A long time coming

Yes again I've not posted on this blog for months, but don't dismiss me just yet I do have valid reasons. My boyfriend has been very ill since about August and had major surgery in November to replace a tube, so his kidney now works. This procedure went really well and even surprised the doctors. What surprised them even more was how quick he is recovering, this is also going really well, and his scars are getting better by the day.

So my take on Christmas, this year I was cooking Christmas day dinner as my boyfriend wasn't able to go to anyone house, so each year we take turns his parents Xmas day mine Boxing day then the opposite the next year and so on. But this year as it would have been our turn to go to my parents we invited them over to ours for me to do the cooking. I've never cooked for 5 people before especially a full roast(well to be fair my Dad did the meat) but I did veg and roast potatoes and I think it went rather well, no disasters. Note.. this is a one year only normal service resumes next year.

So Boxing day his family came over to ours for a Boxing day buffet with cold sandwiches and variety of meats and cheeses etc which also went down pretty well.

For Christmas I received, a Oral B electronic toothbrush which is amazing so good my boyfriend went out and bought one himself in the sales, crafting stuff, clothes, books, vouchers, Super Mario Galaxy for Wii, Scene it 2 for Xbox and lots of other things. So I did pretty well this year.

Again comes the time to make new years resolutions and last year I didn't stick to mine so this year I'm really going to try but haven't decided just yet what they are. On the weight front over Christmas I've managed to lose 3lbs which is good considering the chocolate and nice food, so in total since May I've lost 2 stone 6lbs which I don't think is too bad.

Summer of Discontent

Again I know i've not been keeping this updated, but I've been a tad busy of the past few months. My Fiance has been in and out of hospital with Kidney problems and things are getting better so he has to have an operation in Nov, which neither of us are looking forward to, but i'm sure everything will be fine, and hopefully he will get better soon.

So what I have I been upto, well the new expansion pack for Sims 2 has come out it's called Apartment Life, and again EA Games have been working hard and i'm loving this new expansion. I'm also lookng forward to February when Sims 3 is coming out, not sure if my current PC will take it though.

I've also been involved in producing marketing marterial and photography for a collegues play "Hedda Gabler" by Ibsen, which opens at the Sheffield Drama Studio on Wednesday night, for more info go to here, or check out their facebook group, if you happen to be in Sheffield and want to see some amazing acting then this is the place, book your tickets now!!!

I'm now back to being a student again, i've enrolled to do a MA in E-communication, which i'm looking forward to, i'm doing it distant learning (studing at home with online teaching), so i'll still be working and work are paying for it which is even better, oh the perks of working for a University. I recieved my work books and module information the other week and looking over it briefly it seems a bit daunting but i'm sure once I get into it everything will be ok. Plus I know get Student Discount again which is ace.

Just an update on the weight front, i've now lost 2 stone 1 pound in total, which i'm really happy about, the only trouble is i've now got to start buying new clothes, as my own are very baggy, especially my jeans and trousers, I feel like a clown in them. Which also ties in very nicely with my birthday in 10 days time, so people can give me money and I can buy new clothes, woo hoo!!!

Daddy's taking me to the Zoo

Well it's more of the other way round, I took my Dad to Whipsnade Zoo for the annual Bad Taste Bear event. The reason for taking Dad is that my partner was in Hospital this happened a couple of years ago, and he missed out on going to the West Midlands Safari Park, now not to criticize or anything but he isn't much of a zoo person and animals don't really excite him, apart from he likes the Penguins. But I know it's a coincidence and he didn't mean to land himself in the Northern General but he was really poorly, but thankfully after a week in hospital he is getting better, he isn't 100% just yet but he will get there.

So back to the Zoo, I really had a great time, it took us about 2 and a half hours to get there and we spent about 1 hour in the BTB bit then went to spend the rest of the day watching the animals, there are more photos on my Flickr site.

My favourite was the baby Giraffe it was so cute and only 2 days old. There was also a baby Rhino and baby Elephant that were equally as sweet. Thankfully the weather held up and we only had a little shower around lunchtime but nothing to warrant getting the brolly out, and the packed lunch we took was nice too.

Here comes the bride... da da da da and all that

Just to keep you all updated, I'm getting married, hopefully next year, if I can get into the dress I've seen. It makes sense really as I've been engaged for nearly 4 years and we are slowly making progress in saving. So I've now found the book I bought when we first got engaged and have started looking around at venues etc, I've got a rough idea of colour theme and I know who is going to be my bridesmaids, for a start my cousin Gemma and my to be sister-in-law and her son as my Paige boy. I've got my chief hen night coordinator Kelly who will definitely give me a night to remember she is really a top bird and a great friend. I've got my partner's brother in charge of photos and I'm making my own invitations plus my hairdresser makes cakes so that bits sorted. All i need to think about is who to invite.

I will keep you all posted on the developments of the planning.

Lego rocks!!!

Well I'm now into week 10 of my Weight Watches diet and I'm 17lbs lighter, which I'm ecstatic about and I'm starting to see a difference in my features. I'm slowly losing my double chin and for the first time in a while I've got my neck back whoo hoo!!! but i can't get too exited I've still got a long way to go.

I've been reading a book that started off as a blog called "The amazing adventures of Dietgirl" I'm addicted to this book, it's about a girl from Australia who has lost 12 and a half stone and hats off to her, she has done it over 6 years and I really admire her determination, I just hope I can achieve the same determination and achieve my goals.

So since my last post I've been in London for a weeks holiday which was ace, there were lots of photo taking and walking around and two amazing meals at Garfunkel's, if you ever go to London you have to experience a Garfunkel's Burger, they are just so nice, the meat melts in your mouth and their chips are so divine. I've still got to upload my photos to Flickr but hopefully I'll get round to it this weekend.

Currently I'm so addicted to Lego Indiana Jones on the Xbox 360, much to my boyfriends annoyance. I'm one of those people that likes to collect everything I need to get all the artifacts, all the parcels and all the characters and won't stop till I've completed it all. Then once I've done that I'm going back to Lego Star Wars and go and complete all that too.

I'm also sort of watching Big Brother, now I've watched them all but in my opinion the first three were the best and it has gone down hill since, but I've not got into the obsession just yet on this series and I'm not sure I will hit that stage. All I can really say I'm glad that Alex got kicked out as she was a nasty piece of work, even though she claims that BB edited it so it makes her look bad and that what she was saying was out of context, but what I don't understand is what other context should it have been taken in, she said those words and they were offensive and she was being a bully to Steph, Mo and Rebecca, which is wrong.

The next Bad Taste Bear event is fast approaching and this years summer event is atWhipsnade Zoo, I'm very looking forward to this one as I've been wanting to go to Whipsnade for a while now, I love Zoo's and animals.

Weighting Issues

Since I last updated I have started Weight Watches I've only been doing it fully for 2 weeks as I have had to buy some new digital scales but so far I've lost 7lb which I'm quite proud off. I had my doubts thinking that it wouldn't work, as I've tried other diets but I'm getting to like this one. I'm not going to meetings as I refuse to pay £5.50 for someone to tell me I'm fat, so I've got two work colleagues that go to the meetings so they have got me the Eating out guide and the Shopping guide and a calculator and I'm finding it quite easy I can have 29 points a day and to be honest I'm struggling to find thing to eat to fill my points up, as you have to use them all up. What has made a difference is not drinking fizzy drinks and cutting down my portion sizes. So hopefully in maybe a year or 2 I'll be able to fit into my dream wedding dress.

I'm off to London in 2 weeks for a weeks holiday, I'm so looking forward to it and I'll get to try out my new camera to it's full potential.

Girls on Film....well Digital

I've got a new camera, yippee. It's a Canon G9 12.1 mega pixels and it is my new best friend. This is the best camera I've ever had and I've been going around taking lots and lots of pictures, you can see these pics on my Flickr site. So I'm going to spend most of the Easter holidays taking pictures. Plus I'm going to London at the end of May so I will be taking loads and loads there too.

So it's now Easter and I've done quite well for Easter eggs, now I will let you into a secret I'm 27 and I still love getting Easter eggs, granted these days you are really paying for all the packaging but the added bonus of chocolate and the occasional mug is great, and the best bit is K doesn't like the egg bit so I get all his too, yummy.

I've also just installed Vista on my computer which is nice, not as good as my Mac but ok all the same. I'm still slowly getting used to where things are compared to XP, but I'm sure it will be fine in the end.

Must....Must.......Must

Yes I must update this more often, once a month for the past 5 months is unacceptable, but when you are as busy as me you tend to forget about the important things of updating your blog, no seriously I have been busy....well maybe a little. Ok we have our nice shiny blue new car yippee, this car is (cue for a song..) Automatic, It's systematic, It's hydromatic well maybe its no Grease Lightning, but it is pretty damn cool, the best car I've ever had, and it only took me three weeks to drive the thing, plus I can park it too, which is an achievement even for me.

Another new thing I got was my new phone. Let me put this into context for you all, I have a Sony Ericsson K800i and I love it, a couple of weeks ago it let me down and wouldn't switch on so off it went back to 02 who kindly fixed it, but it was still doing weird things like corrupting my messages then deleting them without warning, but once I'd updated my gprs settings it seemed to stop. Now I'm coming to the end of my 18 month contract with o2 and I wasn't going to update but simply switch tariffs to 02 Simplicity and keep my K800i. But with all the problems I was having and with the BF's iphone problems with bluetooth not talking to the Tomtom. I decided that I would upgrade and BF can have the K800i for the Tomtom simple no? Then I had the dilemma of what phone to get, I like my Sony Ericsson but wasn't too struck on the K850i until I played with the one a friend had, well to cut a long story short I now have a Sony Ericsson K850i and I love it more than the K800i. The camera is amazing and the sound quality so much better, the reason I was unsure about it was because of the little square blue buttons rather than the little joystick thing, I thought that there was no way I could txt without hitting one of the buttons in the square, but again Sony Ericsson have come out tops the little square buttons are slightly raised so you don't catch them when texting which is great. So all in all a great phone.

At the moment I've been getting nice new things and another of these nice new things is a MacBook, which was given to me by my lovely BF (only coz he got himself a MacBook Pro, but I'm very grateful all the same). Now let me explain I learnt everything I know about computing on a PC, Microsoft thru and thru, but this all changed when I did a Graphic Design job where I was working on a Mac and I had bought my first Ipod, but deep down in my heart I though..... there is not a cat in hells chance of even owning a Mac so I went on dreaming, but storing up in my head what I'd learnt on the Mac as you never know when it might come in handy. So here I am typing this to you on a Mac, but the sad thing is I still love my PC for it holds my trusty Sims 2 game (yes I know you can buy it for the Mac but I don't wanna ok) and speaking of Sims 2 the next expansion pack is coming out next Friday the 29th it's called Free Time and I'm so looking forward to buying it.

Ok so I hope this post has met with your satisfactions of length for a months worth of nothingness, but I will try to post more I promise.

Post Xmas Blues

Well Christmas is now over and I can't believe that we are over half way into January. My Christmas was really cool, I spent my holiday between both sets of families which was really good. For Christmas I got some really nice presents including a Nintendo Wii, Wii games, some books, craft things, a tiger (don't worry not a real one, a adopted one from the WWF), loads of clothes, a donut maker and chocolates.

Now that Christmas is over the only thing to look forward to is Easter when I'm next on holiday from work. Oh and our new car which will arrive next week. Nothing else really has been happening apart from this weekend when all the weather has been doing is raining, what I'm hoping is that we don't have the amount of rain we had in the summer but I've been very vigilant with the weather watch and keeping informed with the flood watches just in case, as I don't want to have a repeat of the summer's floods. Some places near where I live have had local floods but ours has been ok, plus one of the main reasons we flooded in the summer was a tree got stuck under the bridge near my house.

Anyway I'm going to sign off now and finish watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire which is on one of the movie channels on Sky.