A Catch Up – Decorating, Food, and Planning

I haven’t blogged in a while, mainly because I have been so busy. But I have really missed not sitting at the computer and pouring out my words and just writing.

I love to write and it keeps me sane, if I am totally honest, it distresses me and makes me calmer, and more focused. When I don’t write I miss it a lot, and I don’t like going long periods not writing. But life happens, and that is what has been happening recently.

We have been so busy the past week, good busy but slightly mental, and blogging has really taken a back seat.

Mr has been working manically on the house, and one wall has completely gone with the other being adapted this weekend. It was a job that didn’t take long in the kitchen but the clean up was vast and we are still in the middle of it, the clean up inside is completed but our garden is another story where the rubbish is currently sitting and waiting to be moved. It was and still is a big job, what we are doing downstairs, but the end is finally in sight and it is getting exciting knowing that hopefully very soon it will only be cosmetic work left to do down here, which I am sure will take just as long if not longer than the work we have been doing so far. But the kitchen is now huge, and the space we have gained is fantastic and it is all being used.

The other thing that is really taking up a lot of my time, is diet.

I have eagerly brought lots of new cookbooks, including the fabulous Deliciously Ella, that I am currently reading like a massive chick flick hit.

I have been wanting to cut our sugar as a family down for months, and it is something that I have really struggled with I am a chocoholic there is no denying that, and I am a person that doesn’t drink a lot either. Neither are brilliant things to be honest, but I really don’t want the boys to be like that. Both Mr L and I comfort eat and again I don’t want the boys to do that. Over the years we have got comfortable and it is not an unusual event for us to be sat in front of the TV one with a bag of chocolate and the other with a tub of ice cream. I don’t want to go teetotal, to be honest neither of us have that many vices, but at the same time, I know what we are doing is not good and I want us to be healthy and be around for the boys. So I have been making changes slowly, but they haven’t always been that good. A lot of the time I know what I need, we need to do, but I am so uninspired with food it is not my thing and I would much rather grab a stonking great slice of cake than eat something healthy.

I did Juice Plus last year, and after a break I have gone back to it. Because I know I don’t eat that brilliantly, and I know I often will miss breakfast as I am dealing with the boys in the morning. It is a lot easier to grab a shake and pile it up with fruit than it is to try to create a healthy breakfast, and I like the shakes. I am not a great food lover, so when I do like something it is always good to go with it. But it is the other things that I need to get to grips with, it is the snacking and the eating of the meals, rather than going for cakes and pies I wanted us all to eat better. So I have been reading researching and trying to find something that will suit all of us, as a family, as I don’t want to be making different meals every evening. I also don’t want to be doing elaborate meals as I am not a fan of cooking.

I have gone back to listening to my Thinking Slimmer Slimpods, in the hope that this time I will run a good course with them, as I have attempted these a few times before and I do just stop listening, which is a totally silly idea, but this time I want to finally get to grips with the chocolate and start making them a part of my daily routine.

But I also want to change the food. I have heard such great things about the Deliciously Ella book that I decided to take the plunge and buy it. I am fascinated about Ella’s story and have been dipping in and out of her book for the last few days, trying a few things here and there. So far always with success, and ease, so it is something I really want to continue. I have to be honest I have always been a little put off as a lot of food seems to have nuts in which brings Mr L out in an awful rash so we really try to avoid in our house, but after reading the nut section in-depth I am willing to change the recipes and add pumpkin seeds in the ones I want to try instead, and see if I can make the recipes that way.

I am currently finishing of the book, and working out a food plan for the week so that I can do a big food shop with everything that I will need. I am determined to make a go of this and I am hoping the boys wont really notice the change as they are just enjoying the food and not thinking about the fact that there is no bad things in there! But it is a very long work in progress, as is the Thinking Slimmer, the Juice Plus, and my own personal journey with chocolate and drinking.

As well as renovating, reorganising the house, and trying to get to grips with a whole new way of eating for the whole family, I am also trying to get more organised full stop.

At the beginning of the year, I changed the way we as a family wrote our information down and how we organised things on a weekly and daily basis and developed our own little family hub, which I still love and use all the time. But there were a few things wrong with it. Last year I started to use bullet journalling and I really loved the way a bullet journal worked, but within my family hub I had brought a week to view diary, thinking that would actually be good enough for me with working from home, and only having the children’s activities to deal with as well. But I quickly discovered that I really didn’t like that format. I wanted to go back to a page per day diary, but at the same time, that also didn’t suit everything that I wanted from a diary, so I have tweaked it a lot, and am actually just working on a monthly basis at the moment. Just to see if what I have done I do like. I have lots of sections for each page, and am using a selection of different post it notes for different things, because I don’t want to have book after book of lists and notes, I want to be able to see all the things I need to see and remember in one place. But again it is all a little trial and error, to see if it is actually going to work or not. But it is certainly keeping me busy working out if I like the new set up or not.

So there are many things happening at the moment, and we don’t really stop at all, juggling every ball going at times, but still managing not to drop any at the moment. But I do need to find a way to be productive, rather than just running around and not doing anything productive at all.