Sunshine blogger award!

July 24, 2020 trulyraisa11 Comments

Hello! Today is a special blog post because I have been nominated for the Sunshine Blogger Award! I want to thank Sara@Sunflower Seeds for nominating me! Shall we begin?

Rules

Thank the blogger who nominated you for this award.
Make sure to list the rules and to post a photo of the award logo.
Answer the 11 questions that your nominator asked you.
Nominate 11 other bloggers and ask them your own 11 questions.
Notify your nominees by commenting on one of their recent posts.

Let’s move on to the Q&A!

What’s your favourite season?

I used to like winter a lot but recently I love spring! The way I think of it is as a season of fresh starts. The sun starts to come out a lot and the flowers and wildlife start to bloom and for me that is a sign that if things are not going well I can always start the year again with a fresh start! Sunny days and flowers always give a happy feeling but I can’t stand when it’s extremely hot in the summer.

2. What is a meal that you are pro at cooking?

Pasta is always a dish that I am a pro at! I like a lot of different cuisines like Japanese (Sushi is my favourite food of all!) , Korean and of course Pakistani food but Italian food and pasta will always have a special place in my heart.

3. Who/what inspired you to blog?

Back in the end of high school I always had my nose in a book and I was reading one book where the main character was a blogger. And so I wanted to try it and I created my own book blog! A fun fact is that I had about three other blogs before this one!

4. Sweet or savoury?

This is a hard one because I love anything sour and spicy but at the same time I have a sweet tooth and can’t resist anything sweet!

5. What book would you read over and over again and never get bored of it?

I don’t really read books as much anymore but my all time favourite book series that I can never get bored of would be The Infernal Devices by Cassandra Clare

6. Out of three, which would you want to be: actor/actress, director or scriptwriter?

Scriptwriter for sure! I would also like to be an actress but I’m a writer through and through, and the chance to write stories for a lifetime is something I wouldn’t miss for the world!

7. What quote do you stand by / inspires you?

I don’t have a famous quote that I live by but something that I live by is “Nothing is impossible” and because I’ve bee through situations before where I thought things weren’t possible, but they actually did come true and so that’s a saying I live by.

8. Do you play any sports? if yes, why that specific sport?

I don’t play any sports but I run a lot, although I don’t like it very much. A sport I used to enjoy a lot back in high school was badminton and I would love to play it on a regular basis these days!

9. Where would your dream house be?

I haven’t thought of this much but the prospect of living in France appeals to me a lot! I would love to go to France one day and see all of it! So I guess I would like a dream house in France.

10. One unusual piece of advice?

Don’t listen to music through headphones while reading a book on the bus, trust me you will miss your stop!

11. What is one good thing that happened to you this week?

One good thing would be being nominated and writing this post!

Nominees

I’m going to break the rules a little and nominate you. Yes, you! If you’re reading this and have a blog of your own I nominate you to take part in this award and if you do, put a link to your post in the comment below so I can read it! I can’t wait to see your answers!

11 questions for my nominees

What is your favourite cuisine of food?
The best thing you’ve ever baked.
Recommend a good book to movie adaptation!
What is one thing that you’re really proud of?
Dream holiday destination?
What’s one thing on your bucket list that you’ve completed?
What is your favourite music artist, or what is your favourite genre of music?
When did you start blogging?
Would you like your blog to be an overnight sensation or are you satisfied with your blog as it is now?
Recommend a TV series.
K-drama or anime? (This is always a hard one for me to choose!)

I hope you enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it!

My self-growth journey

July 8, 2020July 15, 2020 trulyraisa12 Comments

Hello! Welcome back to my site! For those of you who read my previous post would know that I decided to put out more lifestyle posts and this is one of them! Shall we begin?

This week’s post is about my personal self-growth journey so let’s start from the beginning. I am a very big introvert, I’m quite shy and quiet unless I’m comfortable being around a certain person/people (friends, family etc.) It’s easy for me to write my thoughts on a blog and post it and I’m sure readers who may not know me personally wouldn’t have a first impression of me as an introvert.

I’m telling you, stop me in the street and try to make small talk and the conversation will die in minutes.

For me this is a major shortcoming and something I would like to change around. Something that I am trying to work on and will continue to work on! So for me this is my main goal through this self-growth journey.

Now I’d be lying if I say that I haven’t changed over the past couple of years and the truth is that I have. I’ve gained that little boost of confidence when socialising with others and this is something that happened while I was at university trying to make new friends and meet new people. Gone were the days where I was a nameless invisible individual who loved to spend her time in the library reading all the books on all the shelves.

I would say I’m proud of the tiniest bit I’ve grown, no matter how small it was it definitely was some progress and now for the rest of my self-growth journey I’m going to be growing more as an individual both physically and mentally. Becoming more confident about myself, putting myself out there and meeting new friends and making new connections and growing a lot more than I am now.

Believe me, I have A LOT of growing to do and this is only the beginning, I am only aiming to work harder in the future.

See you in the next post!

Brew some tea…..let’s talk.

July 1, 2020July 6, 2020 trulyraisa11 Comments

Hello! Welcome back to my site! Today’s post is quite different from the others. I wanted to just sit down and address a few things as I’ve been quite inactive lately. Shall we begin?

I’ve always loved blogging. I had two other blogs before creating this one and it’s been about 4 years since I’ve started blogging. I created this space just as a place to express myself but I never thought I would enjoy it this much! But recently the creative spark that I had in the beginning is slowly starting to die out.

This means that before I would be full of so many ideas and things to blog about but recently I’ve been struggling with ideas on what posts to write. It could be a blogger slump but although I’ve been struggling to create content I want to blog more and more. It’s depressing for me because I end up sitting in front of a blank draft not knowing what to write. I wanted to aim to write at least one blog post a week but I’ve been struggling with that also. I have a few drafts that I may never publish because I feel like they might not be good enough to post.

Even though my creativity is slowly burning out, it doesn’t mean I will ever stop blogging. It just means that I will be slow with my posts for a while but I will try my best to think of new ideas and content to talk about. I’ve also decided that I may start writing more Lifestyle based posts rather than Nutrition ones. Posts relating to self-growth and lifestyle. What do you think? When I first started this blog I had quite a few viewers who would like and some would even share a comment. I think that’s what made blogging more fun, I used to love getting comments and being able to interact and have my website recognised. But recently there’s been fewer viewers and I think that also demotivated me a little bit.

So if you are reading this please leave a comment, what things would you like me to discuss what kind of content do you enjoy seeing? From now on I will also work really harder to create new posts and content and interact with you all!

I’ll work harder from now on so keep an eye out on this site!

Bake with me!

June 24, 2020 trulyraisa3 Comments

Hello everyone! I’m a little excited for today’s post because it’s been a while since I wrote a post like this! Today’s post

I’m going to be sharing some things I’ve been baking during the lockdown!

Brownies

The first thing I baked was brownies! I liked brownies before, but because we baked them two or three times I started to dislike them. 😦 The recipe is actually very easy, but with this recipe I would recommend that you add something else to give it more flavour, some things I would recommend would be adding some walnuts or orange zest to it. It’s quite plain by itself. This is the recipe that I use to make these brownies Chocolate Brownies recipe.

Cinnamon Rolls

I also attempted to make Cinnamon Rolls! I have to be honest and tell you that they looked delicious but I must have done something wrong because they did not taste good at all. I also didn’t make the icing but it is also included in this recipe. But the first try doesn’t always have to be successful! This is the recipe I used Cinnamon Rolls recipe.

Oat Bars

This was probably the most easiest thing I’ve baked! It was a really simple recipe to follow through and when I had made them I didn’t add any of the seeds and instead of berries I used raisins but they still turned out delicious! This is the recipe I used Granola bars.

Chocolate chip cookies

Chocolate chip cookies are probably a very straightforward thing to bake but when I baked them for the first time they didn’t turn out as I had hoped. But when I tried them for a second they were just perfect! The recipe is quite easy to make so you can try this at home too!

Shortbread

Shortbread is something I bake often because it’s the easiest thing in the world to make. It doesn’t require too many ingredients or even much effort and they taste delicious anyway! The recipe I use is Shortbread recipe

That’s all I have for today! I hope you will try and enjoy some of these recipes and be sure to leave a comment or tag me in your photos on Instagram!

Life of an ex-university student.

June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 trulyraisaLeave a comment

So I unofficially finished university back in May and since then, things haven’t been the same! So I thought I would write a blog post about it! Shall we begin?

The Coronavirus was probably a shock to the whole world. It changed life as it was and because of it I wasn’t able to cherish my last semester at university. All my classes had moved online (I’m guilty for not attending them!) and I was knee deep in a pile of assignments!:( However, I managed to complete all of them and unofficially complete my semester!

But because of the Coronavirus it meant that I wasn’t able to graduate or even meet any of my friends to celebrate the end of the last ever semester. 😦

Since March the country has been on lockdown and things are finally starting to reopen again but nothing has changed for me because I don’t have a full-time job yet or a school to go to. It’s been weird not to have a daily routine or anything to look forward and honestly speaking it’s starting to become depressing. But I’ve been actively trying to look for a job and hopefully soon I’m sure something will come along. I’ve also been trying to keep busy by cooking and baking things and posting them on Instagram and trying to write more blog posts! I’m aiming to at least try to write one blog post a week, but there are no promises!

I’m curious to know how other graduates around the world are dealing with this situation, because I know we’re all facing the same problem so it would be interesting to know!

But for now, I will have to work harder at producing more content and trying to find a job. I have a fun blog post coming up where I share everything I’ve been baking so far and linking the recipes too!

That’s all I have for today, if you’re also a graduate comment how you’ve been getting on as an ex-student!

For the love of food…

June 1, 2020 trulyraisaLeave a comment

Hello everyone! Welcome back to my space 🙂 Today I’m going to be talking about the most common problems or situations I have surrounding food and nutrition and “keeping healthy” So, shall we begin?

I wasn’t always interested in nutrition. In fact I didn’t know that there were courses on nutrition and until I came across it while doing some research on what university to go to. But I was a big foodie (I still am now!) and I think that’s what got me to think “I really want to learn more about food”. I was originally a media student but it wasn’t a practical career field I saw myself in.

Adapting from being a media student in the Arts to doing Nutrition in Applied Sciences was a huge change. I swear the first few lectures were gibberish and the first year I would wait until I was home to properly take notes and understand the lectures!

Apart from learning about nutrition I tried to pay more attention to what I ate and I had a lot of struggles. Some of them maybe some of you will be able to relate to. Something that I had struggled with in the past is snacking. In my opinion I think snacking is a bad habit and for us who should be eating three meals a day, that should be more than enough to satisfy our energy and caloric intake during the day. In the past, I used to snack a lot and it often lead to binge-eating. So recently, I have tried not to eat anything in between my three meals and occasionally I still snack on something (unhealthy, usually!) but I am working on it more.

Another struggle I had ever since I was a student was stress-eating. A-levels were a particularly hard time for me, even harder than university and because of my bad habit of snacking I used to stress eat a lot. I’m glad that with time I can now say that I’ve completely eliminated that struggle!

Finding time to exercise is a struggle I can say that there are some of you who can relate to this. The NHS guidelines for physical activity is 150 minutes of moderate activity. I really wanted to achieve that, but working a part time job while being a university student meant I had barely any time on my hands. I’m not really comfortable with completing exercise with others and it’s something I like to do on my own so I don’t go to a gym. We have a treadmill in our house so I usually go running 2 or 3 times a week. Occasionally I also find a YouTube video and follow a Yoga or Pilates routine! But any type of physical activity is great! Just getting your body moving and being active is all that’s required!

After three years of learning about food I can tell you it’s not just black and white. The constant pressure to eat healthy and stay active isn’t as simple as gaining weight or losing weight. That is not the only goal, yes it’s amazing if everyone can be a healthy weight but that’s not the only goal. Foods are so much more complex and believe it or not, what you eat can prevent you from having diseases and being ill in the future. Having a good diet and exercising often can improve your health so much, do you ever see some people that look in their early 40s and they’re actually so much older? The chance of that is because that person has a good diet and they are active. Food is amazing and there is so much more to it than what meets the eye.

That’s all I have for today, but if you have any questions then let me know in the comments below!