5 Things I Learned in France

For my summer holiday this year, I went to France for a week with my family, to stay in a cosy little village called Tourrettes Sur Loup (yes, we’ve heard all the jokes already).

The villa that we were staying in was quite old fashioned in a modern way. The person who owned the villa obviously enjoyed reading as the living room area was lined with bookshelves and these were crammed full with books. There was some really old Penguin classics, lots of encyclopedias and a few modern books.

I don’t want to bore anyone with a detailed day to day itinerary of what I did, so here is a list of things I learned. (I like lists by the way).

1. The French air is good for you

I’ve self diagnosed myself as being lactose intolerant as anything containing milk makes me ill. So when my parents said that we should all get pizza one night, I was dreading having to say “sans fromage merci” just incase the French didn’t understand me or I didn’t understand them. About three minutes away from our villa, there was another villa where a man made pizza at night from his little pizza van parked at the end of his drive. I decided to just be brave and have a cheese pizza and voila, I was not ill the next day. Then the next day I decided to be very naughty and I had an ice cream and another cheese pizza and it still didn’t make me ill. No other explanation so the French air must be good for me!

 2. George Clooney makes pizza

The pizza van that I mentioned in the last point, had pizza boxes that suspiciously had what looked like George Clooney making pizza on them. After googling “George Clooney pizza box” it seems that lots of people have noticed it looks like him too.

3. The French have amazing snacks

Prince biscuits, BN biscuits with cartoon characters, Haribo Smurfs, chocolate bread, croissants, I could go on. Basically, I just wanted to eat snacks for breakfast, lunch and dinner when I was there.

4. They are obsessed with little trains

Every city or large town I went to all had a tiny little train that took tourists around the area.  Also cutely named ‘Le petit train’.

5. They love Nutella

Everything had Nutella on it. Ok, not quite everything but so many eating places served Nutella crepes, paninis etc. Not that I’m complaining as Nutella on a panini is delicious.

Ok , so the things I learnt might not help you out in a general knowledge test but it was interesting to know. No? 

How to Create a Font Background

This trick is so simple and easy to do, I don't know why I haven't thought of doing it before. If you're wondering what I mean by a font background, have a look at my header. The anchor part of my blog's name was created using this trick.

I used Photoshop CS5 for this, but you will be able to do it on other Photoshop versions too.

1. Pick a pretty picture

Go for a picture that is colourful and isn't one solid colour. It's better to use a picture of an object rather than people. For this example, I am going to use a picture that I took of some very bright yellow flowers.

2. The right font

Now that you have got your picture, open it up on Photoshop. Make sure you copy the background layer before you do the next steps (right click on the background layer to duplicate it).

Next you want to pick a font that you like. I would recommend using a thick font so that the picture will show up clearly. I have chosen to use the font Bebas Neue that I downloaded from dafont.com.

Once your font has been sorted, create a new layer and type over your picture. Then right click on the layer with your text and select 'Rasterize Type'.

Hold Ctrl and select the image inside the box on the text layer. Your text should now be selected.
Then press Ctrl, Shift and I.

Your photo should now look similar to this.
Make sure the background layer is selected and then right click on the text and select ' Layer via Cut'.
Deselect everything by holding Ctrl and D. Hide all the other layers except for the new one to see the finished result.

If you want to use this trick on a long name, it is helpful to put your text into different layers so that the backgrounds of the text are similar. This is handy if you want to use a certain part of your image.
For example if I wanted to have Anchor Road, I'd now make another text layer and repeat the above steps with the word Road.

3. Go crazy with it 

 I've used this idea as my blog header but you could use it on greeting cards, for business cards, make a sign for a room or even use it on promotional images.

Here's how it would look with other images:

Background: Smoothies

Background: Houses sitting on a beach

Let's go to the beach!

I love visiting Cardiff Bay. Who would have thought that somewhere so nice and peaceful could be inside a city? There's always so much to do at Cardiff Bay, it's a lovely place to go for walks, ride a bike or even just people watch. Because it's summer, Cardiff Bay has opened up it's own beach in Roald Dahl Plass. 

Before I had seen the beach, I thought it would just be a small area cornered off and filled with sand. I was so wrong. There are fair rides, little beach huts selling gifts, a swimming pool and games like hook a duck.

It felt more like a carnival than just a beach, but that's what I loved. They had created a really nice atmosphere and it was good to be able to wander around it for free. 

It's such a nice idea to bring the seaside to the city. 

Another event that is also happening at Cardiff Bay is Blysh. They have lots of shows on and they put on a silent disco about two weeks ago. I'd never been to a silent disco before but I will definitely go to one again! It took place in the Spiegel tent (you can see it to the left of the picture above). It's so funny to walk into the middle of the dance hall and hear nothing but the sounds of strangled cats. Oops, I mean people singing! Because we had to wear headphones to hear the music and switch between two DJs, we felt as though no one could see us and danced badly.

Cardiff Bay, you're too awesome. 

A Very Unprofessional Review Of The Internship

When living in Scotland, I’m never awake early enough to get The Metro paper. Mainly because I’m too lazy and always wake up five minutes before college classes start.

As I have an internship in Wales, I’ve turned into a morning person and I’m out of the house extremely early. On my walk from the train station to my internship, I always pick up The Metro. Purely just to give me something to read at lunchtime or on the way home.

Flicking through The Metro, I saw an advertisement to see a free preview of The Internship at selected cinemas. Luckily Cardiff’s Vue was one of the chosen cinemas. I registered on The Metro, put in the code that was on the advertisement and chose the cinema and two tickets. Boom, two free tickets were mine.

I’d never been to a preview of a film before. I’ve never had enough money to sign up for a Cineworld card that lets you see films for free so I was really excited to be seeing The Internship before it was released in the UK.