Sunday 22 March 2015

Fruit Salad Smoothie - Boost Juice



When I received an email from Boost Juice UK telling me about their new Fruit Salad limited edition smoothie drink that promised the taste of one of my favourite sweets with the usual healthiness of a smoothie, I knew I had to go and try one. 

For regular visitors to Boost you may somewhat recognise the taste due to it being a combination of two of their most popular smoothies, Passion Mango and Strawberry Squeeze. Incredibly when they are mixed together to create the Fruit Salad smoothie it creates an even more delicious drink than the two individually. Although the taste isn't quite that of a fruit salad sweet that it promised, it is still very sweet and somehow gives you the feeling that you are having a bag of sweets or an ice cream whilst you're drinking it. With summer coming up and people wanting to be healthier who would chose to have a salad when you can have a delicious smoothie instead. I can't believe that something which tastes so much like sweets can be healthy. 

The prices for a regular start at £4.45 in the Peterborough and Leicester stores, £4.70 in the London branches and £4.50 in the rest of the UK stores. Boost is quite expensive but in comparison to shop bought smoothies I can honestly say that it is worth it. You get a lot of smoothie for your money and it really is delicious.

For those wanting to know the ins and out of the smoothie, it contains a combination of apple and tropical juice, milk, banana, strawberry, mango, strawberry and vanilla yoghurt and ice. I can assure you that they are a winning combination and if you have a sweet tooth you will love the Fruit Salad smoothie.

Boost are selling the Fruit Salad smoothie up until Wednesday 6th May so be sure to head down to your local Boost branch to pick one up before it's too late.

To find out more information on about Boost Juice UK or to simply keep up to date with the latest products check out their various links below

www.boostjuicebars.co.uk
www.facebook.com/boostjuiceuk
www.twitter.com/boostjuiceuk
www.Instagram.com/boostjuiceuk

Sunday 15 March 2015

Epic Fail - Claire LaZebnik


Elise Benton and her family have just moved to Los Angeles. She and her sisters are enrolled in Coral Tree Prep School where everyone appears to have famous connections; Elise on the other hand is only attending the school due to the fact that her mother is the new principle. A fact that doesn’t make her the top of people’s lists of people to be friends with, that is until she catches the attention of school heartthrob Derek Edwards. Derek Edwards has the most famous parents in the entire school meaning that every guy wants to be his friend and every girl wants to date him. Derek however, to the outside world appears to hardly ever smile and be quite moody and standoffish. Elise seems to like Derek for him and not because of his parents and Derek opens up to her more than he seems to with anyone else. Meanwhile her sister Juliana becomes extremely smitten with Derek’s best friend Chase. Throw in the most popular girl in school Chelsea and charming Webster to cause problems along the way and you have an enjoyable book. 
I enjoyed the book on the whole. The plot however may seem a little more predictable than a normal book due to being based on Pride and Prejudice. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad thing as regardless of whether you’ve read Pride and Prejudice or not it works very well as a standalone book. If you’ve read the book then it gives a modern twist on it so really it is a win win book for all. Despite all the obvious similarities I didn’t even realise until very near the end of the book.
It was a light hearted, predictable and a quick read, which sometimes is all I want from a book. I really enjoyed seeing how Derek started to open up with Elise and slowly started revealing more personal things about himself that he had never told anyone else. She slowly begins to understand his more famous life and world more and Derek even starts to introduce Elise to it more by taking her to a movie premiere. I didn’t enjoy reading chapters with Elise’s family, I found her younger sister to be particularly irritating. I also found some of the scenes where a certain person took advantage of the more famous students at Coral Tree Prep to be difficult and unenjoyable to read. I’m not entirely sure why I just didn’t enjoy those chapters. I also found the way characters reactions to some situations such as when Juliana thinks that Chase has cheated on her, a little annoying to read but the book moves on so quickly it doesn’t give you time to dwell. 
Truthfully I could take or leave this book. I’m glad I read it and I enjoyed reading it but it wouldn’t be on the top of my pile of books that I would recommend to others. I would however love to have a sequel to find out how Derek and Elise end up in later life. I think that if you’re a huge fan of Pride and Prejudice and feel like you would enjoy reading a modern day remake or you really enjoy books of this genre then I do think you will really enjoy this book.  

Sunday 1 March 2015

Camp America



It’s just over 3 years to the day since I went to the London recruitment fair and was placed at a summer camp in New Hampshire. Recently I've been thinking a lot about how still to this day, doing Camp America was the best decision I’ve ever made so I thought other people may find it interesting to read about my experience. 

Whilst I was applying to do Camp America I read a lot of blogs about other people’s experiences. Personally as useful as those blogs were I found very few on the campower option which I wanted to do and did ultimately ending up doing. Many companies offer a similar summer camp experience to Camp America but as I knew someone who went with Camp America a few years prior to when I did and had nothing but good things to say about them it seemed the obvious choice for me. The whole application process was straight forward, they made getting the visa simple, I flew Virgin Atlantic both ways, and someone was waiting to meet me at the airport to take me to the hotel they’d booked for us arriving into the States before taking us to the Greyhound bus station the morning after. I’m sure the other companies do the same but from my experience Camp America was fantastic.
From reading blogs, I found that many people chose to be counsellors but I chose to do campower. Campower is basically the support staff of the camp; you could be doing anything from helping cook dinner, to waitressing to cleaning for example. My role on camp was waitressing and housekeeping. Personally, I was 19 at the time and I didn’t feel like I was responsible or experienced enough for a counsellor position and I didn’t want to spend my entire summer living with children so being a member of the support staff team was perfect for me.

I think the first thing I have to say about Camp America, as amazing experience as it is don’t be fooled into thinking it’s just going to be three months of you dossing around in America. It really is hard work. I worked 6 out of 7 days but the advantage of being support staff was that I did have hours in between meal times where I could just chill or do camp activities. I would imagine being a counsellor is even more intense as from what I could tell they didn't get as much free time as I did. My work was especially intense prior and after camp ended due to getting the cabins ready for the children's arrival and  then closing them down again ready for the next year. Camp is like any job, once camp begins you have the same routine day in day out. My day began very early setting up the dining room ready for breakfast then we served breakfast as my camp had family dining style meals . We did a quick clean up of the dining room and set up for the next meal then went to clean our designated area which varied from the dance room or the gym for example, which was the only bit of cleaning we had to do all day. From then we repeated the dining room routine again at lunch and dinner before finishing for the evening. You got time to yourself between meals and evenings but the time we worked was hectic to say the least. I’m not sure if all camps do this but the camp I worked at provided cars so we were able to go into the nearest town and go to Walmart or the cinema after we finished for the evening. 

adore the east coast of America so I couldn’t have been asked to have been placed anywhere better. In hindsight the big advantage of being placed at a recruitment fair is that I was able to chose myself camps that I liked the look and location of rather than waiting for a camp to chose me. Camp was exactly how I imagined an American summer camp to look like, except for the fact it was lacking my long lost American twin but maybe that only happens in films. New Hampshire was somewhere that I probably wouldn’t have chosen to go on holiday but it was perfect to live there. It was full of the most breathtaking places where we were lucky enough to visit on our days off, it wasn't far away from dreamlike beaches and for those who prefer the city, my camp was situated only an hour away from Boston. I loved it so much that I am currently saving money to hopefully be able to move to New Hampshire one day soon, something that I wouldn’t have been inspired to do without attending camp. 

For anyone reading this whose thinking of doing of Camp America but isn’t so sure about it, I can highly recommend doing it. 3 years on I find myself still saying the sentence, “this one time when I was at camp...” to people far too often. It has provided me with lifelong memories and friends from around the world who I’m still in contact with today. Although it was very hard work and truthfully at times I did feel like coming home, I would do it again tomorrow if I could. What other summer job can you get that gives you the opportunity to spend three months in America and time to travel after? I’m sure depending on what type of camp you go to and where it is situated in America everyone has different experiences but I’m sure everyone who does Camp America takes away such incredible memories and would recommend doing it.    

For more information on Camp America visit the website by clicking here