Week 14 - Sparkle! It's Christmas!

So week 14 is here!!! This was originally my 'D-Day' where I set myself to loose 1 stone by Christmas (1lbs a week).....

This last week I haven't exactly kept on track so I've gained 1lb. But in total I have lost 18lbs :)

Weight watchers had set a 'challenge' ? to their followers to 'Get set to Sparkle' which, at this time of year I can't say no to a bit of sparkle and glitter - OK, maybe all year round I can't say no to it!

 

So within these last 14 weeks I have lost a total of 18lbs :)

 

This is just the start to my weight loss - This Christmas was my starting goal - now for 2013 to keep loosing it with my Sister's wedding as my next mini goal! (Remember THIS post?!)

 

So my next aim is to stay the same over these next few days of festive joy and then from 1st January I want to loose 13lbs before my sister's wedding - 1lb a week - a healthy way to do it!

 

But for now, on Christmas Day.....

 

I just wanted to write a 'post' Christmas card to you all and show you some of my highlights in the lead up to this lovely time of celebrating the birth of Jesus.

 

 Singing at The Salvation Army's Carol Concert at The Royal Albert Hall

 

 

(sound check part.... Singing and sitting next to my lovely new 2013-gained friend!)

 

 

Receiving lovely Christmas cards...

 

 

Pug (our guard dog door stop) gained a new friend...

 

 

Putting out my lovely Argentinian Nativity Set

 

 

Opening and lighting this beauty of an advent calendar (PS Yankee Candle please do this again!)

 

 

Oh, and putting up and filling up Mr O's Advent calendar too!

 

Buying, getting it home and putting up the Christmas Tree...

 

Making Christmas Decorations, cards and pressies (the rest of these obviously can't be shown!)....

 

 

 

Putting out old handmade deorations made by Mr O himself when you could actually read his writing!

 

 

 

 

Lovely Christmas days out and doing things like meeting Father Christmas (Read more HERE about these days out)

 

 

And Finally... sparkling at my work's Christmas Do...

 

 

 

May your Christmas be filled with love, peace and Joy.

With Love and Festive joy to you all....

Mrs O xxx

... Back to the old ...

I wrote this last week and forgot to post it! So here it is.....

As I said in my last post I feel that all I write about at the moment is my weight! So I am currently sitting down with my old 'Mrs O' hat on....

This last week I have had a lovely fun-packed week being spent with friends and family.

As you will already know, Mr O & I hosted a lovely fun Christmas-themed party for a bunch of friends. We had so many laughs about lots of different things. One thing I love about these friends are that they have all come into my friendship circle thanks to Mrs O. Don't you love that about relationships? You get to meet and build friendships with others you thought you never would have...

Unfortunately I didn't manage to take any photos of the night - maybe I was just enjoying it all too much?! However, in the run up to the party, Mr O and I (yes, that's right, Mr O too!!) got creative. Not only did we make the invitations ourselves, but we also made crackers. gingerbread men and decorated them as a party bag-esk item and ice cream (ok, the latter too I did but Mr O cooked everything from scratch)

Monday night then found me travelling around the M25 back to my home shire to see my family. Mum and Dad had to go out carolling so my youngest sister and I went round and visited my Nana. We always have lots of giggles with my Nana. She's a lady who says she's 58 as she says that her and her friends switch the numbers around when they get past a certain age. She comes out with the most hilarious stories and comments. Lil Sis and I just wanted to film the whole thing as it would be funny for all to see. We even played a little prank on her too - which she loved!

Mr O and I decided to take Wednesday off work. Originally it was planned to take it off so we could go Christmas shopping, but we luckily have already sorted or bought all the presents this year. Our halos are shining! So instead we decided to spend the day up in London. But in our true fashion, we slept in until 10am! So we decided to have a lazy-ish start and to have a lovely cooked breakfast and then head out and up to London.

Here is my OOTD for Wednesday:

First stop was to Borough Market. Last minute we decided to call my Dad and see if he wanted to meet up with us for a coffee - he works round the corner from there - so we did. We had a lovely look around, didn't spend too much money, but spent most of the time looking at the amazing displays of food and being amazed at how cheap the food actually was! Just look at some of the displays...

 

 

Just so you know, we didn't buy much, in fact I think all we bought were coffees and a punnet of grapes.

We then headed off on a walk heading towards the South Bank. We stopped on the way for a lovely meal at Pizza Express - check out the massive salad I had and the amazing view!

 
So to work off the lovely big meal we decided to continue our walk over the Millennium bridge and over to St Pauls. ~ For any of you who don't know London this is the famous bridge that sways. ~
Of course we had to stop for a selfie but I also managed to capture this amazing picture. I felt like singing 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner'!!

 

We then hopped back on the underground and went for a walk through Regents Street, Carnaby Street and then along Oxford Street.

We did the 'Christmas thing' of going into Selfridges, trying out different things and bumping into this famous old man...

Oh and I found my new dolls house... hahaha

We then headed onto M&S to find a jacket for me as Mr O is still on a hunt for a Christmas pressie for me! I then randomly spotted this amazing jacket :

I know, I know, it does look a little tight but it is my 'new size' and this would be a spring jacket and so hopefully by then it will fit perfectly!

We got a random phone call from one of my besties - Mr Ding Dong himself - so we decided to take a hop skip and a jump onto a bus and went to Winter Wonderland. And my word did it make me feel like I was a big kid again. We went on rides, had hot chocolates and mince pies in the VIP suite, froze our bottoms off in the Magical Ice Kingdom and got completely lost in the mirror maze. Not laughed like that in a long time!! Here are some of the pictures....

 

 

And to end the week off I tried out some new recipes - Weight watchers Chicken and Broccoli Bake with a crusty cheese topping and I also made up a new recipe of fake peanut butter ice cream ... I will post about the ice cream once I have tried and perfected it.

         

 

So tonight I plan on doing some more Christmas present crafts - which will all be revealed in the new year! A night by the sewing machine.....

Hope you've all had a lovely week.

Love, Mrs O x

Week 13 - 'Gunna Kick off this weight!'

So after week 12's disaster of gaining 3lbs, this week I managed to kick them off.

I naughtlily weighed myself every few days, but it allowed me to see the weight slowly fall back off. My word was I happy to see that .3lbs again!! :)

As these last few weeks I had spent a lot of time out and about and covering up, on Thursday night I had my chance to have a bit of a butterfly moment.... At my work Christmas dinner :)

This was my lovely dress that I bought all those weeks ago from Avon. It's the perfect dress for me as it allows you to have the top half however you want. So as I get more and more confident about my arms again, I can slowly uncover them as I go along!

However, what did I find when I got on the dance floor that night?.... A lady with a pair of wings on her back. Yes, they may have been angel wings, but still, I felt like it was a message from somewhere telling me that tonight was a night where I can show off my new forming wings! And I definitely used it as my chance to sparkle!

I decided not to point everything up that night and that I would just eat as well as I could that day and then just point it as my weeklies.

 

How have all of you got on at your Christmas parties?

Love, Mrs O x

Week 1 - 3lbs

Week 2 - 4lbs

Week 3 - 1lbs

Week 4 - 2lbs

Week 5 - 1lbs

Week 6 + 1lbs :(  - 0lbs

Week 7 - 4lbs

Week 8 - 2lbs

Week 9 - 0lbs (but also +0lbs!)

Week 10 - 2lbs

Week 11 +/- 0lbs

Week 12 + 3lbs (Major :(  )

Week 13 -3lbs

Week 12 - becoming a butterfly

The dreaded gaining weight

This week I put weight on .... dun dun duuuuuunnnnnnn!

3 flipping pounds! But I know exactly how and why they have gone on. On Saturday night we had a little Christmas Party with some friends at our house. I was doing really well until I brought out the home made ice cream..... I just shouldn't have had it nor the mince pie, or the mince pie after that. And then the Cheese came out ... and it stayed out for the rest of the night. I shouldn't have done it and I have been 'punishing' myself all week because of it. Well, just not touching my weeklies (apart from Wednesday but that is another story to come!) I know, I know, excuses excuses!!!

Anyway, as I said, I have been really focusing to get back down and loose those 3lbs I put on that weekend. So today, as I always do, I did my mid-week weigh in and I've lost 2 of those pounds again! THANK GOODNESS!!

I will post up later on a little post later on full of pictures of my adventures this week - food and non-food! - I feel that all I post about is my weight so I will try and put a nicer and more uplifting post up soon.

So you are probably thinking why have I titled this as 'Becoming a butterfly' well...

As its a time of thinking all about Christmas and with the lovely British weather being cold all I want to do is wrap up! But today when I was putting my clothes on I stopped and paused before I put my cardigan on and thought of the summer.... I know, it's a long way off but I can't wait to show off the new me in skimpier figure hugging clothes.

Hopefully by next year I will have lost even more weight and will look an even better looking gal!(although Mr O keeps saying I look good already!) 

So this winter I am being a bit of a butterfly... Working hard under my cocoon so that come the spring I can unwrap and show off my beautiful new set of wings!    Just like the story of the Hungry caterpillar.

Love, Mrs O x

Week 11 - A kick up the bum with a toad in the hole!

As predicted this week I haven't lost anything, but I haven't gained anything :)

I knew that after my Korma episode and sitting around feeling sorry for myself (after my visit to the hospital on Tuesday and then having to be on 'bed rest') I wouldn't have lost anything but so pleased that it wasn't a gain either!

As I had predicted that I decided at the weekend to sort out the freezer. After seeing a few of my friends post up on facebook saying that they had gone through the whole of their freezer and checked to see what they had done, they then posted up meal plans for the next week or so. So of course, me being one to follow a trend, I decided to empty my freezer out and write out a list of everything I had in it.... So I did....

You always forget about that packet of random things that you have in your freezer, don't you?! Why is that?! I do find myself being fairly organised most of the time, for example if I have made a larger meal and there are left overs (or sometimes I even make extra on purpose) I will put it into bags or Tupperware and then freeze it.

Anyway, I wrote my list out and evening meal planned for the next 2 weeks! And there is more in the freezer left over!! I have made sure that I have pointed up all my food too so it will help me to organise what I can or can't have in the day.

Stupidly, now that the Christmas decorations are up, our little snowman cookie jar is now also filled up with sweets! Don't worry, I have pointed them all out! But they are a good little treat - so I am looking at that jar as a treat jar and not a jar to just empty as soon as I can!!

But in new news .... I have tried out the new Weight Watcher's Toad in the hole. It was so yummy!!! AND again Mr O loved it!! It looked lovely and presentable in the baking tray but it flopped out of the tray and landed in a heap on my plate!


(spot the light choices sausages!! Mr O had normal sausages)

One of my colleagues told me yesterday to not worry about it and to just eat healthily and not out of control as I have done so well already and then start afresh in the New Year... I see her point but I know that it wont be that hard to loose a little bit between now and the New Year.

So this whole organisational Mrs O has given me a kick up the bum (along with the whole realisation that its not long until Christmas!) and that I only have 2lbs to loose until I am at my 10% goal. - this only came to me this morning! I have decided that I want to loose 2lbs by Christmas and then over Christmas to just make sure that I don't put any on. So c'mon Mrs O ! 2lbs to go,......!!!!

Have any of you got any real inspirational things to keep them going until you reach your Christmas goal?...

Love Mrs O x