#jandsadventselfie

This year we did something a little different in the lead up to Christmas, instead of just opening our advent calendars each day we decided to take a selfie!  Well I decided to do it and Maddie was more than happy to play along :)

It got us thinking about our day and how we were feeling about the arrival of Christmas and I thought it was worth a post on the blog :)

Dec 1st and we were excited about Christmas:

Dec 2nd was a Christmas Tree selfie :)

Dec 3rd and we were enjoying the Christmas lights outside our office :)

Dec 4th and we reached the end of the working week :)

Dec 5th and it was an early morning, straight out of bed selfie :)

Dec 6th was a lazy Sunday :)

Dec 7th and it was top (photo) bombing from Alfie :)

Dec 8th and we spent another day chilling :)

Dec 9th and we were enjoying our advent chocolates :)

Dec 10th and it was nearly the weekend!

Dec 11th and we were loving the Christmas trimmings :)

Dec 12th and we'd just got home from laptop shopping!

Dec 13th was the new laptop selfie :)

Dec 14th and we were happy that it was our last week at work :)

Dec 15th was all about family time :)

Dec 16th and we had to include the Santa cookie jar, otherwise known as Baby Sam :)

Dec 17th and we painted our nails ready for Christmas :)

Dec 18th and we were celebrating finishing work for 2 weeks :)

Dec 19th and one of us was feeling rather delicate after the office Christmas party!

Dec 20th and was said goodbye to my brother Jamie and his girlfriend Eat as they headed back to Thailand :(

Dec 21st and we were chilling :)

Dec 22nd was time for our favourite Christmas film :)

Dec 23rd and we watched Elf :)

Dec 24th and we spent the evening baking :)

Dec 25th and we had a lovely Christmas Day :)

It really was a fun way to countdown the days to Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by
Jo xx

Weeks Fifty One & Fifty Two

The last couple of weeks have passed in a blur, I'm sure it's been the same for everyone though!  Here are the highlights:

Work was busy but there was still time for the odd selfie :)

I got some new trainers ready for a fitter me in the New Year!

I wore a Santa hat while manning the pay station at  slimming :)

I enjoyed dirty pudding :)

Our fortnight off work started :)

We went to my work's Christmas party :) I got way too drunk!

We celebrated a friend's daughter's birthday :)

A much needed red cup!

We said goodbye to my brother Jamie when he went back to Thailand just before Christmas :(

I spent a lot of time with my boy :)

I had a major clear out of the kitchen cupboards!

We watched our favourite Christmas film :)

I was gutted when my self stripping wool had a join in it that messed the pattern up, I didn't think there was anyway I'd get this present finished in time for Christmas :(

I took my niece on a train trip :)

To visit Santa!!!

Alfie loved watching Elf as much as me and Maddie did :)

Me and Maddie baked mince pies and snickerdoodles :)

Santa came :)

The socks did get finished and were very much appreciated :)

We had too much chocolate!

And spent time relaxing :)

We had a great night with friends playing a kazoo game :)

And I really enjoyed my one and only Christmas drink!

I had a lovely, quiet Christmas with a little bit of noise thrown in and now I'm really looking forward to seeing in the New Year.

I hope you had a great Christmas, thanks for stopping by
Jo xx

Five Favourites From November

Better late than never I say! Here are my five favourite photos from November:

Maddie and V...or is it me?!?!?

This one makes me laugh so much :)

My baby boy snuggled under my mood blanket :)

Me getting a huge surprise!

And a foggy walk in the park.

I'm looking forward to scrapping these over the Christmas period when I have a few days off work.

Thanks for stopping by
Jo xx

Refocus

I have been so busy recently that I haven't had a chance to document my Slimming World journey, that doesn't mean that I've stopped travelling though!

We have had a lot of talks in the past few weeks about Christmas and how to cope with it and, quite frankly, I wasn't coping with the talk of Christmas and the pressure I felt, the pressure I had put on myself to continue losing over Christmas.

I had gain after gain and was so unhappy so I refocused.  I stopped thinking about the fast approaching run away train called Christmas and started focusing on something else instead.

I thought back to the summer of 2014, not a great time for me personally but a great time for my weight loss.  During that summer I wore a lovely pair of cropped jeans and I felt great in them.  In the summer of 2015 the gap between the button and buttonhole on those jeans was a vast canyon and that upset me :(

So my focus changed from Christmas to summer 2016 when I really want to walk along the beach with those jeans on, and it worked!

This was the result the first week after I'd changed my thought process and I was so happy!

The week after that I maintained, it wasn't a loss but it wasn't a gain either and I'd had a heavy week so I was still happy :)

And then last week this happened:

And I was over the moon :)

I'm weighing in tonight and I'm hoping for another good loss, a loss that will allow me to enjoy myself at Christmas but, more importantly, a loss that will get me in those jeans come the summer.

Remember - everyone is different therefore everyone's goals, thoughts, deadlines and focus should be different too.  Find something that works for you.

Thanks for stopping by
Jo xx

Five Favourites Finished!

At last I've finally got my five favourite photos from October scrapped and ready to share!

Now that Maddie is older I don't get many chances to use my Halloween stash so I was pleased when she grabbed this spider hat to try on :)  I'm also very please with the web I drew using glitter glue!

Although I chose one photo from this set of photos I'd taken I decided to scrap them all in the end, we always have a laugh when we're taking selfies and I wanted to show that in the layout :)

This is another one where I added an extra photo, I found it hard to pick just one so decided to do them both.  My niece Alice certainly is a crazy lady :)

I have a ton of photos of these two but I love the look on Alfie's face in this one :)

This layout I'm just not sure about, I thought the background paper was perfect to document a nice walk in the park but now I don't think it works.  I'm not going to change it though and hopefully it will grow on me once it's in the album.

So that's another nine photos scrapped meaning another five layouts in my albums. It also means that I'm almost bang up to date with scrapping 2015! Woohoo :)

I'll be back soon with my five favourite photos from November.

Thanks for stopping by
Jo xx