parkrunning and touring since 2013!
Hey- just a quick one from me.
In my super technical way I have put the names in a pot, and pulled out a winner of the Zalando voucher– Ffion! Congratulations! You might get the voucher directly emailed to you-if not email me and I will find out.
(And if anyone is wondering why I am doing this in the middle of the day it is because I have some sort of stomach bug, so have been off work yesterday and today- bleurgh).
Hey peeps, I hope you all had a lovely weekend.
Friday was a bit of a rush, as I had to get to Kings Cross for Friday evening- luckily the traffic driving home was fine, and we made it! Even had time to buy a sandwich to eat on the train.
The Eurostar goes to Brussels, so then it was another train ride to Bruges- we arrived at our hotel pretty late, but were up bright and early the next morning for a lovely wander around. We had breakfast at the Gingerbread Teahouse (is there a more perfect name than that?), and spent hours walking around the streets admiring the pretty buildings, the park, the canals etc. I had a waffle for lunch, and Andy had frites (half the reason for us going there!).
Taken with my mobile to use as a background- Andy took some proper pictures!
In the evening we went for a walk around the Christmas markets- they are so pretty all lit up. There was an ice skating rink, and all the buildings had white lights (I don’t like coloured lights)- there was music playing but none of that Slade rubbish. It looked like a Christmas movie, only it was real!
Today we went back to the Gingerbread tearoom for breakfast (they did the most amazing hot chocolate, which was chocolate chips in the bottom of a cup, with steamed milk poured on top, so you had to stir it and melt the chocolate mmmm), and did a spot of shopping. Actually quite a bit of shopping!
I bought this cute reindeer top! The shop had a cute bear one, and a penguin one (but it was red, which I don’t like to wear)- they had lovely PJ’s too, but I stuck with the top.
I bought a magnet from the Christmas markets- that is what all the buildings look like! Plus some dark chocolate with hazelnuts, cute little Christmas chocolates (holly leaves, reindeer, Christmas trees, snowmen etc) and some rice crispy chocolates which we were going to eat for lunch today but forgot.
As well as selling chocolates, loads of the shops had logs of marzipan in the windows, in many flavours (mocha, chocolate, cherry, hazelnut..)- I bought a slice of pistachio and a slice of orange- sounds so good. Plus this speculoos spread which I think is a cinnamon biscuit?
We decided not to go to any of the museums (eg the chocolate museum) and Andy suggested I spend the money on buying chocolate instead. I bought a little tin (they were everywhere too, and I decided that it would be good to store teabags in)- anyway it would have been rude not to buy a little chocolate figure to go in it.
Whoops, when I got home my Montezuma’s order had arrived- special Christmas hot chocolate (orange and spice flavour) and some yummy coated fruits, plus a free sample of hand cream! Exciting. I think we have plenty of sweet treats to keep us going for a long time!
Anyway, I had never been to Bruges before, but I loved it. It was such a pretty town, there were so many lovely buildings to see, and pretty shops, and the Christmas market was just lovely, not tacky at all. It really put me in a festive mood. I still think it is amazing that we can get the train across to Europe, and now it is high speed it is so quick. It took us longer to get up to Newcastle than it took for us to get there.
I would love to visit there again. Have you ever been to Bruges before? Or any Christmas market? I fancy Salzburg next year, and next week we are off to Bath! I might explode tinsel everywhere in a minute!
PS> You still have time to enter the giveaway for the Zalando voucher- I have had a bit of problem with comments going to the spam, so it might be worth a check if you have entered- check that your comment has come up I mean. x
Hey peeps
Gosh it has been windy! I hope everyone had a lovely weekend. I did an 8.3 mile run on Sunday morning, and got home starving. Then I remembered that I had some rhubarb that needed planting out, and I really have to do it in daylight hours, so decided to have a snack and head there right away. Lucky I went, as our shed had blown over- it is a 6ft high metal shed- think all my body pump training came in handy as there was no-one about to help me.
Anyway, on Sunday evening I did the next cake decoration. I decided on snowmen, and I could not find good instructions on the internet, so I sort of free-styled.
I decided to have them sat on a blue circle (ice?) surrounded by stars, so I made them first. Then I made the snowmen with little balls of icing, and ribbons of icing for the scarves.
The eyes were hard to do (and buttons) as I had to roll the black icing into tiny balls, and in the end I used a cocktail stick to push them in to place.
Anyway, I was quite pleased with how they turned out. I think they need little hats though.
On Monday I went on a short run, as I was a bit stiff from Sunday and I thought it might help. Then I did more decorating!
I keep my cutters in those gingerbread tins- they are so cute 🙂
I had some little ones (I made these as a surprise for Andy, but he has seen them!)- these ones were easy as I have little gingerbread man cutters, and to make the candy canes I twisted together two ropes of icing. Then I made the little hearts as I had some red left over.
I got a ribbon cutter from the Amazon black Friday deals (which went on all week), and I had a go at using it to make a ribbon to surround one of the cakes, but I realised after that I had put it together wrong- anyway the icing still sort of came out in a ribbon.
Now I have one cake left- I think I am going to go with penguins. I loved the idea of reindeers, but when I was looking the antlers looked very fiddly. Lots of places used pretzels but I am not sure they would last- anyway it has given me an idea for baking for the school Christmas fayre 🙂
This evening I went to aerobics- it was a bit of a rush because they have moved it to an earlier slot, but I made it and it was still great- I have not been there for weeks. It feels good to be getting back to my old routine again.
On a side note, I have been loving muesli for breakfast this week (and last). I normally have porridge, but if I do not feel 100% then I get really put off it, so I go to muesli with cold milk instead. Not sure why. Anyway, it has been a nice change, and I have some mint tea to warm me up still.
Oh, and also check out my last post for a giveaway 🙂
Night 🙂
Hey peeps
I hope you are all having a lovely weekend, and not getting too wet.
On Saturday I was very excited to see I had a parcel delivered:
They came with pretty wrapping paper too.
I was contacted by Zalando to see if I would like to review their services- of course I said yes! I had already had my eye on a couple of pairs of boots from there, so I put the voucher towards them. They had a great selection of women’s shoes on there- the only problem was deciding which ones to buy!
I could not wait to try them on! I wanted some boots that I could wear with trousers to work, as I either have big boots (to wear with dresses) or sort of pumps (for when I wear trousers), which are no good in the rain. Verdict? A great fit, comfy, and I think they look quite nice too.
I would recommend Zalando- I love it when on-line places have free delivery, and this delivery was speedy because I only ordered them on Wednesday evening.
I found the website pretty easy to navigate, although when you are browsing it can come up with pages and pages of items as they seem to have a massive amount of products available. I did find that you could narrow the results by selecting colour (I knew I wanted grey boots), size, brand name, type of boot etc (eg flat/ heels etc) which made it easier to use.
The feature I really liked was the wish basket- I know a lot of on-line places have them now but I find it so useful. I had a couple of pairs of boots which I added to it, and then instead of having to go back and search, they were both on the same page and I could compare and select the ones I wanted.
Now I know not everyone would buy shoes (or clothes) over the internet, but I frequently do- my feet are a pretty standard size 5, and generally most brands fit just fine. But they do offer a 30 day return, in case things don’t fit, which is really good.
They also have a great range of sportswear, and some lovely little Christmas gifts too.
Anyway, they also kindly have offered a voucher (for £10 or European equivalent) as a giveaway prize.
So, as I am not really up with the modern fashions, I thought it might be fun if you go to their website, have a look and suggest what you think would be your top fashion buy of Winter 2012.
Leave a comment below telling me what you think it is.
You can also get an extra entry by liking my facebook page (link on my homepage), or by mentioning this in a post on your own blog. Just leave a comment to let me know you have done so. It will close on Monday 3rd December at 8am UK time. Entries will be drawn out of a bowl (or possibly a hat, maybe a winter woolly one) at some point after that, and then the lovely Zalando people will email the winner with their voucher code to use on the site.
So go, educate me about fashion! 🙂 Good luck!
Hooray!
Hooray for so many reasons! It is the weekend (at long last! It has been a busy week, and I spent Friday night back at work as we were running the PTA quiz). I am feeling better (also at long last, in fact longer). I went on a run this morning before the rain! It was a speedy run- 4 miles with every mile under 10 mins! Usually I can keep it up for 3, but not 4. Feeling it now though!
Breakfast of pumpkin choc chip pancakes + apple was well needed! (I started off making pancakes with some protein powder I was sent with an i-herb order, but it turned green, and smelled so bad- really sickly, and it reminded me of the old protein powder I had before, and why I just don’t get on with protein powder, so anyway I made a second batch with just flour and they were scrumptious).
Plus, I got to start decorating my cakes today. Hooray!
Originally we were going to go in to London for the day, but seeing as the weather forecast predicted torrential rain, we gave it a miss. In fact it was not raining at all when I woke up, so I was pleased to squeeze the run in. Instead we have been sorting out things at home- we had to buy new blinds for a couple of windows- so anyway while we were out we went to the little cake decorating shop nearby and I bought some red and black icing.
I had to ice the final cake, as I had run out of icing when I did the other ones.
Then I got down to colouring the icing- I bought red and black as apparently they are hard to make, but the green and brown could be coloured using the little gel colours that I have.
I tried to follow the instructions from this recipe, but when I clicked on the step by step bit it would not work.
I thought they still looked cute anyway.
All assembled on the cake!
This one is for my Mum and Dad, as they love birds, and bird watching, so I thought robins would be perfect for them. I think it needs a red ribbon or something, to set off the red of the robins, but I can do that later. I did buy some ribbon, but then this week I bought an icing ribbon cutter thing as it was super cheap on Amazon (love the black Friday deals), so I could try to make ribbon with icing. I got some bargain tins from Sainsbury’s last week (reduced to £1.95) so I am keeping them in those before I give them away. The cake boards don’t fit in the tins which is why they are on silver foil.
Now I need to decide how to do the other ones. I quite fancy penguins this year. Any other ideas?
How have you all been? We are off to see some friends this evening, so no more decorating for me today! Have a lovely weekend 🙂