Sunday 28 October 2012

The morning after the night before...

You know when you wake up looking like this...:
...that you weren't entirely feeling like yourself last night...:


Halloween parties are the best!  

Saturday 27 October 2012

Classy Class

Dizz, C. and I attended the best class ever 2day. We learned how to make our own jewellery! How cool is that? C. Made earrings...

Dizz and I made rings...

We are all chuffed with our handy work. Next time we get to make Christmas decorations. Fun fun fun!




Thursday 25 October 2012

New Housemate

Helloooooo peeps! It's been a while.

I want to introduce you to my new housemate/cousin, Alanah. She moved here a couple of weeks ago from Bonnie Scotland and is happily occupying my spare room. She's completely mad, as you would expect of any cousin of mine, and to prove it here's a pic of her getting ready to do some painting in my kitchen.


Now that Alanah's here I can finally get on with my plans for doing up my house. I'VE GOT MY HOUSE MOJO BACK! WOOHOO! As I write this she is supervising the odd-job-man who is putting up shelves and blinds and cupboards galore. Which are desparately needed to house all of Alanah's junk, I mean belongings.

Anyhoo, better do some work now. Ta ta
Fizz

Thursday 18 October 2012

Image (self)

On my little trot back to the car today I walked past several reflecting surfaces and did a little glance into each of them, as you do...as I do...and decided that it's no wonder people, and I'm pretty sure I don't just speak for myself here, have such skewed versions of self image. Every single reflective surface showed me in a slightly different way. It was like a warped hall of mirrors designed to mash with your head. 

Just to say though, I'm not completely vain and always staring at my reflection. Quite often as you approach glazed doors they show your whole image and you can't really avoid looking at that unless you walk with your eyes cast down all the time, in which case you'd be in serious danger of walking into said glazed door which wouldn't be such a bright idea. And when you go to a bathroom they have mirrors. The lifts at work have mirrors but there's definitely something wrong with those ones as they make me look like a giant heffa and I'm pretty confident that this is not the case. I'd admit to being on the chunky side, or "sturdy" as my Pops kindly refers to me, but heffa like, no!

Then there's those really strange mirrors that somehow stretch you so you look like you have supermodel proportions. That's all well and good if you want to fool yourself but I think what we all need is a really good mirror. A mirror that tells you the whole truth and nothing but the truth. If you want to know if your bum looks big in that outfit, ask the mirror. I wouldn't need to ask the mirror that as my bum looks big in everything, this is because I have me a curvy and bootylicious bum that I rather like thank you very much. While I'm at it, I think some of those students at work need this mirror as they clearly haven't looked into anything that resembles a mirror at all. Or if they have, all I can say is eep! There are truly some hideous sights and waaaaaay too much flesh that I don't need to see. And seriously, what's with the teeny tiny shorts that your bottom cheeks literally hang out of paired with opaque tights, but the shorts are so small you can see where the gusset of the tights begins...sheesh people, no no no. Get thee to a mirror and examine your outfit! 

And so, in conclusion, reflective surfaces are just there to freak us out. But I firmly believe it's always worth a glance in them just to, you know, check if you've got food in your teeth, or make sure your skirt isn't tucked into your tights and you're showing your floral knickers to the world. What? It happens! Honest I've seen it happen and you can't always rely on nice people to tell you as they're too busy laughing at you. Mirrors though, they might lie sometimes, but they'll definitely tell you that!  

Friday 12 October 2012

Fail...nyeh

So let's recap:

I didn't start the daily yoga or do much about improving my exercise regime, and today I didn't even walk from my park and ride, I rode the bus for the sole reason of saving my new favourite shoes from certain death which will be inevitable if I hammer the pavements in them.

I realised by Wednesday that I only have a couple of dresses so didn't manage to wear a dress each day, but I did manage to wear skirts instead so didn't wear jeans once this week. Progress!

I did eat marginally better, but Thursday saw an epic fail in staying away from cakes when I began the day with a chocolate brioche and ended it mid afternoon with a sparkling strawberry cupcake from the cafe that lives about 20 metres away from my desk. Ho hum.

And now because it's Friday and I've completed my work week I can't remember what the other aim for the week was - doh!

To all of the above I say a big fat nyeh. Life is short and I intend to enjoy it by eating as much cake as I want, being as lazy as I want, wearing cool studded shoes that I heart so, and buying lots of lovely clothes now that I've remembered the pin number for my credit card...okay maybe not so much of the last one as too much debt is never clever.

Happy weekend folks. Enjoy your cakes!

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Week of aims

I decided on Sunday after a spectacularly bad week of eating crap and being late-ish for work that there had to be improvement. I began the week with a few small aims, best to keep them real and achievable otherwise there's just no point. In no particular order here are my aims and a brief description of progress so far, almost halfway through the week:

1. Drag my sorry ass out of bed before 7am and get to work by at least 8.30 every day. Progress: started off the week well, today only 15 minutes behind arriving at a quarter to nine, aim to do better tomorrow
2. Eat much better. Progress: taken my own lunch each day, only eaten what I have taken with me, turned down cake twice (!!), so far so okay
3. Exercise! Progress: a brisk 15 minute walk each morning from my park and "walk" carpark, downloaded an app to do daily yoga, yet to begin said daily yoga, aim to begin yoga in the morning but this will only work if aim #1 is achieved...
4. Wear a pretty dress for work every single day. Progress: Success! Yesterday I was all casual and floral, today also floral but with some va-va-voom ruffles, both accompanied by most favourite new black "slipper" shoes with gold studs (bling, tough, happenin') 

What can I say, clearly I excel in style aims and in all others I border on failure possibly leading to epic failure, only Friday will reveal all...

Sunday 7 October 2012

Bramley apple spongey pud

It was a double whammy of yummy creations in the kitchen today. Here's my next recipe of the day:

Ingredients:
2 oz butter
2 oz caster sugar
1 egg
2 oz self raising flour
Splash of vanilla essence
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
1 bramley apple, peeled, cored, grated
Handful of almond pieces / slices

Cream the butter, sugar and egg until a nice fluffy mixture. Add a splash of vanilla essence and stir gently. Grate the apple directly into the mixture adding a small amount of flour with each chunk you grate. Once the apple is grated, add in all the flour, the teaspoon of cinnamon, and the almond pieces and stir to a yummy mixture. Measure into individual dishes that can be used in the microwave. When you're ready to have pud, heat the puds for 4 mins in the microwave, leave to cool slightly before tipping upside down into a bowl and serve with custard. Deelish and a thumbs up from Wavey!

Carrotish and coriander soup

My thrown together in a pot soup recipe was so successful I'm going to share it right here! 

Ingredients:
1 glug of sunflower oil
Generous pinch of cumin seeds
1 onion, chopped
4-5 big carrots, peeled and chopped 
Chunk of swede, peeled and chopped
1 cup of red split lentils
Vegetable stock
Salt and pepper
Fresh coriander

Heat the sunflower oil and throw in your cumin seeds to toast. Once they become aromatic and yummy smelling chuck in your onion and give them a good old stir around until coated with the cumin seeds, heat gently until soft. Next add the carrots and the swede for a couple of minutes. Add the vegetable stock and cup of lentils, season with salt and pepper, bring to the boil, simmer for approximately 40-45 minutes. Once all the veggies are soft and cooked, transfer to a blender and whizz it all up. Add the whizzed up mixture back to the soup water, stir well, season to taste. While the soup is heating up, chop up the coriander, serve the soup in bowls, add the coriander garnish. Serve with tasty crunchy bread and enjoy! 

Domestic bliss

There was a time, not that many years ago, where I would literally sleep the whole weekend away. I thought nothing of sleeping in until 11am, lounging around catching up on tv, reading books, drinking cups of tea; I would get dressed sometime after lunch and then repeat the above until it was time to go back to bed. I even did this when I had my own house to take care of, so basically I was lazy and didn't dig housework. That hasn't changed, I still firmly believe that dusting is the biggest waste of time ever and Wavey is a champion at the hoovering (though don't tell him I said that will you, sshhh...) however something has changed. 

Most weeekends now I wake up between 9 and half past and after the compulsory breakfast in bed that begins both the weekend days, we are generally up and about by half 10. That probably seems really late to most people but for me it's like mega early. And I no longer lounge around wasting the time, I'm busy doing loads of housey stuff be it boring housework or more fun stuff like weekend baking and cooking. The hours fly by and by the end of the day I feel like I've achieved so much. The funny thing is that none of this feels like chores. There's actual pleasure taken in all this buzzy activity. 

Take today for example, up and about by half 10 I headed straight down to the bottom of the garden to finish clearing the veggie patches that I started yesterday. Wavey surprised me with a cuppa and we sat on the bench in the sunshine and talked strategy for next years crops. Now I'm in the kitchen creating something that was supposed to be carrot and coriander soup but has somehow ended up with cumin seeds, some swede, and some red lentils in there too...I never can resist messing. Oh and I'm roasting beetroots that I dug up yesterday. I'm also reading a recipe for chocolate and beet cake, deciding how many apples to use in my apple sponge pud later, and typing this blog post! Multi-tasking-tastic! 

Is this some kind of age thing? Do you hit 35 and realise that lounging around and wasting time just ain't all that? I still love a bit of a lounge but it's usually only for an hour maximum. Maybe aliens have come down and kidnapped the old Dizz and replaced her with this other variety? While I ponder over that I shall just get back to my kitchen tasks...