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Happy Friday! I know its been a 4 day week but I’m still more than ready for the weekend. After all the rest I got over Easter I thought I would have went back to work on Tuesday with a spring in my step but its taken me a couple of days to get back into it. I think the fact that I’ve been working on a huge report hasn’t helped. At least I was able to work from home under the influence of a lot of coffee to give me a kick start:

 

My make shift desk plus epic amounts of strong black coffee!

After all the Easter eating and cooking my grocery budget is now non existent so I’ve been making use of leftovers and doing my best to use up the things we had already bought in. Last week I had treated myself to some of the new Alpro Pouring Yoghurt in Vanilla (was on offer in Tesco) so I’ve really enjoyed eating that this week! First up with fresh pineapple and my favourite muesli for breakfast…

…as a snack with frozen raspberries…

…and for breakfast again with strawberries, kiwi fruit and more muesli:

Its so delicious but is very sugary so its definitely a ‘treat food’ for me, but oh so good! I’ve also enjoyed a couple of green smoothies. This one contained spinach, pineapple, banana, vanilla sun warrior, maca powder, ground flax, water and ice then topped with kashi almond crunch and coconut:

As for using up leftovers I made a salad topped with some of the M&S roast veg and couscous salad from Easter Sunday lunch:

…and the leftover carrot and bulgar salad with veggies, home made raw crackers and sauerkraut:

For dinner I raided the freezer for a bag of home made chilli with soy mince and served it with some leftover balsamic roasted green beans:

Those beans are so good! I’ve also been using up my jar of Zest pesto in a big bowl of raw courgette ‘spaghetti’ with chickpeas:

Don’t be fooled, there was over 250 cals worth of pesto in that bowl, delish! I also raided Aldi for some of their super 6 cheap veggies. I got some broccoli that was on offer and also some sweet potatoes. Accompanied by home cooked adzuki beans from the freezer and a generous drizzle of tahini miso dressing it made the perfect cheap meal!

For sweet treats, my protein ‘ice cream’ has made a re appearance this week:

I made this with a scoop of smore’s spiru-tein protein powder, water, ice, stevia and xanthan gum then swirled in some raw cacao sauce made with raw cacao powder, water and agave. This tasted absolutely wonderful! I also treated myself to a peanut butter chocolate chip lara bar:

They are quite simply lush!

As for my workouts, they have been brilliant!

• Saturday – approx 5 mile run (still going garminless for now)
• Sunday – REST 
• Monday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout A from Dial it in phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike
• Tuesday – PM, 30 minutes random cardio on gym machines, Body Pump class 
• Wednesday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout B from Dial it in phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike
• Thursday – PM yoga class 1hr 15 
• Friday – AM 5 min cross trainer warm up, strength workout A from Dial it in phase of Female Body Breakthrough, 10 min HIIT step machine, 10 min HIIT bike

I just realised that I’d been saying I was doing the ‘Dial it in’ phase of Female Body Breakthrough for the last 4 weeks when it was actually the ‘Define yourself’ phase, doh! Anyway, this week I started the ‘Dial it in’ phase. Its great to be doing some different exercises again. This phase combines high weight low rep moves (like deadlifts) with low weight high rep moves (like single point rows) – I love the mix of this, it also means it suits me better as I only have limited equipment at the gym so can only lift as heavy as the weights we have available.

On the weekend send off love list this week…

My tattoo is completely healed now and looking great! I’ve been showing it off in my cap sleeve blue polka dot dress (H&M) along with my favourite floral scarf (New Look). Also…

Watching Enter the Dragon on TCM Wednesday night. I love how bad ass Bruce Lee is in that movie! // Drop Box – its made making working from home so much easier // the kindness of bloggers – Maria surprised me with a little parcel of green tea that she had going spare as she knows how much I like it :-)

How has your week been? Has it been easy getting back into the swing of things after Easter? What’s on your love list this week?

Oh and don’t forget to check out my Coyo Coconut Yoghurt GIVEAWAY!

Quick Blog update: I wanted to do a little update about the blog and the direction it's going in. In the future I am going to be doing some sponsored posts. I’m mentioning this because I want to be fully open and transparent about everything and I will be receiving some remuneration for these posts. I will be writing the posts myself and I will only be doing them on topics that I feel are relevant and in line with my own views and beliefs. All sponsored posts will be clearly marked as such. As I've blogged about before, I'm in the process of trying to establish my own business which isn't cheap to get going so any additional capital I can put towards it is going to be very helpful. It's also worth highlighting that so far I've chosen not to run Adsense, Food Buzz or other ad streams, the content of which I would have little control over. Instead I've taken inspiration from my fashion blogger friends and have looked for sponsors: healthy living brands I believe in, small businesses, as well as other bloggers looking to promote their sites. Anyway, I just wanted to be open about this and thank you all for your continued support!

Have a great weekend!