Sweet Treat Delivery Services

I'm amazed by the number of companies offering sweet treat deliveries at the moment, so I've compiled a list of various different offerings I've come across, in case anyone is feeling as overwhelmed as I am! This was inspired by @Bristolian Foodie who recently did one of these but for Beer delivery services - check it out if you're after a different kind of pick me up.

As we can't be with our loved ones at the moment, I'm really enjoying sending my friends little surprises in the post to remind them of how loved they are - and it's always a plus to be able to support a small business in the process!

These are mainly based off accounts I follow on Instagram (@foodie_megan - shameless plug) so there's a lot of South West / Birmingham / Edinburgh stores, but if you know a business that should be featured here, feel free to DM me or drop me an email at foodiemegan@gmail.com

Let me know if you end up ordering from any of these places, I'd love to see pics of what you get.

(Note: I'll keep updated this as things change so keep checking back! This is correct to the best of my knowledge at the time of posting, but given the nature of the situation, things can change pretty quickly at the moment so make sure you're checking things for yourself too)

Megan's Cookies

I've recently gotten into the habit of spending my Sunday afternoons baking some sweet treats for the team I'm working with in the following week, to keep morale up and mostly just gives me an excuse to keep baking even though I live alone! So far I've done a lemon drizzle cake, chocolate orange chip cake and brownies, but this week's cookies were just too good not to share - if you like gooey cookies à la Millie's Cookies, you might want to try this out!

Where to Eat in Birmingham

Going out to eat is one of my favourite things to do when I'm spending time with my friends, celebrating something, need cheering up about something, I'm bored and fancy getting out and about... Literally any excuse! I've been going to uni in Birmingham now for 3 years and have been to loads of different places around the city, so I thought I would take the time to share some of my favourite places to go as I come to the end of my time here.

Birthday Brunching

I recently turned 21, and I decided that for my birthday, I wanted to get all of my favourite people together to celebrate, as it's the last excuse I have to do it until my wedding really! Having divorced parents, there's people from either side of my family who haven't seen each other in almost 20 years at this point, so I was quite nervous about how it would be, especially with friends from all corners of my life there too, but it was such a lovely day.

Resolutions Review

On 19th December 2016 at 00:33 I made a note on my phone of my new year's resolutions for 2017. I don't use my notes app all too often so I'd actually forgotten about the list completely until I went to do the same for 2018, but I thought it would be interesting to go through and review to see whether I'd actually achieved any of my resolutions or not.

Venetian Vistas

Okay this time it's not me trying to come up with a fun blog title, this was actually the name of our itinerary

I went through a stage a while ago where I was uploading Instagrams from all sorts of fun places for a week straight and in case you didn't know, that's because I went on a cruise with my best friend. The cruise itself is going to have its own separate post because that was An Experience, but I thought I would do a post first about the actual places we went to.

A Vineyard Vacation

In May, I managed to convince one of my school friends to book a semi-spontaneous trip to Bordeaux with me for my 20th birthday in June. Why Bordeaux? I don't even remember now to be honest! We'd done French together in school so somewhere in France made sense, we found cheap flights, and the cheese and wine were calling to us, so off we went.

How to Train Your Aga (Aga Christmas Masterclass)

If you've seen my Dear House post from August, you may have realised that we moved house this year. The new house we've moved into is an old farm cottage and part of that package means it comes complete with an Aga. Neither my mum nor I had ever used an Aga before we moved into this house, so I decided to take her on an Aga masterclass so that we could make the most out of it - especially with Christmas just around the corner.

Skiing 16/17

Welcome to the month of What I Did in 2017! Where better to start than how I rang in the new year?

Mum decided she wanted to take us on a semi-spontaneous family ski trip over Christmas this year. My parents and the kids have all been skiing before, but me and my older brother hadn't, so we had a real mixed bag of abilities going within the family, but it was something we could all get involved with and have a go at.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I feel like this post is almost redundant because it's so hard to get tickets to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child that you know if you want to go and see it or not. However this post is more for me personally to remember the experience. The premise of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is that it picks up where Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows finishes, and follows the life of one of Harry's sons.

What I've Been Loving Lately #3

This mini series has been around on my blog for a while now - rather than do a monthly favourites post, I do a little one every so often talking about some of the things that I've been enjoying recently (mostly food, TV shows and more food):

Dear House

Thank you for being our home for the past 9 years.

Bobble Bottle Review

Is that a collection of attractive candid photos? No, not in the slightest. But I thought it would be a good way to start a post about something that goes absolutely everywhere with me (as shown by the assortment of photos I have featuring it) - my Bobble Bottle.

The Addams Family Musical

For my birthday this year, my mum surprised me with tickets to go and see The Addams Family with her and my older brother in Bath, because she knows I love any and all musicals, but that I'm a particular fan of Carrie Hope Fletcher too.

Social Media Ban

For those of you that don't know, I've been brought up in a Christian community, so giving up something for Lent each year is almost like part of my annual routine by this point. When I was younger, it was easy - crisps, chocolate, or other unhealthy foods. But now that I've gotten a bit older, I don't see giving up those things as as much of a challenge as they used to be, so I decided to take a different route this year - I gave up social media.

During the ban, I kept a list of 'semi ironic questions I've asked myself since giving up social media' in the Notes app on my phone:

My Favourite Charities

As the festive period is upon us, I always feel like this time is one of giving back, both to friends and family on Christmas, but also back to the community as a whole. That's why I though today I would write a post about my favourite charities to give back to at this time of year.

What I've Been Loving Lately #2

Last year I did a post rounding up all of the things that I'd been loving at the time and I thought making another one would be a good way to ease myself back into blogging. I have quite a lot of posts in the works coming up this month (as you'll read about below!) but this acted as a way to catch up generally.

Brindleyplace Film Festival 2016

Living in Birmingham now, it feels like there's always something fun and exciting going on - much more than when I lived in the countryside! If I'm honest, one of the number one ways I find out about things going on around here is through Facebook ads for places based on location and yesterday I found one for a Film Festival happening in a part of town that we live quite close to, and as I had a friend from home up and we were looking for something to do, we decided to head down and give it a go.

Turning 19!

* not actually my cake, photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39551170@N02/15270339206

I feel like the majority of posts on this blog relate to personal things happening in my life and they're usually quite well received, so I thought I'd come out of my blogging rut to do a post all about my 19th birthday on Friday.

If I'm honest, I'm not particularly major about birthdays. If you've read my post about what I did on my 18th birthday, that may come as a bit of a surprise to you as that one was a pretty big spectacle! But aside from milestone birthdays where my darling mum has a tendency to go a bit OTT, most birthdays tend to go by relatively quietly with this year being not much of an exception.

To The Gym!

For the past year and a half or so, going to the gym has been a fairly staple part of my routine. Sure, some weeks I may end up there 4 times and others I may skip going altogether, but it's something I at least think about doing every week. For a bit of background, I'm useless at every sport ever invented and until I started going to the gym, I did no exercise whatsoever so it's been quite important for me to focus on it, as I like to stay in fairly good shape!