Crazy Saturday!

So today is the first day for a long time i’ve been at home completely alone. And when i say alone, even my my isn’t available as she’s on holiday!

Hubby is working a double shift so won’t be home until 9pm (he started at 7am). Now my dad is in town but i spent last night with him and he’ll only want to talk about sewers and decking and i have to draw a line somewhere. So i woke up about 8am, watched YouTube in bed for a couple of hours and finally got up about 11am – i did also watch The Prince and the Showgirl which i’ve never seen before, wasn’t impressed with the ending.

I had some lunch, yes a bit early but i skipped breakfast, and then watched an odd programme called How to be a billionaire. no it unfortunately didn’t teach me anything other than how stupid the rich are!

I then got serious and did a couple of hours of studying, in a much calmer manner than last weekend (i won’t go into detail as it was too stressful but over now).

3pm bought the football and my team drew which was pretty good but even better i put a bet on and won £16 – woo hoo. I then caught up on xFactor from last week – brutal is the only thing i can say. In fact i’m not going to bother watching again until the live shows start as the whole 6 chair thing in front of an audience is the worst thing I’ve seen on telly.

So all in all a fairly boring day and i ended up recording myself singing in the madness of not having talked to anyone but the cats today and even they have slept all but about 20 minutes today.

Now this is a ridiculously boring update but not much else to say. To be honest work this week has been mostly me ranting about other people although we had some light relief on Thursday and Friday as there were no bosses in, so we could have a little more fun.

Ok i’m off to rescue the cat who is insisting on sitting about 4 inches away from the fire!!!!

Toilet Talk

Apologies for being MIA recently, crazy busy at work, studying to be done, a weekend away and now i’m ill. But i won’t hark on about that because something else has rattled my cage!

Generally when you go out somewhere – restaurant, bar, pub, sporting or music event – you will likely need to pop to the loo. Pretty simple thing to do (as long as you can find the loos) but once inside some venues don’t make it easy.

The sorts of obstacles you have to contend with are:

• Queues
• Water on the floor (slipping hazard)
• Crazy attendants
• Tropical temperatures

And these are all before even entering the cubicle. I went to three venues this weekend and two of them required me to become a contortionist. Now i’m a big girl but that shouldn’t stop me peeing! However these cubicles had inward opening doors and there was, i joke you not, about 2 inches between the edge of the door and the toilet seat. Now in reality to enter these toilets i really needed to sit on the seat, spread my legs as wide as possible and then close the door – not gonna happen. So i had to perform a ridiculous movement to simply get the door closed – not great when you’re busting for the loo!

Why do this i ask? What possible benefit is there in having a door so close to the toilet seat? It doesn’t make the cubicle any narrower so you can get more of them in! I would also point out that both of these toilets had plenty, and i mean plenty, of room to add an extra foot onto the length of the cubicle but no, whoever designed these decided that they needed the sinks to be at least 12 feet away from the doors of the cubicles – the 4 cubicles meaning that even at a busy time there would be a maximum of 8 people in there!

And don’t even get me started on the loo roll situation. We all need it when we go to the loo so please stop installing paper dispensers that only give out one sheet at a time or filling said dispensers with something that could pass as sand paper! Is it too much to ask for a good few sheets of soft paper.

OK rant over. Please feel free to vent your frustration in the comments!

Cake, cake and more cake!

So today is the Macmillan Coffee Morning – the worlds biggest coffee morning.

So last night i spent 4 hours baking away in the kitchen. I made my signature chocolate swirl banana bread which always goes down a storm and i also tried something new. I found a recipe for carrot cake that looked awesome so i trotted off to the supermarket on Wednesday to purchase all the ingredients.

The sponge for the carrot cake went very well and looked brilliant. Then came time to do the icing. So i went the full fat cream cheese and the icing sugar, followed by the zest of two lemons and a squeeze of lemon juice. Now to me a squeeze is when you take half of lemon and give it a good squeeze. This, i learnt quickly, was completely wrong. This amount of lemon juice made my icing very runny! The recipe said i should spread the icing – well that was never going to happen. I texted a baking genius friend who said to add more icing sugar. So i added 150g more then 200g more and in the end added another 500g to total 1kg of icing sugar!! It still didn’t thicken up.

Damn!

By this time it was 9.45pm and i was knackered so i put each of the sponges on a plate a drizzled the running icing over them.

As it turned out this went down well and the sponge was moist and tasty. So overall a success but i definitely won’t be making that icing again!

Below is a selection of the cakes made by all my colleagues at work – we did good. 

No More Moo!

Ok so i’ve reported before that i was told i was intolerant to cows milk so starting on the 3rd September i eliminated this from my diet. At the same time i started a new diet whereby i simply track my calories using MyFitnessPal and stick to 1400 calories a day.

So far the elimination diet has gone well. I’m still slightly upset that i can no longer eat werther’s originals but i’m dealing with it. I’m also finding that i’m not missing cheese quite as much as i thought i would and so far no dreams about giant blocks of cheddar!

The other part of the diet is going extremely well. I must start by giving a shout out to my hubby who is supporting me 110% with this. This includes him spending more money on the shopping on extra fruit and veg plus prepping salad and keeping me with a good supply of hard boiled eggs which i’m enjoying for breakfast every day.

I’ve been following this plan for almost 3 weeks with my next weigh in being on Thursday (today is Sunday). So far i have lost 13lbs which i’m over the moon about. My goal was to lose 14lbs in September and i have 2 more weigh in’s to go even though the 4th will be on October 1st. I’m then hoping to lose about 10lbs per month.

I have a wedding in December and could do with dropping another 2 stone so that my dress looks better. It does currently fit but only with supersonic spanx underneath!

I’m not going to put down a particular weight as my goal as i would be happy getting to a size 14/16 (UK) and be able to shop anywhere and be comfortable.

I will of course keep you posted with my progress.

Bad Blogger!

Oh i’ve been a very bad blogger and not posted anything all week.

This week has been pretty hectic at work and to be honest on a few days i completely forgot or fell asleep on the sofa straight after tea (a habit i’m trying to break!)

Yesterday was a busy day – a nice Saturday morning lie-in, football in the afternoon (we lost) and then dinner and X Factor at my parents apartment up here – they normally live 200 miles away down south but also own an apartment  here for when they visit. We really enjoy Saturday nights just chilling out and we hadn’t seen my parents for about 6 weeks. On the plus side the weather was really nice yesterday and we are not yet in hats and scarves at the football.

Work is hectic as we are currently working on the next 3/4 months of activity (i work in marketing) plus we are rebranding. Our department has only one answer when anyone asks how we are – BUSY lol!

I’m going to do another update on my food intolerance and diet.

Blog Challenge – Day 13

Your favourite guilty pleasures:

Now I’ve been following my healthy eating for a week and a half now but i would still say that one of my favourite guilty pleasures is crisp sandwiches. I know lots of people like these but i’m very particular about the bread, the filling and of course the crisps.

It has to be a soft white bread roll and i start of by making a ham and mayo sandwich. The crisps have to either be McCoys Flame Grilled Steak or Walkers Prawn Cocktail or Cheese and Onion.

I only like large sized crisps in the sandwich so i start with an initial layer, out the bread roll lid back on and give it a squish, then i go back in with more crisps until i feel there is just the right amount that they won’t all fall out. This is where bread roll comes in handy – it has a joint and therefore acts as a barrier and keeps the crisps in. This is one sandwich that once picked up, cannot be put down!

Wow that was a lot of detail about a crisp sandwich.

My other guilty pleasure is stationary. We recently redecorated one of our spare rooms and this meant we had to go through all the crap we had in the house and organise our storage. I was repeatedly asked by my hubby why i have so many notebooks that I’ve never written in. To be honest i just love notebooks, the more beautiful the better. I must have about 20 Moleskine ones that i’ve bought over the last couple of years and some have never been opened let alone written in.

Also i have so many pens at work that i need two (yes two) pen holders and an entire draw just filed with post it notes of various colours and sizes.

I definitely need to work on reducing the size of my stash and actually using up some of my notebooks.

Some of my other guilty pleasures include the following – cake (iced victoria sponge every time), pasta with cheesy sauces, apple crumble and custard (but only as made by my mum), singing at full volume whilst driving with all the windows down, spending the whole day in bed (when you’re not ill) and binge watching an amazing new TV show when you should really be going to bed!

Blog Challenge – Day 12

Favourite quotes:

I’m not a massive quote person and very often get them wrong but for as long as i can remember i have loved this quote from Little Women. It is said by the professor to Jo whilst they are at the opera.

“Your heart understood mine. In the depth of the fragrant night, i listened with ravished soul to your beloved voice. Your heart understood mine.”

The words are simple but hold so much meaning.

Whilst i say i’m not a massive quote person yesterday i found myself saying “Time and trolley wait for no man” which is from the film Meet Me in St Louis. I often say ‘fiddle-dee-dee’ as said by Scarlett O’Hara. Sometimes i don’t even know i’m doing it.

However if someone where to ask me to recite a quote i would definitely struggle.

Oh and knowing the words to every Friends episode doesn’t count as quotes!

Blog Challenge – Day 11

(Yes i’m aware that i’ve skipped a few days)

Make A Wish:

I’m starting to get flashbacks to watching Aladdin when i was younger and trying to remember what wishes i would make if i had a genie in a lamp!

I”m certain they were all the normal wishes you make as a teenager – i hope i get a boyfriend, i hope i get good exam results, i hope i get invited to this party or that sleepover etc etc.

Wishes when you’re 35 are very different and could range from i hope i don’t lose anyone close to me, i hope my job is secure, i hope we can finish decorating the house and so on.

I probably have all the same wishes as many women out there, please let me get down to a weight/clothes size i’m happy with and can i please have a bit more money.

Wishes also change over time and right now i would wish that my niece continues to grow up to be the confident, strong and intelligent girl she is now at almost 14. She has been through enough in the last year and i would wish that she has lots of happy times ahead of her.

But as we all know wishes aren’t real, we have to work to make the good things happen. Some people can be fortune enough to benefit from good luck but good luck (or what is perceived to be good luck) always runs out.

I want to lose weight so i’m working it at. This will maybe result in me and my hubby having a baby which is something i long for (not wish for).

Making a List

I saw this list on a few other people’s blog and love the idea.

Turn your iPod on and put it on shuffle and list the first 10 songs that come out. At the time of replying to someone’s blog with my own list my main iPod was in the car so i did the shuffle on spotify. However today i remembered to do the shuffle whilst i was in the car and made a note of the first 10 songs.

1. Betcha’ Gonna Know – Mariah Carey ft. R Kelly
2. A House is Not a Home – Chris Colfer & Cory Monteith (Glee)
3. All I Want For Christmas – Mariah Carey
4. Blurred Lines – Robin Thicke
5. Tonight the Heartbreaks on Me – Dixie Chicks
6. Be Faithful – Fatman Scoop
7. 1+1 – Beyonce
8. She’s Out of My Life – Michael Jackson
9. Save Yourself – Will Young
10. And I Am Telling You – Jennifer Hudson

I have over 1,000 songs on the iPod in my car including a lot a Mariah Carey and a good sprinkling of Christmas songs – nothing like a festive tune in the middle of July!

I did also mention to someone else that i had a special playlist called Belters for those times when all i want to do is sing epic song after epic song – we’re talking Whitney, Mariah, Celine, showtunes, you get the idea.

Keeping it short for today (although this should have been yesterday’s post)

Who I Am and Why I’m Here….

So i’m taking part in Blogging 101 to try and expand my horizons and give me some more inspiration.

Who I Am?

I’m Laura, 35, living in the north of England, but originally from the south of England. I have been married for 11 years and work for a non-profit organisation. I own my own home, don’t have any children and have two adorable, rescue cats.

I suppose that is all the basic stuff so above and beyond this, i love reading, watching TV, i’m addicted to watching beauty videos on YouTube, i love beauty products and stationary (yes i do need another new notebook!). I prefer cold weather, love visiting America, i like gadgets, my ideal Saturday night is spending time with my family either out or at home. My favourite drink would be champagne or a peroni (random i know), my favourite food is my mums lasagna and apple crumble and i hate surprises (although i love planning them for someone else).

Phew, that’s enough for now.

Why I’m Here?

Simply to put words down. I could keep a personal journal but i don’t really like my handwriting and i prefer putting my words somewhere that means, hopefully, i can interact with people across the globe. I love hearing about other people and their lives so maybe someone will want to hear about mine?

I am NOT a writer, i don’t ever profess to be good at it but I’m enjoying getting the thoughts in my head out of my head.

My husband will normally listen to anything i tell him (unless i’m arranging an event and then he claims I’ve never mentioned it!) but sometimes the thoughts and words spill out when he isn’t around, so they’ve got to go somewhere.