More Bank Holiday fun!

I absolutely love how many Bank Holidays we have at this time of year - it kinda feels like one big holiday all through May! This time around I finished work on Friday and don't go back in until Thursday which is BRILLIANT!! We always get both the Monday and Tuesday off at my work which is pretty cool but this time I also added in a sneaky days holiday for the Wednesday so I could meet up with the GORGEOUS Sinead and hit the shops! 

We will both be attending the Xen Tan Pop Up at Selfridges in the Trafford Centre at 2pm for a consultation. Pretty excited as I'm thinking I'm going to splurge on some goodies, always wanted to try Xen Tan! 

Is anyone else attending the event? Me and Sinead are going to be in Manchester pretty much all day...coupled with the fact that I got paid this weekend and received a little bonus and payrise I *think* it won't just be my feet aching from all the walking round but also my hands from carrying a looootttt of shopping bags!!

Let me know if you are going! :) 

xxx

Check My Swagga Out

I went along to the River Island Student Shop In a couple of weeks ago now but I've only just got around taking pics of what I picked up. If you read my post here I trawled the RI website looking for all the things I wanted to pick up. In the end I actually ended up getting none of it as none of it was there! Apart from the ring, and that was NOT happening, I picked up a large and couldn't get it on my first finger and the middle one was a squeeze, RI must make their rings tight or something!!

I only actually got two things - a blouse and a jacket.

I can't even remember how much this cost and I couldn't find it online to show you, I think it was about £25. I wore it today for a job interview and I love it! It's perfect to wear for work or with a pair of jeans for some drinks.

The second thing I got was this gorgeous jacket. Slightly more at £39.99 but I love it - I've always wanted a nice jacket I could wear on nights out that wasn't a proper jacket, blazers never suit me so they're out of the question but this will be perfect.

Have you picked anything up from River Island lately? There is some gorgeous stuff online but I find it hard to find the things I like in my local store!

The header of this post may as well be the only song on my iPod at the moment, I literally play it on repeat all day!

xxx

Lighter Life Challenge

Buona sera persone

How are you all today? It's not even 11pm and I am so tired my eyes are closing but as I won't be around tomorrow night to blog I wanted to do a quick post tonight! 

So as you know Tuesday is my weigh in day at Weight Watchers. I was extremely disappointed last week to the point when when I got home I just cried and went to bed at like 7 pm because after such a fantastic week where I was certain of a loss, and had said I would be disappointed with a measly one pound loss, I actually put on half a pound. I was absolutely distraught and it knocked my confidence so much but I managed to stay on track for a week praying the loss would be shown this week instead. 

And tonight it did! Thank GOD! I lost 3 pounds tonight at weigh in bringing my total loss up to 17 and a half pounds. I need to lose another 4 to get my 10% from Weight Watchers, another 10 and a half to notch up my second stone. 

I keep meaning to take pictures of my lunches but I keep forgetting!! Heres just what I did remember to take this week:

 Green beans, chopped strawberries and an orange. This was last Fridays lunch and being the end of the week I didn't have a lot left so ended up taking two slices of Weight Watchers bread and two slices of cheese to make cheese on toast! It was quite a nice welcome change to a salad or sandwich actually. 7 pro points. 

 Green salad, green beans, baby potatoes and a selection of fruit. Spinach is definitely my favourite kind of salad to take to work and just a couple of new potatoes done for around 5 mins in the mic make a nice little addition :) 4 PP for the potatoes, everything else free.

Probably my favourite tea of last week, something I haven't had before, something low in points, something filling, something tasty and something visually appetising! Fish is a great addition to a main meal as it is so low in points. This is haddock, and there is quite a lot of it (I felt pretty sick after clearing this plate I won't lie, but at least I didn't go looking for food later on that night!) with a simple salad and some boiled rice. And the pro points worked out for this? 0 for the salad, 5 for all of the fish and I think the rice was around 8ish I worked it out at. 5 points for that amount of fish I think it amazing! 

Staying on the subject of fish I wanted to just show you something I have been taking for lunch as it is simple to do in the microwave at work, it takes five minutes:

Internet pic I'm afraid as I can't say they look very nice once they've been cooked. They're something ridic like 2 pro points per fish. My only hate about them is how the bags explode in the mic, I don't mind at home so much but I try not to think about the mic at work, it makes me feel sick to think all those other people use it to cook sometimes rank food!! I've been taking these and pairing them with a salad usually, then the meal only comes to 2 points for the fish. Today with it being my weigh in day I just took one of these and three minuscule potatoes and it is so tasty! 

I also bought a pedometer tonight at Weight Watchers. £16.97 is pretty steep I think and you can obviously get them cheaper but the WW one works out how many activity points you have earned. How much do you think you walk a day? I'm pretty excited to find out tomorrow, by government standards you should aim to walk 5 miles a day which is the equivalent of 10000 steps. On a standard day I do around 45 mins walking to and from home to bus stop, then I have my walk to the bus stop from work which is quite far really, I usually go out on a lunch hour and walk around the shops and I work in an office with three flights of stairs that I'm often up and down all days so tomorrow should be interesting to find out! 

I'm looking forward to seeing my girls at the Aussie event on Saturday although also rather scared that everyone else going will be exercise buffs and I'll be all embarrassed doing the exercises! :( I bought some trainers for the first time in like 5 years or something yesterday! Will be so weird wearing them I tell you! Should just point out to my train/tube buddies that after all the bomb scare business in LDN yesterday ... I'm pretty damn scared! I'm trusting Briony and her ipad of Inbetweeners will calm me down on the way there ;) 

Are you going to the event on Saturday? How are diets going for everyone else? If you're blogging about your diet and don't know/think I read it please leave the link as I'm genuinely interested in reading all this diet inspiration at the mo! 

xxxxx

Reading, Watching, Listening, Loving!

In 2010 I started doing monthly posts of books I'd read, programmes and films I'd watched, music I was loving, but somewhere along the line I stopped doing them, and I thought I'd bring them back as I love being able to look back and see what I was watching and loving!

I go through phases where one minute I'm reading books like they're going out of fashion, the next I struggle to read more than a couple a month. The majority of the time the only chance I get to actually read is waiting for the bus on a morning and night, not actually on the bus (unless it's a unputdownable book!) as I get really bad travel sickness! This month so far the two books I have read are Linwood Barclay's Fear the Worst and Jane Green'a Jemima J. I have read a Linwood Barclay book before and while I do enjoy them, I have another waiting to be read, his main characters really grate on me! The lead in this book made me hate reading the dialogue between him and everyone else in the book! It was a good read though, I'll be passing this over to my dad to read next! 

Jemima J is pretty old now, not sure when I picked it up but it was published in 1998, me and my mum have read it SO many times. It's about a girl (Jemima) who is overweight, and as the internet and chat rooms really kick off in the late nineties she gets talking to a gorgeous gym fitness freak in LA. When he asks her to send him a picture, a bit of photoshopping out her chins and body on a current photo of herself shows that if she was slim she would be absolutely beautiful. This prompts her to become slightly addicted to the gym and not eating, and lose over half her body weight, before jetting off to LA to meet her beach buff. As I'm currently on a diet I remembered how much I loved this and picked it up once again hoping it would give me a bit of inspiration! Has anyone read this? I bloody love it!

I finished Jemima this morning and will be starting The Atlantic Code tonight, pretty excited, it sounds quite good. God, is it sad to get excited about reading a book?! A Night To Remember by Walter Lord is an 'electrifying minute by minute story of the sinking of the Titanic'. I'm a bit of a Titanic geek, I get really into it. Someone requested to swap a book from me on Read It Swap It and I saw the words Titanic and agreed. Then the guy emailed me and said, oh thanks for swapping, I posted your book today, just so you know its very old and battered and yellowed but readable'..I was like oh...thank for telling me BEFORE I swapped it... 

It is literally taking me yonks to read it. It's OK, I find it interesting but terribly sad at the same time, which makes it hard to read, I just can't sit and read it all I have to keep coming back to it! If anyone else is a Titanic geek like me and fancies a read when I eventually finish it holler and I'll send you it! 

OBSESSED with Mad Men. I finished season one yesterday and can't wait to get my hands on 2! Films Lovefilm have sent me this month: The Switch, which I didn't overly like, Eat Pray Love and The Rebound which I LOVED. Can't wait to pick them up for my own collection, also want to get the Eat Pray Love book. Who else has seen this film? 

Bow Wow, Break It Down, Lloyd Feat 50 Cent, Let's Get It In, Martin Solveig, Hello, Kanye etc, All of the Lights, Nicole Scherzinger, Don't Hold Your Breath, Mad Men Soundtrack. 

xxx

Your beauty is inside you, don't let them bring you down

♥ I have honestly got an obsession with Chris Brown at the moment. I am listening to him on repeat and I cannot count the times I have watched this video ^^^ and this one...



♥ Actually love him right now, totally obsessed.

♥ I was lucky enough to win the gorgeous Domanique's giveaway recently and received my goodies this week..

A headband which is gorgeous, a beautiful ring, falsies in the form of nails and lashes, a flower and also some cherry body butter which is in the bathroom hence why it isn't in this pic! Thanks so much Domanique :)

♥ Speaking of giveaways, Jen is having one at the moment which I suggest you all head over to, if you don't follow her already! Jen was a blogger I used to speak to lots a couple of years ago before she took a blogging break but she is back in the game now! So pleased about this! :)

♥ I painted my nails last night, they're all different sizes and my nails in general are looking a bit shit atm so I just painted each one a different colour then put crackle glaze on top,

Ignore my scabbyness around my nails, honestly this is one of my biggest bugbears about nail pictures, really don't know why people who pick and chew their way around each and every finger then wanna picture it and show it off like its brilliant....its gross... I don't know why my yellow finger is like this here because it's not today :s Colours used: Attitude, Paradise Lost (thumb), Barry M Blue Moon, Models Own Lemon Meringue, Illamasqua Velocity and Barry M Mint Green. What do you think of crackle polishes? I only have one, and I was excited when I saw the first PR release for more colours but now so many other companies have jumped on that bandwagon I kinda think it's died. I wouldn't mind trying another colour though.

♥ Where has the weather gone! It is raining all the time lately and I am having wardrobe crisis left right and centre! Looking forward to the return of Summer...when it's like this I just want it to be Christmas again!

Good weekends?

x x x

Right About Now

I mentioned a few weeks ago how I missed my old blog and one of the types of posts I used to do was this, the make up currently residing in my make up bag.

I ran out of Studio Fix at the beginning of the year but resisted urges to buy a new bottle as money was a bit tight. Last week when I got paid it coincided with my MSF running out so I took a trip to MAC and picked up newbies. The blusher I'm most reaching for this month has to be Pink Swoon, such a light girly beautiful pink colour. 

It makes me laugh sometimes when I do look back, I will have raved about a product and how I couldn't live without it only to find when I re-read the review however many months later I've totally forgotten the product exists  Still, it's nice to dig it out and fall in love all over again I suppose! One such product is Benefits F.Y.Eye, a primer I loved last year and used religiously! Also MAC's Smoke & Diamonds eyeshadow, I have not used this in such a long time I have 100% forgotten how much I used to love it! Benefits Bad Gal Lash Mascara and Urban Decay;s 24/7 Liner in Zero are my go to liner and mascara combo, also up there is the eyebrow kit I picked up at IMATs which I use pretty much every day as well. 

The Safari Sleek palette has been in my make up bag and has had a lot of use lately, although it's really just for one colour:

As you can see the palette is smashed to bits so I have to be careful using it but the white shadow on the bottom is the most perfect highlight colour I own. 

I have so many lipglosses and I don't really wear lip gloss anymore so I usually alternate these every week trying to use as many up as I can. I used to have an obsession with Lancome Juicy Tubes and I have no idea why, I don't really like them now, this one for instance is almost brand new? What a waste of money! They smell nice at least!

Three brushes residing in the bag at the moment - my Sigma F80 Flat Top Kabuki which I use everyday to put on my foundation and powder, MAC 217 and Sigma E25 (I think). 

Finally, my current nail varnish: 

So there you have it, an update of everything in my make up bag at the present moment! Have you got any of the products I'm loving at the moment? 

xxx

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind...Healthy Hair!

As you know I am an Aussie Angel and as I mentioned a few weeks ago am part of the Lusciously Lighter Self gang. Also, as you know I am currently at Weight Watchers trying to lose some weight and get fitter and healthier! 

The past few months I haven't been really doing the diet properly. Does everyone who is on a diet such as WW do this? Join, throw yourself into it and then just kinda s-l-o-w it down? I've still been going and haven't put weight on (apart from a pound) but I just haven't been doing it properly - eating rubbish all week and then starving myself Mondays and Tuesdays in time for Tuesday nights weigh in isn't the right way to do it I'm sure. 

So I will be using the Aussie challenge as a chance to throw myself back into this diet and lifestyle. I went out last Saturday night (30 April) and got so, so, so drunk. I barely remember the night, drank so much black sambucca and wine...and vodka....and sourz...literally so much. I kinda do that when I go out. I woke up on Sunday and although it wasn't the worst hangover in the world, to be truthful I barely had one, but when I started trying to remember the night I just couldn't...I picked my camera up and couldn't remember half the pictures on there, half of which were on the way out...I just thought to myself 

RIGHT 

it's the 1 May, first day of a new month and time to start afresh! So from now on 

NO more drinking alcohol

NO more eating food unless it is pointed up via Weight Watchers

Go back to drinking NO full fat pop

Go back to getting the different bus home on a night thus a 25 minute walk rather than the usual 15 one (I know it's only ten more minutes but over the course of the week that is nearly an extra hour walking)

I have made a concious effort this week to do all of the above apart from the walking as my drunken antics on Saturday saw me fall over a number of times and my foot is seriously killing - I think I am going to have to go to the doctors about it as after a week it is still swollen looking and I can't put my full weight onto it :(  If when I get to weigh in on Tuesday night I find I have not lost any weight I will truly cry because I have done it so well. Heres a quick look at some of the food I have eaten this week:

 Jacket Potato, tuna, two different kind of salads and coleslaw

Chicken salad sandwiches on Weight Watchers bread - yesterdays lunch for me and my mum. 

When reading Sofia's Journal a few weeks back she mentioned the Easy Lunchbox and linked to this site which has lots of pages of lunchbox inspiration! I don't know if I've ever mentioned this on here before but tupperwear boxes really freak me out, I can't stand them and the thought of food enclosed in them makes me feel sick, I totally can't bear to wash one out if I ever have to use them but the look of a lot of these healthy dinners made me really want one. At £15+ for just three boxes I thought it was a bit steep, and then came across this one in Sainsburys:

It has a 'normal' lunchbox at the bottom, and then three separate compartments on the top. The singular compartment to the left of the picture actually comes with a flask, but sitting next to a water machine at work I didn't really see the point in wasting a space for food!

I DID get rid of all that fat on the palma ham, I would usually have tuna with this salad but I was rushing for work and just took this ham from the fridge!

I'm feeling really focused and feel like now I'm back on track with my eating my next step is exercise. I've only just managed to catch up with the first of three videos Aussie has sent us, featuring the ultra 'aussome' Elle with her exercise tips. Check it out here! 

Did anyone make it this far?! I feel like this is a bit of a mammoth post...how are you other Angels getting on with the Challenge? 

xxx

Next!

Hi lovers

Just a quick post from me as I've had a lot on this week! I am planning on doing a few blog posts at the weekend but after just coming across this post from Red Boots I HAD to share it!

Basically if, like me, you use Google Reader to tick off and read all the blogs you follow, but miss being able to see actual blogs, as opposed to the boring repetitive GR layout, there is a button you can install onto your bookmarks titled 'Next' which takes you through each post you have to read via the actual blog - which is also perfect for commenting more on blogs as instead of having to click through to get there you're already on the correct page!

I'm so chuffed I read this post, I don't know if this is a new thing or not but I'm a little bit more in love with blog reading tonight (if possible!)!

To get the Next button if you already use Google Reader, click here and then click the Goodies tab. Scroll down to the part about the Next button, drag it to your bookmarks and thats it!

Did you already know about this? I am way behind?!

xx

Mother Shipton

Last Bank Holiday Monday the weather was perfect to pack up a picnic and drive up to Knaresborough - something I haven't done since I was a child! We decided to go to Mother Shipton's Cave, not only was it a place me and my friend remembered from our younger days but it also boasts plenty of scenic views, picnic areas and a mile long walk, perfect for starting off my Aussie Lighter Self challenge ;)

I'm absolutely gutted I didn't take a picture of my picnic as I was so proud of it!! I love preparing food like that and did the perfect little picnic, it was just too eager to jump in my mouth before my hands found my camera I guess. After we'd taken the picnic bags back to the car we set off on a walk around the park, reading all the signs and taking silly pictures. It's the perfect place to take kids, there's little play parks dotted all over the place. 

For anyone that doesn't know, Mother Shipton was a prophetess born in 1488 in the cave you can visit in the park. She allegedly predicted the Great Fire of London amongst many other things. You can read more about her on the website here :) In the actual cave now there is a stone statue of her...

Next to the cave is the Petrifying Well - anything that the water touches eventually turns to stone. Over the past 500 years there has been so many different things left to turn, some of them still hanging around the edge now.

Just behind the well is a little wishing well. You hold your right hand in the water and make a wish and it is supposed to obviously come true. I guess I will have to wait and see if this is true!

After we'd come to the end of the park we had a look around the museum, where there are all sorts of items that have been taken down from the well that had turned to stone, things left by famous people, including a shoe left by Queen Mary in 1923! 

It costs £6 each to get into the park and £2 to park the car which you can then leave there while you wander about, so we decided to leave the park and walk round Knaresborough in search of an ice cream. I wish I had taken a pedometer with me, would be interesting to know how many steps we did that day! It was a gorgeous hot day and just when we'd given up hope of finding a shop that did proper ice creams we rounded a corner and found people queuing on the street outside a little cute corner shop selling deliciousness. After a nice long stroll back to the park we had to walk back through the mile long stretch and well again, and as it was a bit emptier took some silly pictures without people getting in the way! 

With our hands in the wishing well water! I'll be sure to let you know if mine comes true!

Have you ever seen anyone so clearly excited to be stood in a cave with a stone statue before? What's happening with my face? LOL! I had to include this picture just for funny reasons, I look like a total loser.

Have you been to Mother Shiptons Cave before? 

xxx