Oh, hey there 2019! Can you believe its here already?
I definitely enjoyed having 10 days off – I don’t know about you but I’d gotten very used to having no alarm and waking up when I felt like it. At least it was only a 3 day working week but waking up at 6am on Wednesday was not fun!
January is a time I like to set good intentions to help me on my way into the year. You don’t have to be a new you in the new year, but I like to set myself some goals to measure against. Its always great to see progress 😊
I’m going to take it month by month so here are my January resolutions. I heard someone the other day say that their resolutions were GTC… Gym; Tan; Charity 😅 Mine aren’t exactly that but start with the Gym!
GYM
Go to the gym 3-4 times a week and try and make one of those a yoga/ pilates/ swimming.
These past few months have been very over-indulgent and its time to get back to a proper routine. We’d gotten really good at going to the gym and then in October we both caught colds and then the gym got pushed down the list. So we decided to enjoy ourselves in December and didn’t go to the gym once… oops!
DRINK MORE WATER
This one is more directed at work and try to drink more water rather than non-stop cups of tea. I am a true Brit and looooooooove my tea. It’s the first thing I have as soon as I get to my desk in the morning and will always say yes when a round is offered. So I’m going to try and only have 3 cups of tea a day.
MINDFUL EATING
I love my food… Over Christmas we ate out so much and definitely over-indulged. There’s nothing wrong with that at all but we weren’t doing any exercise… oops! We’ve decided to go back to following Jo Wicks philosophy. Basically its eating carbs the days you work out and having low-carb meals the days you don’t work out. It worked for us in 2017 and the beginning of 2018 so we’re going to give it another go!
We’re going to tryyyyy and only have 1 comfort fast food meal a week – by this I mean you take-out/ pizza!
So those are my January goals! This month is going to be mega busy at work so I feel like I need to have some sort of goals to make sure I don’t work all the time and keep my sanity intact – fellow auditors will know what I mean!
So how’s this week been? It hasn’t been too manic which was good… I mean I only had to work for 3 days so alls good!
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| Love these tiles in the coffee shop at work 😍 |
Monday and Tuesday were nice and chilled enjoying our final days of the break! We even managed to watch Harry Potter 5 – we didn’t manage to get through them by the end of the year like we’d planned but we’ll hopefully get through them in the next couple of weekends. Harry Potter is definitely my favourite series of films! Anyone with me?!
I was a very lucky girl on New Years Eve. Tim cooked up a 3 course meal for us and I wasn’t allowed to help. It was delish! We had Jamie Oliver veggie puff pastry tarts to start which were piled high with pesto deliciousness. (See recipe
here) This was then followed by Lamb Shanks with hasselback potatoes with peas and asparagus… again it was so good! We then finished off the meal with an Eton Mess with cream, strawberries and home made fudge – we’d tried to make fudge before Christmas but it didn’t really set so it was like a vanilla caramel on top… DIVINE!
Wednesday started way too early! The hubby was up at 5:30am to go down to Cornwall for work for the day so I was up at 6am and working by 6:30… way too early! I was worried that I’d have a horrific amount of emails but they weren’t too bad – only 40! I normally get 40 in an afternoon so that over 10 days isn’t bad…
For dinner I cooked up Joe Wick’s beef red curry with chickpeas, butternut squash and kale. It wasn’t bad and I’d definitely have it again! We cooked up a load so had an extra 3 portions ready for lunch for the rest of the week.
I also made Joe Wicks energy balls for the first time. Honestly I wasn’t that keen on them due to the coconut but Tim enjoyed them so he polished them off. It was messy work as I just can’t keep the kitchen clean when I cook!
Thursday was broken up by a tasty meal at The Botanist in Birmingham. A new manager started at work so some of us took her out for lunch. I had a tasty Chicken Burger. (It was meant to be katsu which I couldn’t taste but it was still yum!) It also came with salt and pepper chips which I LOVED!!! I hadn’t realised they would be covered in sweet chilli sauce from the name so it was a very pleasant surprise. I will DEFO be having those again.
I also had a cheeky strawberry and cucumber cocktail – nomnomnom. I had been thinking of doing Dry January but obviously that hasn’t happened! 🙊
I’m tempted to try and do no booze during the week but still unsure… hoping I’ll make my mind up soon… we’ll see 😋
We made sure to go to the gym after work and I managed a non-stop 10 minute run! It was very hard but I did it! I’ll get there slowly but surely 💪
Friday was a pretty shit day. I won’t bore you with my moaning but just felt that I was being left out of things at work and with family. Got the best hubby cos when he got home he gave me a huge hug and ordered Chinese. It was well worth it! We got our fav crispy duck pancakes which made everything better. We then got comfy on the sofa and watched Harry Potter 6 (only 2 left now!)
Saturday started off with a lie in (yay!) then we went to the gym. I tried out one of Charlie Launder’s workouts and actually managed it even if it was with little weights. It was hard at the time but felt good after. I finished it off with 5 mins on the rowing machine and then some arm weights. Sunday I was definitely feeling it!
The rest of Saturday had been planned for sorting the house but I’d been feeling a bit rotten so only managed to list a few bits on eBay and get a bag ready for the charity shop. Tim made the most yummy chicken burger with mango chutney and sweet potato fries. It was a Joe Wicks recipe and we’ll definitely have it again.
This week we managed to go to the gym 4 times this week 😊 – very pleased with myself… I was definitely feeling it on Sunday so we went swimming and spent some time in the spa after (definitely one of the perks of Virgin Active gyms).
We went to the Garden Centre on Sunday and got some bulbs ready to plant for spring. I also got the cutest cacti ‘garden’ which is now at home on the 1st floor. What do you think?
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| I would love this… has the most gorgeous pink on the leaves… just no place for it to go! |
The rest of Sunday wasn’t too exciting. I spent a few hours sorting out the back bedroom and having a clear out of my art bits and bobs. Feel much better now its done and will try and tackle the other spare room next weekend.
We finished off the weekend with a glass of bubbles and tried out these little flavoured balls for prosecco. It comes with a straw for the ‘balls’ so it went down very quickly (if not too quickly) while we tried to get the strawberry balls.
Definitely a good way to finish the week and get us ready for another week at work… oh joy!
How was your week?
Have you set any new years or January goals?
Until next time,
Cathers x
