3rd June - Diet Diary

So today Russ & I went for a massive food shop as that time came where too many things needed replacing. Oh Tesco how expensive do you want to be? We normally shop in Aldi but Tesco have a much better rang of everything :( So £96.00 down we have a ridiculously healthy fridge.

So today for breakfast I had shredded wheat with a little bit of sugar -  calories

Mid day snack of prawn cocktail crisps - 130 calories. ( anyone else noticed they've made the packets tiny now? Probably to make it seem like they're full instead of completely empty like the old packs!)

Lunch time - I made a bacon vegetable salad (I hate regular salad bleugh!) I used spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and sprouts, with pancetta and a couple of new potatoes.  -  calories

Dinner - We will be having chicken breast, with sweet potato fries and baked beans! Mainly because I've already used my achieved my healthy 5 a day already and fancy being naughty.

Exercise-wise = I am taking the puppies for a walk each this afternoon so about 1 hour of walking and I'll be doing my 30 day shred routine again which burns around 130-140 calories.

My Fitness Pal tells me I only have to work out to burn 940 calories a week to lose 1 pound a week in combination with a healthier diet of 1200 calories or less.

My aim is to be slimmer by my 21st birthday & graduation!! :)

2nd June - Today is a new day!!

So I've been really depressed lately about my weight, I mentioned a few months ago that I hated how much weight I had put on but with all the university stress, I had no motivation or energy to do anything about it. So whilst I'm sat around applying for jobs, I'm going to start today!

I've done well so far, I woke up motivated, not just for exercise but in general. I suffer with depression clinically, and it often comes in waves so some days its just difficult waking up, let alone going for a jog. I'm doing a 5 day trial at the gym by me soon, I just have to buy ink for my printer to print it off! But today I'm getting the house all sorted and getting our life back on track as it all got ahead of me during the last wave. I'm going to be using my fitness pal to calculate my calories & i'm going to use my blog to keep a track of how I'm getting on! Because now my laptop is fixed I have no excuse :)


It's now 1.30pm - I've had breakfast and lunch!

Breakfast - I had an egg and two pieces of toast - 222 calories

Lunchtime - I had spagetti with a stilton and parmesan sauce (naughty) - 524 calories.


Dinner - I had breaded cod with broccoli, cauliflower, mange tout and baby sweetcorn.

I did have a late snack - naughty! I had low calorie ice-cream with some sprinkles!


I did my 30 day shred workout which I started today, and I did a tone-it-up arm workout! Feeling very good about myself :)

Irritated with ASOS!

Mini rant alert! I ordered my benefit moisturiser from ASOS last week, and since I've moved I added in my new address whilst placing the order and then checked out. What I was not aware of was that even though you select 'add new address for delivery' it doesn't automatically send to that address. So even though I've moved to a different city, my moisturiser was being delivered to my old address. So immediately in the morning when I realised I contacted the customer service team - who only operate on twitter, lots of conspiracy about how they don't like to speak to customers on the phone. Easier to stop speaking to a person online than hang up on someone on the phone..

Anywhoo, it had only been 12 hours since I placed the order, and my package was still being packed for delivery. 2 days later, it was despatched & I was told that they were not able to change the address. Even though the bloody package was in their possession for 2 days. Simply don't send it out. I asked to cancel the order, because at ASOS you pay straight away even before receiving the package. After a long winded and angry series of tweets, they said they would attempt to contact the individual courier.. of which I've heard nothing. They told me I would need to get in contact with the current occupants myself. Even though they apologised for the mistake their system had made, it's bloody ridiculous. My life is pretty much crap at the moment, and all I wanted was a new moisturiser to try & sort my skin out, and not even that can go right! Plus unhelpful customer service drives me crazy!!

Really need to sort themselves out - will definitely be driving to the nearest city to purchase my moisturiser from house of fraser instead of bothering to order with them again. Meant to be for convenience, and it's just caused massive stress. Now I have to go through the irritating process of contacting my bank and making them get my money back.

xoxoxoxox

What does the future hold?

I had an amazing dream last night, so much so I snoozed my alarm three times and Russ left me to sleep an extra hour as I refused to wake up! What was this dream about? Well something quite broody actually, I dreamt that we had a baby, and she was 2 weeks old at the time. The entire dream consisted of using going shopping for her new outfits, according to my dream self I only purchased two onsies for her, and she'd been living in them for two whole weeks - evil mother. She had short blonde curly hair (like Russ when he was younger) and green eyes, very adorable...

It's not a surprise that I then woke up saddened that it was not reality and that Russ had not impregnated me. I mean I'm 21, but my news feed on facebook is full of people who have got pregnant younger than I am, and are living with babies and posting all their snaps of their happy little family. So a girl is definitely going to be feeling a slight tinge of jealousy even if she has two puppy babies of her own. This led to an hour of me walking round like a mother looking for her child, until Russ told me 'not for a few more years Lauren', then I had to go for a jog with Ella to get it out of my head. We had a lurvely time, I love walks with Ella through the country, we walk for 95% and jog for 5% but it gets my heart rate up and she loves the little bursts of running. Plus it's a beautiful day so I'm feeling much happier!

Anywhoo! What does the future ACTUALLY hold for us?

Well as you may know we moved into our new rented house in March, and we're staying here for at least a year and a half till September 2014. Then the road in unclear!! Which is exciting & terrifying at the same time. I am doing a masters in Applied Child Psychology which takes 1 year and ends in September, which will prepare me for doing my Phd, till then I have to find somewhere that focuses on my speciality and apply a year in advance?! HAHAHA - stress. Whilst Russ is maybe applying for masters, but thinks he will just work full time for a year and save up money for his studies :) it will be strange if we're both not studying because that's all we've ever known each other to do!

No luck as yet with the temp agency, they've called me about a few jobs, but never got back to me. Slightly disheartening, I did apply for a job which I thought would be lots of fun, and hopefully they will get back to me - fingers crossed please!! Plus I need to get back to taking photos now that it's becoming sunny again, for some reason when it rains I lose all motivation to take snaps of how depressing life is! Here's a couple of photos for you :)

Here's Linky sitting on the back seat for the first time! Russ' mum came to visit, and we took Lincoln to a massive car boot sale, he did amazingly well considering he's scared of people sometimes and he let lots of children stroke him :) very proud of my big baby!

As I said Russ' mum came to stay with us for a weekend, and on the Saturday my mum also came to visit. Together they helped us create a window seat for our Lounge! It's a pastel silky pink to tie in with the theme and it's so comfy and padded. Amazing was two ladies can accomplish when they put their heads together. 

My patchwork quilt is also on it's way, very exciting! I am having a break from it, as soon as my exams finished I got really into doing my patchwork, but then Russ' mum visited and told me my stitches were not strong enough and that I needed to re-do them, see how many there are?! Not impressed :( But! At least almost 1/7 is finished, there will be 6 more sections like this, and they will then be stitched together to make a quilt. I felt like this was the easiest way to make the quilt without having a massive piece to work with :) Very excited!!!!

Lots of love,

Lauren :)

xoxoxoxooxox

Update on Animal Testing!

Wayne from Goss Makeup Artist on Youtube posted a video recently that explained that in the EU all make up brands have to be manufactured without using animal testing! This limits them from testing on animals and also anyone they source from testing on animals. This is fantastic news and means that we in the UK do not have to worry about animal testing, because any product they sell to us legally has to have not been tested on animals to be legally sold. This is amazing news for anyone like me who loves the big brands like MAC and Estee Lauder's companies! Wayne explains that this is why MAC have released fewer limited collections recently whilst they are adjusting to the new manufacturing laws.


Heaven's have answered! Thank you government organisations for seeing that something is wrong, and doing something about it for once. Brilliant news!

Wow...my last post was at the end of March, it's now the end of May. Whoopsy.

I apologise for my absence, I say that so frequently on this blog, but unfortunately from March- now I have been completely distracted by work for my degree! I had to hand in my final copy of my dissertation, which now I'm extremely worried about! I felt like I had done really well, but now it's been a month since handing it in, and we do not find out our grade until mid-June so doubt is beginning to set in! I also had my exams this month, and was working like a maniac to prepare myself for them, I revised in a way I never have before so I might do a post about that because it worked ridiculously well for me. It might not be everyone's cup of tea, and not everyone will be able to do it, my boyfriend is quite annoyed that he can't but I did not feel nervous for any exam, and felt so confident afterwards which I have no felt before so great time to feel good about my work in my last year of my degree! SO now I have completely finished university for my undergraduate degree! I calculated based on my previous assignments so far, that for half of my degree, I have scored 68.9 on average, which means I am 1% below a first honours. So annoying, but hopefully with my dissertation and exams worth so much, maybe I did well enough to push it over the edge! Fingers crossed, but I'll be very happy with a high 2:1 as thats what I need for my masters course.

Wow - it's hailing outside and it's May, what is happening to the world! Where is the sun? In Britain we had a week of beautiful sunshine during revision time - typical. And then it went away, and now it's just rain, hail, cloudyness. Absolute terrible; so disappointed mother nature come on, we need some bright sunshine to lighten up these dreary times! Anywhoo I noticed that I've had over 1000 views to this little blog, which made me so happy! I was very surprised considering I barely have subscribers and no-one really comments, so I always feel like I'm waffling on to myself. Alas, I will continue to talk to whoever is out there reading :)

Now as my degree has come to an end, I feel very weird because I constantly feel like I need to be doing work, or have reading to do, which I clearly don't. I've even emailed my course leader for my masters asking for a reading list, it's terrible! This may be due to the fact that I also quit my job recently. I had a horrible boss, and could not really stand working in that horrible environment any longer, so I bit the bullet and quit. I am registered with a temporary admin agency who find you receptionist/admin work so I have some sort of job. However, when I signed up, I said I need two weeks till my exams are over and then I can work full time for you. They then rang me three times in the last week about several jobs, all of which I had to reject because I had exams like I had previously told them. Then this week, they've only called me about one job and said that they had to send CVs off for a candidate to be chosen...now I feel like I have no purpose in life, no drive. So I thought, I'm going to do some work on my blog. In my research for my future career path, I've been quite scared about the prospects. I do not attend a red-brick university, so how likely am I to be accepted to one for a phd course? I have no idea, so I thought, instead of worrying, I'm just going to prepare myself to be excellent in what I do, so that when I do apply, I know it's not based on my abilities but simply my academic background (aka, where I come from) that affects whether I get let in! Which I think is likely to happen, so I'm trying to prepare myself.

I didn't know whether or not you would mind if I wrote a few posts on here about psychology and things I find interesting when I research? Just thought it might be interesting to learn a few random bits of information you might not know unless you study psychology! Well because no-one ever comments really I'm going to take that for a yes and start uploading some!

Also it was Ella & Lincoln's 1st birthday this year! Ella was 1 on the 27th of April and Lincoln was 1 on the 5th May! It's so strange we adopted them at such different stages in life, yet they were born a week apart. SO glad to have them both in my life now at least! But I do get sad that I couldn't give Lincoln a home until he was 6 months old, he must have gone through such hard times until then, I mean he is still scared of a lot of things, and he has scars on his beautiful face that you only notice when he has his head snuggled into your lap - yes he is very spoilt but after being alone on the streets for half his life, I think it's all he deserves! :)

P.s. Been majorly obsessed with Elementary & Hart of Dixie lately, I finished the Elementary season and oh my lord, brilliant. I love Lucy Lui as an actress and I'm glad she's in something I can watch all the time! Also Hart of Dixie, is just addictive in terms of the southern feel, I keep slipping into a deep south accent which is really annoying my boyfriend because I'm British & it just does not sound right. However I do get ridiculously annoyed by Zoe Hart thinking she is in love with George even though she's only kissed him once, not had enough interactions with him to warrant full blown love. Now I understand why young children think they are in love all the time, because the media makes it seem like a tiny thing that is achievable after one date. That is infatuation, difference. The word love is thrown around way too much, but more of that later! Finally, I have become obsessed with patchwork! I started making a patchwork quilt, I'd had the bits for about 8 months but now I'm finally getting around to making it & I love it! Here's a picture of it a few days ago, it's bigger now but I'll write a post about it! Because I love it too much not to share! I might also try the tone-it-up way of life, or just simply more healthy but maybe when it's not too rainy and I may actually like to go outside.

Have a great day!

xoxoxox

My lord I apologise for my Absence!

My life has been chaotic the last few weeks let me tell you that! So I apologise for not writing any posts but my lord have I been busy. With what you ask?

I moved house with my boyfriend this weekend so for the last two weeks I've been living in purgatory! Literally all our furniture was packed away and we were eating off the floor for the last few days. When we finally moved our landlord couldn't move into his new property so had to keep most of his furniture in the house. Luckily he's moving beginning of April and then the house will be completely ours, but just had to happen really didn't it! There is never smooth sailing in my life I can tell you that!

Also - I found out last week that I have a sister. A SISTER! That no-one ever told me about. She found me on facebook and just thought I was a relative of my dads. However, turns out she was his child from a previous relationship and she never met him. My mum didn't know either so it was a massive shock to us, grandparents however knew everything and were going to tell me when I was 21. Really changes your perspective on family when they keep a secret for 20 years. I now worry whenever my nan rings me because our last few conversations have always included; 'Lauren, Gemma wants to know about this...so theres something you should know' As if every event in my life seems to have extra history that I am unaware of. Cray cray life!

All this has happened during the last few weeks before my dissertation is due; thats in less than 2 weeks. I have my feedback from my supervisor but I need to finish it all off. I have all the tools to do it, but it's pretty hard to concentrate when you're second guessing your life & your worldly possessions are in boxes. Hopefully my life will be completely organised tomorrow & I can start work again. But today... I have a job trial at a new restaurant in Loughborough where I'm living.

I'm so nervous! I have been a waitress for 4 years, but I'm still worried I'm never good enough. This is often what happens; plus my anxiety is constantly sky high; I'll definitely have a panic attack on my walk to work tonight - 100%. But for now I'm going to try & be productive until then :)

Russell is now asking for some moral support in the kitchen because he does not want to cook Lunch alone. MEN!

Here's some instagram snaps from the last week for a super quick update on my life! They have been uploaded in a random order so I'm going to quickly go through them, randomly.

Here's a funny snap of me & Russ on our last night in the old house. Thank god! Was an absolute nightmare moving out - I have a detest  for our old estate agents. They are horrible people! I paid £200 for my carpets to be cleaned & they're saying that damage that was 'written in the inventory' is our fault as the estate agent 'forgot to write it in'. Money-grabbing Assholes. 

This is me today! My hair feels so much better condition since I haven't used heat for the last 3 weeks! I have been just washing my hair every other day, then leaving my hair in plaits over night so it's dry by morning and has a nice wave to it! Although you can tell my routine is all over the place because today it was straightened and I felt terrible hahaha. 

Last night Russ was at work & I was having a night in by myself with the puppies. Strangely it was heaven, I watched Psychic Sally for the first time. I love trashy tv, and it's interesting to see so many people believing in the paranormal! 

Oh Linky-bear. This was our second day in the new house, we were unpacking and Lincoln had gone missing. We found him asleep on our bed - you can see in his eyes that he knows he's done wrong! Cheeky puppy. 

This is from Sunday, when Ella & Linc had their long walks. Lincoln was all up in my grill about wanting cuddles where as Ella was snuggled up in her bed avoiding the drama :) so cute! My pups are so photogenic! 

So that's it! Again i'll try to be more organised with my videos but life got quite dramatic all of a sudden! 

Much loves.

xoxoxoxoxoxox