my new [fill in the blank]

Hope you're all having a top day/night!

Guess what? I did something very out of character last weekend.

Let's set the scene for you. Phil is presented with three options:

1. Get new dress which is on sale at happie loves it. Not only does it have green in it, but it has OWLS on it.

2. Get new runners, which are quite desperately needed if Phil is going to train for more long distance races. NB: I hear this week (I think) if I got a London Marathon 2011 ballot place. As the wedding and all its associated madness took over my life for the last four months, I've barely thought about the marathon and, in my life and experience, it will be sod's law that now I don't care if I get in or not, I will get in!  So I figured I'd better get back up to marathon standards...ish!

3. Get new knee high boots, quite desperately needed also. Would also go nicely with Option 1.

What did Phil choose?!

Make your guess, no peeking!

Ok....

I got new runners!! Howzat?!  Asics Gel 1150s!  I was also finally fitted properly and had to get a men's size...but we won't talk about that.  No matter what my body does it seems my feet will always be plus size!! :P

I can't wait to try them out!  Unfortunately I got super bad blisters wearing my wedding shoes to a birthday party on the same night...we're talking great big bleeding peeling mofos.  I could barely walk let alone run!  It's been all yoga and 30DS this last week (which I can do barefoot..kind of!).  Luckily I can wear flip-flops to work too.  But now my heels seem to be a lot better and I've been able to wear closed shoes again, so my first run with my new bad boys will hopefully be tomorrow! Yay!

How are you all going? :) 

meal plan monday

Happy Monday everyone! I thought I'd share this week's meal plan with you. We usually do our groceries on a Friday, when it's not as crowded at our nearest Sainsbury's (though the colourful locals do still come out to play, LOL) and it means we can have a sleep in on Saturday! So here's what we had on the weekend and our plans for the rest of the week:

Friday
Tandoori chickpea pizza - got the idea from Lisa (thanks Lisa!!)

It had mango chutney, pasatta, spinach, tandoori chickpeas, yellow pepper, coriander, mozzarella and natural yoghurt.

It was so yummy! We used a ciabatta bread as the base instead of getting a pizza base or using a pitta bread, for a change.

Saturday
We stayed late at a birthday party and ended up getting Chinese takeaway from the place up the road! I had the Monastry Tofu Feast and Tom had tofu, eggplant and zuchinni in chilli blackbean sauce. I loved mine! It had lots of brocolli in it.

Sunday

Grilled tofu with peanut sauce, brocolli and brown rice

Oh god, this sauce is so good!!!

I had been out to the Lanesborough for afternoon tea with my editor (the things you have to do, LOL) so we had this fairly late and just were in the mood for something light and wholesome. Hit the spot!!

Monday (tonight)
Pearl barley risotto with tomato and garlic (feta on the side for Tom!) [he's not wild about feta]

I make it from this recipe. Pearl barley is a delicious alternative to risotto rice - and so cheap! 39p for a giant bag of it!

UPDATE 9:36PM - ended up ditching this one because we had brown rice leftovers for lunch and didn't fancy it! Had baked potatoes with homemade hummous and a huge salad instead.

Tuesday
Dinner with a friend - she's cooking! :D

Wednesday
Spicy mixed bean pasta

This is a recipe submitted to my work's charity cook book project, which I'm helping to manage this year. It's right up my alley! I've even got someone from Masterchef UK involved, which I'm pretty stoked with! This one sounds very yummy, so I'm going to "test" it and photograph the results for the book.

Thursday

Girls night in - I haven't decided what I'll make yet. Maybe another salad that talks to me? :)

What about you guys? Have you got your eats planned for the week?

my new favourite book

This week I've read:

and it got me back out there, sweating on the Thames path, Kylie blaring in my ears, feet pounding the pavement, over the bridges and through the parks in the early autumn evening sun. A perfect run.

what not to wear

Wedding stories coming soon, but I wanted to tell you about my lovely new gym gear I got on Sunday! For such a bargain too! Whilst wandering the King's Road with hubby, I came across a Sweaty Betty that was shutting down! I ended up getting two tops and two new pairs of pants for running and yoga - how about that! Me, the Poster Child of Ancient Gym Wear!

I don't know about you guys, but I have a lot of things in my wardrobe that easily fit into the "what not to wear" category! Stuff that has been worn to death and beyond, but that I can't seem to be able to throw in the bin. When I was losing weight I was only too happy to shed the stuff that was tatty and didn't fit any more, but now I'm horribly sentimental about my clothes, mostly stuff I bought when I first got to goal four years ago. Each time I look at them, or wear them, I feel connected again to the time when those clothes were new. For example:

Supre 3/4 running capris and green racer back tank top

I bought these from the Swanston Street Supre in Melbourne for a weekend of doing yoga with Mary in Sydney, in January 2007. That's the best part of four years ago! I had the most amazing time on that weekend, and when I got back to Melbourne these were the clothes I would wear to Bikram yoga. I took them with me on my US & Canada trip and wore them each time I went for a run or to a yoga class. I remember wandering around the streets of Kitsilano in Vancouver, a yoga mat rolled up under my arm, the sun on my face, wandering in and out of stores or stopping at the Na'am for an orange and strawberry juice. And then I wore them to yoga classes here in London, and on runs. So basically, these two items of clothing collectively have seen over three years of SWEAT! Ewwww! The top is very faded now. And the other day, I was doing some yoga at home and was in the middle of my favourite forward bend, supta karmasana, and realised that the inside of the capris are starting to get a bit thin and there is the beginning of several holes on the inside leg! Oh dear.

Size 10 jeans

These were the dream jeans. The invincible jeans. The "I can take on the world" jeans. Four years on, there are stains on them that just have never come out despite the best stain removers Britain has on offer, the bottoms are raggy, and if I'm honest they aren't the most comfortable pair of jeans I own! Their time might be up.

The lucky dress

Oh, who remembers this one? I bought this from Quick Brown Fox in Melbourne in June 2006 and it was a symbolic ray of sunshine for me at that time. Every time I put it on I felt like a million dollars. Every time I wasn't sure what to wear, I put this on and every time it was a winner. It could take me to coffee before work, to work, to lunch, to a meeting with the bank manager, to cocktails, to dinner and out to a club afterwards. Four years on, it still fits like a dream, but lift up the collar and look at the underside and you'll see the colour the dress used to be. It has faded. It's a tiny bit shabby looking now. But it has been so loved and the thought of ever parting with it makes me want to cry!

Grey striped Sussan cardigan and Witchery black crossover pattern singlet/vest

Bought in August 2006, this was a winning pair that went with jeans for brunch at my favourite Melbourne cafe, or with black pants for work. I have worn both of these to death. I remember wearing them a lot on my trip to New Zealand in 2006. Oh wait, here I am:

Four years on, the singlet is faded and has a tiny tear, and the grey striped cardigan has seen better days!! Even my sister in law, who wears stuff from the 80s, thought it might be time to retire it!!

So while a wardrobe clean out is definitely going to happen before autumn well and truly hits us here, and everything mentioned above will either go in the bin or be lovingly folded away for posterity, it's been nice revisiting some of the memories of my now threadbare togs. Memories are wonderful. But if you constantly (and physically) hold on to the old stuff in life and aren't brave enough to make the break from it, you'll never have any room for the new and exciting stuff that might possibly suit you better. If nothing changes, well....nothing changes. And I know that as well as anyone.

Plus, my flat is tiny and I'm running out of wardrobe space!! ;)

What about you? Have you got some clothes in your wardrobe that are threadbare and skanky, but you can't bear to chuck them away? Or any new exciting purchases recently?

things to remember

Just a bit of fun - made with Blyberg.net catalog card generator!

taking the cake

Guest contributor for this post: my husband :) [he did the cartoons]

The wedding cake was one of the most fun tasks leading up to the big day. My mother has used the same baker for all the wedding and celebration cakes in our family, but obviously this baker couldn't make a cake in Tassie and then ship it to London (well, not easily!), so she gave Mum her secret recipe for luscious chocolate mud cake to bring over so that we could make it ourselves in my tiny broom closet of a kitchen!

Mum and I bought shares in the Jane Asher cake decorating shop, getting the right tins, ribbon, bags of belgian chocolate and white icing. My bridesmaid Kristy arrived from Australia on "cake day", so she fought off the jet lag by melting chocolate and weighing out flour! It was a lot of fun and made me very proud to think we had made it ourselves. And it tasted Out. Of. This. World.

The figures we had on the top of the cake have a cute story behind them. Tom has always loved the Indiana Jones films, ever since he was a kid.

When the last Indy film came out in 2008, Tom was, of course, very excited! We were living together in North London back then, and were doing our weekly shop at our local ASDA, when we saw these sweet little Indiana Jones and Willie Scott figurines near the checkout. We had a giggle over Indy's giant hands and I said to Tom, jokingly, "if we ever got married, we should have those on top of our wedding cake!"

He rather liked the idea!!

Fast forward to two years later, we had set a date and we were talking about the wedding cake. I remembered the little figurines in ASDA and we both thought how cute it would be if we could manage to find them again......Tom managed to track them down (thank you Amazon)!!

They even look a bit like us....kind of!! ;)

Icing the cake proved to be a bit of a nightmare - Mum had to phone the baker to get help, as our first effort looked like a 3 year old had done it! - but it eventually all worked out and looked absolutely amazing!

And it was so, so delicious.....imagine something between a cake and a fudge, and this was it!

We've frozen the top layer for our first wedding anniversary, or for when our first child is born....my money is on the first wedding anniversary ;)

Next wedding story: the dress!

Photos of me and Tom by Sheena, other cake photos by me.

so full of love

Wow, you guys - I feel like way more than a week has passed since the wedding, it feels like months! The souvenirs of the day are littered around the flat - my petticoat I had made especially with less than a week to go, my vintage handbag, the bobby pins, and my wedding bouquet sits in a vase on our dining table with the blooms getting fuller and more open by the day.....it feels so surreal and to be honest I'm still taking it all in. I am full of joy.

So many people have told us that they loved how real the day was, and that made me so very happy because that was just what we wanted. Something genuine and relaxed that truly reflected who we are. But most of all, I think the day was about more than our love - it was just about love itself. That was what I saw in every guest's smile, felt in every hug, heard in every laugh and basked in from the taxi ride to the registry office to the quiet bar afterwards when only a handful of us revellers remained. I never thought a day could be so perfect.......everyone was smiling and laughing and rejoicing, there was just so much warmth and happiness....and there were bellinis!

I have so much to say. So much. But for now I'll just give you a few more pictures:

“It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation.”

-Rainer Maria Rilke

**most of the photos are by our wonderful photographer Sheena - she was FANTASTIC**

greetings from cloud nine

Well, holy crap, it's been a while hasn't it!! If anyone is still reading (!!) I'm sorry for abandoning you for so long!! There's so much to tell you, so much has happened and the past month or so has just flown by. But for now, let me just show you a few pictures from last Wednesday:

It was the most wonderful, perfect day. We are just so happy.

More very soon, I promise!! Hope you are doing well :)

reader, i married him!

Photo by the fabulous Sheena.

We did it!!

It was the most perfect, amazing day of my life.

More soon!!!