sweets - AnnaTheApple

February 12, 2015February 12, 2015

Rants and Raves #8

I’m pretty much back into the normal swing of things again. It’s scary (and sad) how quickly normality and reality submerges you when you get back from being away. It’s like you never went away…

The other parts of my holiday recaps are coming but for now I thought I’d rant and rave for a bit.

Rant: I was driving back from the gym and had BBC Radio 2 (this was about 6.40am) and Chris Evans was reading some texts out. He read one from someone who said “I’m training for London” and Chris Evans was like “what does that mean? Training for the entire of the city? Training to do what? You need to sort your texting out!”. As a runner and a marathon lover obviously I knew exactly what the texter meant. He was training for the London marathon. It just annoyed me that Chris Evans was so oblivious to is and assumed the texter had made a mistake. I suppose as a non-runner you wouldn’t automatically know I guess…but it still irked me.

Rave: I am missing American food big time. I think Ben and me both agreed that if there was a froyo place near to where we lived it would probably become a Friday night and weekend habit. Not good for our bank account, teeth or tummies! I also miss the BBQ food…

Walking past these at Tesco on my lunch break I couldn’t help but grab them and buy them quickly. BBQ ribs for Friday night! It softens the pain somewhat 😉

Rant: Speaking of American food…

Obviously we brought back some treats to enjoy at home. The birthday cake M&Ms are my favourite. I dislike plain chocolate M&Ms as I find them too chocolatey, if that makes sense, but I love these. Very moreish though! I don’t like the Harry Potter Bertie Botts Every Flavour Jelly Beans though. Ear wax and vomit flavours?? Noooo thank you!

Rave: New trainers!

I’m now a big believer in rotating trainers rather than just using one pair all the time. I still love my Brooks trainers but I think I’m always a Mizuno girl at heart. Sooo comfy and just seem to mould well to my feet. These were sent to by Millets to review so that’ll be up next week sometime.

Rant: So much washing. It’s unreal. I do tend to do some hand washing on holiday for my smalls and gym stuff (otherwise they’ll sit in my bag for ages all sweaty and gross) but still the amount of washing needed to be done was ridiculous. That coupled with going to the gym and running and Ben going to the gym and running now…ay ay ay!

Rave: OK strictly speaking this isn’t really a rave, it was just very funny. I’d planned to go to the gym on Wednesday so my alarm was set for 5am. It went off, I got up…and then Ben’s alarm started going off which hugely confused me. He shouldn’t be getting up until 6am. As Ben’s alarm takes a while to wake him up (we’re so different) I nudged him and said “Ben, your alarm is going off??”. He rolled over, turned it off and said “was going to go running…too tired…not a morning person…mrrfff” and went back to sleep.

I got back from the gym about 6.45am to a very quiet and very dark house. I ran upstairs and opened the bedroom to find Ben still asleep. He woke up to the noise, bolted upright in bed and proceeded to reel off a few choice phrases and words I shan’t write here and leapt to the bathroom…he hadn’t re-set his alarm from before! He was 45 minutes late. Yes I’m a bad wife for saying this, but him leaping out of bed half asleep in major panic semi-naked and dishevelled was fairly amusing. Major kudos to him: he got out of the house (with a shower) in under 15 minutes. Oh to be a man…

Rant: I’m really suffering from dry skin on my legs. It started on holiday and I wondered if I was allergic to the hotel linen or water or something, but it’s still bugging me now. We bought some really good moisturiser in the States which is helping to some degree.

Funny name hehe…yes I’m a child

I normally get dry hands during the winter but hand lotion helps…but dry legs? Bit random and very annoying. Finger’s crossed it’ll clear up soon.

Any tips for dry skin?

Do you bring back food from a holiday?

What’s your trainer brand of choice? I like Mizuno, Brooks and Adidas Boosts.

December 17, 2014January 14, 2015

Rants and Raves #5

And we’re mid-week! Hurrah! Can you believe it’s Christmas next week – as in next week? I’m pretty much in the “I love Christmas, it’s my favourite time ever” camp so I’m fairly excited right now. I know some people aren’t as keen on Christmas and it can be quite stressful, but I just really enjoy it – the atmosphere, family time, food (ALL THE FOODS), friends, music, films…I love it. Anyway, on to my rants and raves!

Rave: And on the theme of Christmas… Christmas jumpers! I’m a jumper lover and it really appeals to me on two levels: it’s Christmassy and it’s warm.

From Matalan

Rant: Ben pretends he doesn’t like Christmas jumpers but I’m convinced there’s an excited little boy in there somewhere…

From Tesco

I’m sure he loves wearing it really. But anyway, Christmas jumpers are amazing. It’s sad they’re only really socially acceptable around Christmas. And I lost my last jumper as I thoughtfully put it away last year…to an unknown location.

Rave: The gym! OK it is early days but I’m really enjoying the variety. I did (my gym’s version) of body pump, which isn’t the Les Mills one but is a very similar concept, at the weekend. The class worked on muscles that I had long been neglecting: shoulders, back, triceps, biceps, chest…it’s been a while. And my body made me full aware of that the next day as I was hobbling around like a 90 year old woman struggling with simple activities.

I also did a class called Pure Blast. It was 30 minutes of high intensity exercise. Basically you either sprinted on the treadmill or cycled madly on the bike for a set amount of time, then did a series of exercises like squats, burpees, sit ups, lunges, etc. before getting back on the bike. Non-stop for 25 minutes (5 minute cool down – or in my case, collapse on floor). This was followed by a core class which was run by the same ~~monster~~ guy. He did a very similar concept whereby you did a certain core move a set time and then moved quickly on to the next move. After peeling myself off the floor I realised I quite enjoyed it. My body didn’t know what had hit it – there was just so much variety!

Rant: My gym, I won’t lie, is one of the cheaper gyms (PureGym) but works brilliantly for me. It’s open 24 hours a day and has loads of different classes which are perfect for my schedule. It’s also massive so there’s never a chance of not getting a machine or set of weights. However it isn’t glamorous by anyone’s imagination and some people who go there (I am heavily generalising here as I know a lot of nice people who also go there) can be a bit intimidating and, for want of a better word, are a bit “rough” (I fully admit to to being a snob). This was proved as I came out of the gym and was cat-called by a bunch of guys also exiting. Me quickening up to get to my car just heightened their calling. Lovely.

Rave: Alfie. Need I say more?

Alfie gives me hope that one day when I become a mother (*heart palpitations begin*) I will sink into the role easier than I think. I just love this fur ball more than words – even if he does decide to poo when his walk is 99% over and we’re well and truly past the poo bin.

Rant: OK this is something I’ve been meaning to post about. When Ben went to China (and Hong Kong) he asked me if there was anything I’d like him to bring back. I said some Chinese sweets as I was intrigued what they’d be like. Verdict?

Not sweet at all. In fact, there were these so-called ginger sweets (actually I have no idea what they were called at all as the description is in another language) which blew my head off! The after burn was ridiculous. I was bitterly disappointed. You live and learn.

Rave: Hey check me out posting not one but two ‘outfit of the day’ photos in one post! I used to do this a while ago but then stopped because…well, I’m actually devoid of any style and my clothes are quite boring. But I was quite proud of this outfit. If you think it looks stupid/ugly, please don’t tell me as I want to continue to live in my fantasy world… 😉

Jumper from Matalan, skirt very old stolen from sister years ago, socks from River Island, necklace and boots I can’t remember (this is possibly another reason why I don’t post my outfit that often)

I much prefer summer to winter but winter does have the benefit of long boots and layering. And long socks! They were so toasty. Almost typed “tasty” (food is never far from my mind clearly).

Rant: Working from home is amazing. However deciding to “chance” doing an update on my computer in the morning before I started work was not wise.

I started it at 8.30am and it didn’t finish until 1pm. I kid you not. I felt terrible because obviously I couldn’t do any work. My manager was aware and it had happened to someone else in the office the other day so it wasn’t really an issue. I pottered about doing chores and bits and bobs. I suppose you could say that’s a good thing – but I’m the type of person who when genuinely sick and can’t go to work is convinced they’ll think I’m lying or taking liberties. I hate people thinking I’m dossing about or not doing my job. I got what I needed to do done for the day though so it wasn’t too bad in the end.

Rave: I’ve done my one month free of Kindle Unlimited. I downloaded (for free) and read Thorn Birds (wowza is that an epic love saga or what! Slightly creepy as well) and the The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window (absolutely fantastic – very dry and sarcastic humour but this really appealed to me).

I also downloaded Life of Pi and Great Expectations as audio books and listened to these in the car on the way to and from work. I loved Life of Pi and really recommend it. I chose Great Expectations as I don’t think I’ve read a Charles Dickens before and thought I really probably should. It was over 11 hours long though!

I decided I was going to cancel my Kindle Unlimited account though as I didn’t think £7.99/month was worth it. I do read a lot of books but I usually aim for the cheaper ones and there wasn’t enough audio book selection to keep me interested there. This meant that I had to listen to Great Expectations quite often towards the end of the free month as when you cancel Kindle Unlimited they remove the Unlimited content from your devices. Though I’ve managed to duck this so far by not connecting my Kindle to WiFi (sneaky, sneaky), but for my phone (where I listen to the audio books) this was impossible.

Anyway long story short: I enjoyed Kindle Unlimited but I’d prefer to spend £7.99 a month at Audible where you get a free audio book from a huge selection every month. I did enjoy Great Expectations though – even if Dickens often decided to use 12 words when one would have sufficed.

Do you enjoy reading/listening to audio books? I love getting through twice as many books by using my ‘dead time’ when I’m commuting to listen to something.

Have you ever tried “foreign” sweets before? Generally I’ve had good experiences but I think this is because I’ve always had more “Westernised” sweets.

Are you a Christmas jumper lover or hater?

May 12, 2014

Another wedding and yet more cake

I’ve had four days off and yet I feel like I’m even more tired. We’ve just been crazy busy. But in a nice way.

Ben and me had Thursday and Friday off as we had a wedding Thursday afternoon and were staying the night in the hotel where the reception was being held. On Thursday morning we tried to get some boring house jobs done and also sort my new car out (very exciting!) Then we headed to the wedding, which was being held in the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth.

Basically it’s this huge tower-like structure where you can go up in a lift and see amazing views. Well, I say amazing…it’s about as amazing as it can get in Portsmouth 😉 Because we got there about 40 minutes before the wedding began we waited in the cafe and had a sneaky bit of cake.

We had a slice of carrot cake and millionaire shortbread and had half each of both. This is big news as I never normally share cake!

Despite the weather being less than stellar, the views were fantastic. It was really quite a unique and lovely ceremony.

And there was a glass floor you could stand on (without shoes) and look straight down. Very cool.

After the ceremony we headed back to the hotel for the reception. Despite my previous cake, I was getting hungry. The meal was a buffet and in true Anna fashion I started getting antsy. I hate buffets. I’m always scared they’ll not be enough food – and consequently eat way too much. When will I ever learn? Ben said he thinks it’s hilarious, but I tried to make him understand by saying imagine that the bar was a buffet format and there were only so many drinks available. His eyes lit up in panic. Exactly!

I ate quite a lot of sweets from the sweet buffet too…and three *little* pieces of wedding cake. I felt quite full by the end. And rather rough. It was a good evening though with lots of great company and banter.

The sign reads: “I’m here for the cake”

I woke up feeling a little delicate and quite bloated. Not good!

Then we had a mad whirl-wind of a day where we had to dash back home to Southampton to pick up my paper bit of my driving licence to then drive back to Portsmouth to sort my new car out. We’ve officially bought a new Fiat 500!

And amazingly it’ll be ready this week as they had one in stock to the spec we wanted. How lucky is that??

Then from there we had to go home, do the food shop, go to the post office and pick up our road bikes from Halfords. And I wanted to do a bit of baking for a party I was going to the next day. Whew.

As we don’t have a bike rack we could only get one bike safely in our car so I cycled mine home (it was only 4 miles). It was great to get a proper feel for the bike. It felt really good. It fit well, I felt very comfortable and it was light and speedy – from my limited experience!

Unfortunately we don’t have anywhere to put them yet as our shed is rather full. So they’re in the living room for the moment.

Looks fine, right…? Alfie doesn’t even care.

After Parkrun on Saturday morning I headed to a surprise party for our lovely previous ladies’ captain who’s currently pregnant. A fair few of us made cakes and it was all very lovely. She was very surprised and chuffed (I think!) I brought cupcakes but forgot to take a photo. They looked liked cupcakes… 😉

Obviously I was in my element with the cake…

Which was well documented by our current ladies captain (I’ve stolen the photos from her – thank you, Kelly!)

But this was the best part:

Photo credit – stolen from Karen (thank you!)

Now, I’m not a baby person but that is just adorable! Mini Hedge End Running Club gear. Karen’s baby will be the best dressed baby in town 🙂

On Sunday we went to the Alton 10 mile race where Ben aimed to beat his PB (around 1:26 I think) and I planned to just run with him and help push him along and keep him company. I’ll do a recap of my latest runnings in another post. Spoiler alert: Ben got his PB 🙂

Whew. Lots going on!!

Next weekend is the Netley 10k which is our running club championships (lots of medals up for grabs for different achievements). I’ve eaten so much rubbish the past few days (yep, I include cake in that) that I’ve decided to go on a bit of a ‘detox’ this week. I say detox but what I mean is a ‘cake and rubbish free zone’. No cake, chocolate or ‘big’ treats until I finish the race. I feel like I went overboard the past couple of days and I want to get back to feeling good and in race shape!

How was your weekend?

What’s the best part of a wedding for you? I’d be lying if I said the cake was one of my favourite parts…

What’s your car like? I’ve never had a new car so this is very exciting. I will be cleaning it every weekend…maybe.

How do you deal with a weekend or few days of eating rubbish?

January 17, 2013

Table for one, please

Hi all! Hope the week is treating you right. Almost the weekend!

This week has been slightly different for me. It started as normal but then Ben had to go to London for two days for work which left me home alone. Luckily last night I was off out with my friends to the cinema to see Les Mis. I never usually go out in the week just because with finishing work and getting home it’s always so late. So this was a totally new thing for me (sad I know).

I was so worried that I wasn’t going to arrive on time for the 7pm showing as where I work is quite a long way from where the cinema is. I left work at 5pm thinking I would be cutting it fine as I wanted to grab a Subway just before as I wouldn’t get chance for dinner beforehand. Well, I arrived at the cinema a full hour before I was meeting my friends! So I skipped Subway and decided to go to Nando’s instead. There was no way I was sitting in the tiny little Subway for an hour.

I’ve never been out for dinner on my own in a restaurant and I’m sorry to say I was quite embarrassed. The waitress sort of looked sorry for me as she said “Just you?”. I felt I suddenly had to justify why I was alone, assuring her that I was meeting actual friends later.

I’m happy to say though that I found the experience very liberating! It was nice to sit there and just chill. I ordered a double chicken breast pitta with mango and lime sauce (is it a sauce? a marinade? a dressing?) with two sides (I was hungry!).

[Apologies for the bad photo] The sides were corn on the cob and mushy peas. It was so good. There was even a large slice of pineapple in the pitta!

I couldn’t resist getting a couple of pick ‘n’ mix sweets at the cinema either…but I have to say I was a lot more restrained than I usually am at the cinema. Normally when I get sweets it costs a fortune and I feel so sick at the end of the film. So I was quite proud of myself (OK it might have been that I had literally just been out for dinner…shhh).

Now, the film. I have to admit that I really wasn’t looking forward to Les Mis. Like dreading it. All singing? Depressing storyline? French revolution? Sounded like a nightmare. I was going for the social element rather than the film choice (as social as can be going to see a movie).

HOWEVER! As soon as the first song began I was enthralled. It was AMAZING. Goose bump amazing. It was so good that the audience CLAPPED at the end of the film.

I was buzzing at the end of the film. By the time I got home it was around 10.30pm and I just couldn’t get myself into sleeping mode so had to read for a bit. This is old lady Anna who usually goes to bed at 9pm. It’s a once off I’ll admit

Ben’s back tonight so that’ll be lovely. And then tomorrow we’re driving to North Wales for my granddad’s 80th birthday party. All very exciting. However, there have been several snow warnings which is concerning us a bit as we have a long drive ahead of us. We’ll just have to judge it tomorrow before we leave.

Before we go I have a 5.5mile run planned which will be great considering we then have an over four hour car journey. I get so bored in the car. But luckily I’m one of those people who doesn’t feel sick reading in the car…though I’m guessing Ben might want some company haha.

Have a lovely weekend (I’m sorry I know we’re not quite there yet), I’ll be back on Monday!

Have you seen Les Mis? What did you think?

Cinema snacking – do you buy treats? Do you take snacks with you? (I did take a couple of apples with me as well of course).

Solo restaurant eating…yes or no?

October 14, 2012January 5, 2017

Holiday –part 1 (Orlando)

Hi guys! Well, I’m back to 100% Anna now. Back into the groove of work. It’s quite nice to have nothing to worry about or stress about. No more mad planning and just free weekends! It’s novel. I can get back on track with things that slid to one side this year. Like sprucing up our little home a bit as since we moved in last November we didn’t majorly deck it out with any sort of decorations. I’d like to buy some pictures and things like that to make things a bit more homey. Oh and Alfie is in a definite need of a haircut! He’s a mess.

So, I thought I’d do a recap of our holiday adventures. We spent six days in Orlando and then four days in Colorado Springs. So, here’s how Orlando went:

The taxi picked us up at 4.45am. We were half asleep as you can imagine. But by the time we got to the airport it was breakfast time (5am was breakfast time my tummy was telling me, but I waited). We treated ourselves to a Jamie Oliver breakfast:

Check that bad boy out. Not my usual porridge – but it’s Jamie’s so what can I say! I don’t eat sausage though (worst food in any form) so Ben gladly traded it for his black pudding. Yum.

Anyway, after a very very long flight we arrived in Orlando. Groggy and tired we basically just went to bed (in our amazing three bedroom villa!) It worked out nicely because we’d gone to bed so early (Orlando time) we woke up the next day at like 5.30am and so got started straight away. To save money and time, we decided to buy a load of food from the supermarket and eat breakfast at home before dashing to a theme park (also I’m a bit sad and get very excited with foreign supermarkets so it was a win-win situation).

Obviously I had porridge. American style! (Actually not that different from UK…) And Ben had a crazy array of cereals each day:

Each day we zoomed off to the parks. We went to Universal Studios and Island of Adventures first.

It was brilliant. It was fairly quiet so we got on rides very quickly. We were like kids running around with big smiles on our faces. Obviously we had to go to Jurassic Park (my all-time favourite movie – despite being terrified of velociraptors for the majority of my childhood).

And Harry Potter world as well…

Where we shared a BUTTERBEER!!! Pretty much heaven in a drink. I dare not to think of how bad it is for you but seriously, I need this in my life on a weekly basis:

Divine.

Do you know what else was amazing? The sheer amount of sweets.

Hello candy-coated apples! Of simply every variety. Cue Ben holding Anna back before she spends all their money on teeth-rotting goodies. The chocolate/marshmallow/caramel/peanut butter coated apples are healthy though, right? There’s fruit in there somewhere…

For lunch we decided that it was just too hot to buy something from a vendor and sit outside eating. We went to a great restaurant (twice) on the City Walk: Emeril’s Restaurant.

[Anticlockwise: Rotisserie chicken and Andouille gumbo, BBQ prawns, Salmon with stewed beans and smashed avocado, & roasted trout with artichokes and rocket]

After two days of Universal, we then went to Disney. In complete juxtaposition to Universal it was so busy! We were surprised as it’s supposed to be the quiet season right? But maybe there is no quiet time for Disney…

We went to Hollywood Studios in the morning and then headed to Magical Kingdom for the afternoon. We got there around lunchtime and it was packed. We decided to try finding a restaurant to eat (=cooler). Epic fail.

Now, withhold your judgement please… Throughout the parks I’d been seeing people eat HUGE turkey legs. Now I’m not a massive meat eater but I had begun craving one of these bad boys to an irrational level. I just had to have one.

I’ll spare you the pictures because, people, it wasn’t pretty (good ol’ husband snapping away while I tried not to look like a savage). Despite lacking a lot of feminine grace while gnawing away on the beast, it tasted AMAZING. Out of idle curiosity I later Googled it. 1,200 CALORIES. I was aghast. Ben laughed. But what can you do? No wonder it tasted so damn good.

Disney wasn’t as good as we thought to be honest. A lot of children. A lot of Disney-obsessed people. We enjoyed it, but it didn’t rock our world like Universal.

The next day was spent in Busch Gardens which was EMPTY. We went on everything and even got on the front of the roller coasters quite a lot. It was good fun. Lots of animals as well!

We grabbed lunch while watching some crazy dancing in one of the indoor canteens. On a similar carnivorous note to before I went for ribs with a side of veggies. Ribs are a bit of my devil food. I LOVE them but I try not to eat them too often as they’re usually always coated in that delicious BBQ sauce which probably has about 5 tbs of sugar in it. But hey, it’s holiday, and they were the speciality. Would be rude not to…

[Apologies if I’m offending any vegetarians/vegans – sometimes I just can’t control the beast within]

We did manage some slightly less rich food by eating in the villa (and saving us some money) and trying out some more local restaurants and enjoying their salads.

[Chicken, avocado, lots of fruit and seeds. Yum!]

And between parks and rollercoasters we enjoyed the pool.

Though it was verrrry chilly. But nice and refreshing after all the humidity and heat.

We spent one day away from the main tourist area and looked around Winter Park which is a very beautiful area with nice eating spots and coffee shops. It was nice to take a moment out!

All in all, Orlando was amazing. We went on every ride we wanted to (some twice) and really had a great time. Having the villa was brilliant as we could just come back and have something simple to eat at home or swim in our private pool! It definitely saved us some money as well.

So, part two will be on our adventures in Colorado. Horse riding, bike riding and lots of mountains!