Monday Musings III

Happy Monday Lovelies! And Happy Day Off to most of my UK friends - can't believe it's yet another Bank Holiday. I'm kind of ready for life to get back to normal now (and, more importantly, for the postal system to get back to normal now). Monday Musings did take a little break for the festive season, but I'm happy to say that it'll be sticking around for the forseeable future as i really enjoy sharing bits of my week with you!

♥ Roundup 

The week before Christmas, I posted a massive thank you for helping me win the Superdrug Britney Radiance Competition!!!! Thank you again. I also posted my Darling Girl Cosmetics review, announced my giveaway winner and wished you all a Merry Christmas!
On Thursday, I told you about my Christmas celebrations and shared some of my lovely pressies with you.
On Friday, I announced my Best of 2010 "awards"
On Saturday, I shared my New Year Goals and asked you to share yours.


inmywindow roundup - as you'll know if you read my New Year's Goals post, I'm relaunching inmywindow as a craft/photography/cooking blog, so I'll also be sharing a weekly round up of posts from there over here incase you fancy taking a look. As I only started on New Year's Day, there's not much to share this week - just my first post, my 50 craft projects in 52 weeks goals post and little look at my favourite fabrics from the Seamstar January Sale.

♥ Eye Eye

This week, I've been lucky enough see to a lot of countryside, which always makes me incredibly happy! We went for a long walk with my Sister and her family/friends the day after Boxing Day and then Peter and I went on an extremely muddy 7 mile walk on New Years Day. Last year I didn't managed to do much walking in the countryside for some reason, which I'll be trying hard to resolve this year!


I've also seen a lot of joyfulness - quite often, I find Christmas a bit disappointing and so do many others that I know, but for some reason this year seemed so relaxed and full of joy which was wonderful!

I've also been lucky enough to spend a lot of time with good friends and with my family, which I've really appreciated. It's been nice to have some full days off with peter where we've had no specific plans, and my wonderful friend Dave was back from Bangladesh (he works over there for a charity) and brought his wonderful Canadian girlfriend along to meet us for the first time - it was so flipping good to see him. I miss him a heck of a lot. (Coincidentally, you can see Dave's ear/arm in the photo I won the Superdrug competition  with as it was Dave who walked me down the aisle on my Wedding Day)

♥ Whirring Cogs

I've been thinking a lot about the New Year and the goals and challenges I want to set myself. I love this time of year as I love the newness and the anticipation of things getting better. Obviously we can end up disappointed as things won't always go the way we want them to, but I think at the end of the year, no matter how difficult, I always find myself able to reflect and find something good to take with me into the next.

I've also been thinking quite a lot about the GTP in Hull and whether or not I should apply. I think I'm erring towards the side of applying any way as it's better to apply and reject them than to not apply and kick myself. I seem to swing between thinking it's an excellent idea and thinking it's a silly idea on a pretty much daily basis, so I think I just need to apply and get it out of my system!

Finally, I've been thinking a lot about sewing and crafting and making our home beautiful. At the moment, we live in a little two bed terraced house and we really don't have enough room at all. We're not clutter collectors by any stretch of the imagination - we just have no storage space where we are at the moment and it can become quite frustrating.

♥ Hidden Treasures

I've found a heck of a lot of blogs this week, although most of them are sewing ones! However, some of the beauty blogs I've been enjoyed recently are:

Rotten Otter's Thoughts for beautiful photography, a gorgeous mishmash of topics and a fabulous New Year's Goals post!

Big City Dreams who has a gorgeous blog and seems like a very sweet blogger indeed!

SBV is such a gorgeous blog full of pretty pictures and a slightly retro style. Also, she bakes some frankly droolworthy treats!

♥ The Path...

This week, I want to remember that the key to a healthy body (and healthy mind) is a balanced diet of deliciousness and an appropriate amount of exercise - crash/fad diets do not make your happy and aren't sustainable :)

♥ Respect Yourself

Speaking of which, I really need to make friends with the wonderful Jillian and her 30 Day Shred again. I fell off the wagon a little before Christmas but I knew that was going to happen so I feel pretty chilled about it all. I'm happy to have started Shredding before Christmas as it means that I know what to expect and it'll be easier to get into and stick with in the New Year :)

However, I have done a fair bit of walking this Christmas, which will definitely have helped shift some of the overeating! I've love the middle to end of this past week as we've had a return to our "normal eating pattern" which is high in veg, low in processedness and wheat free. Wheat makes a huuuuge difference to my health but over Christmas I sort of slacked off to make it easier for other people (I'm vegetarian as well) - man did I notice the difference. I've been wheat free for nearly two years now, and although I sometimes have a sneaky bit of cake here or a bit of bread there, I rarely eat lots of wheat and oh my goodness... .I was in pain! It's good though - it means I'm starting 2011 with a firm reminder that me not eating wheat is not a faffy diet thing, it's something that has an actual impact on the quality and enjoyment of my life. :)

So my lovelies, if you've managed to make it this far though such an epic post, how have your weeks been? What are you musing on this bank holiday Monday? xx