6st GONE! Weight Loss Journey

These are two photos that I've kept hidden for a long time. In fact they are the only two photos that were taken of me over a period of about 2 years. Would I pose for a photo....Hell no!!! as you can tell these top two photos were taken without my knowledge! One was put on facebook by a friend and she Tagged me in it. When it popped up in my news feed I nearly passed out! I knew I had put on weight but I had no idea it was that much!
Id crept into a size 20! I wouldn't have ANY full size mirrors in our home. The only mirror I would look into each hay was one to plaster my makeup on my face to make me feel better.
I knew I had to lose weight as I wanted to be able to walk up the stairs without breaking into a sweat and I wanted to stand at the school gate without covering up with a big jumper or coat in summer just to cover up.

I went to a Wedding fayre when we first got engaged and I looked at a dress from a wedding dress stall and thought it was beautiful! The woman who was working on the stall quickly rushed over and said....'oh gosh lovely! no good looking by there!...they wont fit!...the plus size are over there!' I had never felt so embarrassed in my whole life! Inside, my heart fell to the floor and I just smiled when I really wanted to cry and I just walked away. From that moment I promised myself that I would have whatever dress I wanted and no one was gonna tell me that I couldn't have this or that! I also promised myself that I wouldn't try on a single wedding dress on until id got nearer my goal.
I Joined Weight Watchers in Sept 2013. Please don't think I'm here to harp on about Weight Watchers but if your reading this then you are probably reading to find out how I did it.
I went along to my local weight watchers meeting and weighed in! The reason I knew something like Weight Watchers would work for me is I hate to fail so I saw each weigh in as a challenge and No way was I going to stand on the scales and have a gain!
Don't get me wrong, I did have a few weigh ins that resulted in me maintaining and even gaining but then it made me push harder for the loss the next week!
I found Weight watchers to be a fantastic plan and even now I still follow the plan somewhat! I think when you have lost so much weight on a specific plan that teaches you how to change your lifestyle it will always be part of you!
I weighed in at 15st 7.5lbs and in the photos on my wedding day I was 9st 8lbs.

It is sooooo achievable! you just need to make that leap and have the determination!

There are so many foods that I loved eating that I really didn't have to give up! Its amazing and has changed me for the better!

Do I want to go back to that woman on the dress stall at the wedding fayre and give her a piece of my mind....oh Hell yes! but on the other hand I'm a very strong believer in 'everything happens for a reason' and if it hadn't have been for that lady I would never have had the determination and drive to lose all of my weight!
Please don't think of this post as one that is saying everyone should lose weight. I know many over weight people that are the happiest and most confident people that I know! If your Happy, Fab! good on ya!. All i knew was that i was soooo unhappy and unhealthy and that's why I choose to lose weight.
If anyone have got any questions about Weight Watchers please feel free to ask! As Ive said I choose weight Watchers and it worked perfectly for me! I'm sure there are other plans that work well too but I've just been speaking on what worked for me!
NOTE:- Weight watchers have not asked me to do this review nor have I received any payment for this post.

Screams in the night

Over the past 3-5 months R has been having really bad nightmares and thankfully its been fairly easy to settle him by going into his room and reassuring him that its ok and that hes safe etc.

However over the last 2 months my poor little monkey keeps having a really bad dream where he litterely wakes up screaming crying so bad! He screams about bees/wasps being all over his bed/pillow and before you can get in his bedroom he's jumped out of his bed and is shaking and crying so bad!

We tried to reasure him and pop a lamp on and show him that there are no bees in his bed but the dream is so real to him that there is no reasoning with him and hes completely convinced that there are bees in his bed.

When these dreams happen the only thing that works is either Andy or myself sleeping on the floor on R's room (he usually ends up joing one of us on the floor). I know hes not attention seeking as it always happends in the middle of the night and hes genuinly sooo upset.

I really have no idea why these bad dreams about bees/wasps have come about because hes not had any bad experiences with bees or wasps yet hes had the same dream now about 5-6 times.

There is also nothing that had changed within our lives that may have upset him to cause any bad dreams.

Can anyone shine any light on this? do your little ones have many bad dreams?

Keepin em busy!

Well......the school holidays are here and our wedding is all done and dusted I figure that its time to plan some activities for munchkin while hes off school!

Its easy to get carried away within your day as a mum, cleaning, tidying, washing dishes, hanging the washing, etc etc and if your children are anything like mine they are constantly nagging... 'mummy! come and do this!' 'mummy can we play games?' 'mummy can you play with my cars' and at times I do find myself saying ' not now babe, Mummy is busy' so I'm making it my aim to do as many daily activities other than free play as I can with him. Here is what we ideas we have so far....

• Painting
• colouring
• Playing games
• Playdoh
• Music & Dance
• Cooking
• Role play (shop, house, hair dressers, picnic)
• Face painting
• Water play
• Sand play
• Gloop play
• Bubble blowing through a straw
• Making spider web around the living room
• Cutting and sticking
• Make fruit kebabs
• Fly a kite
• Feed the ducks
• Go on a treasure hunt and collect pine cones, etc
• Trip to the library

Obviously these are just some of the things we have come up with but you can find loads of activities on pintrest (yes I'm completely obsessed with pintrest).
I would love to know all of your plans with your little ones throughout the summer holidays!

Colouring isnt just for kids!

I finally gave into my temptation and bought one of the adult colouring books that I've seen around for ages! I'd seen them in Asda, wh smiths, The range and a few other places and thought it was a fab idea as I LOVE to colour and always have so as soon as R gets his colouring book out my eyes light up!

I've been having a lot of stress put on me lately with the wedding coming closer and peoples unwanted views and tantrums becoming much more frequent.

I began to realise that a lot of my day was spend in front of a screen, maybe a phone, ipad, laptop or tv so I wanted something that would de stress me and not involve me being infront of any type of screen! So I decided that I would pick up the next colouring book that I saw! 

It happened to be in Asda so I picked up some cheap colouring markers and pencils to go with it and promised myself that I wouldn't let R get his mitts on them as that's where all of my stationary seems to go lately. 

I think the colouring book was around the £6 mark which seems extremely expensive however when you see the amount of pages and the detail in some of the pictures you will understand that they take a while to complete!

Here are some that I've completed. I don't claim to be an artist. I just just colour how I want when I want and where I want.

 

As you can see by the pictures below and the one above they do contain a lot of detail.

I would highly recommend these colouring books for adults as they certainly destress me and give me enjoyment.

Our BIG day!

Sooooo......our big day had come and gone and it went amazingly!

alot of the bits and bobs I did myself as I love being creative.

We have another few weeks before we get the official photos back but I have some that either family or myself have photographed.

So here is my table plan that I made. Its done on a mirror and each table is printed on pearlescent ivory card with ivory satin ribbon finished off with a brooch which I bought from Imagine doing it yourself and hot glued them on.

I bought the mirror from 'The Range'

Here are the table numbers that I made! I basically printed onto pearlescent card i then added ivory satin ribbon finished off with a brooch and diamantes on the numbers. I them backed them on a champagne card to add a bit of our colour scheme.

This is our guest book that we had made to match our wedding invites! This and the invitations were made by a fab company called byjo

I bough many different hair accessories for the bridesmaids many of which cost £30+ each but in the end this is what we ended up going with. The hair dressers put them at the top of their messy buns and they looked Fab! as you can see they are from Primark for £2.50.

My dress was something I really wasn't looking for and I was 100% looking for lace and every lace dress I tried on looked horrid on my so the girl in the shop suggested that i pick something to try on that is the complete opposite to what I've been looking for and from the second it went on I fell absolutely in love with it! The support this dress gives you is unreal! 

Its a Sottero and midgely dress called adorae!

I purchased it from an amazing shop Called All about eve who have shops in Newport and chepstow. I would recommend this dress shop to everyone as the service is outstanding and the selection is amazing!

As you can see from the above and below photos we had an ice cream trike! This was an amazing addition to our big day and all of our guests loved the idea (and the ice cream) a variety of cones, ice cream and toppings were available which saw Rohan eating 5 ice creams....yes 5!!!

The company we used was Icicle tricycle wales and he is amazing and so easy to get on with!

We only did a small candy buffet as we had another edible product going on too!

The jars were bought in home bargains (£1.99) along with the candy floss (29p each) im sure that we also bought the sign there too which was under £2.

The buckets were something i already had and also the heart bowls

(I do have some of the jars, bowls and scoops for sale)

We also had a chocolate heart from funky fountains that was filled with yummy chocolates!

I wanted to add a special something to my bouquet in memory of my mum so i added something blue to it too!  

We had this tshirt made for Rohan to wear the evening before the wedding as we were having a family meal then he could wear it the evening of the wedding as i wanted to change him into something more comfortable. I went into a uniform shop and they did us and amazing deal of £7 for the tshirt and printing.

Im in absolute love with our cake! i'd changed it about 3 times but im so so so glad that we settled with this one! The tiers we went for top to bottom is lemon, carrot, sponge and fruit. We choose to cut up the fruit one as dessert for the evening. 

We had an amazing dance floor and up lighters in the evening 

for my flowers i went for a bouquet mixed with roses, hydrangea and peonies all in ivory shades and the bridesmaids had ivory and pink roses.

For place names we hunted charity shops and boot sales for a year to be able to spell each guests name! I then glued the letters of each name together and painted the wooden scrabble holders in the peppermint blue to add some extra colour to the tables.

The bridesmaids dresses were one shoulder in a peppermint colour to go with the champagne.

For our chair covers we went for a white spandex with a satin champagne colour sash.

Over all we had the most amazing day it was so stress free! we opted for a very relaxed documentary approach with the photography which ment that we didn't have loads of people being dragged here there and everywhere.

I will be adding some of the professional photos soon! 

keep your eyes peeled!

Car boot sales! My top 10 tips

Evening all,
As many of you would have read in my recent blog post we are short on money and I've been trying to make as much money as we possibly can.
So my alarm was set and the boxes were ready to load into the car for an early morning car boot sale.
I'd managed to smuggle some toys away from munchkin as he has way to many that he doesn't play with and my inlaws had given me some bits and bobs of theirs to get rid of.

Soooo.....perching your bum inside your open yet uncomfortable car boot while in a muddy field, with bitter winds at 7 am in the morning isn't my idea of a lazy Sunday morning but hey! Somethings gotta give if we are gonna get some money.
My plan was to keep low prices to sell more! My dad came and had a cuppa with me and to my surprise hubs-2-b brought munchkin up for a walk and to see all the toys I'd secretly robbed from him his mummy!

Munchkin found it amazing to be able to wander around in the boot of the car and put people's money in our cash box (he's convinced that the money is for Butlins).

Anyways lots of things sold....it amazes me at what people will buy at boot sales. It is defiantly true that 'one mans junk is another mans treasure'. When sorting through the garage I'd found a cutlery tray that didn't fit in our draw in out new house. The woman gave me £1 for it and all I could thing was.....you could probably get a brand new one in the pound shop! But she was happy...and so was I.

We found ourselves drooling over all of the passersby with huge burgers and hot dogs....a handful of times I nearly gave into the temptation of a dirty treat but kept thinking of the money.

The joyful time came for me to pack up and go home (Yey!) couldn't wait to warm up and have a nice cuppa.
After getting home munchkin hindered helped while I counted my money. After taking out the cost of the pitch (£5) and my float for the cash tin (£20) we actually earned £120 which I'm really pleased about because when my alarm went off I was considering hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep! So I'm glad that I dragged myself out of bed.

I would really recommend doing a boot sale to get rid of items while earning some cash. Here are my 10 top tips!

1) Do your research into good boot sales in your area

2) Box up items in advance and stick prices on them

3) Take plenty of carrier bags

4) Take a cash float of change

5) wrap up warm or take sun cream depending on the weather

6) Take a flask and some food so that your not temped to spend your earnings on the burger van

7) Take a sturdy table. Papering tables are good but use something to support the middle underneath

8) Be prepared for hagglers....it's a boot sale....it's gonna happen

9) If you're going for a walk don't take too much money, that way you can't be tempted to buy loads.

10) Make sure all disks, CD's, games & DVD are in their boxes.

I'd be interested to know all your thoughts, feelings and experiences with car boot sales.