Naughty but nice - AnnaTheApple

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?

April 30, 2014April 30, 2014

Weddings, cake and apple

Hello! We’re in that awkward spot of half way between last weekend and next weekend (and a Bank holiday on Monday, wahay!)

Last weekend was a busy one. We had Parkrun in the morning as usual. We had to dash off pretty quickly afterwards to get home, showered and sorted as we had my friend’s wedding later in the day in Bristol.

I do love a good wedding, don’t you? Though it was a little overcast and drizzly at the start, when it was important the weather held out and there was some beautiful sunshine. Though it was quite chilly!

The ceremony was lovely. It’s so strange seeing one of your close friends walking down the aisle with her dad about to marry someone.

I mean I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I’m a married woman!

I know this is quite sad, but I’m so happy I was actually able to wear my fascinator! My mum gave it to me ages ago and I finally had an occasion and a dress that went with it. The dress is from Warehouse and I love it! I didn’t do anything with my hair because, well, I’m not that creative and it’s quite stubborn in that it just likes being straight. Ben looked rather dapper as well I must say!

I don’t normally drink but I did enjoy quite a few G&Ts and bucks fizzes, but luckily it was over a long period of time so I wasn’t an embarrassing drunk! I don’t usually drink so it was a nice change. My lack of drinking is not really a conscious thing, just that I don’t like wine or beer. I find cake and chocolate help me relax better anyway 😉

The table favours and theme for the wedding were great. The wedding couple are obsessed with Florida and the theme parks so they named each table a theme park, like Magical Kingdom, Busch Gardens and Universal Studios. We were Seaworld. In our table favours there were American sweets (candy?) like Reese’s Kisses and Baby Ruths (what on Earth are they??) and Tootsie Rolls.

The wedding breakfast (though really lunch – isn’t that a strange term?) was delicious: tomato soup, followed by chicken with vegetables and a creamy mash and then the most amazing slice of apple pie.

Then it was time to cut the cake.

How cool is that? An upside-down cake! It was chocolate cake with a white chocolate hard coating.

I had three slices. To be fair they were tiny slices so really I’m sure it was only one ‘proper’ slice 😉

Later there was a lot of dancing and craziness. I missed the second coming of the cake and was a little disappointed (I know, I know…) but had a spare apple in my room in the hotel to tide me over into the evening.

I am too cool for school I know. Can’t beat a late-night apple 😉

Needless to say I felt so tired on Sunday. The bride had booked the breakfast room in the morning for 8.45am for us all to have breakfast together. The day before that didn’t sound too bad, but in the morning I could have definitely had a bit more sleep! I might have had a little doze in the car on the way home…

We then enjoyed an afternoon of doing nothing. We watch the new Thor film (not bad at all!) and just chilled. Normally I hate just sitting down and doing nothing all day but actually it was lovely. A nice way to recharge the batteries.

Have you been to any weddings recently? What’s your favourite part?

Do you know of any interesting wedding themes that people use? At our wedding we used a ‘sweet’ theme, so each table was called a different sweet and the favours contained pick ‘n’ mix.

How do you recharge your batteries after a night out?

April 24, 2014

Easy Easter

It’s amazing what two extra day’s off can do to your motivation. Getting back to work on Tuesday was tough. It felt like I’d been off for ages. Thankfully we have another Bank holiday off very soon as well. Whew! 😉

Our Easter weekend was quite low key. On the Friday we decided to just have a lovely lazy day. We walked Alfie and went to Sainsbury’s for a few items (read: chocolate adventure). Can’t really beat that! In Sainbury’s we both chose an Easter egg each and we also got a film (Hunger Games: Catching fire).

I went for an unusual egg (a ‘squegg’) because it just sounded amazing. I much prefer more interesting eggs rather than just plain chocolate.

It’s hard to tell, but it’s actually a flat egg. This worked perfectly for me as I love putting chocolate in the fridge. Fitting an entire 3D Easter egg in the fridge is tough, but this slab of choc worked well. Actually too well. That evening I might have stood with the fridge open chomping my way through it. Three quarters of the squegg later…I felt sick but very satisfied. I don’t regret it!

Anyway, Saturday was Parkrun in the morning:

And then lots of jobs. We cleared out some drawers of clothes…apparently I was hogging drawers with my mass of clothes…surely not! 😉 In the end we had three bags of clothes to go to charity, a bag of rubbish (stuff that really couldn’t go to charity) and some bottles for the bottle bank. Love a good clear out! We were both really ruthless.

Sunday we went for a seven mile easy sociable run with some guys from the club. It was just nice to not worry about pace and relax into the run.

Later Ben and me headed to his mum’s for a lovely home-made lunch.

She’s been inspired by Masterchef so it was all very tasty and a bit different (not that her usual meals aren’t nice, it was just more adventurous). *In the posh Masterchef voice* Salmon and cod roasted over a bed of vegetables, all marinated in a delicious orange and parsley dressing, served with pesto stuffed tomatoes and lemon buttered greens. Well I say!

And followed by lemon meringue with ice cream. YES.

We then had a relaxed evening at home in a bit of a food coma.

Monday (oh isn’t it nice to have such a long weekend?) was a rest day. We went out with our friend to Nando’s and all three of us ordered a whole chicken each.

I got a corn on the cob and side salad to go alongside (my mission was not to be defeated. Ben made the mistake of getting garlic bread and mash and couldn’t finish his chicken. Schoolboy error).

I think this went down a bit too easy if I’m honest…

But definitely worth it. Though I felt so full for the rest of the day. Dinner really wasn’t an option that evening.

So lots of food, a fair bit of chocolate, some running and good quality rest time. I do love weekend’s like that. I feel like I need to get my eating in order a bit though as since the marathon I’ve kind of just gone a bit mad on everything. But it was Easter 😉

How was your Easter?

What’s your ideal Easter egg?

Do you have any Easter traditions? We don’t really. We’ll always have a nice meal but that’s about it. And maybe a few eggs…

March 31, 2014

The best kind of weekend

Posting a bit later today as things have got a bit ahead of me. The story of my life at the moment! Definitely didn’t enjoy losing that hour Sunday morning.

The weekend was a busy one. We went to Parkrun in the morning and helped set out the course. Ben is a huge fan of doing this and now has me hooked. I don’t mind getting up earlier to help out as you get a bit more social time with other runners.

I was a bit nervous for the run as my calf had gotten quite tight after Thursday and it’s so close to the marathon now that anything is causing me huge amounts of stress…someone sneezing near me is enough to freeze up my system in terror.

I made sure I did a very good warm-up with jogging, dynamic stretches and specifically stretching my calf using a handy tree.

I’m sure a fun caption could be made here… “Ben I can’t seem to move this tree no matter how hard I push”

Which was caught on camera…lovely! Not one of my best photos haha!

I decided to take Parkrun nice and easy and there were quite a few of us who decided to run together so we had a nice natter as we ran round the course in the lovely sunshine. My calf was OK <– WHEW.

I’m still wearing my gloves even though it was so warm. My hands are the very last things to heat up.

My time was 23:29 and third female – not too shabby at all! After this we had a nice cup of tea with some of the running club and then headed home for breakfast. At this point I was STARVING.

We met up with a friend in the afternoon and did a huge walk with Alfie around the countryside. It wasn’t meant to be so long it’s just we got caught out with lots of muddy routes and had to go the long way back home (needless to say Alfie required a bath that evening…). At the end of the day I’d done almost 30,000 steps. And, more importantly, this happened:

If you don’t know what this game is, I urge you to download it (it’s an app). It is so simple but so very addictive!!

We had a lovely early night as we had to get up early the next day for a long run. I was so tired when the alarm went off at 6.40am – which my body thought was 5.40am due to the daylight savings. Arghh!

My plan was to run 13 miles. Perhaps not the most ideal distance considering I have the marathon a week later but psychologically I needed to do it. Ben and me had decided to meet up with some guys from our running group to run with them. The route was only 10 miles so I ran the 2 miles to the meeting point instead of going in the car with Ben, then planned on adding a bit on at the end.

The route was lovely. Credit to my husband who planned it (though I think it was based on a route one of the other guy’s had used before – so credit all round). It was fairly hilly though which was tough.

There were quite a few of us – eight or nine? Not sure. But in the end we sort of spread out from each other as we found our natural paces. It was really nice to spend a long run chatting to people rather than go solo. Though I will always love my solo long runs listening to podcasts…

I’m not going to lie, it was tough with the hills and not feeling completely fresh from a week of running (6 miles Tuesday, 8 miles Thursday, 3 miles Saturday) of which I’m not as used to anymore with my sporadic training. But it didn’t feel that bad as to worry me. I felt like I could have gone on further (bloody lucky considering it’s double that seven days later).

I was shattered when I got home though. Absolutely drained. So was Ben. We’re pretty sure the long walk the afternoon before hadn’t helped. Then it was time to treat two lovely ladies to some afternoon tea as it was Mother’s Day in the UK.

My mum showed up with the same handbag as me but slightly smaller – it was like mum and baby handbags! (She had originally given me the big handbag as she prefers smaller handbags and I love a huge bag to put my multitude of things in it).

Then off we went to indulge in some very lovely tea, sandwiches and cake at our favourite local (dangerously local) coffee shop: Elsie’s Tearoom if you’re in the area.

[Ben wasn’t happy with this photo; he said he felt uncomfortable because the table next to us were gawping at us – how rude!]

We all had afternoon tea. I had ham and mustard sandwiches, a fruit scone (with strawberry and rhubarb preserve, oohh err) and a slice of lemon cake.

Honestly, I am getting to be somewhat a pro at this afternoon tea business. Way to easy to eat. And I even had a bite of my mum’s unfinished lemon cake. Oh god…

After spending some quality time with The Mums, Ben and me pretty much did nothing. I fell asleep on the sofa to the dulcet tones of Ben blowing up zombie brains on the Xbox…then awoke with a new lease of life to tackle the ironing while we watched Elysium. I would give this movie a rating of “meh”. An OK film for when you’re not in the mood to think too hard.

The plan for this week is all easy running. Probably three miles Tuesday, three miles Thursday, the Paris breakfast 5km on Saturday (to shake out our ‘plane legs’) and then just a short gentle jog taking in the different sights of Paris. Probably 26.2miles, but we’ll see how it goes 😉

For those who celebrated it, how did you spend Mother’s Day?

Do you struggle with a full afternoon tea?

Ladies, do you prefer big handbags or small? (Men you can join in too with your manbags!) I have small handbags when I’m going out for an evening, but I do love a good handbag. Looking forward to all those back problems in later life 😉

Long runs solo or with a group?

March 10, 2014March 11, 2014

Highs and Lows

Hello! Well that was a fairly rubbish weekend. OK, not all of it was rubbish but pretty much 70%. I was not a well bunny 🙁

Friday Ben and me had the day off. We both slept in which was just divine (for us this is just before 9am – normally we’re up 7.30am-8am if we don’t have anything going on ). I then had my final running school session. I started this ages ago in November but had to stop going because I got injured (ironic really – I started doing the running school to stop getting injured).

Anyway, in my first session the coach filmed my running to see where my problem areas were. I dropped my hip, I bounced up and down unnecessarily, my leg flicked out…not great. Though I haven’t been to the running school in months I have been doing lots of specifically running-focused strength work to target my weakness: my glutes and hamstrings. Lots of bridges, single leg squats, clams…twice a week at least.

He videoed me against this time to see if I’d improved. Thankfully I had! He put both videos next to each other and the improvement was clear. I no longer bounce but use that energy to propel forward. My leg doesn’t flick out excessively. My pelvis and hips are more level. And the whole running motion just looks like a smooth and natural forward propulsion. I was very pleased.

Unfortunately after the appointment I started feeling a bit dodge. My tummy didn’t feel great but I could ignore it. Anyway Ben and me had a nice meal to go to that I was excited about.

We went to a lovely rustic pub in Basingstoke called The Purefoy Arms. And it was lovely. The service was impeccable; our waiter knew the menu inside out and everything was sustainable, local and fresh.

We both decided to have scallops to start, and, unusually for both of us, the butcher’s steak (rare) with a duck’s eggs and dripping cooked chips. For pudding I had a brownie with a scoop of ice cream.

The brownie was dark chocolate with crumble crumbs and chocolate covered nuts alongside. The ice cream is in the jar.

Ben enjoyed a rhubarb panacotta with a side of rhubarb infused gin!

We were pleasantly full afterwards as the portion sizes weren’t huge.

Sadly though I just felt worse after the meal and basically just had to go to bed when I got in. I really enjoyed the meal but my stomach was just not happy.

I had a fairly rough evening and didn’t sleep a huge amount, so Saturday’s Parkrun was off the cards for me. Instead I slept in and read my book. I was quite depressed by this point. And sadly I had to call off going to Karen’s 30th birthday afternoon tea celebration in the afternoon (*sobs*). Not great to be ill around a pregnant lady! Ben stayed at home and played on the Xbox looked after me. On the plus side, we did watch a lot of Game of Thrones.

Sunday, thankfully, I was feeling better but still shattered. And not well enough to run my planned 18 miler. CUE PANIC. Postponed until next weekend now. Let’s just not talk about my marathon rubbish training shall we??

But we had a meal planned for 2pm to celebrate Ben’s birthday. So I actually got dressed and looked presentable for the first time of the weekend.

The meal unfortunately didn’t go as planned. We were slightly late (*cough* parent’s fault) and we rung the restaurant to tell them we’d be 10 minutes late. They were quite rude on the phone and told us to get there ASAP as they stop serving food at 2.30pm.

When we did arrive at 2.15pm no one served us and when we hurriedly tried to get notice of someone (because we were running out of time!) they either ignored us or said rather tersely “I’m with a customer”. Finally we managed to get the attention of a waiter and he vaguely pointed at a table and told us “well, there’s your table” and then said “you have nine minutes to order”. Oh right. Well we told them no thank you and left. It was just terrible. Yes we were late, but we had rung and if it was so much of an issue they should have told us on the phone. And then to be treated really rudely and in an off-hand way. Hello, we’re paying customers.

FYI, that’s The Plough in Winchester. I’d walk on by that one in future.

Well, in the end we found a lovely restaurant called The White Horse in Otterbourne. Lovely service, lovely food.

I had an orange, chicory and goat’s cheese salad to start and then my favourite, Caesar Salad with a side portion of braised red cabbage (yep I am that strange).

Absolutely delicious! Ben forced me to order a pudding at the end. Not for me, I’ll hasten to add as I was quite full, but so he wouldn’t look greedy as he wanted two. Yep that’s Mr Two Puddings Smith.

Ginger cake with caramelised bananas followed by pear and apple crumble with salted caramel ice cream. He had run 16.5miles in the morning so I’ll let him off 😉

And then we got home where I promptly collapsed on the sofa exhausted.

So a strange weekend of lovely peaks (good food, family time) and depressing troughs (sickness, no running and no cake).

What are your highs and lows of this weekend?

Have you ever ordered two puddings at a restaurant?

What’s the worst service you’ve ever had?