Info all Articles

Hello guys, hope you are enjoying your Sunday! I’ve had a really lovely weekend and today is our 4 year wedding anniversary! We aren’t doing anything special as we’ve enjoyed enough celebrations these last couple of weeks! We have been reminiscing though, especially as we attended the wedding party for my cousin Louise and her husband Nathan after they got married in Santorini a couple of weeks ago. We got married in Sorrento in Italy – it was fabulous! I have posted pictures of our wedding on the blog before if you want to take a peek! The party last night was lovely:

I wore my vintage floral dress with my nude skyscraper heels and minimal accessories – just a black leather look clutch and cuff for a bit more of an edge. The meal was yummy – moussaka, rice and salad with olives and a little mini Eton mess for dessert. 

Yesterday morning I popped into town for a little bit of shopping with some birthday money and vouchers. I had planned on only being out a couple of hours so just had a light breakfast of melon, peach and a coconut milk blended iced coffee:

5 hours later I came home with a few goodies:

My favourite Aveda hair care products, some Weleda deodorant and emery boards

Necklaces, black trousers, stripy dress and oversize neutral coloured jumper all from H&M, under ware from M&S

Needless to say I inhaled my ‘brunch’ which I had been planning as pancakes but decided to have the quicker option of a two egg omelette filled with almond butter and sugar free strawberry jam plus some blackberries and blueberries on the side:

I also had a green smoothie to follow, and later on a huge fresh juice:

Carrot, cucumber, celery and ginger. It was lovely but much sweeter than I usually have my juices due to the carrots so I only managed half!

This morning I had a lovely breakfast before I went to the gym:

Baked sweet potato with peanut butter and strawberries, it was utterly delicious and great fuel for my Kettlecise class – I decided to use a bigger kettle bell for some of the moves and boy could I feel it!

Yesterday I cooked up a huge pot of chickpeas so I’ve been eating loads of them in with salads and I have a tasty recipe planned for tonight, however I couldn’t not make some hummus with them of course! I used my Vitamix to make it rather than the food processor and it gave it a fab smooth texture. I had some on top of a salad with beetroot and avocado:

Love this combo!

So I think we are going to chill out for the rest of the day. As I was saying I’m planning a nice meal for dinner later and we are going to cuddle up and watch a movie together :-)

How has your weekend been? What was the last wedding you went to? If you are married, what’s your wedding story?

P.S – don’t forget to check out my Myvitamins GIVEAWAY!

Hello guys, hope you are having a great day :-) I’ve had a really lovely weekend so far, its been quite blissful indeed, we haven’t been far or done much but sometimes that is just what you need!

Coffee love

On Friday evening I went to see my sister, nephews and parents then came home and cleaned the flat – love getting the cleaning all done! Yesterday morning we popped out to Tesco for some groceries and sleeping bags ready for Kendal Calling in two weeks, and today I was out at the gym for my Kettle bell class.

Other than that I have been spending time with the man in my life, and by man of course I am referring to the Vitamix, oh and and I may have also talked to my husband occasionally ;-) Some of the things I’ve whipped up include this bowl of protein ice cream with frozen raspberries, chocolate chip spiru-tein and topped with crumbled Popchips:

Oh and I’m not the only crazy person putting crisps with sweet desserts ;-)

This morning post kettle bells I made a massive green smoothie with spinach, fresh pineapple, vanilla sun warrior protein powder and a small handful of fresh coriander:

The coriander added a really interesting flavour. This shows you just how big I make my smoothies, they always fill the blender and give me at least two full glasses!

For lunch I decided to experiment and make a Raw Thai Carrot Soup:

In to the Vita went 6 carrots, 1 red pepper, a couple of spring onions, slice of fresh ginger, 1 tbsp shoyu, 2 tbsp coconut butter, coriander and water (made 2 servings worth). I served it with Raw Health flax crackers. Seriously this is absolutely amazing, it will be getting made again for sure!

For breakfast yesterday I had been thinking about making a big smoothie but I tasted the fruit as I was chopping it and it was too good to be blended up! I ended up making a fruit snacking plate with almond butter for dipping and just having a green smoothie on the side:

The smoothie was simply a head of romaine, vanilla sun warrior, water, ice and a few drops of vanilla stevia whipped up. This morning I didn’t want a large breakfast before kettle bells so I made some oats in a jar:

I’ve just ordered more of that brand of almond butter from iHerb. It has agave and flaxseed blended into it and it really is super creamy. I just cooked the oats on the stove in water with a pinch of pink salt and vanilla stevia, my fave way to make oats right now.

I had a fridge full of courgettes to use up so made some into noodles and topped with the last of my green goddess dressing mixed with a lot more tahini and sweet white miso:

I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of big bowls of creamy raw courgette noodles! Snacks wise, along with the usual green juice, I’ve been having berries and rice cakes with nut butter:

Those blackberries were delicious! Last night for dinner I had some perfect tofu with broccoli and a sunflower seed butter stuffed sweet potato:

Love this meal! Tonight I’m planning on using the tofu in my Tofu and Sweet Potato Hash, its been too long!

The weekend would also not be complete without chocolate of course:

Almonds, sea salt and dark chocolate = heaven!

This morning I decided to try working out in my Converse All Stars for a change:

I’ve been working out in my very old running shoes which have a lot of cushioning for over pronation. What I’ve been finding when doing strength training it that I have trouble really feeling like my feet are being grounded, especially for squats and deadlifts. I wore these for kettle bells this morning and they were brilliant, I can imagine they’d be good for Body Pump too. I could do with some new trainers but until then I think I’ll be sticking with my All Stars!

What kind of shoes do you work out in? Do you have different foot ware for different forms of exercise? How’s your weekend been?

Hello folks, happy Friday! Hope you have had a lovely week. I have to admit this one has been a bit of a long stressful one for me so I’m happy the weekend has arrived! It certainly hasn’t been that bad though, I have quite a few things on my Love List this week, and we did have a day of sunshine which prompted me to get the legs out! My favourite outfit from this week:

OOTD: heart pendant: vintage, stripy top: Topshop, blue dress worn as skirt: Mango, tan leather sandals: New Look

I love that dress and it worked so well layered up with the top for work. The blue is such a stunning colour it really cheered up my day!

This weeks workouts:

• Saturday – REST
• Sunday – Kettle bell class (plus 30 minutes relaxed cardio on the cross trainer and bike waiting for class to start)
• Monday – 30 minutes total cardio on cross trainer, step machine and bike, quick medicine ball workout and a few circuits of the weights machines
• Tuesday – Body Pump class
• Wednesday – MTV Power Yoga DVD
• Thursday – evening Yoga class
• Friday – Gym – this strength and HIIT workout but I increased all the upper body weights by 1kg same as last week and went a bit easier on the HIIT

I’m really enjoying my workouts at the moment, and as you will see no running! Instead I have really enjoyed my classes at the gym and my yoga practice. On Sunday night I was just doing a few poses in the living room while listening to one of my IIN lectures and I managed full Plough Pose! I was chuffed to bits :-)

I’ve also been enjoying some very tasty meals recently. I have quite a few thoughts on how I’m eating and how that has been evolving to share soon. I just feel like I’m doing well at giving my body what it needs right now.

On Sunday night I had a big veggie packed stir fry with edamame topped with some shoyu roasted sunflower seeds:

At the weekend I had made up some of my Seitan Sausage so I had some of that added to a mix of sautéed onion, courgette and aubergine in some tomato sauce with Italian seasonings and basil. I piled it up on top of some spaghetti squash:

I had the other half of the squash with steamed broccoli and edamame beans topped with some of my green goddess dressing:

I adore that dressing, I could drink it! I’ve also been having it on salads all week:

Chickpeas with romaine, beetroot, cucumber and red onion.

For breakfasts I have been making the most of the doughnut peaches I bought from the market. First with muesli and almond milk:

Also with some vanilla coconut raw ‘yoghurt’ (1/2 scoop of vanilla sun warrior protein powder, 1 tbsp of raw coconut flour mixed with water) and a heavenly slice of raw millionaires shortbread:

On Wednesday I had some oats. I’d cooked them the night before to give me the option to have them cold or warm them back up again. The weather made my decision for me: hot porridge with apple, cinnamon and home made sunflower seed cashew nut butter:

Snacks wise I’ve been having pink lady apples with sachets of nut butter:

I just suck the nut butter straight out of the packet! I’ve also had dried figs with mixed seeds and pretzels:

Such a good combo! When the weather did improve slightly yesterday I jumped on the chance to have an iced coffee:

Please tell me I’m not the only person that takes great joy in seeing the milk swirl round? This was almond milk and oh so delicious. I do think I’m becoming the Mrs Doyle of coffee – and if you get that reference we are best friends forever ;-)

On Tuesday night my stress levels were increased slightly when my trusty Kenwood kMix blender decided to give up on me. I think it was just one too many bowls of protein ice cream! I would still recommend that blender to anyone, its lasted me over two years of heavy use and could handle processing ice and tough veggies very well. However I use my blender at least twice a day and I think it just wasn’t built to sustain that level of use. Now, I have always promised myself that when my blender died I would be replacing it with the creme de la creme of blenders – the Vitamix. These are not cheap by a long shot, however after talking to James and being encouraged by naughty people on Twitter, I decided to bite the bullet…

On the Love List this week:

My red Vitamix Total Nutrition Centre in red!

If it was a person it would be a sexy Italian with dark eyes and a killer smile who owns a red Ferrari ;-) Needless to say I am in love! This is my big early 30th Birthday present from James (and myself). I can’t wait to experiment with it. I’ve already made some green smoothies and protein ice cream and you can tell the difference in terms of texture and speed. It is also a doddle to clean which is a big thumbs up in my book. I’ll be playing with my new toy all weekend! Also…

Having my orientation call with IIN – classes start on Monday! // getting into the habit of painting my nails again, having them a bright pink cheers me up // tweets and facebook messages from my aged Thirty something followers telling me how awesome it is to be 30! Will be blogging more on this soon // tidying up my dropbox and evernote accounts // cuddles from James // relaxing on an evening by pottering about on Pinterest and Tumblr

In case you missed it:

• I gave you a guide to ordering from iHerb
• I blogged my recipe for Raw Millionaires Shortbread

How has your week been? What’s on your Love List this week? Vitamix owners – do you have any tips and tricks for me?