Hello Friday! Wow where did this week go? It went crazily fast. Not that I’m complaining.
I thought I’d do a post on some random thoughts and occurrences of late. It’s the little things in life that keep things interesting!
1. It’s a well known fact that cake on a Friday doesn’t count (FYI this was last Friday’s cake – I didn’t eat cake that went off yesterday. Would I refuse a one-day-stale piece of cake though over no cake? I’d rather not answer that…). Cake is an indulgence I need every week. Without fail.
2. Mini trolleys are AMAZING. This is a tiny trolley from M&S, almost like a basket with wheels which makes me feel like I’m six again. Anyone from the UK: do you remember when they used to do trolleys for children?? So the kids could push a little trolley with their parents as well. I wonder why they disappeared…Oh yes, that’s right because who ever decided to allow young children to push trolleys around a busy supermarket is CRAZY. Hello ankle pain.
3. I can destroy half a melon easily in under 10 minutes. Like a boss. In fact, I have to finish Ben’s off as he is so rubbish at getting all the melon flesh. Take no prisoners.
4. This display on my Garmin annoys me SO MUCH.
The loading bar is full therefore it should be done, right? Oh no. It stays with that full bar for minutes afterwards. While I am stood in the cold just waiting to run. Garmin, stop lying to me!!
5. Why do people leave the teabags in their drinks? Maybe this is a British thing (or a specifically Anna thing) but whenever I see TV programmes (I must say, usually US programmes) and someone is drinking a tea they always leave the teabag in so the little piece of string hangs down the side. It baffles me because doesn’t this over-steep the tea?? Doesn’t the teabag hit your mouth when you drink? It really freaks me out.
Yes, this is not my usual mug. This is my back-up Scooby mug.
6. One of our knives broke the other day when I was chopping vegetables. The knife blade literally pinged past me and hit the wall behind me. It was like the vegetables were fighting back. It would have been funny if I hadn’t been in shock.
7. This photo makes me feel a little sad inside:
He looks so helpless and upset at having being bathed. It needed to happen though. He was getting to one stinky pooch.
8. However this photo brings me right back up to a significantly happy level:
Sea salt Green and Blacks! On offer! Still expensive though. And definitely beaten to the punch by Lindt.
Well, I hope you guys have a great weekend. Ben and me are running a 5k Parkrun tomorrow so I’m quite excited but also nervous. I hate 5ks, they’re just so fast and painful…but we’ll see how it goes! We might be running a 10k run through Moors Valley Country Park on Sunday depending how we feel. I will be taking that one easy if we do go for it. I’m going to take it more of as a nice trail run then a proper race I think as I think I’ll be shattered after tomorrow!
What’s been making you happy this week?
What are your little things in life that keep things interesting for you? Wow there’s a vague question for you
Hi guys, I thought I’d do something a bit different today. I was inspired by Chelsea’s post that was inspired from Caitlyn’s post about a ‘Day in the Life’. I love reading these – I find it fascinating what other people get up to around the world and so wanted to give it a bash! Forgive me if it’s dull, I’m not hugely interesting
So this is a typical Monday:
5.40am: alarm goes off. I blearily look around confused. Surely I just went to bed?? Then Alfie jumps on me to wake me up with a lovely slobbery kiss (Alfie is our dog, not my husband. That would be strange).
5.41-5.50am: get out of bed, pee (too much? Sorry), put on running clothes, head downstairs with Alfie who is jumping off the walls ready for his walk. Put Alfie’s lead on and leave the house.
5.50-6am: walk Alfie. The whole time wishing I was still in bed and not about to go running. Usually I’m a zombie walking down the road. If Alfie sees a cat he lunges after it and this seriously wakes me up .
6-6.05am: put Alfie in kitchen on a towel to dry his paws. Basically I’ve left a towel by the door so when he walks in he walks onto the towel then I drag the towel, with Alfie on it, into the kitchen. He loves it, until he realises he’s trapped.
Then I go running.
It’s usually between 5-6miles on a Monday. The first mile I hate it. Then I get into it. Unless it’s windy. Then I pretty much hate it ALL.
6.50am: get back and feel really good after the run (though sweaty & tired), let Alfie out, sweep the floor as I’m obsessed. Also this prolongs the time before the shower so I can cool down a bit.
6.55am: head upstairs, let Alfie into the bedroom again. Alfie immediately jumps on the sleeping Ben. I half-heartedly tell him to “lie down” (whilst secretly smiling to myself that Ben has been woken up haha – I am evil). Ben confusedly asks if I’m just about to go running or if I’m back. *sighs*
7am: shower. I love showering – is that weird? I like a really hot shower and could stay in there all day.
7.10-7.30: ponder what to wear and complain of my lack of outfits. Get dressed, comb my hair (this is a beast of a task) and then dry hair (this is the worst part of my morning). Sometimes Alfie stands next to me and enjoys the heat from the hair dryer that gets blown his way. He goes crazy for it. I then straighten my hair. Put contact lenses in and then spray perfume on.
7.30-7.45am: make lunch and get snacks ready for the day if I haven’t done it the night before.
7.45am: make breakfast.
7.50am: eat breakfast. Best time of the morning. I sit and read my Kindle while enjoying my lovely plain oatmeal. Ben is usually up and dressed by this point and says goodbye. We’ve managed to avoid each other successfully in the morning as I’m not an engaging person to chat to pre-breakfast. If he’s super upbeat I tend to become even more moody.
I wash my stuff up and tidy the place up a bit.
8am: leave for work.
8.01-9am: curse my stupidly long commute whilst listening to the news. Sit in traffic and watch people do lovely things like pick their nose, do their make-up or sing to music. Hilarious.
9-10.30am: work, work, work, and then coffee time.
10.31-12.30: work, work ,work.
12.30pm: have lunch. Best time of working day Read blogs and glare at anyone who interrupts me. Sometimes I might walk to the nearby Tesco to get some bananas or random stuff I need. I also write my blog posts.
4pm: apple and banana time. Almost home-time.
5pm: start thinking about home-time. Email Ben to find out when he’s getting home. Both of us have fairly flexible working hours so it varies from day to day.
5.30-6pm: leave around this time.
6.01pm: curse my commute. Listen to music on the way home or the news. Depends where my brain’s at.
6.30-7pm: depends how bad the traffic is to when I will get home. Usually it’s 6.30pm. On o good day Ben is back before me and has taken Alfie for a walk. On a bad day, I’m back before Ben and I have to take him for his walk.
It sounds like I’m complaining and moaning, but it’s easier if Ben’s walked Alfie as I can straight away get on with dinner.
OK, that’s a lie. I straight away get into comfy clothes.
Then I start dinner.
7-7.30pm: After pretty much cooking dinner I give Ben the ‘5 minute warning’ which tells him he needs to stop watching TV/playing on the Xbox and set the table, get the drinks ready (water for me, Coke for him) and be prepared for dinner. Sometimes he’s already done this when I get home. He’s lovely
Most of the time with dinner I’ll read my Kindle and Ben will watch Family Guy/American Dad or some sci-fi series (he loves sci-fi – a few weeks ago it was Roswell). I’m usually distracted if Family Guy is on. It’s too funny to not watch. I love Brian.
8pm: dinner is finished and washing up done. We have our puddings on the couch (yogurt & cheese string for Ben, chopped apple for me). He loves to leave his pudding paraphernalia on the coffee table to annoy me. He leaves there until he goes to bed. I glare at it every time I walk past it.
8.10-850: This is the time of the evening I love. I sit with the Ipad reading the Daily Mail (OK, looking at the pretty pictures, not reading the drivel) and more blogs while Ben watches TV/plays Xbox,
I usually have Snack a Jacks and a hot chocolate as a snack. Then probably some chocolate.
Only two or three squares, but it’s heaven.
8.51pm: make my way upstairs to bed. Spend an annoying amount of time plucking my eyebrows (otherwise they’re like hair caterpillars across my forehead).
9pm: get into bed and read my Kindle. Perfect de-stressor before bed.
9.30pm: usually fall asleep. Embarrassingly early I know. Sometimes I manage to stay up until 10pm. Not often…
Ben comes to bed anytime from 9pm to midnight. If it’s later than me it usually scares the hell out of me every single time. Apparently I bolt upright in bed in shock even though he’s as quiet as a ninja coming to bed. I can’t remember this but he’s filmed me doing it once and it is WEIRD.
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And that’s it! Nothing exciting and I’m sorry if you read through that I felt like you’ve wasted minutes of your life But I love reading other people’s days!
If you want to get involved, link up at Caitlyn’s post! It’s quite fun to write 🙂
What’s your favourite time of the day?
What’s the most annoying thing you have to do on a daily basis?
Hello lovely people. This week has been so much better to last week thankfully. I don’t feel as though I’m clawing myself to the weekend.
Last night (Thursday) I was able to go to running club as I could finish work at a reasonable time. I was umm-ing and arr-ing all day long about whether I did actually want to go. This is the problem I find with not running in the morning. I’m one of those people that when my alarm goes off I’m bang awake. So if I’ve planned to run and set my alarm stupidly early I pretty much need to go otherwise I’m up stupidly early for work. However, if I’m going to run in the evening I’ve got the entire day to compile a list of reasons why not to go.
But the sun was shining and, like I said, I could leave on time. I had no excuse. And I am so glad I went. I really wasn’t up for a 7.30min/mile hill run like the immensely tough run from the other week so I was really chuffed that the faster guys were planning on running 8mins/mile semi-road semi-trail run.
It was one of those runs where you could relax into it, power it at times, but otherwise just find a good rhythm and enjoy it (hence the crazy variation of pace!). The weather was beautiful, not too hot but still light and clear. I didn’t feel pushed to my limits, but just comfortable. A perfect run.
Again the only problem I had was I was buzzing all evening when I got home and when I went to bed I just couldn’t sleep until like 11pm. People, this is crazy for me.
On to an interesting subject that really got me thinking and sort of worried me a little bit. Madison did a great post about organic food and the “dirty dozen”.
The Dirty Dozen are the 12 foods that are really top of the list for the most pesticide-affected foods. Now usually I don’t really care about this sort of thing. I optimistically live in a wonderful world where things like pesticide can’t bother me.
However, for whatever reason it really struck a cord with me. I eat at least three apples a day. Just your bog-standard non-organic apples.
I did a bit more research into it myself to find out specifically about the UK. Here’s an interesting website which basically outlines the benefits of eating organically.
Essentially here are the main benefits in very general terms:
Support for the land and wildlife in terms of sustainability
It does worry me about the pesticides building up in my body. I’m not going to lie, I don’t know a huge amount of what this might do to you. But I am usually so careful about what I eat in terms of not wanting tons of sugar or salt and avoiding overly processed stuff (I don’t completely avoid it as where’s the fun in that??) that it seems I’ve become a bit blasé about other issues, such as chemicals sprayed on food or fed to animals.
But, as you’re probably aware, organic food tends to be more expensive unfortunately. Mainly because it’s not so quick to get out there in the shops with long shelf-life’s etc. than non-organic food is and there’s a whole load of regulations involved obviously.
We can’t afford the luxury of buying all organic so I’ve decided to pick a few things and try to stick to organic as much as possible. So apples obviously.
And also things like strawberries and other berries. Maybe I’ll try getting lettuce as well as I do eat a lot of salad…
Basically lots thoughts regarding this have been running through my head lately! Food for thought, you might say
Do you buy organic? Why?
What particular things do you think are important in selecting the food you buy? For me it is general nutrition (sugar and salt levels) and quality of ingredients. But also price does play a part and if it’s from Britain or from miles away. I do worry about how far food has travelled.
On a lighter note, what have you got planned for this weekend?
Hope you’re week’s going well. I’ve been finding it so much easier to get up in the morning because of the light. Obviously when the alarm goes off I’m not leaping out of bed with a huge smile on my face (who does that??), but it’s easier because I’ve already started to wake up gradually so it’s not as big a shock as it was in the winter. Though at the weekend I have this annoying habit of hiding under the duvets when it starts getting light and then I fall back into a really deep sleep and feel so tired when I pull myself out of bed between 8-9am. I hate sleeping later than 9am as I’m one of those people who feels like the day is wasted otherwise.
I’ve been really trying to do new recipes more often as I’m participating in Megan’sSo Fresh So Clean Challenge. Basically it’s a challenge to see if you can refresh your food and fitness routine a bit.
I wanted to take part in this because honestly I am such a routine-orientated person and can get so stuck in food ruts (see below: oatmeal every single morning). It’s really helping to push me to try new recipes and mix up my routine a bit. I love trying new recipes but can find it a bit of an effort at times…So this challenge has helped motivate me that little bit more!
I know I need to work on switching up my breakfast but at the moment I haven’t quite managed that…it’s still oatmeal with almond milk *hides in shame*.
But honestly, this weekend I really want to try mixing it up. I’m more inclined to experiment with breakfast at the weekend as I have an irrational fear that nothing else will fill me up and I’ll be at work STARVING. Yes a little over-dramatic. So maybe this weekend I’ll step outside my safety oatmeal bubble.
Lunch at the weekend and lunch in the week are obviously going to be different for me as I work in an office during the week and I’m limited by what I can bring or buy. And I hate buying lunch as it’s just so expensive.
Yesterday it was a sandwich with sliced turkey and cream cheese with a side salad.
I had this with some slice melon and Greek yogurt.
The bottom left-hand section were oatcakes with an onion marmalade and let me tell you, they were AMAZING. I opened them fully with the intention to snack on a couple and then save for later. Oh they did not stand a chance. Those babies were gone within minutes.
I also have my usual apple and banana towards the end of the day to stop me keeling over mid-commute back home. Also prevents me from eating the first thing I see when I get home…
Lunch this weekend was something I’ve been meaning to try for yonks.
Sweet potato roasted in the oven with a blob of cream cheese with two fried eggs (and a side portion of Brussels’s sprouts obviously…) I wasn’t sure about mixing eggs and sweet potato but it went so well together.
I made dinner for Tuesday night on Tuesday morning as I was planning to go to running club literally just after I got back from work and really didn’t fancy making anything when I got back at like 8.30pm. Plus who knows what sort of thing Ben would have made himself?? Dangerous to give him so much freedom He’d have cheese on cheese with a side portion of cheese if he could.
So I made One-Pot Moroccan chicken.
I used THIS recipe. The only thing I changed was instead of honey (of which I had none) I used some regular sugar. Probably missed some of the depth of the honey flavour but I wasn’t too bothered. It was an easy recipe to whip up in the morning and then reheat in the evening.
It was quite spicy, but had lots of bold flavour and was definitely very filling with the chicken and chickpeas. Couscous would probably work well this (though I was a bit couscous’ed out from the weekend).
However, I never made it to running club. I found out it was a timed mile (for progress monitoring) and then some intervals. I really wasn’t up for that. Don’t get me wrong, I love running with other people but I didn’t fancy just doing a mile and the intervals. I know I’m being such a picky runner but I want to just run. Anyway, Thursdays are more for ‘normal’ running so I’m going then instead.
I decided to do a quick 3 miles when I got home anyway as I didn’t want to miss a run. I really wasn’t up for it so as soon as I started in my head I was just like “get this done as quick as possible and then you can have dinner”. This was a BRILLIANT motivator
When I first started I was finding it so tough and when I looked at my Garmin I couldn’t believe my pace! No wonder I was dying. I am so pleased with this run. I couldn’t have maintained it for long though – I was already slowing down considerably on the last mile.
So I’ve mixed up my fitness a bit by not always running in the stupid hours of the morning. And I’ve also been managing to use my foam roller after runs (OK some runs…not all. Work in progress).
I have a love-hate relationship with the foam roller. I like following THIS helpful guide of the exercises to do. To be honest, I never do all of them… but the one I always do because it always hurts to do it (so by that perverse logical I know it’s working) is this one:
Sweet, sweet pain.
And I’m trying to do more planks again. Ahh, back in the day I could do 3 minute long planks, but after such a break since I focused mainly on running I’m struggling to go for a minute a half. Again, work in progress
So the challenge is helping me – small steps, granted. But it’s always nice to have that extra motivation!
How do you mix things up when you get into a rut? Fitness or food-related?
What new recipes have you been loving lately?
Do you foam roll?
*** Also don’t forget to enter my giveaway – open only to US residents, sorry non-US readers***
This week has been quite tiring I must say. The first half of the week my legs were aching like crazy from the weekend race and I was just generally tired. I made sure I took it relatively easy on the running front. I ran a 3 mile easy run on Tuesday (PAINFUL, very painful), 5 miles more normal run on Thursday (getting back into my groove which felt nice) and then this morning I went for a 2 mile run with Ben (helping him do intervals).
Ben is really keen on getting back into running and I couldn’t be more pleased. His whole attitude has changed; he’s excited about runs, he’s keen to get into shape and he’s quite upbeat about it all. Even while giving up alcohol! I don’t drink at all to be honest (occasionally a gin and tonic now and then) but Ben does like his wine. He doesn’t drink stupid amounts by any stretch of the imagination but it is his way of relaxing at the weekend. Hopefully he won’t find it too hard this weekend!
Anyway, the very lovely Meghan nominated me for the One Lovely Blog Award! I’m very flattered and pleased. I love Meghan’s blog and really recommend, if you haven’t already, to go and check it out.
The rules are that I share 7 random things about myself and then nominate 7 other bloggers. So let’s get going!
1) I sweep our kitchen floor every morning and every evening. It’s obsessive I know, but it really, really annoys me when I walk bare feet and can feel crumbs on the floor. Also I think Alfie is out to make me crazy because when he eats his kibble he doesn’t eat it over his bowl, but crunches it in the middle of the kitchen and leaves a whole load of crumbs on the floor. It drives me mad.
2) Though I’m sure Ben is wholly unaware of this, in my mind we are having a ‘bathroom product paraphernalia’ war that has been raging (in my mind) for weeks. He leaves his hair gel out every single morning and I put it away every single morning.
3) I passed the time during the half-marathon by checking out other runners. This sounds weird I know, but looking at other runners and what they were wearing (especially the ladies) was a good way to stop myself getting bored. I’d be like “Oooh I like her leggings…” or “he has a cool running belt”.
4) I don’t mind watching scary films as long as they’re not gory. Any scenes of mutilation or torture and I’m outta there. Give me floating ghosts and creaky floorboards any day. I love Game of Thrones but why do they have to make it so violent and painful?? It was bad enough reading it in the book, but seeing it is so much worse.
5) I used to get really bad night terrors when I was younger so much so I had to have my sister sleep in my room on our camp bed. I made her pack that thing away and tidy her stuff out of my room every morning though. How mean was I??
6) I avoid my neighbours. They’re so chatty and nosey. I swear they watch at the window for me to walk past before leaping out of their door to catch me for a stupidly long catch-up. Invariably I’m about to walk Alfie and Alfie is just shooting them the Death Stare the entire time as he wants to actually get going. Ben and I have been known to hide from them at times.
7) I’m not a baby person. Like at all. Don’t get me wrong, I love my little niece, Ellie, to pieces but any other babies or small children? Nope. I have no maternal instinct whatsoever. Good luck, Ben
And the 7 lovely and brilliant bloggers I nominate are:
Obviously there are so many more I could have nominated but these are some of my favourites
Name something random about yourself? It’s actually quite hard! I don’t think I’m as unique as I’d like to be!
What’s your favourite genre of movie to watch? Mine is a gripping story, like Erin Brockovich, or a romantic comedy classic, like Four Weddings and a Funeral or When Harry Met Sally.
Do you like stuff put away like me, or left out for easy access like Ben? I’m all for keeping things minimalistic and tidy!
He’d have cheese on cheese with a side portion of cheese if he could.
