Milestone boots

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The first of my online orders from my yearly Christmas/birthday money splurge arrived today: knee high slouch boots from ASOS.  They’re a lot shinier than they look on the website, but if you know me, you know that’s no bad thing.

Glittery knee high boots
I may not take these off for a while.

When I told Geth the other day what I’d bought with my Christmas and birthday money (knee high boots! new handbag! nice bracelet! new dressing gown!) he seemed a bit surprised.  ‘You buy such grown-up things now.  Where are the games?’

I still love games, but I feel like I’ve got enough at the moment (not to mention no time to play them).  Not only that, but I don’t really feel like my new fripperies are the least bit grown-up – shiny, sparkly boots are the kind of thing I used to buy back in my teenage years.  However, I’ve not bought knee high boots since probably…2007, and there’s a good reason for that.  I have ridiculously giant calves, so when I’m even the slightest bit overweight (which I was from 2009 until I started losing the weight with Slimming World last year), knee high boots are an impossibility.

As such, with just over a stone to go till target, these boots are an exciting weight loss milestone.  They’re slouchy, so it is kind of cheating – especially as my still-giant-despite-now-being-a-healthy-BMI calves do a very good job of filling the supposed-to-be-slouchy bits – but I’m taking it as a win anyway.  Hopefully, when I reach my goal weight, they’ll fit a bit more like they’re supposed to.  In the meantime, I’m just going to enjoy sparkling through the dull second half of winter!

And back to dancing

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It wasn’t just running that took a back seat over the last couple of months – it was cardio exercise full stop.  This was mainly due to a ridiculous period at work around October to November when I was pulling 12-hour days every day for six solid weeks.  The joys of self-employment.

Exercise is always the thing that gets neglected by me in these situations, because all I want to do in the two hours I have left in the day after sleeping, eating and working is stare mindlessly at the internet.  The other thing is that the work was interfering with my scheduled exercise – I could no longer go to my Tuesday night Zumba class – so once the ridiculous work period was over, I’d got out of the habit of Zumba and was making alternative commitments for Tuesday nights.

I’ve missed dancing though, so tonight I headed off to another class that my Zumba instructor runs, a ‘Strictly Dance’ class, which is a solo dance exercise class based on ballroom and Latin steps.  I love Strictly so I really enjoyed it, probably even more than Zumba.  I’m looking forward to getting to know the routines over the course of the next few weeks.  Also, it’s earlier in the evening, so a nice bonus is that I can eat after the class rather than before and don’t have to stress about whether Geth will get home from work for tea early enough for me to avoid exercising immediately after eating.  Win-win.

Bloch dance trainers
My awesome dance trainers, which I totally bought for the functionality and not the pretty colours.

I’m definitely feeling better all round for getting my cardio back on, though my calves do hate me at the moment.

So much plastic

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I went through my bracelet box this evening.  I have several hundred bracelets that I never wear, largely due to a teenage addiction to Claire’s Accessories.  SO MANY JELLY BRACELETS.  I used to wear them with neon fishnet armwarmers and matching plastic beads, all of which I also still have.  My taste in jewellery has always screamed ‘1980s’, though these days it’s a little less early Madonna and a little more OTT power bling.  Maturity and all.

Bracelets, mostly jelly and plastic bangles.
Plastic, plastic everywhere.

Anyway, I’ve organised them into vague colour groupings in the hope that they might actually get worn more often.  We’ll see.

Back to running

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Geth and I dragged ourselves out of bed this morning to go to parkrun for the first time in seven weeks.  Neither of us had run at all during the intervening period; taking this into consideration, I was pretty happy with my time, which was only four minutes slower than my PB.  A few weeks back in training (not to mention non-Christmas eating) and hopefully I’ll be back where I was in the autumn and ready for the 10k races I’ve got lined up for the spring and summer!

My forthcoming ’80s house!

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My husband Geth and I are in the process of buying our first house at the moment, which, as with every move, is both exciting and stressful at the same time.  We’re pretty close to completion now, and had a meeting with our solicitor in Whitley Bay today to sign stuff and finalise things.

Whitley Bay red phone box
Gratuitous phone box picture of the phone box near Whitley Bay metro station, probably my favourite phone box in the North East.

I was excited to find out today that the house we’re buying was built in 1988.  I love the ’80s but have never lived in an ’80s build before!  I’m really looking forward to moving in next month, getting settled, and starting to plan all my home improvement projects.

2018 Ciders #2: Magners Original

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On Tuesday, I went out with the family to our favourite Italian restaurant in Edinburgh, the Bar Italia, where my mum and dad have been going since the ’70s.  The pizza there is great, but like most Italian restaurants, they don’t offer a huge deal of choice on the cider front, so a Magners it was.

Magners Original
Magners Original.

Magners is pretty ubiquitous so there’s not much to say about this one, other than the fact I expect I’ll be drinking it at lots of restaurants during 2018!

Thirty-three

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It’s my thirty-third birthday today.  I have celebrated reaching matching digits again (only happens once every eleven years!) with birthday cheesecake, prosecco, filthy Dominos takeaway and a resolve not to care what the scales say at Slimming World weigh-in tomorrow (back on plan from tomorrow afternoon!).

2018 Ciders #1: Thistly Cross Traditional

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It’s probably fitting that my first proper post is about cider; I do drink a lot of the stuff.  I did originally think about doing a blog where I tried a new one every day for a year, but in recent years I’ve realised that I do need to have dry days most of the time.  Still, I’m going to review them here when I do drink them.

Thistly Cross Traditional
Thistly Cross Traditional. Apologies for the terrible photo!

I like pretty much all flavours of Thistly Cross, but some of them can be a bit heavy.  This is a nice, lighter option at 4.4% (the Original and Whisky Cask flavours are both over 6%, for comparison), so it was very welcome yesterday when I was starting to get that really sluggish, boozed-out feeling you have towards the end of the Christmas period.

Scotland isn’t typically known for cider production, but Thistly Cross is most definitely one of my favourite ciders.  Expect to see a few different flavours of this posted over the next wee while.

A new venture!

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It’s a new year today, so time for a few new projects.  Including this blog, which I’ve been planning for a while.  I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts about music, ’80s stuff, TV, food and all the other things going on in my life!