Update on the Track!

Last Saturday (the 22nd) I posted about getting back on Track ..
this is the update! Now as I planned I took a photo of our dinner (almost) every night this past week ... Dinner Details at very end of this post :)

Tuesday was my one late night this week finishing at 5.30, which is not very late so I could have cooked dinner but after the day I had, I REALLY couldn't be bothered! So we decided that it would be our ONE takeaway night for the week. We headed to Downtown Food Court and Grant got his beloved Roast, I really didn't feel like roast, so got Wedges & a Chicken Stick instead.

The rest of the week was good until we got to Friday, I was thinking of doing Pasta Bake or Stir Fry for dinner, but I got a txt from Grant around 4pm asking if his friend Nigel could come around for dinner and drinks, to discuss something and this is when Grant suggested Pizza for dinner .. and instead of been good and saying no I will cook, I agreed to the pizza .. and then we ended up having the left overs for dinner on Saturday night. 

What I learnt from taking photos of our dinner every night is that our down fall is not only late night finishes but Weekends!! I have also found that I am more consice of what we are having for dinner because I am taking a photo of it to share, which was all part of the plan to begin with .. so I am going to continue with dinner sharing photos each week :) AND start with Step Two - More Exercise!

After all this talk of dinner has made me realise that it's already 6.45pm, and we haven't had dinner yet (as Grant has been very busy in the garage working).
Now to be completely honest I haven't even given dinner a second thought until now, so I better finish up this post and get cracking with sorting out some dinner :)

  

Sunday - Bacon, Eggs, Hashbrowns, Mushrooms & Tomato.

Monday - Pork Chop, Baked Potato, Mixed Veges & Tomato.

Tuesday - Takeaways - Wedges & Chicken Stick 

Wednesday - Sausages, Mashed Potato, Mixed Veges, Yorkshire Puddings & Gravy

Thursday - Steak, Eggs, Mushrooms, Steak Fries & Tomato.

Friday - Internet Photo - Domino's Pizza

Saturday - 29 March - No Photo - Left Over Domino's Pizza.

Visitors for Dinner

Having visitors over for dinner .. why do you do it?

For the the company and socialisation?
Or because you like cooking for people and hosting a dinner?

For me it's all about the company and catching up with friends and family! 
It's actually the hosting part of it that I hate!! 

Like come on, you invite people over for dinner and then what, you end up spending the majority of the time in the kitchen preparing and cooking dinner, and then cleaning up afterwards ... and then to get the socialisation you have to have your friends or family in the kitchen with you! 

We invited my parents for dinner on Thursday night (which is why I was thinking about it all this) and I wanted to actually catch up with my parents rather than be in the kitchen the whole time. So I decided on Pasta Cabonara for dinner :) because it's reasonably quick and very easy.

I prepared all the ingredients before my parents even came around. I cut up the mushrooms & bacon, put the beans in a steam bag etc, so when my parents arrived I only had to actually cook the dinner and only spent half the time in the kitchen that I would have if I needed to prepare everything too. 

I think I only had to spend about 15 minutes in the kitchen :) putting on the pasta (& checking on it), cooking the bacon & mushrooms in the frypan, microwaving the beans & sauce :) and then just mix it all together and serving EASY!!! 

Which meant I got to spend the rest of the time catching up with my parents, even though we weren't all fully focused on each other and just talking ... it was still great spending time with them :)

Dad - Watched a movie (Bourne Identity)
Mum - Watched movie, talked & did paperwork (great multi-tasker she is)
Grant  - Watched the movie & did work on his laptop (for my dad)
Me - Repaired necklace of Mum's, talked & watched the movie! (Multi-tasker like my mum!)

Getting Back On Track ..

I need to get back on track!!
I am currently so far off track that I'm lost in a padlock!  

I have been on very few walks since spraining my ankle,
it's all better now so its no excuse!

And eating, well let's not even go there! It's not been good.
Too many takeaways and too much of just eating whatever I want ...

But this is it .. I am better than that!!

While I was cooking dinner I told my partner, Grant that tonight was the first night of a week of cooking at home and no takeaways! The only exception will be if we are invited out with friends or family, but then it would be out for dinner at a resturant rather than takeaways. 

Grant's only question was "What if I finish work late?" which is usually one of the main reasons we end up having takeaways, because by the time he gets home (sometimes not till 7.30-8pm) I feel that it's too late to cook. My answer was that I will either cook before he gets home and he can eat when he gets home. 

Now Grant quite likes his takeaways and his favourite lately is roast!!
Which really is hardly a takeaway, but still we made a compromise ..
we will only ONE takeaway night this week!!! (If we have any at all)

This was tonight's dinner .. Thai Coconut, Chilli & Lime Chicken Stir-fry, with lots of veges and hokkien noodles .. mmm yum!

 

This is the first step to getting back on track .. to succeed and prove that I/we can do this ... I plan to take a photo every night this week to document what we had for dinner :) and I will share them all with you at the end of the week! 

 

Sour Lollies!!

Sour Lollies .. 

you either like them or don't them ... 

you can either handle them or you can't .. 

which are you??

I have been a sour lolly lover for as long as I can remember! 

Whether it's "Sour Worms" (or Cola Bottles) that aren't really sour ..
or "TNT"s with their liquid sour centre ..
or the hard sour "Warheads" or "Short Circuits"..
or any other sour versions of candy, like "Skittles" & "Jelly Belly" Jellybeans!

Yum Yum Yum!! 

My fondest sour lolly memory is going to the diary after school with my best mate Nikole and spending a few dollars just on Sour Lollies! We used to sit on the huge street sign at the end of our street & watch people as we ate the whole lot!
We were always on the hunt for really sour lollies, like REALLY sour lollies!
We eventually found these soft individalluy wrapped sour lollies that were the sourest we could find & we LOVED them! Except the blue ones that tasted like blueberry shampoo lol, these ones we would put the letterbox of a boy who we went to school with and lived down the road .. Ahhh the memories!!

Now my partner Grant loves sour lollies too, even more than I do! and he can handle them so much better than I can these days! So for his 30th I went searching for some really sour lollies to add to his Birthday present. 

Grabone happened to have a deal where you paid $10 and got a $20 voucher for the "London Lolly Shop" I had never heard of them before, so got searching and found that they had these sour lollies called "Barnetts Mega Sour" and they sounded like just what I was looking for :) so I ordered a bag of every flavour!

Green Apple, Blue Raspberry, Cherry, Bubblegum, Plum, Cola & Lemon.

Grant loved them! and since I'm a very lucky girl he shared with me and
OH EM GEE!!! They are SOUR!!! I gave one of each favour to Nikole and even she found them sour!! So I suggest if you love sour lollies like us ..
check out Barnetts Mega Sour Lollies!!!

My Birthday!

I celebrated my 27th Birthday last week (1st March) and was going to post this on my Birthday, but was waiting for another nice day to get photos of my garden stakes lol

My day started off with Weight Watchers where I quickly weighed in (and lost 1.7kgs whoop whoop!) then headed home got changed and Mum picked me up for a Mother Daughter day at Martinborough Fair! 

 

We had a great day, wandering around all the stalls, we stopped into a few of the different cafes to find some lunch. We walked out of a few places as the line was too long, there were no free tables, or we didn't understand a word of the menu lol. We ended up in a cute bakery, where we had a chicken kebab and shared a punnet of chips & a egg sandwich. We then also had berries and ice-cream later on from one of the stalls .. mm yum :)

I bought an awesome coloured pencil necklace from Colour In Your Garden, a dragonfly & flower garden stake for my garden & a random rubber toy for Atlas
(who destroyed it in about an hour!!) 

 

Once home I got my Birthday present from Grant, which was my old laptop completely rebuilt and upgraded :) so it's now pretty much a brand new laptop, in my old laptop case! Plus some Girl Guide Biscuits & an erasable Pink ink pen :) 

We then headed out for dinner with Mum & Dad to Bethany's, where I knew exactly what I wanted for dinner before I even told Mum where I wanted to go! "Chicken Breast" -Wrapped in bacon, gourmet large shell pasta, sweet corn, button mushrooms, red onions, baby spinach, crushed cashew nuts and cherry tomatoes, sundried tomato pesto and apple syrup. YUM!!! and then "Death by Chocolate" for dessert and my goodness, that was a lot of chocolate, even for me who just LOVES chocolate lol :)

 

While out for dinner I got given my presents from my parents, my brother (who lives in Australia) and my Grandparents (who are away travelling the south island). I was very spoilt and am very grateful to have such a wonderful family and a great bunch of friends (who txted a posted messages on Facebook) xxx

WINNING!!

OMG Living Laughing and Loving Life right now!!

I enter quite a few giveaways and competitions but never seem to win much .. maybe $5 store credit or a few dollars on a scratchie ticket .. but nothing major .. so you can imagine my surprise when I got a call from "Pump" today!!! 

A random Auckland number came up on my cellphone and when I answered it,

t was "Pump", the lady then asked a few questions and then told me I was one of the
$500 Cash weekly winners of Pump Up Your Pay!!!!

Whoop Whoop Excited Much!!!