Rhian Williams

USW Insight Ambassador, 21, Second Year Psychology with Criminology Student at Treforest!

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Well that was PHENOMENAL! I got so emotional at many different stages of the tour just seeing how much effort went into making my all time favourite films from my childhood! Huge thankyou to my wonderful mum for this birthday treat - I'll never forget it! ❤️ #Hogwarts #WBStudioTour #HarryPotter (at The Making Of Harry Potter Studio Tours)

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OH MY GOD!! HARRY POTTER!! #harrypotter #wbstudiotour (at Warner Bros. Studio Tour London)

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LONDON BABY!!! #London #buckinghampalace (at Buckingham Palace)

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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... 🙊🎄🎅🏼❄️☃ #christmas #candles #bedtime #reindeer #cosy

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Sunday afternoons be like... 🐱😴💤 #sleepyhead #sleepykitty #cat #instacat #catsofinstagram #cats #sundays #lazyday

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Hey there guys!

So seen as it ‘s that time of year, I figured I’d do a revamp of one of the vlogs I had to make to get the role of Insight Ambassador and give you my % Top Tips For Applying To University!

Hope they help you out! Good luck with applying - and don’t forget if you have any questions you can contact me on here!! :D

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There's not a lot of it but first snowfall of the year occurred overnight!! Is it time to get the Christmas decorations out yet?! ❄️🌨☃🎄🎅🏼 #snow #winter #christmas #cold (at Chapel en le Frith)

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At my favourite little coffee shop in Cardiff having a milkshake with a friend!! Seriously guys you need to come here! 😍 #barkers #milkshake #Cardiff (at Barker Tea House)

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Student Friendly Recipes

Part 2, Take 2: Bonfire Night Cupcakes!

Hey guys!!

So as you may have read last week I attempted to make some Halloween themed cupcakes for my October Student Friendly Recipe post and they didn’t quite go to plan... Now as promised I have done a whole new themed cupcake recipe for you, and the theme is Bonfire Night! I was a bit nervous I’d mess up again, so my wonderful friend Jack stayed on FaceTime with me whilst I made these badboys! I have already received word off my housemates that these ones are indeed better than the last batch:

“I think you’ve outdone yourself with these ones Rhian; much better than the Halloween ones - can’t bludgeon someone with these!” - Matthew

Mary Berry would be proud!

Continue reading for ingredients and method!

Ingredients

For the cakes:

200g caster sugar

200g butter/margarine

200g self-raising flour (make sure it’s self-raising - don’t be a fool like me)

4 tablespoons of cocoa powder

4 medium eggs

White chocolate chunks - this is completely optional, I only included it because I found some lying around and thought ‘why not’

For the decoration:

115g unsalted butter

250g icing sugar

Red, orange and yellow food colouring

Popping candy

Flake choclate

MatchMakers - I opted for the zingy orange ones but whichever you fancy!

A piping bag - whether this is a store bought one of a nifty homemade one you see on the internet!

Method

1. Preheat your wonderful ovens to Gas Mark 4/180°C/350°F.

2. Arrange cupcake cases on a baking tray so that they are ready!

3. Cream together your butter and caster sugar until light, pale, and fluffy!

4. Crack in the eggs one at a time with a tablespoon of sifted dry ingredients (flour and cocoa) and mix thoroughly.

5. Sieve in the rest of the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly. Add a splash of milk if need me to make the mixture a tad smoother.

6. If you have decided to add white chocolate, add it at this point. :)

7. Transfer equal amounts to your prepared cases on a baking tray so it looks something like this:

8. Pop them into the oven for 12-18 minutes - you’ll know they’re done when they’ve risen and a knife/skewer poked into them comes out clean! Leave them to one side to cool.

9. Now we start on the decorations! First things first, snap up the MatchMakers into relatively small pieces to look like firewood and crumble the Flake bars up so they’re fairly chunky but still crumbled.

10. Buttercream! To make the buttercream, you want to start by beating the butter until it’s soft and fluffy.

11. Gradually sieve in the icing sugar to the softened butter, a bit at a time and adding a drop of water occasionally when needed to smooth the mixture.

12. Separate out the mixture into three parts - two of a similar small size and one larger quantity.

13. Into the two smaller bowls, add yellow food colouring to one and red food colouring to the other. To the larger bowl add orange food colouring. Ensure all colours are distributed evenly!

14. Pop the buttercreams into the fridge for approx 5 minutes so that they are ready for piping. Grab the orange one and put it into a piping bag with a star/flower shaped nozzle (I’m not too sure what they’re actually called but they look like this).

15. Begin piping the orange buttercream in an upwards motion from the top of the cupcakes, almost creating several elongated Iced Gem peaks. Place the orange buttercream back into the fridge.

16. Grab the yellow buttercream and repeat the last step.

17. For the red buttercream, you want to use a narrow piping nozzle like this. You want to use this and make small lines within the orange and yellow to aim for a flame-like effect. 

18. If need be bring the orange back out to bulk out the ‘fire’ slightly.

19. Grab your MatchMakers and arrange over the buttercream fires to look like firewood. Then grab the crumbly Flakes and sprinkle over the top.

20. Finally! Grab some popping candy and throw it over the top of all the little bonfires and listen to it crackle! As one of my housemates Georgie said at this point “I CAN HEAR IT POPPING OH MY GOD”.

And there we have it! My Bonfire Night inspired cupcakes for you guys! Bit of a long blog post but worth it when you get to the end and have these yummy cupcakes to eat! Should get you all in the mood for fireworks, bonfires and sparklers tomorrow night!

Let me know if you try these out and send me your pictures! I’d love to see you guys giving my recipes a go! In the mean time, enjoy Bonfire night and all the pretty fireworks!

Until next time amigos! xx

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If you guessed I was making Bonfire Night themed cupcakes then you guessed correctly!! Recipe up on my blog later!! 😍🎆🔥 #bonfire #guyfawkesnight #bonfirenight #fireworks #university #insight #uni #usw #universityofsouthwales #student #blogger #cupcakes #baking #bake

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Currently working on my next Student Friendly Recipes for you all - watch this space!! 😋🍫🍰 #student #uni #insight #USW #southwales #baking #bake #cakes #universityofsouthwales

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You know winter is coming when it's dark as you finish uni for the day!! #USW #uni #university #dusk #winter #nighttime (at University of South Wales)

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Student Friendly Recipes

Part 2: A Disaster of Epic Proportions

So as you may have seen in my latest vlog, I promised my next student friendly recipes post would be about some Halloween cupcakes.

However, having just completed decorating them, they can only be described as an epic fail. Mary Berry would NOT be impressed...

It was all going so well, then after I’d put them into the oven to begin baking them, I began to tidy away my ingredients. It was then I had realised that I had in fact used plain flour instead of self-raising flour. Without any baking powder or any raising agent in my cupboards, I had no way to salvage them. So I let them bake and waited patiently to see how they would come out...

Surprisingly, they didn’t look too bad. “Hurray!” I thought to myself, I may be able to salvage these afterall! So I began making my buttercream to decorate the cakes with, and then it came to piping it on. This is where things started to go slightly wrong...

The first piping bag split on me half way through, and I’d stupidly picked up the wrong nozzle! But it was too late, I had enough buttercream to sink a ship in a bag in my hand with the wrong nozzle buried at the bottom; I had no choice but to persevere. The wrong nozzle caused me to ice the cakes horrendously. A small child could’ve done a better job than me at this point.

SO I have decided that these cakes belong hidden away so only my housemates see them and eat them. This of course means that I have no student-friendly recipe to post today as planned! As an apology of sorts, I have decided that next month I shall do TWO student friendly recipe posts - the first of which I’m planning to get up next week for you guys!

So in short, make sure you check your ingredients before you put anything in an oven. I’m off to hang my head in shame for disappointing Mary Berry like this. Tune in next week for the new improved Student Friendly Recipe for this month!

Until next time amigos! xx

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Here’s my latest vlog for you guys! This one is all about my visit back home over the weekend where my cousin surprised me with a visit to Spooky World in Warrington - it was so much fun! :)

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Finally time to snuggle up in bed and watch this! Happy #BackToTheFuture Day!! ❤️

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Feel like dropping out of university...?

The first few weeks of university are a whirlwind, what with the the madness of freshers and the excitement of being independent and meeting all these new people - you barely have a chance to sit down and think for five minutes! Some of you however, may have that spare five minutes somewhere and come to realise that a few weeks into university life you’re not enjoying it as much as you thought you might, and are leaning towards dropping out and going back home… The main thing to remember is not to panic; you’re not the first person to feel like this and most certainly won’t be the last.

Although it may feel entirely overwhelming, the thing to remember is this isn’t the end of the world, and there are many roads to go down from here.

Now obviously there are many things that could be making you feel like this, and for each option there is always someone to help, guide and advise you as to what your next steps should be. But university is such a big step, it’s important to know that if you really do want to drop out, you have to ensure it’s absolutely the right decision for you…

So who should I talk to about dropping out?

First things first, I’d recommend talking to your family - your mum, dad, brothers or sisters - whoever you feel most comfortable talking to (we all know what families are like). They will advise and support you no matter what you decide. Explain to them how you’re feeling; maybe you’re just feeling a little homesick and will feel 10 times better after a Skype call home. Alternatively talk to your flatmates, I’m sure you won’t be the only one that feels a tad homesick and is struggling with the new found independence university gives you, so you’ll all benefit from a quick chat and a brief distraction.

Alternatively if you do then think “hmmm I don’t think I’m on the right course” then talk to Student Support Services (they can be found in the main reception area of G Block on Treforest campus). If it’s not too late you may be able to talk to course leaders with their help and transfer to a different course more suited to you. If you decide you enjoy the course but feel you should be closer to home, they may even be able to advise and help with a university transfer. At the very least they can advise you about dropping out, all the pros, cons and everything that comes with it - pop in and have a chat with them, I guarantee it will help! After all they are there to support all students with whatever help they may need during university; whether it’s something as intense as dropping out, or if it’s just a friend when you need one! :)

I speak as someone who has been in this boat, and I’m not saying it’s the same for everyone, but this is my story:

I started at the University of South Wales in September 2013 on the Caerleon campus studying photography. At first everything was absolutely amazing! I’d made some awesome friends (some of whom I am still in touch with), I was enjoying being independent, and I loved living down here in South Wales. But after freshers had died down, and everyone started locking themselves away in their rooms because of the assignments they had to complete, I really started to think “maybe I should be doing something right now too”… But the truth is I’d done the majority of the written work that needed doing but wasn’t due in until January, I’d completed all my photoshoots and my meetings with tutors about the progress of my work were all great. But as Christmas loomed nearer I couldn’t stop thinking “something isn’t right here” despite feeling settled in Caerleon. I didn’t speak to anyone about how I was feeling, which was the worst thing I could’ve done as at the time I had a lot going on in my personal life at the time too. I also think part of me thought that if I gave up, I’d let everyone down as I was, and still am, the first member of my immediate family to go to university. After a few emotional Skype calls with my mum (who is my absolute best friend and my rock throughout everything) I traveled home for Christmas a few weeks early and it was then I decided I wasn’t going back. I thought long and hard about why I wanted to drop out, and it just boiled down to the fact that the course was completely wrong for me. So after talking to the University, I found out I couldn’t transfer as it was too late in the year, but instead I could drop out completely and just reapply direct to USW; I was 1000% I wanted to be back down here studying and working towards a fantastic future for myself…

To this day, I still think that was hands down the best decision I had ever made, and I would not change a thing. Sometimes I get asked if I’d rather have taken a year out and not bothered the first time round. My answer is always no. Those first three months with USW prepared me enough to make such grown-up decisions and deal with them, all in all preparing me for university life. 

Myself and my Newport friends Cat and Kirstie enjoying Oktoberfest in Caerleon SU during my                                                            first attempt at university!

So, my final pieces of advice:

Don’t stay quiet. Talk to someone about how you’re feeling!

Remember student support services are there. They can help you with almost any problem so make the most of having that opportunity!

Most importantly, do whatever is right for you! This is the new chapter in your life, you can write whatever you want in there! :)

And if all else fails, you can always talk to me! I’m contactable through the USW Insight Facebook and Twitter pages and through the ask box on my blog (it’s in the links at the top of the page)! Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have questions - always happy to help!

Until next time amigos! xx

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Train journey home be like... 🌲🍂🍃Shoutout to the guy who hiccuped at the end 😂🙈 #wales #countryside #train #journey #travel #student #home