Birthday Round Up

Well folks, its official I am now in my late twenties :( I think I am now at the stage where you stop counting the years as they go by!

Anyway I had a lovely Birthday, I was greeted by this lovely display of presents from Tom.

I love Thomas's gift wrapping - he always puts so much effort into it! I, on the other hand, am hopeless at wrapping. Unless its square, then its not too bad.

So what was inside these wonderful wrapped parcels? Tom originally got me the new Mulberry Rosie Toiletry bag, which is really lovely but just too big to carry around your day to day make up. I was really touched by this gift as he had noticed my current bag was getting a bit grotty, but decided that I wouldn't get much use out of it. Plus I would be worried that it got wreaked like all my other make up bags do! As we were going through to Edinburgh we decided to pay the Mulberry shop a visit and we exchanged it for this lovely little beauty: 

I decided on this size rather that the wallet as I don't really carry that much cash on me and this finds all my cards and coins nicely, its also a nice size that will fit into most bags and not take up all the room. 

Tom also got me (spoiled I am!) a Babyliss Pro curling wand and a notebook and Pen, as he knows my love for stationary! I adore the pen, its a lovely Raspberry colour and writes like a dream! 

After all the gift unwrapping we got ready and headed to the Hotel Missoni in Edinburgh for a wee birthday lunch! The hotel was amazing, we were greeted by doormen in Missoni Kilts and the decoration was amazing. The food was delicious and amazing value for money - you can get 3 courses for £20, which I think is brilliant for a 5 star restaurant! I would love to stay in one of the rooms there. After lunch we went for a quick look in Harvey Nicks, I didn't get anything apart from Shampoo and there gorgeous cupcakes! 

Other gifts included a lovely Liz Earle set from my Mum and an ASOS voucher from my sister which I have already spent and will do a wee post on when the goods arrived. 

I will leave you with a picture of Rosie climbing out a Missoni basket! 

xxxx

Tone It Up Update and weekend antics

Bonsoir everyone!

Hope you are all good and well and have had a lovely weekend. Just a little update on how things are going with the new health regime and life.

So I completed Day 1 no problem, Day 2's challenge was fine also. It was the Bikini Strap work out and I thought it was a really good........ until things started to go wrong. Yesterday my left knee felt a wee bit niggly but I didn't really think too much of it and just carried on with my day. Which to be honest didn't involve much apart from a big food shop (most exciting thing about that was getting a new kettle and toaster - oh how my life is exciting). In the evening we just chilled and watched HP, when I went to bed my knee was still a bit niggly but pretty easy to ignore. Fast forward to around 5am when I woke in absolute agony and could hardly move my leg. Thought uh oh but eventually, after a lot of tossing and turning I managed to get back to sleep. However I did wake a couple more times. 

When I woke up for the day the pain had become unbareable and I literally couldn't move my leg at all! I  was bursting for the loo so had to get Tom to help me hobble along. And oh my god sitting down was agony! So we decided it was probably a good idea to pop up to A&E to have it checked out. 

Around an hour later, after a lot of faffing about and a good 5 mins spent trying to get in the car we arrived at the hospital. Luckily, it was really quiet so didn't have to wait long at all to be seen which was a bonus as Rosie was with us and I didn't fancy trying to keep her entertained for an age whilst in a waiting area! 

The doctor got me to hop up (again quite literally) on to the bed and then began the torture process where she prodded and poked my knee, made me bend it and lift my leg in the air, all of which hurt - A LOT. She then went away and the consultant came in and made me repeat the whole bloody process again, which is beyond me. My favourite bit was when she asked me to lift my foot - to which I tried and failed, so then she asked me again!!!! I have just said I can't FFS! Now I know they were just doing their job but come on. 

After some murmuring and discussions involving some un-comprehendible medical terms she finally announced that the most likely cause was tendonitis and send me packing with the advice to pick up some ibroprofen! 

Tendonitis is not a nice thing peeps, it really really hurts and I don't think I will be able to do anymore road running, even though I had good trainers etc etc. If I do, then it is most likely to flare up again. It also means I can't exercise for a few days which is pretty rubbish however my mate is coming up from NCL so probably wouldn't have done much anyway.

So thats the exercise round up, food wise things are going alright. Had a bit of a pig out on Friday but have mostly been sticking to my measured out meals. Today was a bit of failure as we went to my friend's daughters 1st birthday party so was obviously cake galore. 

The party was so cute, Rosie loved it and it was brilliant seeing her laugh and play with other babies her age. She gets so excited! She also matched the birthday girl perfectly as she was in white and red stripes and J was in spots. Hopefully get a picture of them both together. 

So all in all the weekend was a bit up and down! I shall leave you with a wee picture of my cutie pie! 

Sophie 

xxxxx

Cloth Nappies

Recently I have been reading and watching a lot of stuff about Cloth nappies. Now generally my thoughts towards this was "urgh no way! Hand me the pampers" but after finding a bit more out about cloth nappies I felt inspired to give it a go. Better late than never eh!

So I am a complete novice to all this but from what I gathered there are a few different versions of cloth nappies but I choose the "pocket" version. Basically, a cloth insert fits into a pocket in the nappy and this absorbs all the wee and other lovely stuff. When it comes to changing you just take the insert out and chuck them in a nappy pail ( a bucket with a lid) ready for wash day. (Oh forgot to mention, that you also place a liner on top of the nappy and this just gets chucked down the toilet, brilliant for number 2's as you just flush away and its not nearly as digesting as I originally though!)

Everyones favourite cloth nappies seem to be either Bumgenious or Fuzzybunz so I had a look at these but they just seemed a bit pricey and what if it didn't work out? So off i trundled to good old Ebay where I found a lovely deal for 5 nappies. They arrived promptly and so I began the pre washing process where you chuck them in the machine a few times to increase their absorbency.

Two days ago was our first "Cloth day" and it went like a dream, now we are just doing this part time until the stash is built up so we alternate one disposable and one cloth. The cloth nappies were just as easy as the disposables, the only difference is that you chuck it in the nappy pail instead of the bin.

After Day 1 I was hooked! I went and had a look at the other variations of the nappies and came across the Flip. This differs as instead of having to wash two parts of the nappy, you just take out the insert and wash that, and give the cover a wipe down, ready to be used with the next insert. Sounded brill so off I went and ordered one cover and a few inserts. They arrived today and will do the pre washing tomorrow so they will be ready to be used over the weekend.

If you are thinking about cloth nappy-ing but seem a bit confused by it all then don't worry - its actually really simple and most proper should have access to real nappy experts in their are who they can have a chat with. Also I *think* that if you live in England or Wales then you get a grant from your local authority to purchase some cloth nappies, so that may be worth a wee look.

If you are reading this and already use cloth nappies (or diapers) and have used both the bumgenious/ other branded nappies and the Ebay cheapies can you let me know the difference? and if one is better etc?

PS If any one is put off by the bulkiness of cloth nappies then don't be, there really is hardly any difference!

Tone it Up! Day 1

Greetings all, hope your are safe and well after these last few days of utter horror and devastation. All seems calm in England now, lets hope it stays like that. These riots made me feel glad that I now live out of the city, I was so scared for all my English friends and family. Anyway I hope we have seen the end.

If you read my blog (then thank you!)  you will know that I am the worlds biggest yo yo dieter, I start a diet or fitness regime, stick to it for a week or two then thats it. Well I am back on my quest to lost this last stone, which for some godly reason wants to stick around. Whats the plan this time?

Well I was looking up diet chef the other day and was very tempted but the high cost just put me off. Its like my whole months shopping budget, and although I would be fed, what would Tom and Rosie eat! So i looked into the food a bit more and thought hmmmmm surely you can do a bit of a DIY diet chef. The main pros for diet chef are that you don't have to think what to have and you get the right size portion so no overeating. So i have decided that I am just going to weight out my portions so they are the same size as the DC ones. Also I can tailor my meal planning around the same meals they have or make something else that is fairly healthy. Lunch wise, all the DC ones are soup, so I will just stock up on that and make sure the portion size and cal count are similar. Same with breakfast. So there you go, a DIY diet chef.

So thats the food thing out the way, so what about that awful thing know as exercise. Well the other evening when I was catching up on some You Tube vids,  a wee link caught my eye. It was to the Tone It Up videos, so clickity click I went.

The channel is brilliant, loads and loads of great work out videos for free. There was also a link to their website so I had a wee look at that and found the "Spring into Bikini series". This is 8 weeks worth of planned exercise. All you have to do is follow the days challenges  one by one and in 8 weeks you should be much more tonnes and slimmer.

Today was the first challenge and it was the Booty Call. This means waking up 30 mins earlier a day and fitting in a fat burning workout. Well i didn't wake up 30 mins early, in fact if anything I woke up 30 mins later than usual as Rose the Human Alarm Clock decided she wanted a day off and slept in! Nevertheless I went out for a run at lunch time (in the pouring rain, may I add) and managed just over 2 miles!

Tomorrow its the Bikini Strap work out, and I must say as the exercise is generally different everyday I am actually looking forward to it!

I will try and update as best as I can but if you want to go check it out the you can find it here:

http://toneitup.com/blog.php?Bikini-Series-If-you-missed-it-5112

I also thought about doing some vlogs but always feel like an utter twat when I film myself!

In your head..

Over the last couple of days I have had about a million things swarming my thoughts but in reality I have done nothing! I have tried to write a To Do list but nothing actually appeared on the paper. Must try harder tomorrow. Any one else ever have this restless head syndrome?

Image courtesy of We Heart It 

xx

Start as you mean to go on

My oh my this blog has been neglected of late! I seemed to have taken an unwanted hiatus from blogging in the last couple of months and actually really miss it.

In stead of doing posts that I actually want to write about I always leave so much time in between posts that I always have to spend loads of time on catch up posts. Not good. Anyway this is just another little post apologising for the lack of content of late and that from this moment on it will be rectified!

I have finally got a new laptop so no excuses now!

Sophie
xxx