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Well this has been one busy week! I’ve been recovering from the Great North Run, worked two late nights, been grocery shopping for my Gran while my Mam and Dad have been away and doing a hell of a lot of thinking. Thank goodness the weekend is here, and better still, I have next week off!

I’ve still been able to fit in some great workouts this week:

• Sat: REST
• Sun: Great North Run!
• Mon: REST (obviously!) + 20 minutes yoga to stretch out
• Tue: Yoga (20 minutes) + Cardio intervals (30 minutes) + Body Pump
• Wed: Cardio intervals (1 hour) plus abs
• Thurs: Davina Super Sculpt Pump DVD, MTV Yoga DVD (1 hour 10 mins)
• Friday: Random bike intervals (30 minutes) cardio intervals (30 minutes) abs

Plus I’ve had some delicious eats including lots of snacks:

 Banana Sunshine Muffin and apples

 Bedtime snack of apple, carrots and cashew butter, mmm!

Near empty tahini jar with apples, raisins and cinnamon, microwaved and topped with granola

Plus countless more apples, rice cakes with nut butters etc, I’m really getting into the whole day time snacking thing, and its really helping to stop me from over eating on an evening :-)

Green smoothies have featured as usual:

I made this amazing Chocolate Cherry Almond Green Smoothie containing:

• Kale (or greens of choice such as spinach etc)
• Frozen cherries
• 1 scoop of chocolate hemp protein powder (or you could use 1 tbsp of cocoa powder)
• Ice
• Water (or you could use a milk or non dairy milk)
• 1/2 tsp of almond extract

For toppings:

• Almond butter (1 tbsp made into a sauce with hot water)
• Dried cherries
• Flaked almonds

I also added the usual xanthan and guar gums for thickness, maca powder, msm crystals, greens powder and berries powder. This tasted delicious!

I also finally got round to opening my box of Kashi Go Lean I’d ordered from iHerb:

I had a bowl with a large chopped banana, frozen blueberries and vanilla rice milk and it was delicious!

Speaking of iHerb:

I ordered this giant bag of peanut flour, I can not wait to have some fun with this! I think its going to be pretty much the same as PB2, however this is a lot cheaper than that! I love that it has 16g of protein per 1/4 cup serving, that’s better than a lot of vegan protein powders!

I also treated myself to a bar of this delicious chocolate at an event I was at for work:

Divine Ginger and Orange Dark Chocolate plus fair trade sultana’s to keep at work for snacks, yum!

While I’ve been working late I’ve been having a bowl of this amazing soup to keep me going:

I think I made a soup like this last year and called it Simple Soup its pretty much a fridge soup recipe – i.e. chuck in whatever veggies you have on hand. This contained (washed and chopped):

• 2 onions
• 2 leeks
• 3 carrots
• 2 courgettes
• 1 sweet potato
• 1 cup of red lentils
• handful of kale
• 2 tsp of vegetable bouillon and hot water

I semi blended it with a stick blender. I have to say you can’t go wrong with lentils and sweet potatoes!

Tonight for dinner I dug out a tofu and aubergine curry from the freezer and served it with quinoa and steamed greens, so good!

So I said at the beginning of the post I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my diet and stuff, well actually I’ve been thinking about things for quite a while! I really see October as being a fresh start for my diet, my exercise routine (especially post Great North Run as all my training has been geared up for that) and my budgeting! I’ve got a lot of posts I want to write over the next week on those subjects that I really hope you’ll enjoy, and won’t find too boring ;-) one of which includes this…

I’m busy writing up a post for my Big Budget Challenge Round 2, and as a few of us seem to be in the money saving frame of mind right now I’m going to make it a challenge that any one can join in with if they like! I’ll be designing a blog button we can all use and doing weekly budgeting posts from around the blog world. At least that way we can all be skint together ;-)

As for my weekend and week off, said budgeting issues have dictated that we will be staycationing in style! I actually really love to have time off to just chill at home and get caught up with things, especially at this time of year! We’ll probably have a couple of days out to town and maybe the coast, I’ll be getting a lot of stuff up on eBay, sorting out my autumn / winter wardrobe, completing an assignment for my course and watching the entire Star Wars series of movies on blu ray DVD :-) Of course there will be much cooking and baking going on too!

Do you have staycations sometimes? What’s your favourite staycationing activity?

Hope you have a great weekend and don’t forget to enter my international giveaway for the brilliant vegan recipe book Blissful Bites!

Hey everyone, hope your weekends are going well! I feel like I’ve hardly stopped – this has been a very busy weekend! It all started on Friday night when I decided to have a massive clear out of my wardrobe. I’d been thinking for a while that I really needed to be quite ruthless. I had so much stuff that either no longer fitted me or suited my style. I filled two huge bags:

Before I started I decided to have a think about what I usually tend to wear. I identified that my favourite items are:

• basic cotton t shirts and vests
• stripy t shirts and vests
• floral dresses
• statement necklaces
• brightly coloured scarves and belts
• brightly coloured cardigans
• black slim leg trousers
• slim leg dark denim jeans

As well as classic things like my cream blazer, ballet pumps, denim jacket, converse trainers, leather boots, leather jacket etc.

I was pretty ruthless at getting rid of almost everything that wasn’t one of the above and boy did it feel liberating! I do think that I finally ‘get’ what my style is now, and armed with this knowledge I hit the shops in search of a few new things:

Cream trench style coat: Warehouse (on sale), deep grey basic tee: H&M, bright jewel necklace: H&M, basic black dress with gold zip feature: H&M

Stripy vest: French Connection (on sale), white sheer blouse top: H&M, fine cream knit jumper: H&M

I also got a few more t shirts and vests that are similar to the ones above. I thought I’d invest in the coat from Warehouse while it was on sale as I think that style is so wearable. I also realised that my wardrobe was missing an LBD and the basic one from H&M can easily be styled up or down with the right accessories. I’m really happy with what I bought and the fact that I managed to stick within the budget I’d set myself – H&M is affordable and seems to be perfect for what I’m into right now. My wardrobe feels so much more organised!

Before the shopping started I enjoyed a trip to the hairdresser! I’ll be blogging more on that soon but you can kind of see my new style in my OOTD from yesterday:

Leather hooded jacket: Topshop, scarf: Urban Outfitters, coral vest top: H&M, slim leg jeans: Mango, brown boots: New Look, bird ring: Primark, arm candy: various bangles and bracelets including sparkly ones from River Island and Accessorize 

I’d also been thinking about getting some better quality products for my hair. I’ve been having a fair few bad hair days and all in the name of smartening myself up I took a trip to Aveda:

I love Aveda but as with most high end products they aren’t cheap, however they had 10% off the whole range yesterday :-) After a chat with the very helpful sales assistant I settled on these products which I feel will give me maximum impact for my money. I purchased the colour conserve shampoo and conditioner, the phomollient volumising styling foam and the madder root colour conditioner to use once a week to keep my red colour vibrant.

After getting my hair done and hitting the shops I was off to see my parents and best friends, by the time I got home I was exhausted! When I woke up this morning to go on my long run and when I saw that it was chucking it down, as well as having a painful blister on my toe, I decided to give myself some slack and do a shorter run than my planned 10 miles. I did 4 miles and plan to do my long run during the week. I’m glad I decided to be a bit kinder to myself for a change :-)

When I came home I probably would have been better off having something warm but all I fancied was the usual smoothie!

Romaine, frozen blueberries, chocolate amazing grass amazing meal powder, ground flax, maca powder, ice, water topped with roast almonds, goji berries and bee pollen

Other tastiness from the weekend has included:

Starbucks soy latte with vanilla syrup – perfection!

A full punnet of Scottish strawberries from the market topped with a delicious Alpro Dark Chocolate pudding

Chickpea and Aubergine Curry (but with the aubergine added in chunks instead of roasted), brown rice and broccoli

I’ve also been on a matcha green tea kick. I made some matcha overnight oats with chia seeds and soy milk layered with a chopped banana, some goji berries and a little agave nectar:

This morning I made myself a matcha latte with soy milk and stevia:

So happy to be getting my matcha fix again!

It seems that the ‘clear out’ mentality has been with me all weekend as this morning I decided to tackle my CD / DVD / book collection:

See what you can spot!

We have a vintage wooden chest in the living room where I store a lot of stuff – between me and James we have a few piles of things to get rid of. We decided that instead of trying to eBay it all we are going to give family and friends first dibs then donate what’s left to charity. I also tidied my kitchen cupboards and the ‘crap’ cupboard in our hall way. It feels fantastic to have so much less clutter, living in a one bed flat it makes a massive difference!

How has your weekend been? I’m glad I went easy on myself with my run this morning, usually I would feel awfully guilty for not completing a planned workout. My training for the Great North Run is going well so missing a long run isn’t the end of the world, and I need to remind myself that I still did get out and do something! When was the last time you didn’t complete a planned workout and how did you feel?

I’m also feeling so good about the clear out, like a big weight has been lifted! When was the last time you had a big clear out?

Thanks for all your cold fighting tips to my last post. I’m still feeling a bit bunged up but I’m glad I’m getting this now and not over Christmas!

Over the last few months when I’ve been able to feel a cold coming on I have managed to beat it into non existence but this one has snuck up on me! Last night I made a huge green monster smoothie containing black kale, savoy cabbage, frozen strawberries and blueberries, maca powder, fruitein powder, soy milk, xanthan and guar gums. I topped it with a big handful of gojis and a little granola.

The fruitein powder is choc full of vitamins so I’m hoping that this is going to help me fight off the infection.

This morning I got to try out a new product:

I’d decided to treat myself (as its pretty expensive) to this almond milk from Holland and Barrat in their sale a few weeks ago. I’ve been dying to try it after reading about it in lots of US blogs where it seems to be much more widely available. I had some with Dorset Cereal Really Nutty Muesli, some home made apple and cinnamon compote and a sliced plum.

This was such a tasty breakfast, I loved the almond milk, it tasted really sweet. Such a shame its not more widely available and more affordable. I’ll have to try making my own sometime!

Mid morning I snacked on some red pepper hummus with green pepper and carrot for dipping.

Lunch was a delicious bowl of lentil and spinach soup (must make more) and an orange.

This was just the perfect lunch for when your feeling under the weather.

I decided that as my symptoms are ‘above the neck’ I should be ok with a gentle gym workout. Before I went I snacked on one of my pumpkin spice cake bars.

I had been planning on doing a more relaxed workout than usual but once I got to the gym I felt fine so I did my usual 30 minutes of HIITs, abs and core then 30 minute spin class.

Dinner was a wonderful curry. A couple of weeks ago I got a lovely email from a blog reader, I won’t name her as I think she’s a bit shy, but she sent me this recipe as she thought I would like it:

P’s Aubergine Curry (makes 2 servings)

• 1 aubergine
• 1 onion, finely chopped (I used 4 little shallots)
• 2 gloves of finely chopped garlic
• 1 teaspoon of minced ginger
• 1 small green chilli finely chopped
• 1 tsp of ground coriander
• salt (to taste)
• I tin of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
• Handful of spinach

Begin by pre heating the oven to 200c. Split the aubergine in half and rub with a little oil. Bake in the oven until tender. Allow to cool then scoop the flesh out of the skin, chop and set aside. In a wok heat a little oil on a medium heat. Add the onion and fry until tender then add the garlic, ginger, green chilli, coriander and pinch of salt and continue to fry for a few minutes. Add the aubergine and fry for a further few minutes before adding the chickpeas and tomatoes. Simmer for 5 minutes then add the spinach leaves and stir in to the curry. Serve.

I served mine with some brown rice and steamed cabbage with a little soy sauce. This was such a tasty and healthy curry. I hope your reading P, thanks so much for the recipe, I loved it and will certainly be making it again!

Desert was two wholegrain rice cakes topped with a microwaved frozen chocolate avocado peanut butter cup plus a sliced apple.

This pic shows one rice cake, after I’d eaten this I was still hungry so went back for the second one!

Have you tried almond milk before? Did you like it? Have you tried making your own before? How did it turn out? I have a few recipes and I would definitely like to give it a try.

This week is going to be a bit crazy for me as I’m working late tomorrow and Wednesday then I have my last yoga class on Thursday evening. I’m busy fixing up some lunches and dinners for the next couple of days to keep me going! Hope you all have had a good Monday, catch you later! :-)