Exercise is the answer!

Well Zumba.... Let me tell you.... I LOVED it! 

I have the grace of a baby elephant, the co-ordination of a 3 legged giraffe and I am as stiff as a post with no flexibility at all!  But I gave it a go and I loved it.  I dragged my two friends along with me and they loved it too.  The instructor is very lovely, talked us through it all at the beginning, we managed to remember the main principles - breathe, smile, keep moving even if you don't know the steps and have fun - and that we did.

Lots of people knew what they were doing, had the routines down and were quite confident looking, but Donna the instructor, kept us all on our toes and working hard.  We had options for jumping around like a crazy person, or keeping it lower for us new beginners - we of course did a mixture of both!  I loved that Donna rotated the rows of people, so no hiding at the back for anyone!.  After every song, the front row moved to the back and the back rows closer to the front, so you got your spot at the front - which for me is quite important, I'm as blind as a bat!

We were all knackered afterwards, certainly a good work out all round and I was at home, showered, eaten and in bed by 10pm - something that never happens!

If you do fancy it, do check out Donna's web page with all her local classes listed on here....
http://donnaarcher.zumba.com/

After Zumba, I was inspired to pick up some more exercise, so went along to aqua aerobics on Thursday with a friend.  We used to do aqua every Thursday without fail, so thought I knew what I was letting myself in for and knew I would whole heartedly enjoy it.  Well I couldn't have been more wrong!  No actual aerobic exercise as such, no warm up, lots of work trying to keep an extremely bouyant float under the water for an hour and doing some pushing and pulling motions, a 45 second stretch and cool down at the end and a very unhappy Mrs B.  Four days later and all the muscles in my back, neck and shoulders are still killing me, I feel like I have done myself a real mischief.  It certainly wasn't worth the £6.20 I paid for it and I will not be going again.  I much rather wished I'd done a second Zumba session instead, and is certainly what I might do this week, and it is cheaper as well!

Well weigh in was Saturday and I'm 4.5lb down woo hoo! So Weight Watchers does work when you actually do it, and I do think the exercise definitely helped!  So World watch out.... I'm going back to Zumba tonight!

TTFN.... Sammy xx

Sad news....

So this week I've been rubbish!  Went to WW on Saturday to help Donna out at her new meeting.  If anyone is wanting to join WW and need an early Saturday morning meeting, 9.15am in Hilsea/North End, I can thoroughly recommend!  It is quite a new meeting and quite small at the moment, but very friendly none the less.  It is in St Francis Church Hall, Northern Parade – do let me know if you need more details, I will be happy to help.  I think it’s a brilliant time to get weighed, out of the way and done and dusted including the meeting and home by 10.30am ready to get on with the weekend.

 

Anyways, I digress… I didn’t weigh on Saturday at the meeting I was helping out at, as I had full intentions to go on the Sunday and then went out and got VERY drunk!  Mr B came along too and was just as much of a bad influence, but I did have a lovely weekend with two of my favourite favourite ladies, J & H.  We did a Chimichanga dinner Friday night and then the little pub in Westbourne for a wineSaturday night, along with a few others.  I did sneakily have wine on both nights and this ended in emergency Maccy D’s for breakfast Sunday morning, a lay in till gone 1pm, a pub roast dinner, a bacon roll, some crisps, chocolate and skittles, I even tried a cider as a hair of the dog…. I can confirm that this all just leads to feeling very bad for yourself from eating so much and actually eating more rubbish!  Not looking forward to weigh in this week as it has long continued along the week…

 

Well after all this, it has finally dawned on me, my lovely friend H is leaving us.  She is moving to pastures new, she has a brilliant opportunity in the land of vajazzles and sadly she isn’t going to be around the corner for a cuppa anymore.  Rubbish :0(  We’ve had H’s leaving do (I got much more drunk than anticipated!) I've packed her up a hamper of boring essentials for her new lovely flat, I've found homes for a few things I no longer have use for (in H’s flat) and I am going to miss her terribly :0(  Even more rubbish!

 

I am very pleased for H, we worked together a while back and did a spot of Mini adventuring with car sharing to our place of work and have had a few good drunken nights out and around, including my very first music festival a few years back!  It will certainly be strange not to have H round the corner or for her to be able to pop over to chez Barcroft for a spot of a la carte Mexican or pizza, but I can’t wait to go and visit the land of tango tan (J and I are off on a road trip and to visit the infamous Sugar Hut aren’t we J?!?!) and we’ll see her again at a half term not so far away.  It will be lovely for H being closer to her lion than she is now, but we will all miss her terribly.

 

So that’s it, I'm off to eat chocolate and drink wine in commiseration…. :0(

 

TTFN xx

New ink...

Well life has had its ups and downs this week and I've not been tracking as I should!  Work is incredibly stressful at the moment so it is making my ibs unbearable at times.  So when I can eat I'm stuffing my face and when I can’t I'm miserable and feeling poorly – not conducive to good weight loss.  Although I saw this chart the other day and thought it was a very true reflection – of my weight loss at least!!

 

 

In other news…. In time honoured tradition I popped along to Portsmouth tattoo convention on Sunday, I went last year too and I must admit it is a favourite day out! All that tattoo noise and smell, although makes my tummy flip, its more of excitement than anything else.  I do think as I get older, I do enjoy the pain more.  But that wouldn’t be a strange thing, considering I come from a family who enjoy the pain of a tattoo, my mum included; although she quite likes being waxed too ha!

 

This year was a bit different, Mr B was in Germany for a stag do so he didn’t come along with us.  Although he wasn’t there I'm sure he’ll make up for the ink he didn’t have ha!  I have a new little tattoo, I have finally been branded Mrs. B forever.  I have been wanting this done for ages, but couldn’t work out where to have it, so have had it on the outside of my wrist, on the opposite side of my butterfly and I love it!  Again with the first one on my wrist, it is taking a little while to get used to seeing it everyday, but it is fab.

I had it done by a lovely lady called Christine, from Dino's, a lovely family run business in Weston Super Mare, do go check them out, they are on Facebook and Instagram too! 

http://www.dinostattooistltd.co.uk/ 

 

 

So now on to planning what to have next….

 

I'll keep you posted! xx

Birthday!

So yesterday was my one year blogging anniversary!  Who’dve thunk it eh.  A whole year of rambling on, sharing with all you lovely people the jumbled mess in my brain!  Well thank you all for listening/reading, its been emotional!

My very first post was around the Race for life 2012, and as it is a year on, we have indeed just completed the Race for Life 2013.  There was 4 of us this year, my cousin Theresa, and my other cousins daughters; Megan and Caylie.  We walked the 5k course, it took us just a smidge under an hour, which in 30 degree heat and hardly any shade I think was quite an achievement!  

We managed to raise £205 in total, £175 online - £65 of that was from the Mad Hatters Tea Party fund, and £30 cash that has been handed to me.  I certainly think that is something to be proud of!

Cancer is something that is very real, very close to all of us and something we have all experienced the effects of.  Ideally of course we’d like it eradicated or a cure all together, but the best we can hope for at the moment is that the treatments just keep getting better and better and more of our loved ones will be here to see more of the future. 

Our family has been very affected by cancer sadly, last year we lost two lovely ladies to the horrible cancer.  They were diagnosed within days of each other in March, and died within weeks of each other in May; so it is certainly a cause that is very close to our hearts.  

There are of course good news stories with cancer.  My grandad, although sadly no longer with us, when he first had cancer in 2002; they were able to treat this and we had another wonderful 5 more years with him before he passed.  And we have lots of survivors to be thankful for.

So this research for cancer, the breakthroughs they have made, the treatments they have devised are so important to all of us to help beat this awful disease.  I am sure the money we have raised will make a difference somewhere in the system to help families like ours to keep their loved ones for longer.

Soaking my feet in cold water after the race!!

So on this note, thank you to all who have sponsored us, thank you to all who have helped us to raise money and thank you to all who have helped raise money after my birthday as well.  Well done you all!

Running total so far….

Cancer research £245 (including tea party donations paid into other pages/our fundraising page/tea party donations to our page)

British Heart Foundation £62.50

Womb Cancer research £50.00

Rowans Hospice £50.00

Happy blogging birthday to me!

TTFN, Sammy xx

Charideee...

As you all know we threw a big bash for my birthday ( I might have mentioned it previously…) which took a lot of thought, a lot of planning and quite a lot of props!  Now with props of course comes expense.  I would say no expense was spared (and my husband would probably agree with that) but we did make quite a lot of the props ourselves and where we made purchases, we made them responsibly.

All in all crockery wise, we sourced just over 200 teacups and saucers, 140 side plates and around about 30 tea pots.  Some of the tea pots were kindly leant to me but my step daughters mum Carole.  Carole, a year ago, organised a vintage tea party to raise money for The Eve Appeal and for Womb Cancer Research and awareness, these tea pots she leant to me were left overs from this event.

I knew nothing good (maybe bankruptcy!) would come from buying these all new, so after asking on facebook if any friends/family could donate/lend me any items of crockery we started the laborious task of hunting out vintage crockery in shops!  A family member also kept an eye out for me while sorting jumble and made a cracking find for me of an actual Alice in Wonderland tea cup, along with other sets for me. 

My first shopping trip it became very clear that charity shops were the way forward for this task, so not only were we able to source some items cheaper than brand new, find some amazing finds and we would in actual fact be doing our bit and contributing to charity along the way.  Lauren (my step daughter) and I spent a very long Saturday traipsing through Waterlooville and Petersfield on our first mission and had a very good day indeed.  We managed a few trips back to the car to fill the boot up and went a little tea cup mad! 

Following on from this trip, Mr B accompanied me on many a rainy Saturday afternoon, traipsing around and carrying my bags.  I am pleased to report although we spent a fortune (well over budget on crockery, shushhhhhh don’t tell Mr B!!) we managed to do this and help all of these charities - Barnados / Cancer Research / Mind / British Heart Foundation / The Rowans Hospice / St Winifreds Hospice / Naomi House and Jacks Place / Sue Ryder / Macmillan / Age UK / Headway to name a few!

Well once the purchasing, storing, organising, washing, packing, unpacking, transporting, setting up, packing away, transporting, washing, drying and re-packing had been done with all this crockery; I was then in a dilemma as to what to do with it!  Ebay….?? Facebook….?? Charity Shops…??  Well I settled on good old facebook and started selling the items bit by bit, the first day went smashingly and I sold loads of stuff, it petered off after a week or so, buy my gosh I was raising lots of money here!  So then I started thinking about what I should be doing with this dosh.  I know it would have been easy to keep the money and recoup some party costs, but hang on, turning 30 is special enough, maybe I should be raising this money for charity?

Carole’s tea cups of course went to the charity Carole was raising money for, the link can be found here http://www.justgiving.com/Debra-Parry0 Theresa and I are again doing the race for life this year for Cancer Research, so that was another easy one and we’ve sent some money that way, the link can be found herehttp://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/SammyandTheresa   Barney’s was the next choice of charity and he picked The British Heart Foundation. (I don’t have a link for them and have taken the money in to their charity shop as a donation).  The last charity we chose was The Rowans Hospice, they are wonderful charity and do some amazing work.  Some money went straight over to The Hospice but a colleague from work is doing a charity walk for them, so some has been donated that way as well, their link can be found herehttp://www.justgiving.com/Kelly-Pope2

They are all of course are still accepting donations so any donations welcome!

The grand totals so far are…

Drum roll please……

Cancer Research - £45

British Heart Foundation - £45

Womb Cancer Research - £40

The Rowans Hospice - £40

So that’s it, birthday over, hundreds of pounds spent in charity shops and hundreds of pounds donated.  So yes, I did throw a big bash and yes no expense was spared, and yes it did cost more than the third World debt (slight exaggeration) BUT I would like to think that we did a little good for the World, for charities and for these charities in particular close to my heart!  I do hope you’re all very proud of your efforts, buying crockery and donating, I know I certainly am very proud of me.

TTFN xx

A Mad Hatters Tea Party

So… down the rabbit hole we went… To a place, like no place on Earth, a land full of wonder, mystery and danger! Some say to survive it you need to be as mad as a hatter!  We emerged in a World that was topsy turvy, drank whiskey (or champagne rather) from tea cups, ate cake that was so colourful it glowed from the inside and partied all night in a World of Wonderland!  And yes we may be mad, bonkers, and completely off our heads, but let me tell you a secret… all the best people are!

So to celebrate the tremendous event of turning 30, (I never thought I’d reach it ha!) I decided to have a party.  It wasn’t a decision I took lightly, it took lots of thinking about before actually doing anything about it.  It all started back last year some time, in 2011 I went to see Take That with my lovely friend Corin and what an amazing show they put on!  They did the song ‘Shine’ which ended up as a mad hatters tea party type thing on the centre stage culminating with Mark Owen riding a giant caterpillar into the stage with talking clocks, white rabbits and all sorts of merriments.  At the time I thought nothing of it, but one rainy afternoon watching the DVD with my step daughter, thinking about my mums surprise 50^th birthday party that we were organising for her, a light bulb pinged in my mind and the idea for a Mad Hatters Tea Party was borne! 

I of course consulted ebay before I thought of anything further (love a spot of shopping!) and spoke to my Mum about my crazy ideas.  The party in itself was an absolute god send with the surprise party for my Mum going on, as I was actually able to talk to my Mum about the party I was organising and not feel like I was keeping anything from her.  In actual fact, when the day of Mum’s surprise party finally came round, she even questioned me as to where all the teacups and pots were at her party and if I was even having a party!

The main theme for the party was of course going to be Alice in Wonderland, topsy turvy and crazy as you like; which is then what got me started thinking about cake.  Do I really want to do a buffet and feed everyone? We had a hog roast for mums party which was marvellous, but did I want to go down that route?  No, I wanted a cake and I wanted a cheese cake, no ordinary cheese cake, but a 5 tier wedding style cake made out of different cheeses!  Yes… welcome to my imagination! 

(The cheese came from Lyburn Farm... http://www.lyburnfarm.co.uk/ check them out for locally produced cheeses.  The chutneys came from https://en-gb.facebook.com/thriftcottage check them out too! Fabulous service from both)

Sat talking one night at Wine O’Clock and Kat (my friend for many moons) was just as excited about the party as I was and so we made the decision for it to be a joint party and share all the fun!  Or hard work, however you look at it anyways!  My birthday is 13th, Kat's birthday is 25th so we picked a date in the middle for a Very Merry Unbirthday indeed!

Now the hard work really started, we needed props and lots of them, we needed cheese and lots of it, we needed sweets and lots of them.  I set about shopping for tea cups/saucers/plates/teapots with the help of Lauren and Mr B.  We visited charity shops far and wide in the Hampshire and West Sussex area and turned my lounge into a junk shop!  I did borrow some tea pots from Lauren’s mum, so that gave us a good start too and a start to filling up my mums spare room as well. 

Crockery wasn’t the only thing I purchased, we also managed to gain a large collection of posters, flamingos, playing cards, giant cards, party signs all manner of things as I'm sure you can probably guess!  Kat and I also set about making things, flowers for the tables, hedgehogs for the flamingos, miniature crochet sets, roses half painted red, I love a trip to Hobby craft me!

So between Kat and I, we made hundreds of flowers, lots of table props, emailed lots of pictures to each other, got given some wonderful donations and made some cracking finds!  I was even given two large frames from a friend of mine, which I dutifully painted, cut, stick, pasted and coloured in, to make feature stands.

On to costumes, I knew right from the start I wanted to be the Queen of Hearts and Barney wants to be the Mad hatter, so of course I set about ebay again looking for some bargains.  My family, work colleagues, friends and anyone else who would listen heard a great deal about the costumes, and well the party come to think of it!

So the big day dawned, I for one was glad of everything to be moved from my lounge for a start, even if it wasn’t for very long!  My lovely friend Penfold came and helped us do some loading and unloading after Mr B most gracefully did his back in.  We spent hours washing, drying and packing (crockery), loading and unloading (boxes), prettying the hall up and generally knackering ourselves out!  We managed to only break two tea cups in all of this process, which by my thinking is bluddy amazing! 

Everyone made a wonderful effort, most people came in the most wonderful Alice in Wonderland costumes or mad hats and we had a lovely party.  Barney and my cousin Trudi organised the most amazing cake (Trudi made it) which just went perfectly with the theme and my crazy ideas. 

My Mum helped out so much, before the party, during the day setting up, doing all our make up, picking up the cheese, doling out welcome drinks in tea cups and helping me to clear away as the night wore on.  My Mum was amazing and I couldn't have done any of it without her, so thank you Mum xx

We had help from a few other people towards the end of the night, the hall was slowly packed up into Barney’s van and it all looked like it had never happened!

Wonderland was a lovely place to visit, I hope those of you who came had fun and I’d love to go back there soon xx

TTFN Sammy xx

P.S.... There are loads of pics on facebook, I couldn't add them all here, plus I wasn't sure if everyone wanted to be splurged across something that isn't facebook! xx

The Other Side...

Well, its been a week and I feel…. No different ha! See 30 wasn’t anything to be scared about now was it?!

I had a fab week turning 30 and did loads of wonderful things, which I won’t bore you with too much…

Barney, my mum and I visited the Harry Potter studios in Watford and it was amazing!  Anyone who gets the opportunity, you must go.  Even Barney enjoyed it and he doesn’t like Harry Potter! The stuff they made, the way things were made, the things they used are just unreal.  Although it now has put me in the mood to watch all the Harry Potter’s all over again which predictably, Mr B is not too keen on ha!

I took my cousin, Theresa, to her first ever concert/gig and we went to see McFly! There were amazing, so good live, so much energy and such a brilliant night.  There was a split in age, half our age and half 13 ish year olds, so we weren’t the only oldies there.  I'm pleased to say Theresa enjoyed herself as much as me, we finished the evening off with some cold chips in the wind tunnel that is Guildhall Walk and Barney came and picked us up and delivered us home safely!

We had a lovely day at the Meon Valley golf and country club in their spa, having luxurious treatments, lots of lunch and a little drop of wine to boot.  We’ve been there a few times now, and it is expensive, but well worth it if you have the time and money for a special occasion.

Thursday I had a whopping great tattoo added to my leg!  I didn’t expect it to be as big as it is, but I love it, it is just brilliant!  I told the tattooist what I did and didn’t like, he drew it up, 4 hours later and… tadaa!...  I know it is not to everyones taste and I'm pretty sure my dad won’t talk to me for weeks, but y’know!  I paid for it with some money Nanny left me, so it is Nanny’s last birthday present to me and I'm sure she would’ve loved it!

Friday…. Well, we fell down a rabbit hole, emerged in a World that was topsy turvy, drank whiskey from tea cups, ate cake that was so colourful it glowed and partied all night in a world of wonderland!  That however deserves another post, and I will write it I promise!!

TTFN xx