a healthy balance

Things I'm loving:

new cameras

food festivals

weekend wonderings

my pretty town

new niece anticipation

nearly-new converse (still)

paris/disney excitement

Things I'm not loving:

dodgy roots (finally rectified; stay tuned!)

marking workload

money stresses

naughty laptops

... as long as the good outweigh the bad, life's good.

Remember to enter my super amazing giveaway!

personal planner

A few weeks ago I was very kindly offered a new diary* from the lovely folk at Personal Planner - a site where you can create your own personalised diary. In terms of what you can personalise, well the list is never-ending! Front cover, cover text, starting month, size, layout, colours, add-ons (I have a 'pupils' section which will be so handy for my personal tutoring!), and how you make use of the front and back 'blank' pages. As well as the pupils section, I've also added a 'training' tick box, to hopefully motivate me when it comes to my workouts, and a simple tick-box to do list. I chose a combination of ruled pages and maps on the front and back sections; I'm always trying to find somewhere to scribble down notes to myself... and the wannabe traveler in me loves maps! 

Designing my diary was really simple using their website, and after a week or so it fell through my letterbox ready for me to start using. I'm so pleased with how its turned out, it's spot on! And the best bit is that the lovely chaps at Personal Planner have asked me to run a giveaway for one of you to win your own planner - any size, any design! 

You can follow Personal Planner on Twitter and Facebook.

To enter complete the rafflecopter form at the bottom of this post and leave a comment on this blog post answering the following question "If you could add an extra hour to each calendar day, what would you use it for?". The giveaway is open for a week (ends midnight Saturday 5th October 2013) and is open to UK readers. I'll pass on the winner's email address and details to Personal Planner who will then get in touch with your digital gift voucher. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

life in pictures

24 (8 seasons) The Walking Dead (3 seasons) Game of Thrones (3 seasons) Breaking Bad (5 seasons) 

Homeland (2 seasons) Dexter (8 seasons) Prison Break (4 seasons)

Err, we watch a lot of TV! Well, that's not entirely true... we watch a lot of TV series retrospectively. In fact, we rarely watch TV - apart from when The Great British Bake Off, The X Factor (for me at least) or The Apprentice are on, we don't watch anything 'religiously'. And even those, its a case of if we're not doing anything, we'll watch. I admit, Casualty is my guilty pleasure, but I can go without! We do love a US TV series though, as you can tell from the above. Yes, we've watched them all, and every season, apart from Dexter which is a work in progress. We started off with 24 at Uni, and spent far too much time when we should have been in lectures following the adventures of Jack Bauer. More recently Homeland and Game of Thrones, and we're just as hooked. Rich has read all of the GoT books and isn't allowed to say anything when its on in case he gives anything away! And although I'm a massive pansy when it comes to blood and gore, I quickly got into The Walking Dead and Dexter. 

So my question is, what next? We need recommendations people! 

Note: we're not as sad as this suggests, and do have lives!

best ever

A little while ago I went to a baby shower, and took with me the best gift of all... rich, gooey, chocolatey brownies. As I wrote in a little book of 'wise words' to the baby - "Learn to bake from a young age, as everyone likes cake. And if they don't, don't trust them". 

I took this recipe from BBC Good Food, and will leave it to them to show you how to make them. Anyone else enjoy the hilariously in-depth instructions?! Anyway, these are titled Best Ever Brownies, and boy are they good. Equal measures of dark chocolate and butter, a little less flour and lots of sugar, this makes for deliciously gooey and rich brownies. Chuck in chunks of milk and white chocolate, and you're everyone's best friend! I've also included some snaps from the baby shower; they'd thought of everything, with some very cute little touches.