Pick of the week #6

Finally, I found my dress for the wedding!

The excellent thing was that it only took one shop. On Saturday DC and I went into town about midday to look for outfits. DC had already seen a jacket in Next that he liked, so off we popped and he chose his outfit in ten minutes... jacket, shirt, tie, and shoes! I was more than impressed; it usually takes a whole day of following him around the shops, and then around again the same shops, to look for an outfit before leaving empty handed.

 

This is DC in his outfit however the photo doesn't do him justice! The jacket is a perfect fit and I love it; it's not a suit jacket material but a bit thicker, about half way towards tweed.

 

After DC was happy with his outfit I had a quick browse in River Island for a dress, and realised that I hadn't planned this trip into town and that I had absolutely no idea what kind of dress I wanted to buy. We popped into Topshop and as soon as we went downstairs I clocked my eye on this dress and knew it would be perfect.

 

Iris wrap front skater dress
£42 Topshop

 

DC told me straight away that he didn't like it. I don't know whether it was the purple, the bright pattern, or probably the mixture of both but he wasn't keen on it at all. But of course, DC not liking something doesn't stop me from going for it...!

 

 
 

I fell in love with it the moment I tried it on, and even more so when I got home. (Excuse the bin in the background!) It's gorgeously bright and perfect for the wedding; there's several reviews of it on Topshop.com from ladies who have also brought it for a wedding.

It's the perfect skater dress shape for my shape and it's so flattering. I love the material and I'm so excited now for 4 May - finally I have a dress for the wedding, and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be!

Dans

 

Week 8 training roundup...

Week 8
Activities: 5

Distance covered: 24.1 km

Average pace: 9:08 min/km

Calories burned: 1,274

Time spent 3:40:30

So this week I seemed to slack a little bit and didn't beat my records from last week. Better luck next week!
 

Sunday: rest day

Monday: rest day (well it was Easter!)

Tuesday: 5.67km training plan run - 50 min jog with 5 min walking warmup, plus 7.60km walk

Wednesday: 1 hour pilates

Thursday: rest day

Friday: 3.70km training plan run - 20 min 'fun run'

Saturday: 5.00 km run! Plus 2.25km walk

 

So I was a bit slack on my runs this week - I just felt seems as it was Easter break that I deserved a little bit of a break myself! I still completed all of my training plan runs and even did a huge extra walk on Tuesday morning, so I didn't feel too bad about it really.

On Tuesday afternoon my sister and I had a training plan run and decided to go down a trail track that we had been waiting to try but couldn't due to the weather. It passes through a couple of villages and ends up in Glenfield, and it made for a great change.

It was a really gorgeous day too, the sun decided to come out for us! It was a really good jog and we didn't even get to the end of the trail before turning around to get our run timed right, so we can't wait to try it out again when we need to go a bit further.

Wednesday was my Pilates class which I loved as much as last week. I'm so glad I joined. This time I couldn't make the early class though so I drove there and back instead of walking. DC came with me though to the class, and he really enjoyed it! Thursday was my usual rest day / weigh in, and Friday was an easy 20 minute training plan run, I think Runkeeper called it a fun run, the day before our 5km race.

Saturday Well this was the day we had been planning for 8 weeks!! We arrived early and got going at 09:00am. We were last and there was absolutely no one behind us, but we didn't care, our aim was just to finish the race in 40 minutes. I knew that we had to stick to around 7.5minutes for each km, so I pushed my sister a bit and tried to keep the pace going. My sister did EXCELLENT! I am so proud of her. She does run a bit slower than me so I obviously wasn't going to get a true time but that wasn't what I was concentrating on - my sis and I had trained together, and so we were going to complete our first proper 5km together.

We did it in 40.08, and I'm so proud of my sister because even when she felt like giving up, especially on the hills, she kept going and I reminded her that she wanted to get this completed in 40 mins, and how disappointed she may feel if she didn't meet her goal. She only walked for about 30 seconds to catch her breath after a hill, the rest of the way she kept jogging and I'm so proud of her.

It felt great afterwards to know that eight weeks ago, neither of us would have been able to complete it at all. It also gave us a good idea of how races work, with this run having a bar code that we run with and we get given a ticket at the end of the race that we give in to determine our place.

We're running the 5km park run again next weekend, and I was going to run it alone to see what kind of time I would get, but I've changed my mind and I'm going to run it again with my sis so that we can try and beat our time.

Next up - 10km training!
 

Dans

Quote of the week #5

Sometimes good things fall apart
so better things can fall together.

- Marilyn Monroe

Thursday night weigh in...

 

So, I put on 0.5lb this week. I think the weightwatchers people above thought "ok, she's eaten crap ALL WEEK, but we won't punish her too much, we'll give her one last chance to be good."

I ate SO MUCH rubbish! Indian takeaway, Chinese takeaway, Easter eggs, wine, chocolate, you name it I had it. I had NO idea how I only put on half a pound, but it's definitely made me want to be good for next week.

Dans

Bake off #4

Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake

DC's Mum had made this cheesecake when we went round for dinner a couple of weeks ago and it was so divine that I just had to steal the recipe and make it! It is taken from Nigella's latest Nigellissima book, and as always I was also drawn to it because it looked so easy to make, with no baking involved.

I was a little shocked when I was shopping for ingredients as I read that this recipe requires 500g of cream cheese - that's two huge tubs! I'm always skeptical about using so much soft cheese because it's so overpowering, but I gave it a go...

Recipe
250g digestive biscuits (I used sweetmeal digestives left over from my Easter rocky road bites)
75g unsalted butter (I always use marg)
1 x 400g tub of Nutella
100g chopped toasted hazelnuts
500g cream cheese - at room temperature
60g icing sugar, sifted

A whole jar of Nutella!! Obviously this recipe is the least Weightwatchers-friendly cheesecake I have ever made...........................

I broke the biscuits into small pieces and blitzed it in my blender along with the butter and 1 tbsp of Nutella. You're meant to keep blitzing it until it resembles a sandy mixture - it took a while due to the amount of biscuits. Also included in this mixture should have been 25g of the hazelnuts but I was so pressed for time that I didn't manage to find any in my local shops, so I had to omit it from the recipe entirely.

This biscuit mixture went into the bottom of a springform cake tin, which I popped into the fridge before I moved onto the rest.

The cream cheese and sugar was beaten until smooth (this was DC's job) before I added the Nutella bit by bit. I understand now why Nigella's recipe says to "patiently" scrape the Nutella out of its jar - it takes a while!

 

And then once the mixture was completely combined, it was simply poured into the cake tin and smoothed on top of the biscuit base.

 

The hazelnuts are again sprinkled on top of the cheesecake but I didn't do this. The recipe advises to refridgerate it for four hours or overnight as it's quite a soft mixture, and so I made this the night before I was due for a dinner date round my friend's house, and left it in the fridge overnight and through the day whilst I was at work.

I was really worried that it would be too soft cheese-y but it was perfect! If a little rich... my friends couldn't manage the big portions I served them however they insisted it was because they had demolished my rocky road bites first and were a bit full!

The good thing with this recipe is that it'll keep in the fridge for a few days - perfect for dipping in for a small slice from time to time!

It was absolutely delicious, and it did taste much better a couple of days after I made it. I'd definitely be making this again if I have a big party coming round, it was so simple to make and tasted completely divine.

Dans

My life in pictures #6

Whilst sorting through all of my old paperwork over the Bank Holiday, I came across this adorable kiddie photos that I thought would be perfect for today's post. I love looking at old photos, especially to see the late '80s / early '90s fashion that we were all rocking at the time!

 

Apparently I still make this face now...! I can remember this dress, it was one of my favourites.

 

How adorable are these Christmas day photos? I remember my brother being obsessed with his new punching bag! He looks so cheeky and my Grandad looks so young! I can't wait to show him at the weekend.

 

This is my favourite photo! Must have been taken at the end of 1988, I think I must have been pretty much a newborn. If you look closely you can see my sister rocking my mum's "Deidre Barlow" glasses. Nice hair cut mum!

 

 

 My brother was such a cutie-pie... what happened!

I don't think mum listened about purple and green never to be seen! I love how I'm nicely blending into both the wrapping paper and carpet in the second photo. 

 

I loved rediscovering these old gems!

 

Dans

Achievements & planning ahead

I can't quite believe it, but I was only 3.1km off running 100km in March!

I never would have expected two months ago that I would have been able to achieve such an accomplishment in such a short space of time. Eight weeks ago I was struggling to take control of my breathing, my pace and was also struggling to run for more than 2 minutes!

I had set myself a 30km monthly goal which I achieved at the end of February, and then moved on to 50km by the end of March and even though I achieved that early on 12 March, I never thought I'd be so close to 100km! I kind of wish that I had gone for an extra 3km run now just to round it off, but either way I can't be disappointed with what I've achieved.

It looks quite scary now seeing that I've done 0km in April - I skipped my extra runs on Sunday and Monday because I thought I deserved some time off seems as it was Bank Holiday - it won't be good for my weekly total but we have our actual 5k run on Saturday so I didn't want to overdo it. Now that we will be completing longer runs there's every chance I could hit 100km for April, but we will see!

 

Today my sister and I spent a couple of hours after a run setting up a training plan for our 10k Race for Life. The Runkeeper app has a 10k training plan but it is spread over 16 weeks and we only have 12 weeks to train from now until 30 June, so we thought it would be a good idea to incorporate their runs into our own plan.

 

 

We kind of made it up as we went along but we're confident that it'll help us to complete the distance. We are hoping for a 60 minute run on 30 June so in two or three weeks' time we'll have more of an idea about where we are and whether it's achievable!

Dans