Fitness and weight loss journey

So tonight, after scoffing one of my sons gorgeous cakes, I came to the huge realization that the wedding isn't far away and I want a baby soon. Both of these things I didn't want to be fat for. I am a huge hormonal eater. When I say I eat... I mean scoff whatever I can get my hands on.

I have decided this is it! And now because it's down in writing on my blog it must be.... Right? 

I'm setting myself what I think is an achievable goal of 2lbs a week / 8lbs a month. I'm aiming to lose the first 8lb by April 1st. I will blog my eating and would be grateful for any tips.

It's a good job I love you...

My gorgeous little buddha was a little monkey last night. 2.30am he was in our room and lying next to me... Prodding me saying 'mumma it's morning, can I have Netflix, please.' Nice manors and really cute, but really? It's 2.30am. Anyway, that was it, he was awake. Although from then he was trying to be good and go to sleep he was just so wide awake it wasn't going to happen. I tried snuggles and putting him in his own bed. *can I hear tip toes?*... It's a good job he's normally such a good boy and has this adorable face!

Stress / Sleep deprived

I'm in a really strange mood... Warning stop reading unless you want to read a load of trash from a jumbled up head *it only took me three times to write the word head* 

My fiancée is working nights this week which means I've got an awful lot of time to sit and think in quiet, which to be honest is quite nice sometimes. Tonight, however, I feel like I'm going a little bit mad. I have so much going on in my little head that I'm not sure what to actually think about and what that voice in my head is telling me... I don't have any underlying mental health issues.

I think I'm just a little stressed and this is why:

• I have not been sleeping 

• I have a 4 year old and he is a great kid.... but a tired mumma with the energy it takes running around after him isn't a great combo and you have to keep going and pretend your not tired because his cute little face doesn't understand you just need to sleep. 
• I am stressing about the house. Will it go through okay, what will the evaluation say, how long etc etc.
• The moving process. My fiancée thinks I'm mad as I want to start packing now. I'm making her bring boxes home with her tonight. Squaring things away in boxes though will help put some of stress in those boxes and square that away also. I know that sounds weird. 
• Work - I LOVE my job but it's going through lots of changes at the moment, as everywhere is, and it means higher caseloads and making sure everything is up to date. That's no biggy really but just something extra. 
• And a wise person said don't moan (well okay so that one went out the window) or speak about other people in your blog in a negative way. So we won't go there, we will just call that a +1 stress / upset / the added extra. 
• Wedding.... I NEED to get my invites out but I'm just haven't got any motivation at the moment. Thats a MUST for this week. 
•  And to top it all off we had a conversation today with the people that deal with school admissions and it's unlikely that our little boy will get into any of the schools we have chosen for him. This is because even though we will be in the catchment area for him when we complete the move we aren't now and since they are the most popular school in the area we basically don't have a chance. On top of that, it's not likely he will get into the catchment school as it wasn't a choice (because of the move) and because that is quite a popular school there won't be space. So the chances are he will be put nowhere near us and in a rubbish school. YAY! An added stress. 

O and all the above could be narrowed down to the fact I just need SLEEP =P.

So guess where I'm off now, goodnight and sweet dreams my lovelies.

House plans

Well we can safely say we are excited about the house. Obviously along with the wedding and everything else we've got going on. Today however we have been planning, this means a lot of Pintrest. We can't wait to get in there and get decorating... making our new house our home. 

This is the floor plan for our new house...

The plan with this house is to do one room at a time... completely opposite from the last house. I plan to start with the Utility. There are two reasons for this.... 1) In our current home we have all appliances integrated therefore need to buy a new washing machine and tumble drier (and not making the huge mistake of getting a combi AGAIN). 2) The boiler is currently housed in what will be my sons bedroom. It is due at upgrade so we are hoping to upgrade and drop it down and into the utility where we can box it in and keep it out the way. I am really looking forward to doing the utility as I believe having an organised space makes general day to day life SO much easier. I've been looking a amazing ways to be organised and getting overly excited about having somewhere separate to do this.

SOME IDEAS

I love the idea of making this small room as organised and efficient as possible. If we have to do these house hold chores at least we can make them easier and a bit more pleasant to do =).

 I also love the idea of Alex having his own basket and helping too... nothing wrong with bringing up kids to know how to do washing and taking some responsibility over his own clothing.  He loves helping me out with the housework and loves cooking in particular. He's not long turned 4 and he can already make his own scrambled eggs (telling his Mumma when I need to put it in the micro / hob) and makes his own breakfast in the morning. Tomorrow I will come home from work to cupcakes him and his Auntie Tasha will have made. Off subject a little... look at the ones he made last week. Apparently with very little help. He cracked his own eggs and my sister showed him how to ice and then he helped... So proud of how willing he is to learn, I think it's so important that kids get brought up to be able to stand on their own two feet and to teach and support them on the essential life skills they will need to know when they are older. I'm sure in a few years time he will hate doing it all but whilst he's enjoying it it's lovely to have a smart little helper.

Anyway back on subject... the second space I want to make super organised and efficient is the entryway. I hate have shoes, coats and bags sprawled about by the front door. I plan on making a pretty and useful place for these. This is what I hope to do: 

So these are the first two... I can't really call them rooms so maybe spaces that I intend to do first... I'm so excited.

... Sorry if any of these images are your own... if you let me know I'll try my best to link it up or take them down if your not happy with my using them. 

Sunday Social 16/02/14

1. What are your favorite things to do on a lazy day?

Lazy days... what are they? Lol. When I do get them I love watching 'crap' on telly. I also LOVE to browse Pintrest and also finding a new sewing project and get my machine out. 

2. What is your tv guilty pleasure?

My guiltiest pleasure has to be Home and Away... I love it and have watched it since I can remember. My mum always watched it when we were growing up and I watched it with her and still do. I also love Grey's Anatomy, Chicago Fire & Covert Affairs

3. What is your favorite road trip music?

Depends on my mood... sometimes if I feeling a little down or stressed I love Nickelback (bit of a guilty pleasure also) I love Jack Johnson and my FAVOURITE is Newton Faulkner, I also love Snow Patrol and Coldplay. I am quite versatile when it comes to music so I suppose it depends on who I'm travelling with. Bit of cheese is also good!

4. What are your favorite magazines or books to read by the pool or laying around?

Haha I'm rubbish at choosing a good book, I let my partner chose them for me as she loves reading. I only tend to read on holiday or when I have some time off as once I'm engrossed in a book that's it, I have no life until it's finished. My partner however, reads on a nightly basis so I normally use her to vet the ones I'd like and that way I don't waste time reading rubbish books haha. I much prefer reading other peoples blogs of an evening =)

5. What is your favorite snack?

Hmm... depends on the day. I have a massive sweet tooth. Proppercorn, bit of chocolate, fruit...

Your turn!

Next week's questions

1. What is your favorite breakfast food?

2. What is the best way to spend a free day?

3. If you had an airline ticket to anywhere in the world....where would you go and why?

4. You can only leave the house with one thing...what is it?

5. How do you take your coffee?

Crafts....

I have been tasked making money saving jars for my brother in law. He is taxi driving whilst studying and finding a training contract and needs something to seperate his money to make sure he is covering his bills. The problem I had was the lack of 'manly' fabric... Luckily they have a beachy themed bedroom so I thought my campers would be okay for this. 

It's my first sewing project since I broke my sewing machine last year shortly as I was doing my gorgeous kindle cover Christmas pressie

I can't believe how rusty and hard it was getting back into it. fingers crossed I'll get better... I haven't made many things, my first ever project was a huge double quilt sized patchwork blanket (though I forgot to take a photo). So these are very beginner projects.... easy ones first hey...

So back to my money jars... There's 4 in total. Insurance, tax, savings & rent - all going to be slightly different. These are my first two attempts. 

I have just used random coffee jars for this as he wants bigger jars and we didn't want to buy new ones.  

Hopefully I'll soon get better and I will start posting tutorials :). 

Happy Valentines Day

I find this a strange time of year... Some people hate it and some people love it. Me... Well I always take part of this week off at least. Normally because I have leave and it seems like a nice time to take off but that's a good enough excuse right?? I do really like it, it's a nice excuse to treat those you love... But should you really need a reason? We have a 4 year old so we don't normally go out, we always have a special meal though. This year we had a Marks and Spencers special and it was gorgeous, even better for the lack of faff.

We don't normally do much in the realms of pressies for the reason that 'it's just another day' and I'd rather surprise my gorgeous girl with flowers and chocolates on a random day and not a day that the prices go up 25% for something that's not as good a quality as any other day of the year. I do however, normally do something cute that I've pulled from pintrest, stuck on my secret board for the last 6 months and believe that valentines day is the perfect day to create whatever it is I've found. This year, I haven't. In the last week alone we have sold and bought our house, and trying to sort wedding invitations... Where's the time? So we agreed to a family day. What an amazing choice that was... We took our gorgeous little buddha for breakfast then to watch the Lego movie at the cinema which he loved and just spent the whole day hanging out as a family.... BEST DAYS EVER!  The most perfect Valentines Day! 

What did you do? 

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! 

EXCITED!!!

WE'VE GOT A NEW HOUSE... YAY. Offer was accepted and they are now aiming for a completion date of the first week in April. Time will fly and it will give us more than enough time to pack up all the junk that we've accumulated and hopefully chuck out a fair bit =D. We are going back on Saturday to see it and start planning our new home. 

Planning ideas to follow =)

House viewings

Wow... so yesterday I said today was the exciting day we got to view new potential homes. Isn't it funny how different the houses are inside when your ACTUALLY there. The house that I thought I'd LOVE was actually the worst one of the day and the one that I wasn't bothered about was simply just perfect. Offer being put in for in tomorrow and I can't wait, fingers crossed we get it!! It's the perfect family home, I can't even describe how perfect it is for us. It needs redecorating and will be a little project but nothing in comparison to this house when we bought it.... AND it's near a really good school for our little one =) yay. 

If our offer is accepted there will be lots of ideas and plans coming this way =)... Love my family!

Our first home

So as I explained yesterday tomorrow is potentially a really exciting day as we are starting to look for our new family home. I thought I would take the opportunity to reflect on the past 2 years and how far we have come in our current property as this time 2 years ago we were buying our first home together and boy has it changed. Nearly 3 months without a kitchen or a decent bathroom.... I couldn't even imagine doing that again. 

So first we have the Living Area: 

When we first bought this house we happened to have 10 days overlap from our previous house. During this time we tried to make the house and in particular this room as liveable as possible as it seemed that this would be the easiest space to start with. We knew very early on that we weren't going to stay in this house so we spent as little as we could and made it to a selling standard... nothing like our new home will be. As I'm writing this post I realise that we actually have very little photos of the house completed... so tonights job... 

This is the living room completed: 


Next is the kitchen... did I mention that this didn't get fitted for 3 months. O, don't let it fool you, that oven in the original photo doesn't actually work. There's not even real fittings for it.

The final and very gorgeous kitchen:

There is tables and chairs behind me there also but I didn't think to photograph that end of the kitchen.

So there it is... the two main living areas of the house. These are some of the other rooms...

THE BATHROOM:

OUR BEDROOM: 

ALEX'S BEDROOM: 

SPARE ROOM 1: 

SPARE ROOM 2:

And there it is... our home, well for the next couple of weeks before we start our new journey making our new house a home. EXCITING!! 

New beginnings

So I've set up a new blog which is still a working progress but I'm pretty chuffed with it so far. I have blogged a couple of times in the past but have stopped for many reasons:

1. I hate blogging negative stuff and I started blogging at a time when it was hard to see the positive... who wants to read negative stuff? I certainly don't need reminding of them. 
2. I couldn't think of anything to write about... well with such a busy year I doubt that finding that 'kick start' will be a problem.

I'm hoping this time will be different and since I LOVE reading other peoples blogs I thought it was about time to jump on the band wagon again. 

So, I said this year I had plenty going on... well that is a little understatement. I think I'm trying to fit in all the most stressful (but also most exciting) things people can do and I can't wait. 

Firstly we have just sold our house, YAY! It has been on the market for about 6 months and I tell you they were a very long 6 months. I didn't think it would be so tiring. I suppose this is where I should have learnt to relax but the little OCD in me just couldn't. I hate people coming into my home when it's messy / unclean.... silly I know, however this meant that the house was fit for a queen every time we had someone view it. With a 4 year old this in itself was a knackering 24/7 job. Thankfully this is now over and we can start the exciting process of choosing our new home. We are looking at a few properties on Wednesday, I'm so excited, so watch this space.

Secondly.... I am getting MARRIED!! In 5 months, 3 weeks and 2 days, not that I'm counting, to my gorgeous fiancée Suzie.  We are getting married in some gorgeous barns in Cornwall with our friends and family around us and of course our gorgeous little boy by our side. This also means.... when there's a wedding there's a honeymoon! For us this will be our first time away without our little Buddha. We have decided to travel Italy as we really wanted to do something that wasn't really all that child friendly. 

Along with these very exciting times ahead comes a lot of planning, redecorating, organising, crafts o and planning.... all the things I love. Although I think the scariest thing thats happening this year is our little boy starting school. AHH... where did time go?? 

Anyway... it's nice to be back and hopefully I will keep on posting =)