It’s been a little while…
As we are well into 2018 now I thought I’d do a bit of a recap on things that I’m loving right now. This is fairly more organisational based but I will have a bumper favourites post at the end of the month.
Reading more
Towards the end of 2017 I got into a regular routine with reading more. I was getting through my TBR pile fairly quickly and this is something I want to continue. I got a load of books for Christmas which was awesome as it has stacked up my TBR pile nicely and given me some choices about what to read next. I’ve got the latest Alice Hoffman book on the go at the moment, finally a prequel to Practical Magic!I’ve also been using Scribd* for reading books and also for listening to audiobooks too. My last audiobook was Ready Player One which I really enjoyed.
Advent calendars, beauty gifts and sales
I feel like I’ve spent most of the month so far sorting through items I got in my Marks and Spencer advent calendar, beauty gifts and also purchases from the January sales. I’ve definitely stocked up again on Soap & Glory and I’ve now got a great selection of Sanctuary Spa goodies to try. I’ve really got back into Sanctuary Spa and I’m enjoying having more pamper time. It’s great to have a try of everything from the advent calendar with more time.
Joseph f***ing Tate
I only watch one English television soap – Emmerdale. I sometimes watch Coronation Street but about once every six weeks, I still manage to follow the storylines even when I don’t watch it that much!
Anyway, over Christmas I’d stopped watching Emmerdale because family time didn’t involve Emmerdale haha! So I caught up on about two weeks worth last week and OH MY GAWD. I’m not doing spoilers but everyone must have seen it now and I can’t have been the only one shouting at the TV “it’s Joseph f***ing Tate” like they’ve just uncovered the biggest secret in the world.
I do enjoy a villain. I do enjoy a soap opera based villain but there’s so much more to this. So much history.
I know it’s not real but in my escapism, it really is so good.
Get Toned
In 2016 I made a decision to really try and lose some more weight after noticing that my clothes were getting a bit tighter. By the Easter of 2017 I had lost about 3 stone and had towards the end of that time not been really making an effort. One of my problems before has been that I’ve lost weight and then put it back on straight away. I seemed to have found more of a way to stay the same, which was progress.
With that progress – which was amazing and I’m not knocking it AT ALL. Within that came the fact I had completely got to a level where it seemed difficult to lose any more too. I started more on core exercises and doing some of the 30 day challenges. I even got good at planking!
Although there were some very hilarious moments in the early days of trying to plank where I was pretty much nosediving to the floor after 5 seconds.
Anyway, I started towards the end of 2017 of adding some weights to my training. I’m still starting off slow but making sure I do enough reading about what I’m doing. If you’re interested I’ve found Bret Contreras on Instagram to be really informative and helpful.
Planning!
I’m always planning but I don’t do my yearly planning at the beginning of every year. I still work on a school term system so I do this back in September – mainly because the back to school stationery goes into the sales!
I generally prefer to do the ‘big’ planning time at September and then revise it in January and then again after my birthday in May. My plans in September were to do more travelling in 2018 and the end part of 2017 involved a lot of saving to accomplish that. Also we are tackling a few home based projects this year and I made a list to get what we could in the January sales.
I generally love planning and it really helps keep a handle on my anxiety.
* Scribd referral is of no extra cost to you. You get two months free and I get a month free. Yay, bookworms!
