LIFESTYLE, PARENTING
There is nothing like a pile of books to start the New Year with and I’ve been lucky enough to be gifted a fair few for my birthday and Christmas that I’ve yet to read. January has been a tiring one, with my new nutrition and fitness regime so I’ve not managed to read much this month! I normally read before bedtime – but I’ve been gone as soon as my head hits the pillow this month. So my reading list is still canny big!
I absolutely LOVE writing these posts. They give me a minute or two to just reflect on what’s been going on in the past month and remind me of all the awesome things I get to do in life. It’s kind of like a once a month, bumper diary entry and I find it really uplifting. So if you’ve never written one before, then get on it!
Maybe it’s the sunshine on this day as I write, but I’m feeling pretty good about January 2016. I’m on the countdown to the wedding, I’m kicking ass in the weight loss and toning up departments and January has actually gone pretty quickly for the most hideous month of the year. It can’t be that long until summer now can it?!
Ahhhh my love of shoes charges on unabated! If there is one item of my wardrobe that I’m always happy to buy, it’s something to put on my feet. Have you ever seen In Her Shoes with Cameron Diaz and Toni Collette? Well Toni Collette’s character – Rose – has a mega collection, despite being a bit boring in the rest of her clothing choices, and Cameron Diaz’s character (her sister Maggie) is well jealous. And one thing Rose says is “When I feel bad I like to treat myself. Clothes never look any good… food just makes me fatter… shoes always fit.”
Shoes always fit – she is so right.
Sometimes it all gets a bit too much. Sometimes you can’t help but collapse into a small heap in tears. Sometimes you can’t help but feel that everything is going wrong and you just can’t cope with life. If you’re anything like me, you might be starting to be able to predict when these little freak outs are coming on. Even if you’re not, it’s sometimes good to take a moment to yourself to just chill out and give yourself a moment of reflection and mental recuperation.
So today’s Friday Five is five things I turn to to help me out when I’m on the verge of it all getting too much.
So now you’ve booked your date and venue, one of the most important things to nail down is your wedding photographer. The good ones get booked up *really* far in advance – we started looking 18 months in advance and one of our first choices was already booked on the day of our wedding. Mental. However, there is a lot to consider when thinking about the mementos of your day as wedding photography comes in all shapes and sizes. So what do you need to know when you’re researching a wedding photographer?
*Warning – spoilers!*
Room by Emma Donoghue has been on my Amazon wishlist for as long as I can remember. I can’t even recall what prompted me to put it on there, but I’ve had a hankering to read it for a good few months. So, when it was my turn to host our Book Club and I therefore got to choose the book, I just knew it had to be Room. I’ve also just found out it’s about to be released as a film – so now is the perfect time to read it!
Image from Pixababy – thank you!
If you’ve been following me on instagram or Snapchat (spoilybyjenni) you might have seen some of the scran I’ve been tucking into this week. Spoiler alert – it’s all super healthy and designed to make you feel just terrible on yourself for eating that burger at Byron last night. Soz-not-soz about that. I also wrote a blog post (before I started, may I add) about my nutrition plan so you can see in more detail. But alongside the eating right, I am also dragging my sorry arse out of bed even earlier than usual to get my fitness on.
My personal trainer, Sarah, has been brilliant. She also works me like a dog. So I thought I’d share what I’ve been up to fitness-wise since I started to hopefully provide some inspo!
So after recently sharing a post about how I have been struggling with anxiety about my blog, then I took some time to look at some bloggers who I really, really love reading. It gave me a much needed dose of inspiration and I thought I would share the positivity by putting up here the five blogs I always check out and love reading.
If you saw on Hello Jennifer Helen just before Christmas, you’ll know that I decided to sign up with a personal trainer to kick off 2016. I wanted to share the journey I am going along because, before I met Sarah, I thought the idea of getting a personal trainer was way beyond me both financially and physically. Sarah completely changed my idea of that and really inspired me to make the change for myself in the year that I get married and turn 30. I kind of think, if I don’t do it now, I’ll probably never do it. So I’m carpe-ing that diem and just bloody well going for it. And I hope that by sharing my journey, it might inspire others to get into the zone.
It’s January 2016 – can’t quite believe it. It seems like all my Best Bits posts of 2015 started with a similar phrase – how quickly did that year go?! But before I jump into 2016 both feet first, I wanted to take a look back on how awesome December was. Who doesn’t love Christmas?! I do (check out my post about what my favourite things are here) and I am happy to say that my decorations are only coming down today – the twelve days of Christmas live on in our house 🙂
But what else did December bring?