Sunday Snapshot

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Happy Saturday

11am Saturday morning, and currently I am in bed. I have been up and made myself breakfast and tea, but I brought it back to bed with me to watch the TV I'd recorded through the week (Geordie Shore and Love your garden!... random!) and have a bit of a pamper.

I didnt post my weekly menu yesterday, I was in a bit of a sulk since I'd gained 2lbs this week. Sure I'd had a couple of days where I hadn't been an angel, but to gain 2lbs! I was miffed to say the least. But its water under the bridge, there is nothing I can do about it so onwards and upwards. Even with my birthday on Monday, and celebratory meal out this evening I still want a loss this week, so I need to be supre super focussed.

Monday - EE - My Birthday! weather dependant we'll bike to the local farm shop for lunch. the day looks like it will pan out much like I hoped

Tuesday - Green - Yoga in evening
B - fruit & cereal
L - Quiche, salad & potaoes
D - pasta & sauce

Wednesday- Green - Gym in evening
B - fruit & cereal
L - Leftover Quiche, salad, potatoes
D - Chilli bean & potato bake

Thursday- Green - Balance & SW in evening
B - fruit & cereal
L - Leftover Chilli bean bake
D - cheese on toast

Friday - Green - Zumba in evening
B - fruit & cereal
L - Leftover chilli bean bake
D - Pepper & Mushroom Risotto

Saturday - EE
B - fruit & cereal
L - hot chicken salad.
D - Boxing on tonight, we have some friends coming over so i'll do some nibbles and make sure I have healthy stuff for me to eat!

Sunday - EE - Going to see Foo Fighters - No idea what I shall eat. hopefully We'll find a jacket potato stand! :D

These are my plans for the week anyway, mainly based around what we have in the cupboards already. Save money on grocery shopping as we have a busy week ahead. :)

Happy weekend xx

My birthday wish list

Is it wrong for me to be posting a wish list of things I would like for on my birthday? I don't want to seem greedy, its not gifts I am after, but rather a little list/plan of the things I would like to make my birthday special (to me) and I thought I would just share the things I would love on here for all to see!


A lot of it seems to revolve around food!... hmmm...

image

Warm croissants and fresh fruit for breakfast, with tea, coffee and oj! Ideally in the garden... if its fnished (and please be sunny!)

A lazy morning, perhaps a little shopping, and then a drive to a lovely local farm shop/tea room for lunch and a slice of cake.


Then home, to curl up on the sofa with a movie or two and some before mentioned Jelly Belly Beans.


Later on some Olive Bread (mmmmm, I could eat home baked olive bread all day long) With some mozzarella cheese a selection of cheeses, various cold meats and pates. Perhaps some home made pizza with some spicy chicken dipper things, or a BBQ in the garden!
 If my birthday pans out like this I will be one blissfully happy (and relaxed) lady!
*ahem* lovely husband take note ;) xx


Whats your perfect way to spend your birthday??


(ps. celebrations with friends & family will happen at the weekend! I'm not ignoring them! haha)

Tasty Tuesday - Spaghetti Bolognese

Ok, so I know that pretty much everyone knows full well how to cook good old Spahetti Bolognese. But this is another firm favourite in this household, my husband simply loves it (you know when sometimes you just get a craving for something and could happily eat it over and over for days on end? This is his favourite thing of the moment!) I thought, I'd do a super quick post on how I make it.

Ingredients

 Spaghetti (I know I have tagliatelle in the photo, It was all I had in the cupboard)

500g lean minced beef

1 red onion - chopped

4 tomatoes - chopped (or a good handfull of cherry tomatoes - halved)

2-3 peppers, any colour - choped

Beef stock (about 300ml)

Dried garlic (I use this so much more than fresh, its so much easier!)

 Lea & Perrins worcesteshire sauce

dried or fresh basil

black pepper

and if I have some, I shove some mushrooms in too!

Method
Fry light a large saucepan, Cook onions and mince until browned

add peppers, a good glug (around 1 tablespoon) worcestershire sauce, tomatoes, garlic, basil, black pepper and beef stock (sometimes it looks like it needs more/less stock, just add what you think is best, you can always add more if it starts to look dry while its cooking!)

add mushrooms if using

Stir well and leave to simmer for around 30 minutes stirring occasionally

While this is simmering away, cook your spaghetti

Then simply serve, with plenty of parmesan sprinkled on top and with either  a nice slice of garlic bread, or some lightly toasted ciabatta

Nice, quick and easy, and lovely comfort food. Just what you want after a day at work (especally if its a bit cold and raining!) x

Monday - 20/6

Just a quick update today as I want to get on with some stuff round the house. My 2nd monday off and it's jam packed with stuff to do this afternoon, and I want to get on with mking some things this morning... If I can find my fabric etc in the spare room organising/decorating chaos.
Its true that things get worse before they get better right? Please say that it will get better...

Its lovely outside a the moment too, so I am thinking I shall get all my stuff together, and while I may not be able to sit and work in the garden, I can at least sit and work in the living room, with the back door wide open and sun streaming in.

One last thing before I dash off, I don't know if any of you read Peonies blog? But her post today about her wardrobe struck a chord with me (apart from the post baby belly of course, post 'eating too much cake and trying to shift the weight belly' is more acurate!) Might try and fit in a half hour of wardrobe purging today, even if I only get a couple of drawers done, its a good start. getting anywhere near 33 items will be nothing short of a miracle, but I am going to be strict and only things I love (and fit properly) will be allowed to reside in my drawers

oo-er missus. ha. x

EDIT - what do you think of the new blog layout/makeover?? The sun is no longer shining, so instead of basking in its rays I got rather carried away dong this instead! :)

Sunday Snapshot

Happy Fathers Day!! :)

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Weigh In Result & Meal Plans

Evening campers! A bit of a late update for a Friday. Its been a busy busy week at work, but its been a good week thats for sure.

At Slimming World last night I lost 2lbs! hoorah. Hopefuilly this is me back on track and there will just be more and more weight loss to come :) Next week is my last weigh in before my birthday, I'd love to hit a stone loss before my birthday so I need to kick arse this week to shift at least 3lbs!! Fingers crossed and send me motivational vibes please! :D

Here are my meal plans for the next week ahead...

Mon - Green - Gym in afternoon
B: Cereal/toast & Fruit
L: leftover spanish omlette
D: Baked gnocchi & garlic bread

Tues - Green - Yoga in Evening
B: Cereal/toast & Fruit
L: leftover gnocchi
D: slow baked potatoes, cottage cheese & salad

Weds - Green - Gym/Walk in evening
B: Cereal/toast & Fruit
L: Baked potato, cheese & salad
D: Mushroom pasta bake & garlic bread

Thurs - Green - Balance & SW in evening
B: Cereal/toast & Fruit
L: Baked potato, cheese & beans, and some leftover muchroom pasta
D: Cheese salad wrap

Fri - Green - Zumba in Evening
B: Cereal/toast & Fruit
L: Baked potato, cheese & beans
D: Veggy curry & rice

Sat - Extra Easy
B: Egg on toast or Granola & Fruit
L: spanish omlette
D: Italian meal out to celebrate my Birthday! ... no diet this evening. :)

Sun - Extra Easy
B: Egg on toast or Granola & Fruit
L: leftover spanish omlette
D: Cheese & Broc past bake & garlic bread

Have a wonderful Weekend all of you. x

Lust List - June 2011

Oops. I haven't done my lust list for a couple of months now! A bit belated perhaps, but here are the things on my Lust List for June...

1: A lego lunchbox!! omg. I'd never use it, but still I love it!

2: Boring I know... but seriously, I need some Billy bookcases for the spareroom/office!

3: And while i'm on the subject, this would be lovely too!

4: I am loving the coloured denim thats in the shops at the moment. I'll not be buying any just yet, need to get these hefty thighs slimmed down before I even consider donning anything bright and attention drawing! haha. Not 100% sure they are really my style either, but they are lovely for summer!

5: I know that I post shoes a lot on my lust lists, I think I may have a problem, I looove shoes. l've them, and currently I love these!! (whats with all the pink!)

6: Really love this dress from boohoo too. Such a lovely colour.

7: This is definitely something I need!

8: A corkscrew... shaped as a unicorn!! .. why yes please!!

9: A cople of these for when our garden is finished would be just wonderful

 10: Finally, This is probably what I want most out of all the items on this list.

 Bit of a random list this time round! Its taken me a while to compile it too. I've put myself on a bit of a spendin hiatus, and so as not to be led into temptation I've just downright avoided looking at lovely stuff!! haha. It'll be worth it in the long run.

Tasty Tuesday - Coated Chicken

This is a Slimming World recipe thats known as 'KFC Style chicken' I call it coated chicken because it tastes bugger all like KFC chicken in my opinion.
Not that it matters, because I actually personally prefer this to the take out 'finger lickin so good' version! (so good as a slogan just isn't as catchy as finger lickin' is it?)
We have this quite regularly, it does feel lik your having a naughty fast food treat.

Ingredients

2 Chicken breast

half a tub of Chicken Bovril paste

1 egg

1 clove crushed garlic - Or use dried like I did! (optional)

1 teaspoon of ground black pepper (optional)

half a teaspoon mixed spice (optional)

half a teaspoon of mild chilli powder (optional)

2-3 slices brown bread

1-2 teaspoons mixed herbs

Method

Place chicken breasts in saucepan of boiling water and simmer for 30min. When cooked, drain and leave to one side to cool

While chicken is cooking  preheat oven to 180deg C
Place bread and herbs into a food processor (I have one of those mini choppers!) and blend until made into breadcrumbs. Put them in a bowl to one side

in another bowl mix together your egg, bovril (I just guesstimate the half tub, dont bother measuring) mixed spice, garlic, chilli and pepper. Mix with a fork until a kind of gloopy paste is achieved

Cut the cooled chicken breast into chunky sized strips

(I always do the coating prep while chicken is cooking, so its never fully cooled by the time I cut it into strips. if its not fully cooled be careful not to burn your fingers!)

Get your baking tray and spray it with frylight now. Keep it close to hand

Take each piece of chicken, dip it first into the gloopy mixture, then into breadcrumbs

(this can get messy you could also just pop the chicken onto the baking tray and drizzle on the gloopy mix followed by the breadcrumb mix, I like mine coated all over though)

place coated chicken onto the baking tray, place in the oven and bake for around 15 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are nice and golden.

When chicken is cooked, remove from oven and serve! We normally have ours with some homemade chips/wedges, salad and coleslaw. Yummy

And you know whats best of all??... if like me you are following Sliming World, use the bread as part of your HEB and its totally syn free!

Let me know if you give it a try. xx

EDIT - I don't know whats going on with blogger and why some of the text is underlined, some not, some bold etc! It muddled everything up when it first published too, so apologies if you read it and wondered what the hell I was on about! :) thanks. x

Is it that time already!!

Today has litterally flow by! It has been my first Monday at home. I've been sorting out the spare room/office and writing up some future posts for on here. If all Mondays shoot past as quick as this one I'm going to need to get much much quicker at doing stuff or i'll never get half the things I want to do done!

Darren is currently out in the garden working on our patio some more. It'll be so good once it's done, yes we have other stuff to get on and get done in the garden, but having a proper area we can sit and eat and entertain and BBQ will be wonderful. And should alleviate some of the dread I have been feeling every time I look out into our garden (omg, there is SO much work to be done!)

The spare room/office is coming along nicely. Its not painted etc, but most of the clearing out has been done. Just need some bookcases/shelving now and I can get my backside into gear and start painting/printing/making. Its scary, I've alway been so critical of my own work, but i need to just overcome that and get on with it. It makes me happy, so i'll suck it up and get on with it. Setting myself deadlines will be a good thing I think. :)

Having Mondays to work at home will give me tht little bit more time to focus on this here blog a bit too, its been a little lacklustre of late I know. Tomorrow I have a yummy recipe post coming up, and Wednesday will have the Lust list back too! Phew... its been more typing than I normally do at work! haha.

Anyway, I hope this is the re-start of making this little blog a bit more entertaining (for me to write, as well as for any of you that read it!) and most importantly of me getting some focus back and really pushing forward with some new things in my life. eeek!!

This is tomorrows recipe 'KFC style chicken' Its making me hungry just thinking about it. Think I need to sign off and go start our dinner (baked gnocchi, yummy!)

Happy Monday! xx

Sunday Snapshot

So technically this is a shot from yesterday. We started the patio finally, and the plan was to continue and get it pretty much finished today. Unfortunately rain stopped play so instead we cleared out the spare room... But that would have been a snapshot of me with really bad hair carrying boxes of junk!!
We've managed to discuss and finalise plans for the garden, spare room and bedroom too though, so that's brilliant, and we can start to see it all taking shape.
Hope your rainy sundays have been lovely and relaxing or productive too! Xx
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Weigh In Result & Meal Plans

Good afternoon.

I'm feeling incredibly tired again today, it was so warm last night we couldn't sleep so early hours of the morning opened one of the windows.

This morning I was woken, not by my alarm, but by a bloody big bee that had found its way in and was stuck behind the curtains. 'Operation Bee Rescue' was quite simple... open the window wider. :)

Aaaanyway, I gained half a pound this week. Not much eh, especially after our weekend away. hoorah. I can feel my body starting to crave healthiness now though, today my lunch mainly consisted of celery and tomatoes.

On top of that, I still cant quite work out if I have developed hayfever or I have some sort of chest infection. Off to see the Dr on Monday. Hopefully they can tell me whats wrong and how to make it better! :) So hoping for a super healthy and lovely feeling week ahead!

Back to some normality this week too, or my new version of normality. Quite simply I now work 4 days a week, Tuesday-Friday. I'll share my plans for my extra 'free' tine soon!! :)

Here is this weeks meal plans (From Monday, as its cheaper to get groceries delivered on a Monday from now on! haha)

Monday: Green

B - Toast/Cereal & fruit

L - homemade soup & bread

D - Baked gnocchi, Garlic bread & salad

Tuesday: Green - Yoga in Evening

B - Toast/Cereal & fruit

L - Leftover Gnocchi

D - Slow baked potato & salad

Wednesday: Green - Gym in Morning

B - Toast/Cereal & fruit

L - 1/2 baked pot & salad

D - Stuffed & roasted BNS, with cheese & salad

Thursday: Green - Balance & SW in Evening

B - Toast/Cereal & fruit

L - Baked potato & salad

D - Sandwich/Wrap & crisps

Friday: EE - Zumba in evening!! (eek, first time I'll be going!)

B - Toast/Cereal & fruit

L - 1/2 baked pot & salad

D - Chicken in spicy tomato sauce with rice.

Saturday: EE

B - Porridge & fruit/Jam

L - Toasted Panini/Sandwich, coffee & cake

D - KFC style chicken & BNS chips.

Sunday: EE 

B - Porridge & fruit/jam

L - Burgers & cajun wedges

D - Homemade soup

Happy weekend. xx

Sunday Snapshot

What a way to spend an anniversary! :)
1 year ago today I married my husband. I loved our wedding day, and I've loved every day since! :) happy anniversary. Xxx
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Weigh In Result & Meal Plans

Gooood morning.


This week is a bit of an off one with the meal planning, It is our first anniversary this weekend (ahhhh) and so we are just going to see how it pans out. there will certainly be no meal planning, so I am just sharing the bits I have planned out...

Friday: green - gym in morning

B - Muesli & strawberries

L - Mugshot, fruit

D - Spaghetti Bolognese & aubergine fritters

Weekend - ???

Tuesday: Green - Yoga in evening

B - Cereal/Toast & fruit

L - Stuffed mushrooms/peppers

D - Veggy curry & rice

Wednesday: Green - Gym in Morning

B - Cereal/Toast & fruit

L - Leftover curry, or mugshot

D - Stuffed aubergines & salad

Thursday: Green - Balance & SW in Evening

B - Cereal/Toast & fruit

L - ‘Ready meal’ at work

D - mugshot or salad?

All a little vague I know, but there you go. I need to prepare a 'ready meal' to have my dinner at lunch at work on Thursday. seeing as Balance on Tuesdays has been cancelled my only other option in Thursdays before slimming world. This does mean however that I am out all day, so I am going to give a try to eating a full proper meal at lunch, and then just have a salad or sandwich when I get home. I really do not like going to bed on a full stomach. 

As for my weigh in last night. I lost 1lb! and after KoL and the weekend in general I am really happy with that. I finally feel like I am getting my sh*t together again. :)

Things are falling into place and that just feels wonderful!

Have wonderful weekends all of you, no matter what you do! xxx