Work Out Wednesday

So today I'm going to talk a little bit about my current exercise routine.
I have been running since April last year.  I was a complete beginner and did a 6 week C25K training plan, 6 weeks before my first 5K race (can you tell I was a beginner not by not leaving myself any wiggle room in training time before the race).

Since my 5K race in June and have had periods of time with no running, the longest being almost 3 months,  I always feel like I have to start right back at the beginning.
However, since New Year I have gotten my fitness to a point where I can comfortably run between 1.5 and 2 miles no matter how long I leave between runs.

I had been searching and searching for a training plan suitable for me.  The C25K ones all seem to not challenging enough for me as they alternate running with walking for the first few weeks.  The next step up in training plans I could find was for 10K and this is too challenging for me right now.

I normally use the RunKeeper app to track my runs but last week I downloaded the Nike+ Running app and I love it.  I have found a 5K training plan that I can work with on there, I am not following it exactly as I don't feel I need to alternate walking but the distances are perfect for me right now.  I am also not necessarily running on the days the training plan suggests as there are only certain times of the week I can realistically get out for a run.

My 8 week training plan looks like this...

Week 1...
Run 1 - 2.4km
Run 2 - 1.6km
Run 3 - 3.2km

Week 2...
Run 1 - 3.2km
Run 2 - Walk (free choice distance run)
Run 3 - 4.8km

Week 3...
Run 1 - 4.8km
Run 2 - Walk (free choice distance run)
Run 3 - 6.4km

Week 4...
Run 1 - 6.4km
Run 2 - 4.8km
Run 3 - 8.0km

Week 5...
Run 1 - 5.6km
Run 2 - 5.6km
Run 3 - 8.9km

Run 4 - 6.4km

Week 6...
Run 1 - 6.4km
Run 2 - 5.6km
Run 3 - 6.4km 

Run 4 - 8.9km

Week 7...
Run 1 - 6.4km
Run 2 - 8.0km
Run 3 - 6.4km

Run 4 - 6.4km

Week 8...
Run 1 - 4.8km
Run 2 - 6.4km
Run 3 - 1.6km

Run 4 - Race 5k

What fitness plans are you all following at the moment? 

Meal Plan Monday - February 2015

I Well, I sucked a little bit at regular blogging in January :(

Never the less, here is February's Meal Plan...
I have used printables from Money Saving Mom's Say Goodbye To Survival Mode printable pack.  I am loving that there are several different layout options for meal planning including monthly, 4 weekly, 2 weekly and weekly.

We seem to have breakfasts sorted in this house now and adding smoothie's to the meal plan has really helped to avoid wasting time in the mornings (and when grocery shopping) deciding what to put in them.

Lunches I have recycled a few from January's Meal Plan, I would like to find a few more lunch options to replace the ham, we sometimes buy, with something a bit healthier.

What's in all of your meal plans at the moment?


Stayed tuned for a Work Wednesday post on Wednesday. 

Style Sunday: Living Room Inspiration

So I have been thinking out moving house or home decor all weekend, no word of a lie every few minutes I am thinking about it.  We are still not entirely decided on whether we will move house this year or not but its looking more like we will be staying put.  If this does transpire then some of the rooms in my house are getting a make over.  

My living room is the room that I spend most of my time thinking about how I can improve it.  We do not live in a big house and our living room is a very modest size.  However, our furniture for this room is huge, especially our sofa, it is a whopping 8.5 feet wide.  Our sofa is old and tatty but I love it.  I have accepted it is probably time to say goodbye to it (when we can afford a new one.)

I am going to dedicate today's post to a mood board for improving my living room.

Wellie Boots and Muddy Paw Prints

Lindevegen

Bump-to-Baby

A Girl and a Glue Gun 

Anna Saccone

Meal Plan Monday: January

A while back I used to do a monthly meal plan instead of a weekly one but it didn't work for. I would end up abandoning ship by half way through week 2. There are 2 main reasons I think that method didn't work for me then are that I only planned dinner and I tried to shop monthly. Fresh vegetables and monthly shops do not go together. 

This January I decided to give a month meal plan another shot but this time I will be shopping weekly and planning all three meals. 

I have used a meal plan from Keeper of the Home for the first weeks with a few swap ins for breakfast. For the third week I have used ideas from Beach Ready Now's meal plan and for the final week I have added some recipes from Pinterest I would like to try. 

As you can see I haven't yet filled in lunches for the final week. I will do this at some point next week when I have a better idea of how much money we have left in our groceries budget. 

Do you meal plan? Do you find it helps you eat well or save money? How do you meal plan in your house? I'd love to hear! 

Style Sunday: New Year Home Inspirtaion

So today I finally took down the Christmas decorations and as usual the house (particularly the living room) feels very bare.

Given that most of the rooms in my house are in some stage of being a work in progress and us toying with the idea of moving in the next 6 months I don't feel any of my rooms are worthy of a Style Sunday feature yet.

Thus, I have turned to good old Pinterest for some inspiration...

At the moment my living room has accidentally adopted the colour scheme of red and naturals.  Our sofa is in need of a revamp, I am thinking some new cushions would be a good way to go.  Here are some I am loving at the moment...

Free Range Children, Birds, Hangry, Clouds/Drops

I am going to keep this Style Sunday short while I'm finding my feet.

Check back tomorrow for my first Meal Plan Monday post!

Style Saturday: New Hair Style

Welcome to my first Style Saturday post.  First off I am going to make a confession...

Writing blog posts and having my picture taken/taking my own picture pushes me out of my comfort zone.

So you may ask, why am I doing a blog topic about my own Style.  Well, because I enjoy style be that clothes, hair or make up and I am hoping writing about my own style and where I get inspiration for some of my style choices will help me to brake through the self conscious barrier I have in this area.

Moving on... I wanted to talk about my new hair style.  I have had a drastic change in length, I have not had my hair this short since I was 6 years old when I unfortunately had a case of head lice and my Mum chopped it with the kitchen scissors.  I cried but it was a necessary evil I had asked for.

I loved having long hair but it was just getting so flat and had no shape or style.  I thought I would be brave and go for a cut that meant I could style it every morning without it taking too much time (as with a small person I don't have much of that to spare.)

How I style my new do is as follows...

First I put a small amount of Trevor Sorbie Invisible Hold Mousse and a few spritzes of Toni and Guy Sea Salt Spray in wet hair.  Then I blow dry with a round brush in various directions to create volume, except at the back where I try to get the bottom to tuck under (so as not to flick out).  Once dry I section off my hair and use my straightening irons to create curls section by section.  I finish off I set with a little hair spray.

If I am styling my hair straight I omit the Sea Salt Spray and use Lee Stafford Flat Iron Protection Shine Mist.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for my first Home edition on Style Sunday!

Filofax Friday: 2015 Set Up

On my first Filofax Friday post I am going to talking about how I came to start using my Filofax/Planner, where I got my inspiration from and what my 2015 set up is starting to look like.

When thinking about writing this post I thought about how I first discovered the world of custom planners and all the world that surrounds it and I couldn't remember.

Looking through many of the recent pins on my Organisation Board, they are all Filofax/Planner related but as I scrolled down through my Pins I realised I pinned some links to custom Filofax set ups a while back and this must have been where I discovered it.

It turns out the second pin on my Organisation Board is a custom daily insert for planners which links to a blog post by Penny Procrastinate on Creating Custom Filofax pages.

Pin: Penny Procrastinate's blog post

As any of you who use Pinterest will know, you can bounce off onto the next pin and then next and before you know it you have become very knowledgeable.  It transpires the first pin that educated me to the idea that there was a huge community of people customising and decorating their Planners/Filofax was of Birthday's list page leading to a blog post by HomeMadeKraft about This Week's Pages.

Pin: HomeMadeKraft's blog post

At some point I discovered DIYfish inserts.  If your not familiar with DIYfish inserts hop on over here to find out all about them!

For my 2015 Filofax set up I have dragged out my old Pocket Denim Filofax.  I have had this since 2008 so its looking a little tatty.  I have also bought the DIYfish 3 month trial V2.2 set with day-on-1-page in Pocket Size 

Next in the name of money saving I decided to have a go at making my own divider.  These are by no means tidy and certainly meet planner addict standards but it was my first attempt so I'm not too disheartened.

Some temporary tabs at the top

Moving onto the actual inserts, I am beginning by using my monthly check sheet to keep track of goals that pertain to being done everyday

I have no idea what to use this side of the monthly sheet for yet, what do you all use yours for?

This side of the weekly sheet I will use left hand smaller column for a brief overview of my appointments and the right hand larger column I shall use for checklists/goals that vary slightly from day to day such as planned activities with my Son and household chores/FlyLady tasks.

As you can see I have started to colour code, I won't go into that now but if it is something you would like to see in blog post in the future let me know.

The weekly chart I have managed to find a use for both sides 

The checklist I am going to use to keep track of daily chores and FlyLady tasks.  The flip side I will be using for meal planning as it has the perfect amount of lines.  However, I am not convinced my handwriting is small enough to fit my meals in the boxes (as you can see above with my abbreviations) and I am certain the list on the right hand side is not big enough for my weekly groceries shopping list.  I may have to upgrade to a larger Filofax in the future.

Again the issue of my handwriting being too big/Pocket size Filofax being too small has cropped up on the daily sheets.  Aside from that though I love them.  I have blocked out my appointments on the right hand side and keep some bullet points on the left hand side.  I really love the water tracker feature just under the date but I don't think I will use the weather and mood tracker (well not for the moment anyway.)

I talked yesterday about some of my goals for 2015 being about organising my finances a bit better.  I found 2 fab free printouts to help with that.  The first is the 52 Week Saving Challenge.  This beautiful printable comes from A Helicopter Mom 

Pin: Free Printable from A Helicopter Mom

The second is an Annual Bill Tracker from Organizing Homelife 

Pin: Free Printable from Organizing Homelife 

As you can see I am by no means finished setting up and very much a beginner when it come to custom planners but be sure to check back and see how my Filofax set up develops and possibly even upgrades a size.

Check in tomorrow for my first Style Saturday post!

A Fresh New Year

I have lost count of how many times over the years I have written a post entitled something along the lines of "brand new start" and proceeded to write a short and boring post about reviving blogging. 

2014 has had its difficult and trying moments for my family and I but there have also been some lovely moments I wish I had documented better. My son is growing up faster than I could have ever imagined and so 2015 is going to be my year. I am determined to be organised and focus on living my life for the happy moments and keeping a record of those happy moments, be that through blogging, photos or beyond.

Instead of writing yet another of those boring "I am going to revive my blog posts" I am just going to outline some of my goals for 2015 and then the world wild web can hold me responsible for working towards achieving them!

Starting with goals regarding blogging and other social media...

• Take part (and complete) FatMumSlim's monthly Photo-a-Day challenges on Instagram
• Blog regularly about things I genuinely like... I am a person who thrives on routine, I am always more likely to be successful at keeping things going if I have a routine.  One way I have decided to transfer this to my blogging is to have regular topics on certain days.  Some of the topics I have come up with include... Meal Plan Monday, Meat Free Monday, Mummy Monday, Weekly Wears Wednesday, What I Ate Wednesday, Thrifty Thursday, Filofax Friday, Foodie Friday, Fashion Friday, Style Saturday (Fashion) and Style Sunday (Home). I dare say I will come up with more in time and if there are any you guys can suggest or would like to see please let me know in the comments below.

Goals relating to health I am aiming to achieve this year are...

• Give up all alcohol (not that I drank very much anyway)
• Give up all refined sugar 
• Ensure I am hydrating properly everyday (I am pretty good at drinking plenty of water so this one shouldn't be too difficult)
• I would like to get back to running 4 times a week but with our lives the way the are at the moment this is not such an attainable goal but you never know!

Goals relating to my home and personal life (including parenting) are...

• Use my planner (Filofax) and calender to organise my schedule more effectively.  I am going to be delving a little bit into the FlyLady world
• Budget more effectively and stick to it, I am thinking of giving the cash envelope system a go
• Complete the 52 week saving challenge
• Meal plan more thoroughly to save money on groceries and waste less
• Plan an engaging activity for my Son every day and set aside some time to focus solely on that.  I find so many great ideas on The Imagination Tree
• Read a chapter a day

What goals, changes, challenges and resolutions have you all made for 2015 or have you decided not to?  I'd love to hear!

Be sure to check back tomorrow for my first Filofax Friday post.