Time is flying by

Hello! Was that the weekend? It whizzed by.

I went for a manicure. I decided to go for simple and elegant for my nails. Just a plain French manicure:

Nails

I never get my nails done (I’m so clumsy that there really never seems to be any point) so this was a nice treat. And sitting there and talking to a lovely lady while she did my nails was like therapy! It was great.

And I got my hair cut. I tried to sneakily take a photo (I was quite embarrassed about doing this) but I only managed to get this:

Hairdressers

But I think it looks rather cool! To be honest, I didn’t have much done to my hair. Just a trim. My hair is so long that I usually just forget about it and then have it cut like twice a year, whoops. And it was long past a cut!

On Friday night, I had my close friend over and she brought over some delicious cupcakes:

Cupcake2

And they will be perfect. Delicious and beautiful!

Cupcake

And my little niece, Ellie (who’s going to be my flower girl) enjoyed them too!

Ellie

So I’m very chuffed that they’re sorted (or at least organised!) And we’ve selected our music for the church as well.

Then Sunday my sister and me were on Mission: Find Bridesmaid Dress. And it was Mission Accomplished. We found a beautiful dress that fits her perfectly. It ticks all the boxes. And we got shoes!! *Breathes sigh of relief* Hurrah!

I did however, have a tough run which ended in me feeling extremely sick. The problem was that I got up later than usual (10.30!! But I had gone to bed at 2am as we were out with friends the night before) and had decided to not have breakfast as it was already fairly late. And because it was mid-morning it was quite warm. So as I got into my stride during my run I started to feel a bit sick. When I finished I felt really sick and very faint. Not good. Very stupid. Lesson definitely learnt. On a plus note…I did run a personal best!

5.08 run

Six miles in less than 50 minutes! Probably the reason I felt so rough after finishing…

And following from a not so good feeling run, I managed to have a porridge-related disaster:

5.08 porridge

It over-flowed!! It looks like something out of a horror film. What a waste Sad smile I got distracted while it was in the microwave. Whoops.

So in all, a very busy weekend! And I thought I’d leave you a picture of my parent’s dog, Lexi:

Sleeping Lexi… and our dog, Alfie, snooderling away. Basically, how I felt Sunday night!

Alfie sleeping

Hope your weekend was good Smile

Almost the weekend

Wow I’m so glad it’s Friday. This week has been fairly hard-going. I’ve been trying not to stress about the wedding and I’ve been doing some delegating so things are better. But getting up for working out has been really hard. I’m usually wake up a bit tired but after giving Alfie, our dog, a quick walk I can snap myself into focus mode. But I’ve been like a zombie walking him. Which isn’t so great when he suddenly sees a cat and I’m not prepared and he almost rips my arm out of its socket.

So my runs this week haven’t been great in terms of how I feel when I’m running. I’ve just felt so tired. But I managed to do some yoga (albeit an attempt). After some good tips from Maria and Becks, I’m going to check out some podcasts and see what they’re like as trying to do it all on my own didn’t work out the best. Anyway, here’s what my week looked like:

Monday – 5 miles (42.38mins)

Tuesday – yoga

Wednesday – 5.2 miles (43.37mins)

Thursday – weights (5 sets of 15 squats 5kg weight, 2min plank, 3 sets of 15 triceps kick backs 2.5kg per arm, 3 sets of 12 ‘cleavage creator’ and 3 sets of 30 sit-ups 5kg weight)

Friday – today I ran 3 miles as I want to improve on my speed.

3.08Run

Really chuffed with how it went. I woke up today feeling less sleepy and just went as fast as I could. It was really tough, I’m not gonna lie. I couldn’t have maintained my speed for a longer run. It was good though to push myself in a different way as I usually just try and run further. Mentally it went well because I knew it’d be a lot shorter than my usual runs. It just zoomed by. I was surprised by how much it knackered me though at the end. I was pooped!

I won’t do a short and fast run every week as it’s quite tough and doing 5 work-outs during the week days was hard-going, especially as I’ll still do my longer run at the weekend. But I’ll try to do it every other week as it’ll show me any progress and help push myself that bit more.

I’ve been enjoying some good smoothie puddings in the evening as well. I’m calling them smoothie puddings because they’re too thick to be smoothies but not massively indulgent to be a pudding. I don’t have any photos as I was too busy chomping (whoops). But my favourite is low fat yogurt, 1tbs carob powder, 2 tbsp PB2, frozen strawberries and a pinch of xanthan gum. Delicious! PB2 is something I’d come across in blogs but didn’t really know what it was. However, on researching it I found it was powdered peanut butter and 85% less fat and calories than usual peanut butter! Amazing.

PB2

Now, don’t get be wrong. I adore normal peanut butter. You can’t beat it. However, when you just fancy a slightly ‘lighter’ smoothie but still with a yummy PB taste, this is perfect! In an evening I don’t want anything too heavy as I tend to go to bed quite early (yes, I know, I’m like an old lady) so it’s perfect for fullness factor. And with the carob powder it tastes very indulgent but without a heavy feeling on your tummy afterwards.

So addicted to the Olympics right now. I’m currently sneakily streaming the track events at work. I’m just blown away with how amazing they all are. Jessica Ennis is our big British star and I’m just in awe of her. These women (and men, of course) are so inspiring to me to push myself that little extra. I know this sounds cheese, but I just think they’re amazing!

I’m looking forward to this evening as I’m meeting up with my close friend to talk wedding and eat Indian take-away. She’s kindly agreed to make me cupcakes for my wedding and sing during the ceremony, I’m so grateful to her! She’s an amazing singer and an amazing baker, so it’s a win-win situation Smile

Hope you all have a great Friday night and lovely weekend!

Summer…what summer??

Woohoo we’re mid-week already. Not that I’m living for the weekends or anything…And predictably it is cold and miserable once again. No surprises there then.

First off, here’s my What I Ate Wednesday (thanks again to Jenn for hosting as always!).

 

Breakfast, I had almond milk porridge but with my added twist of a teaspoon of wheatgrass to turn it a lovely appetising colour of green:

1.08 breakfast

I heard that one of the benefits of wheatgrass was that it helped prevent premature greying of your hair. Now I don’t know how true this benefit is but after my friend (same age as me, 24) told me she’s been finding some grey hairs in her hair I’ve had a mini-panic and been throwing wheatgrass into everything. Silly, I know, but it doesn’t hurt to add it to things (like smoothies and porridge) as you can barely taste anything.

At work I usually eat a tuna salad or I make chilli and take that with me. I won’t post a pic as they’re fairly standard and I’ve posted photos of them before, but I will mention that recently I’ve been adding nutritional yeast as a topping to the chilli and, honestly, it’s divine! I’ve only just come across nutritional yeast so forgive me if I sound like a bit of a newbie when I say, Where have you been all my life?? Yummy.

But anyway, here’s lunch that I had at the weekend:

28.07 lunch

Chicken, onion, yellow bell peppers, courgette, mushrooms and full-fat Philadelphia Cream Cheese with a some Cajun spices to add a kick with steamed broccoli and soya beans. I love this meal soo much. So easy to throw together and just delicious. Really creamy and very filling.

And because it’s Summer Staples WIAW, [though it doesn’t feel like summer] dinner yesterday evening was a lovely colourful salad – at least something looks summery!

30.07 dinner

Feta cheese, haricot beans, cucumber, beetroot, tomatoes, lettuce and a drizzle of balsamic dressing. So fresh and yummy. I’m so into my cheese right now. I’m not a big fan of cheddar at all, but feta, goat’s cheese, edam, mozzarella (not melted) and things like that I adore. You can’t really beat a salad with how easy it is to prepare. Snacks have been a lot of honeydew melon…mmm.

Currently courgettes [zucchinis] are in season in the UK and I can’t get enough of them. I have them in my chilli, stir-fries, random ad hoc meals… and I really want to try that delicious Zucchini-ziki Sauce recipe from Jenn. Definitely a winning summer recipe! And beetroot. I really fancy making a beetroot smoothie – any ideas welcome! Smile

Onto the fitness side of things. Not so good. I woke up Monday morning for my run really not feeling like it. When I stepped outside it was like winter. I wanted to put gloves on it was that nippy. Fairly depressing. Then as soon as I started running I knew the run would be bad. You know when you can just tell? I wanted to give up straight away. My only motivation for continuing was that it would be a waste of the effort of getting up early. I was already up, dressed in my gear and outside, I might as well just get on with it, you know? But I started slowly and didn’t pick up my speed until towards the end.

30.07

I wish I knew what makes me have a good run. Is it what I ate the night before? The amount of sleep I got? I just don’t know. But I was tired and felt my legs were heavy as I was running and I was in a bad mood.

Well, you can’t win them all can you? You’ve got to have a bad run to appreciate the good runs after all!

Here’s my outfit of the day:

1.08 outfit

The top is from Oasis, jeans Top Shop and the necklace is from Accessorize. You can’t quite see in the photo but the top is a lovely colour of greeny-blue. And it’s lovely a silky.

Oooh and I attempted yoga for the first time. I was supposed to do it at the weekend, but after getting myself all stressed out I just didn’t feel the urge. So I got up earlier on Tuesday and attempted some of the beginner’s poses I’d found on the Internet: Downward Facing Dog (to begin with I struggled a little bit to understand how I was actually supposed to be positioned), Warrior (love this one), Plank, Fierce pose, Tree pose (another good ‘un), Garland pose (not the most attractive of positions I must admit), and the Boat pose. I hope to get better at doing them, then hold them for longer and then move on to more tricky ones. Baby steps. But not bad for my first crack at it!

Happy WIAW, hope you all had lovely meals Smile

On the Edge

This weekend has really made me realise how stressed I am about the wedding. I feel under quite a bit of pressure. Not from anyone, but from myself. I’m counting down the weekends and counting up the tasks left to do and it’s not good, people. It’s frightening me! I keep reassuring myself that it’s all under control. I’ve got lists coming out of my ears (weekend breakdown of tasks, day before schedule, wedding day hour by hour timeline) but still I feel stressed. I feel that terrible feeling that I have forgotten something.

Our family friend is doing the bouquets and button holes. She’s fabulous and I have no doubt that it will all be beautiful. But we sat there and she asked me simple questions, like do you want the stems to be covered with material or just the stalks showing? And simple things like that and I started to panic and feel overwhelmed. In the middle of our meeting I was almost in pieces. Come on, Anna, pull it together! I don’t know what’s wrong with me but I can’t shake the panic.

Well, in the end we managed to tick the flowers off the list, then Ben’s outfit off the list after he had his fitting. He looked very dapper. And we chose our hymns. Whew! So it is going well, it just doesn’t feel like it, you know? There’s still so much to do.

Though I am generating some of this stress myself by taking on more things than strictly necessary. Like the sweet/candy buffet. I don’t have to have one, but the wedding has a candy theme and both Ben and me love love love sweets so it seemed rather apt. Anyway, I’ve been hunting around charity shops and Amazon and have found pretty much the selection I want to use. Then I went to Hobby Craft and got some ribbons and decorative bits to jazz them up a bit:

Sweet bufet

I want to add another larger vase and a big round bowl and I think that should be enough…maybe? The triangle white thing is polystyrene so I can display lolly pops on there. I’ve got shredded white paper to fill the bottom of some of the larger contains so it adds that little something else to it. And labels to hang off the lids or prop next to the containers. In the pink bag is our collection of sweets so far:

Sweets

It doesn’t look much but it’s quite a big bag and I think I’ve got about half of what I need. So good progress! I’m also going to attempt to have marshmallows dipped in chocolate and sprinkles on display and my friend is baking me some cupcakes. So not too shabby!

On a non-wedding note (though that doesn’t seem to exist for me at the moment), I ran just over 7 miles on Saturday…

28.07 run

…and then had the best smoothie breakfast afterwards. It was really yummy!

28.07 smoothie28.07 Smoothie 2

Post Run ChocNut Smoothie

Approx. 200ml almond milk

1 x Alpro almond chocolate dessert

1tbs crunchy PB (no added sugar)

1tbs chia seeds

A pinch of xanthan gum

28.07 smoothie ingredients

It was so thick and delicious. Really filling. I ate it with a spoon, it was like pudding. Definitely a winner for me.

Right I will calm myself and stop stressing so much about the wedding…or at least I will try to!

Hope your week is starting well!

Proud To Be British

Woohoo it’s the weekend! Off to a good start: Friday night TV was great (crazy party animal that I am). Ben and me watched the Olympics opening ceremony. Now, originally I wasn’t fussed about the Olympics. It’s been soo over-hyped and you can’t go a day without hearing something about it. However, I thought we best watch the opening ceremony because, well, let’s face it. The Olympics only happen every four years and it’s highly unlikely that I’ll ever see Britain hosting the games again.

So we watched it. Well, not all of it – it went on until midnight! And I have to admit, it was pretty good. Off the wall, yes. But quite a show. Best part? Mr Bean playing the keyboard sketch. That was hilarious. I loved that the Queen got on board with some funniness as well. Danny Boyle did good and made me proud to be British Smile

Source: arthouse.com via Anna on Pinterest

 

Alfie also enjoyed it too, though he did fall asleep after about ten minutes:

28.07 Alfie

Dinner was very late on Friday night as I attempted a cauliflower pizza. Not a pizza covered in cauliflower as my dad thought, but a cauliflower based pizza – i.e. the base is made out of grated cauliflower. I mentioned to Ben that that’s what we were having for tea and he looked at me as if I’d told him we were eating Alfie. He was horrified. But I managed to persuade him by assuring him there would also be mozzarella in the base and it would be very cheesy. He looked slightly less scared. I’m really trying to get Ben to eat more healthily and lose a little bit of weight before the wedding. He’s not fat by any means. But, and he would agree, he has a little excess he’d like to get rid of. So hence the cauliflower pizza.

Has anyone grated an entire head of cauliflower? It takes flipping ages! I vaguely this recipe tweaking some of the quantities and toppings.

Cauliflower

Anyway, so two bowls of cauliflower later and some grated mozzarella and we’re almost good to go.

28

Mix together with egg and herbs.

292

Then I separated it into cake tins as that seemed like the perfect utensil. Then cooked in the oven for 15 minutes. Then add some amazing toppings and put back in for about 5 mins until everything is lovely and cooked. Nom nom nom.

pizzas

Mine’s on the left. I had beetroot, red bell pepper and diced quorn chunks and some grated Babel Bell cheese. Ben had the same but without beetroot and a lot more cheese.

These were amazing. OK they didn’t really taste like pizza (or look like pizza really). But they tasted like something else just as tasty. And they were so filling. But a lot of effort! I think we’ll be having these occasionally as they took so damn long. And Ben’s opinion? He really enjoyed them. He said they wouldn’t replace pizza (what can) but he’d have it again. That, my friends, is a top 8/10 on the Benjamin Scale.

I did my weights in the morning. I’m really struggling with finding new moves to do. I like to mix it up every week to work different muscles but I’m finding it hard to find stuff. I only have dumbbells so my equipment is fairly limited. Here’s what I did:

5 sets of 12 lunges on each leg with 5kg

3 sets of 12 bent over rows

3 sets if 12 lateral raises with 2.5kg per arm

3 sets of 12 sit-ups with 2.5kg weight

3 sets of 12 triceps presses

3 sets of 10 press-ups

1min45sec plank

60 sit-ups

I think I just need to hunt through the Internet to find some inspiration. I never really know what to do with my legs other than lunges and squats.

Anywho, hope you’re all having a lovely weekend. I’m off to choose my bouquet for my wedding. Oh and as a side note, I’m glad to inform you that I managed to drink my smoothie at work yesterday without any spillage issues. Happy days.