Little Things You May Not Know About Me

Hello, hello! Happy Friday! It's almost the weekend and if we're lucky, it will be a sunny one. Another personal post from me today. One of my favourite things about discovering a new blog is finding out all about the blogger. Feeling like you know the person behind the screen makes reading so much more personal, so here are a handful of little things about me that you may or may not know. Enjoy...!

1. I am absolutely, completely, totally obsessed with The Walking Dead. Self-confessed walker-stalker.
2. I own more gym leggings than any other item of clothing. 
3. I can't stand regular tea. Herbal tea, at a push, is acceptable. 
4. Going for dinner and to the cinema to see a new film is my idea of a great Friday date night. 
5. I live in skinny jeans and oversized jumpers/t-shirts.
6. Christmas Day is my favourite day of the whole year, and I always wake up super early like, well, like a kid at Christmas. 
7. Gin and tonic with elderflower is my current drink of choice. 
8. I quote Friends characters on a daily basis, and I've watched every episode more than 10 times.
9. My hair is naturally mousey blonde, but I've dyed it every colour under the sun.
10. I'm not a very good passenger. If we're have to drive somewhere, I will always be the driver. 
11. I spend a lot of time at work missing my cocker spaniel, Logan.
12. I'm not blessed in the chest department; shopping for bras is my personal hell. 
13. I'm a very passionate feminist, and will talk to you about it until the cows come home if you let me. 
14. I type fast. Like, really freakishly fast.  
15. I love cooking and meal planning. Cooking dinner is my favourite part of any average day. 
16. I get really, really stressy when plans change. My brain just cannot compute.  
17. I'm a total geek for anything Star Trek related, always have been. 
18. However, I have never seen Star Wars. 
19. I love gardening and planting flowers, although I seem to have a knack for killing them. 
20. I prefer being barefoot or wearing sandals/flip flops over everything else.
21. My music taste hasn't quite advanced past 2009. I'm currently listening to the new Panic! album on repeat. 
22. I really dislike most cooked fruit and desserts with alcohol in them - particularly trifle! 
23. I have a lot of love for stationary, and am always buying new notebooks and pretty highlighters.
24. I spend most of my evenings daydreaming about the next holiday I'm going to plan.
25. I love supermarkets. I'm the weirdo who enjoys doing the weekly shop.
26. I'm the friend who sends you five emojis with most messages. Sorry not sorry :)

Let's Get Personal: Bad Days

Hello, hello. Time to talk about something that plagues us all, but we don't often discuss it: bad days. We've all had them - days that start out badly, and just continue on from there. Sometimes they can be a hangover from the day before, if worry or anxiety or PMS or anything is playing on your mind. For me, 99% of the time a bad day is caused by anxiety, and that in itself is something I tend to keep on the QT...but that's a post for another day.

I thought I'd write out a wee list of things that have proven really helpful for me in the past, when I'm dealing with a really foul mood, a bout of anxiety, or just a general 'WTF is today' mood. This list won't help everyone, since we all deal with things in our own particular ways, but this is what helps me if I'm feeling particularly low and need to be picked up.

1. Netflix and binge. I can't be the only one who reaches for Netflix every time they feel crappy? Right now I'm marathoning Orange Is The New Black and Grey's Anatomy (tissues, anyone?). Candles lit, curtains shut, chocolate bar in hand, the evening is set. The only word of advice I have is limit whatever you're watching to a certain timeframe or amount of episodes, or you're likely to waste the day completely or stay up hideously late and in return feel worse than you did before.  

2. Get up and get out. The polar opposite to disappearing into your sofa with a bowl or popcorn and the remote? Getting up and going outdoors. Having a dog is a great way to force you outside, as the damn things seem to need walking all the time (love you Loganface!), and having a companion is always preferable to walking solo. I love a good jog, or a hot and sweaty yoga session, both will never fail to clear my head.

3. Escapism. Reading is it for me, but some people prefer music, art or movies. Anything that takes your mind away from where you are, and transports you somewhere far away is incredibly therapeutic. I've always been an advocate for art classes for those with depression/mental health issues, as I've seen some people come away feeling relaxed and rebooted, so anything you can do in your own home/surroundings to achieve that is something to work on.

4. Reach out. You know how they say that talking helps? It's true. On many occasions, I've dug myself into a pit of depression over something, sometimes lasting days, and waited too long to talk to anyone about it. Whether your worries are based on legitimate concerns or not, talking to a friend can help alleviate the feeling that you're struggling on alone. Sometimes a ten-minute phone call does the trick, sometimes a trip to the shops, or an hour-long Facetime session. When your friends are scattered everywhere from down the road to the opposite side of the globe, it can be hard to coordinate schedules, but good friends are always there no matter what. 

5. Little things, big help. Shower, coffee, tidying the kitchen, playing with the cats - there will be unlimited things that you do daily which give you a small lift, so go do them. Even if you just had a cuppa ten minutes ago - have another. Have a bath with rose petals and a glass of wine. Snuggle with your pets under a blanket. Whatever works, no matter how small.

6. Set a goal, and make a start. A lot of the time, feelings of sadness and failure stem from not feeling adequate. I can tell you right now: those feelings are not real, and you are ALWAYS enough. But I know how easy it is to succumb to a negative mindset. So setting a goal and hitting it, however small, is a great way to boost your self-esteem. Anything from a trip to the shop, paying that bill you've been putting off, or hitting a PB, whatever works for you.

7. Plan a trip. With friends, family, or significant other; it doesn't matter. Get the diary open and a date pencilled in. Broke? Go to the park or a museum, anything free will do just fine, as long as you get to spend time with those closest to you.

Let me know what you do on a bad day, and if anything on my list helps you as well as it helps me!

PS: How cute is the sign in the photo? Taken at our stunning wedding venue - only a year and a bit to go!!

Running for Ages (feat. Age UK)

Let's get this out of the way quickly: I hate running. OK, hate is a strong work. I seriously, really, emphatically dislike running. I'd rather be at a pilates class, in the gym, cycling, or pretty much any other fitness activity. But it's good for me, I have a good little four-legged buddy - who only trips me up sometimes - and, whether I like it or not, it's good for clearing your head after a long day. Friends, I know some of you feel me on this one - running sucks, but we do it because it's good for us.

However...

30 Things Before 30...

It's looming, the big 3-0. Seriously, where the f*ck has 30 years gone?! If I start contemplating it too much then I get incredibly emotional so let's breeze past that part and get straight to The List. 

Everyone has one, stored away somewhere, of things they want to do before X. Mine is a list of 30 things before 30, and with less than 5 months until my birthday I thought it was a good opportunity to review that list and see if I can tick off anything else. Some are quite generic, and others are more personal. I should say that this is my list, and not a list I think others should use as their own because everyone is different (although if you feel particularly inspired, feel free!).

1. Get a tattoo - 3 so far, and 2 more planned (sorry mum and dad).
2. Buy a house - Last year we bought our second house in a sweet little village in Yorkshire and I'm so in love with it. 
3. Ride a hot air balloon - Egypt at sunrise...it was pretty spectacular. 
4. Set foot on all continents - nope, not yet. Made good headway though.  
5. Volunteer - I loved working at Cats Protection, and even took home a furry friend from there after I lost my own cat. 

Summer Reading List

I'm counting down the days until our holiday to Sardinia (only 26 sleeps left!), and no plane journey and holiday by the beach is complete without a good selection of holiday reading. I'm doing a 2016 book challenge - 50 books in a year - and I'm doing pretty well, so 7 days in the sun will certainly help towards that.

I already have most of these either on my Kindle or hard copies, so don't really have to worry about spending a lot on books the way I normally do in the last few days before catching a plane/in the airport shops.

Foodie Finds: Gluten-Free Flapjack Recipe

I love baking, but rarely seem to get the chance these days between work, working on the house, working out and, erm, Pokemon GO...

Anyway, this flapjack was so quick and easy to whip up that any excuses I may have had went straight out the window. I wanted a recipe which was gluten free, no dairy, but bonded together nicely and had the perfect texture for flapjack. If you fancy giving it a go yourself, here's what you'll need:

200g gluten-free oats

75g dried cranberries

75g sultana/raisin mix

50g crushed almonds

Handful of mixed nuts/pumpkin seeds

Coconut oil

Raw honey

I always find it quite difficult to measure out how much coconut oil/honey I'll need, so it's a bit of a trial-and-error experience until you find the perfect amount. 

Mix well in a metal mixing bowl, and spoon into a baking tray lined with parchment, and into the oven at 150 for about 45 minutes. 

Et voila!

Instagram Round-Up

If you follow me on Instagram, this will be a dull post for you because you've already seen these photos. If not, here's what I've been up to this month!

Yoga progress! Nailing the headstand. I've been happy with my tripod headstand for a while now, but finally mastered the bound headstand, and forearm headstand, so I was pretty chuffed with myself, not going to lie. Also lifting a leg in wheel pose has been on my list for a while, and I finally felt grounded enough in the pose to give it a go - with success! I generally feel a lot stronger and in control of my body throughout the whole class or practice, and it's a wonderful feeling.

Who doesn't love a wedding? I've been lucky enough to go to two beautiful weddings in the last few weeks, and it was wonderful seeing my friends so happy.

Party and wedding planning! Wedding wise, the band and the registrar got booked in the last week, so it's all feeling SO real now. And a close friend and I booked a venue for our joint 30th birthday party. 30 already? Really?!

Food and friendship. Because who doesn't love toasted marshmallows and a good old catch-up?

What Yoga Means to Me

Two years ago, I couldn't hold a wheel pose for five seconds without falling out of it. I could touch my toes and stand on one leg, but awkwardly and with no finesse. I was OK at yoga, but lacked any basic concept of what it meant to be a yogi. And when I started a regular yoga class at Go Yoga in Harrogate, I was convinced being a yogi meant you were able to do the most complicated pose with ease, and standing on your head came as easily as drawing breath. It didn't take me long to figure out how wrong I was.

Cut forward six months, and I'm the girl at the back of the class with every muscle wound tight as a watch spring, angrily reciting to myself 'inner peace, inner peace...' whilst wondering to myself why on earth I didn't feel peaceful. Where was this 'zen' that other yogis talked about? Why was it avoiding me, what was I doing wrong? I still felt tense and wound-up, and after a class I sometimes came away more frustrated with myself than before. I could now do a pretty bloody good chakrasana (wheel pose), my warrior was always on point, and navasana (boat pose) felt like a breeze. Surely that was enough?

5 Tips for Working Out When You Just Don't Feel Like It

The weather at the moment just sucks, right Britain? We have a day or two of brilliant sunshine, and we're all in our shorts and sundresses buying food for the BBQ. Then the temperature plummets along with our moods, and the rainclouds appear. It does nothing for our motivation, and if you're feeling the drag of the gloomy days, you're not the only one. 

Working out on dreary, cold days is so much harder than when the sun is warming our skin. It's harder to pick up your trainers, harder to find the excitement for a long bike ride, and generally harder to get out of the house. This is a short list of things that have helped me get off my butt and work out, even on the most dismal of days.

1. Get it out of the way. Someone who is into their fitness isn't supposed to say this, right? I should be sickeningly positive at all times. However, sometimes I just can't be bothered, the same as you, and the thought of coming home after work and going for a run or hopping on my bike just isn't an enjoyable one. So the mornings are where it's at. Sure it's hard to get out of bed, but the plus sides are that you've already ticked off your day's exercise, and the streets/gym are likely to be quiet if you go early enough.