day 35 - a story about my hair

I'll be honest, I am not a person who cares substantially about their appearance. I don't use much makeup, I don't really follow fashion, I don't have a skincare regime. As long as I look presentable I'm generally fine. My hair, however, has posed a conundrum for as long as I can remember. I have very thick, frizz prone hair, which is under no circumstances the kind of hair that you can just... leave. I need to look after my hair in one way or another otherwise I look like a complete pratt. 

A couple of years ago I got to a stage where my hair was optimal. After years of straightening and hair abuse, I finally decided to go au naturelle. I gave up my hair straighteners, and for the most part my hair dryer too. And I ended up loving it.

Here it is, my thick, wavy mane:

For some reason, after a year and a half of not really needing to straighten my hair, I suddenly decided earlier this year that I needed to again. I did it, and I was like "WHY DID I EVER STOP?!" 

Well, the many reasons I gave up my straighteners are becoming apparent again right now. Once you start, you get into a vicious cycle of needing to straighten, since your hair goes frizzy and horrible, which needs taming with HEAT. Then the heat further damages it... and so on. I wish I had never started straightening every day again. I forgot how much damage it can really do. At the moment, I have some annoying bits that won't even fit in my ponytail because it must've been so damaged the hair broke off when I tried to tie it up. I am so sad. 

Right now, I am sat here with my hair covered in coconut oil in the hope that this "miracle cure" will help me out. I've heard a lot about coconut oil, but never bought any until I found it reduced to £1.50 in my local Tesco. I don't want to be at the mercy of my hair anymore, I want to be free from this hair prison I have made for myself. Apparently there are many uses for coconut oil, for both your insides and outsides. Uses for hair alone vary from deep conditioning to frizz management. I have decided to try deep conditioning, where you scoop up some of the coconut oil and warm it in your hands, then rub it all over your hair. Having never used coconut oil before at first I thought it was too super solid, but it actually melts very quickly in the palm of your hand. I need to leave this on for one to two hours now. You're supposed to cover with a shower cap, but I don't have one so it's just kinda sitting there. 

I will let you know this goes...

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day 33 - C25K is AWESOME

I have recently started running.

Why? Why on Earth would a person put themselves through this willingly?

Well. I am a very unfit person, determined to get to a healthy weight again. I LOVE food. Food is delicious, food is a hobby, food is life. I have tried many times and many different ways of losing weight through dieting over the years, but none have worked for me in the long term. The best method I found was Slimming World. I actually lost  a couple of stone a few years ago on Slimming World, but then I got a desk job and promptly piled it all back on, and more. The plan is great, but I found I could only really gel with it once for long enough to lose weight without going to group, and I am a penny pincher extraordinaire at the moment so I cannot justify £5 a week (doesn't sound like much, but it adds up). Besides, I love baking and this is very restricted on SW. It can be fun to play around with recipes, creating low syn treats, but there is only so much fun I can have with eggs and sweetener. Sorry. Anyway, my point is, I struggle with restricting my diet. I can eat healthier most of the time, but I wanted to try a different approach: exercise.

I am determined to become one of those people that actually enjoys running. I used to work with people who would make time most days to go running because they loved it, and I have been assured that after a certain point I will too. If I can get fit, lose weight, and not have to restrict my diet (within reason), I am going to be incredibly pleased.

I also want to prove to myself that I can actually do a thing and stick to a thing. Historically I am bad at that.

This is where couch to 5k comes in. It's a 9 week plan which builds  you up week by week, starting with a series of one minute runs, all the way up to being able to run 5k. The plan is specifically designed for people like me; unfit, overweight, self-confessed potato. I have the app from Change4Life, which is a bunch of podcasts which tell you when to start and stop running, and full of helpful tips. I highly recommend it. You can even listen to music at the same time cause it dims the music automatically while the podcast is talking.

I have tried the plan before, but I always managed to make excuses to give up. My main excuse was "I don't have the time". Well, now I have plenty of time so any excuse I'd have to come up with now would be super weak, So weak, even my laziest self would see through it.

I'll be honest, at first it does seem insurmountable. I thought how can someone like me, someone who struggles to run for even a minute, ever expect to be able to run 5k?! Well. I just completed day 1 of week 4. I ran for three minutes, then five minutes, twice, with intervals of walking.

I ran for five minutes. 

I ran for a total of sixteen minutes.

After only three weeks, I have gone from struggling to run for a minute, to being able to run for five straight minutes. More importantly I actually enjoyed it. To people with any real level of fitness this will probably seem silly, but to me it is so significant. I believe that in five more weeks I will be able to run 5k. And I will feel like I have achieved the impossible.

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day 29 - eurovision!!!!

Eurovision is the first of the three main events of the year, the other two being Halloween and Christmas. One of the big highlights of the year is the annual Eurovision party. We've done a few parties over the years, and I believe that other than the obvious song contest itself and the people you're with, there are three main things that every Eurovision party needs:

Theme

Obviously the main theme of it all is cheesy European music, but to be more specific, the theme this year was Sweden since they were hosting. Guests wore blue and yellow, food was from Sweden (IKEA, actually, but same difference), and the Swedish flag hung proudly from the wall. 

Here is my dress that I made for the occasion: 

I realise that I can also wear this dress next year because it matches the colours of Ukraine too :) 

Food

Swedish food! It is the best! Also very easy get hold of seeing as many of us actually work for IKEA and we are very local to the store. We had GIANT CRISPBREAD, cheese, salmon, more salmon but rolled up in flatbreads with mustard and dill sauce, Maribou chocolate, and homemade princess cake. 

It won't be so easy next year with the theme of Ukraine, but according to Wiki they do have many tasty foods that we can try. Drinks wise, the main spirit is apparently moonshine though, so I think we'll give that one a miss. 

Drinking

The obligatory Eurovision drinking game! Guaranteed to get everyone very, very drunk. We do one set of rules for during, and another set of rules for the results. This year, the rules were:

During

Drink every time:

- the word "love" or "heart" is mentioned

- there's a change of language during a performance

- Australia!

- a political statement is made

- wind or fire

Results

Choose your favourite and drink:

- one sip for 1 - 7 points

- 2 sips for 8 points

- 3 sips for 10 points

- 4 sips for 12 points

- everytime they are in the lead

- down your drink if your favourite wins!

We all drink when the UK:

- get nil points

- gets 8, 10 or 12 points

- is in last place

- is in top 5

Inevitably those who chose Ukraine as favourite were a little tiddly by the end.

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day 18 - chocolate orange cake

I've done more baking! I've made a deal with myself that if I'm going to have sweet treats, they need to be things I've baked for myself. Then I can bake and hopefully still be healthy and lose some weight. 

This time I used an old recipe from a Good Food magazine. I don't even know which year it's from because in an attempt to trim down the amount of stuff I have taking up space, I've cut out all the recipes I like the look of from my magazines. Saved loads of space, I highly recommend getting a recipe folder and putting all your favourite recipes into sections to save space and make finding things to make a lot easier (paperchase do a whole load of really nice ones).

Anyway, I made a chocolate and orange cake with Louise. It was supposed to be like a big jaffa cake but we left out the jelly bit, since Tesco didn't have any gelatine or vegetarian equivalent. We just did the orange sponge and the chocolate topping. The recipe can be found online here.

It was so easy, one of those where all the ingredients go into the bowl at the same time and then you just whisk them all together. It's supposed to be "a bit of a challenge", which I suppose must refer mainly to the orange bit, which we didn't make. The choccy topping was really easy too. All we had to do was heat the cream then pour it over the chocolate and leave it to melt. We were sceptical about doing it that way, but it really does work. 

We started eating it before the chocolate had set properly, but it was still super delicious. The chocolate dripped down the side of the slice a bit, which if anything made it even better. 

I think I need to figure out how to be better at food photography. I'm pretty abysmal at the moment. All I want to do is eat the food to be honest. 

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