Hazy days of Summer….

So it’s September. Leaves are falling and I swear you can smell Autumn in the air already. I can’t believe the summer has gone so fast. Three months. Over like that (snaps fingers in case you didn’t get that!) Someone asked me today what we did this summer and to be honest, I couldn’t really answer (except for our little holiday). It’s not that we’ve sat at home doing nothing (the weather’s been too good), but not having a car really does keep you to the local area. So to remind myself more than anything here’s a little round up of what we’ve done over the past three months.

Parks

So many parks! We’re really lucky where we live, in that we’ve got load of parks, many within walkable distance. They’re also free and provide opportunities for my active son to throw himself around. When he’s not on the swings (always with the swings). What’s not to like?

Happy on the swings at High Lane

Action shot in Grayshott Park. Plus the only one we found with a properly lockable gate. I love this park 😉

Loving the space at Hammer Park

Peekaboo in Lion Lane Park. It’s the only one we don’t really enjoy. When I say we of course, I mean me. It’s only really due to the busy roads that surround it. I’m He’s just not really ready for this one.

And while not technically a park, we loved our trips to Applegarth!

The Garden

A bit like the park, but without the swings and the potential for him to break free and head to the road. We love our garden and this year it really has become the boy’s domain. Even the veg aren’t safe from those little hands. Suffice to say we’ve had very few tomatoes this year!

Oscar’s Garden

I’ll ‘help’ Mama!

Watering the ‘brees’ (strawberries)

Oscar through the tulips

We had so much wildlife in the garden this year. including tonnes of beautiful butterflies

Space to run

Hmm, after pulling up the onions he parked his cars in the bed….

… and then transplanted the fledgling tomatoes to the strawberry planter. Sorry Daddy!

Finding fun in everyday things

Several times this summer, on days when we’ve stayed in the house, he’s suddenly become bored of the toys he has. That’s when we raid the cupboards and see what we can find to have some fun. Again it’s cheap, or in the case of water play, free. Yes it might not look the most thrilling to us, no exploding baking soda fountains or ooblek (not that I don’t want to try these one day) but to the boy it’s just dandy!

Hoovering up lentils is supremely satisfying! I have no idea why!

Spaghetti and a bottle. And Cheerios

Shorts & wellies? That’s my boy

Burying and finding things in boxes filled with old cereal

Pouring

Playdates

When did the term ‘playdate’ even come into being a thing? I don’t remember it from my childhood. Ho hum, I guess it does accurately describe what we’re doing. Making a date to play. And play we have. At our house, at The Hen House, in friends gardens, in parks. There hasn’t been a week this summer when we’ve not had various people over or been out visiting.

Our friends Lou and Leia visited from Texas.

Spending time with Autumn in her garden

We had the NCT girls over several times. Rudy & Sammy thoroughly enjoyed the teepee

First go on a trampoline in Matthew’s garden

Having dinner with the bestie

Some days were busier than others. But if it doesn’t go in the diary it doesn’t happen!

Holiday

This year we took Oscar on his first holiday to Moonfleet Manor. I’ve written about it at length here, but suffice to say it was a super experience. Either side of the break we had something of a staycation, which involved trips to the park and ice cream at Dylans.

Perfect evening in Weymouth

The boy had chocolate, I had Raspberry Ripple.

New friends

This summer we made various new friends. Katy (aka@ModernMummy) and her girls, as well as another Katie and her son Charlie. But, this summer we have also made some tiny weeny new friends. So many of our friends have been pregnant/had babies this summer I’ve been to three baby showers and had loads of tiny baby cuddles. This summer we’ve welcomed Mollie, Lawrie, Georgia, Ella and Esmée to our world.

Mollie & Me

Baby Georgia

Handsome baby Lawrie

 

Phew what a busy time! And yet when I was asked, I couldn’t say what we’d done! I guess it just goes so fast, it all blurs into one. It’s made me realise just how fast time can pass. As I’ve said before, Oscar starts preschool in January. It’s only four months away. And if it goes as fast as the summer, well we’ll be there in a blink of an eye. We don’t really have any plans for this ‘term’. I’d like Oscar to have as much fun with me as possible, playing with cars, or crafts or whatever he fancies and always focussing on language development (he starts a Chatterbox course at the local Sure Start centre at the end of September especially for this purpose). But sometimes I’m sure the days will pass in a blur of cheerios and Thomas the Tank Engine. I hope to have days out and I hope to see him play with his friends. Then there’s Christmas and all the potential for fun that comes with that (yup I already have a Christmas Pintrest board going).

But really, I’ll just be happy if he’s happy.

Grubby, but happy

 

Slimming World Update – Week 59

Hiya! How’s you?

I’m good thanks. Still slightly baffled that it’s September already but good. Seriously though, where did the summer go? A blink of the eye and you’d have missed it! The weather’s already on the turn and the boots have been dragged out from the back of the cupboard once already this week. Autumn is definitely upon us. I don’t know about you, but for as long as I can remember, September has felt like the start of something new. When you (or your children) are at school, September is the start of the new school year, but actually I’ve found it hard to shake that feeling of new beginnings in September, even when the school year no longer had any baring on my life.

We talked a lot about new beginnings in SW group last night. I think many people find it hard over the summer months (particularly when children are home from school) to find a focus they once had. It’s understandable really. We can be creatures of habit and having that routine thrown out of the window for 6 or 8 weeks can be tough to take. I think holidays and days out can also be challenging, particularly in terms of planning ahead and food optimising etc, and a couple of ‘bad’ weeks can play havoc with your motivation. But the children start going back to school this week and routines are being re-established. I think everyone, whether they have school to worry about or not, was feeling that new start last night. I definitely felt a renewed sense of vigour in the room. We talked a lot about going back to basics. Regaining that spark we once had. Falling in love with our food again. We also talked about revisiting the personal reasons we each had for joining Slimming World in the first place. It’s so much easier to carry on a journey, if you can remember why you started it. I’ve covered my own reasons at length before, but for me it boils down to being happy in my own skin. Losing so much weight has made me so happy, I just don’t want to lose that.

And when I weighed in with a loss of 2.5lb last night, I really felt the happy! That takes me to a loss of 6 Stone 2.5lb (86lb) and well onto the journey of reaching 7 Stone lost by Christmas.

So today I’ve been heeding Sara’s advice and going back to basics. After a great morning at The Hen House, chatting about motivation with my friend (and fellow SWer) Emma, I came home and made a gorgeous salad, with mixed leaves, pepper, cucumber, hot smoked salmon and my new favourite, pickled red cabbage, followed by a box of fresh cherries. All free (or Super Free even better!) and all delicious!

A super (free) lunch for a super new year!

Have a great week, going back to basics and falling in love with your food again.

xxx

 

Slimming World Update – Week 57

Hi hi hi!

It’s feels like ages since we last spoke! How’ve you been?? I’ve been good, thanks. Having a holiday was absolutely needed and it gave me so much, including time to do jack! Which, as the mother of a 2 year old boy, I never get to do! Part of my holiday also included the decision to take a weeks break from Slimming World. When I say I took a holiday from Slimming World, I don’t mean I ditched everything I’ve become and went back to all my old ways. No, it was more a case of not counting syns and eating things with a bit less thought than I usually do. It was nice not to have to use brain power on food for a while, but it didn’t come without it’s lessons.

If you read my last post, you’ll know that last week we went away for a couple of nights, staying and eating in a hotel. This was really interesting from a SW perspective as some of the choices available were clearly better than others. The first night I chose Scallops, followed by Salt Cod and a Yoghurt based dessert. None of it syn free, but definitely the ‘better’ choices on the menu.  Second night I went completely the other way, choosing duck liver pate, followed by pork belly and a peanut and chocolate parfait!  I enjoyed both menus equally (and have discovered that I love salt cod having never had it before!), but it was interesting to me how optimised the first menu was, compared the second one. And all done without thinking 🙂 . Of course the scones we had on the first day were not optimised at all, and neither were the handmade chocolate chip cookies they delivered with every coffee, but less said about those the better hey 😉

Scones and Clotted cream definitely NOT Food Optimised!

Anywho, I spent the rest of the week occasionally having bits and bobs I generally avoid. One of my biggest weaknesses in the past used to be bread, particularly white crusty bread or baguettes. As such, I’ve stopped having it all together. I just don’t eat it any more. It was hard to get my head around this choice to start with and I would get cravings for it now and then, but slowly it got easier and I rarely think about it now. I’ve not had a baguette since I started SW, but last Friday I decided that’s what I wanted for lunch, bought from a local farm shop. I had it with syn free roast beef and yeah it was nice, but I didn’t feel the rapture with every mouthful I thought I would. And actually afterwards it made me so gassy! I just couldn’t stop belching (haha sorry! You know me, I just love to share!) I guess having cut out much of the wheat (not on purpose I just have) from my every day diet, my system was a bit perplexed at what to do with it all. In fact several times in the last week or so I’ve had episodes where I’ve eaten stuff I wouldn’t usually and its been nice at the time, but has quickly made me feel properly ill. The sugar in the peanut and chocolate parfait I had at Moonfleet gave me serious palpitations and I’ve had stomach cramps so bad I’ve had to sit down more than once this past week. I think I would be a fool to ignore my body’s very clear signals that it really doesn’t enjoy these things any more, regardless of what my head says it likes 😉 !

The hardest thing I think I found about having a SW holiday was the snacking. When I wasn’t counting my syns, I didn’t have to think about having the odd biccie here or the odd bag of Twiglets there. Getting my head around noticing things like that again was really difficult and it made me realise how easily the control can slip when you’re not mindful of what you eat.  I mean meals wise I was straight back to SW fare, with delicious first attempts at a Thai Yellow Vegetable Curry (from the Fakeaways book) and a Moroccan Vegetable Tagine (from the Family Feasts book). But I really wrestled with the desire to snack! I guess it was a bit mean to give my body all that sugar and then just take it away again again overnight. Several times in the past week I’ve found myself raiding the huge bag of sultanas I have for Oscar. Dried fruit isn’t free, but it was better than gorging on chocolate I suppose.

SW Moroccan Vegetable Tagine, severed with Bulghar wheat and Pomegranate. All Free on Extra Easy

So when it came to weigh in this week, I was fully expecting a gain. You just can’t spend a week and a half eating cake and drinking wine and expect anything else. But I was astounded when I found out that gain was only 1.5lb. Tiny in the grand scheme of things, and much smaller than I’m sure I deserve (not that I’m going to question it 😉 ) It’s taken me to just (and I mean just) back under the 6 stone mark to 5 Stone 13.5lb. It would obviously have been nicer if it was going in the other direction, but I can live with that.

So where are we now? Well, it was pointed out to us last night that we have 17 more weigh ins before Christmas. It sounds like a lot but actually at rate of 1lb loss per week, that’s only just over a stone. Which is what I’ve decided to aim for. I have 14.5lbs to lose to get to my 7 stone award and I plan to do that in time for Christmas. It will mean being consistent, which I’ve really struggled with lately, but I believe I can do it. It also reflects that my journey is likely to be a slower one this far down the road, so I feel it’s a realistic target. I’d like to start this week by losing the 1.5lb I gained on holiday, setting me back on an even keel. I’m not saying it’ll be easy this week, but I believe it’ll be easier. I’ve bought lots of fruit and I’m treating myself tonight to a 6 syn bag of cinnamon popcorn. I’ve not tried it before but it sounds lush!

Sweet Cinnamon Spice Popcorn for 6 syns? What’s not to like?

 

If it applies to you, have a great Bank Holiday Weekend. If it doesn’t, Happy Friday y’all. Have a great week

xxx