Happy New Year!

Hi all,

Hope you've had a fabulous festive season. I've tried to pop around to all your blogs today and catch up. Nice to see most of you haven't been as slack as I have in the blogging department over Christmas & New Year! I had a great Chrissy. We started with dinner at GB's parents with his brother and his family on Christmas Eve. Had a good night even though the brother gave us these hideous outdoor art things which we hate. Seriously, art is such a personal thing - why would you buy it for anyone else? This is the same guy who has also given us 2 stuffed magpies for the garden which we have tried to leave behind everytime we move and he keeps "finding them"! Christmas morning we had GB's best friend and his wife over for breakfast. This is a tradition and we take turns hosting. We really like his best friend, unfortunately he's married to a massive mole (sorry for the term but it's the only thing that suits!) and the mole is heavily preggers with baby No 1 so now more than ever the world revolves around her. They also have a dumbarse labrador who is 2 now but still worse than a puppy - feet in the water bowl. They keep saying that her behaviour is just a typical labrador but that is just BS it's just they don't discipline her. These dogs are seeing eye dogs for crying out loud - they can be taught! Our Westie hates her too.

We got rid of them then drove to my Nonna's to give my half-sisters (ages 7, 10) their pressies. Then onto my Aunty & Uncle's for lunch with Dad's family (who I can't stand) where GB and I were told adnauseum how MASSIVELY HUGE we were last Christmas (except we weren't.... it would have been the Christmas before) and how much weight had we lost, how fat were we to start with... blah blah blah. I politely told them that I'd prefer not to say and tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. Grrrrrr

Then we cruised to my cousin's place to say a quick hi to some of my mum's family (Mum ended up staying in Melbourne with my Aunty who has just had a brain tumour removed), then back home to our place where we put on a bbq dinner for my sisters and GB's folks. Phew. Tiring much!

GB got 2 photo's that I'd had professionally taken with my 4 sisters about 4 years ago which had languished in a cupboard, professionally framed for Christmas. He also had my 2 degrees framed (and put them all up on the walls Christmas morning!). From Westie I got the Wii Fit Plus disc, Wolverine on Blu-ray and a new memory card for my camera. SCORE!

Over say 5 days from Christmas, I think I ate my (old) body weight in chocolate... soo many lindt balls... soo little time. I'm pretty sure I ate an entire pig too... Love ham off the bone! I didn't really watch what I was eating AT ALL! Obviously quantities were smaller but still. New Years Eve was hosted by my sister and I made 2 lots of icecream sandwiches (one with baileys, crunchies & maltesers and one with mint chocolate). So tasty!  We had a great great night, with mucho champagne! The next day we were going to mum's for lunch (she came back from Melb on NYE) and as we'd all crashed at Sister3's house, Sister 2 and I decided to walk from there to mum's - about 6.4kms. Have we mentioned how hot it's been in Perth? Sweltering! But luckily Jan 1 was a tad cooler and we did it in about 1hr 20 (including a couple of massive hills). We had a feed at mum's that did not agree with me and because I'd eaten some beetroot, all my PB's were a lovely purple colour - lovely!

I think that was the start of my TTOM restriction because I've pretty much struggled food wise since then. Funny that my last blog I was saying how I could eat mostly anything and then this time of month hits and BOOM, can't keep yoghurt down half the time and night reflux rears it's ugly head. I just don't know what to do in regards to a fill - any thoughts?

As some of my Facebook peeps will know, I started NO CHOCOLATE JANUARY on January 1! Regularly readers will know what a humungous challenge this will be for me. I've given myself a few loopholes (icecream & cake not included) but basically the work chocolate fridge is off limits. Today has been my first big challenge with it because it's the first day back at work since the challenge started and here it is - 2.30pm - traditionally chocolate o'clock - and I'm craving like a mofo! I'm going to try my hardest though. GB has decided as support to go without potato chips for the month too which is just as big a challenge for him as No Chocolate is for me.

After all this eating I had to have a sneak at the scales, thinking I'd probably be well and truly back into the 80's but was pleasantly surprised to see no more damage than a typical weekend for me (was sitting about 79.2kg), so phew!

In other exciting news, I got my shoes for the wedding for $25! yay!

Oh and our wedding invitations went out on the 30th - scary. Due to GB's inability to cut anything to the same size, all our guests will receive one of a kind invitations! I really love our invites, but if we ever get married again I'll be getting them done professionally.. what a farking ordeal! Anyhoo here's a pic of our main invites. We had smaller wishing well & rsvp cards in the same style but I forgot to take photos of those. Sorry they're a bit blurry but hopefully you can make them out.

[caption id="attachment_466" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Front of the invite"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_467" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Back of invite"][/caption]

 

Anyhoo, I must be getting back to work!

Later alligators

Em :)