Spring time, hobbits,birthdays and other snippets of fun

To celebrate the first day of Spring, I decided to take my afternoon cardio outdoors.

          I needed a hill. To walk up. The closest one being One Tree Hill so I headed on over.

I should have done this months ago! No one told me we had our own Hobbiton just down the road! Stone walls, wee stone huts, lambs, grass, flowers.. beautiful! I need to go here more often!

Earlier on that morning I'd had my weigh-in. The skin folds are slowly decreasing, body fat percent is still going down and I am noticing change in my body every week. Including my jeans becoming ridiculously baggy! Needing new ones, I discovered to my delight that I've dropped TWO jeans sizes since I started dieting 2-ish months ago... BOOM! Can't get much more proof than that!

My diet has been pretty consistent over the past few weeks - if it ain't broke why fix it huh!

I have around 300g of veges (cauli, beans, red onion, courgette) with lunch and the same with dinner - the high fibre in my diet keeps me from being hungry, the kumara at lunch keeps me going and the exercise and strictness of the diet (no extras allowed) keep me losing body fat! Plus I am learning to cook with herbs and spices to keep the flavours interesting. Win win win! My latest discovery is garam marsala - what is this and why did I buy it? I have no idea but it tasted good on my chicken tonight.

I had my first visit to Ali G who makes the posing bikinis. We've picked a fabric and a style, and have planned the blingy-sparkly bits. I'm so excited for how my bikini is going to look! It's a classic Tarn colour which makes me very happy.

Kurt just had his birthday so beforehand I spent a bit of time trying to think of fun non-food ideas that we could do. I ended up making the classic eggs bene for brekkie and timing my porridge cooking so we could eat at the same time, nawwww...

Eggs Benedict and Protein porridge for brekkie

We spent the morning at Waiwera hot pools which was lovely to relax (and soak out the sore muscles).

Dinner was at Gengy's... genius! Maybe not 100% romantic, but we caught up with his friends there, they were happy (all you can eat) I was happy (could choose exactly what I wanted to eat) Kurt was happy (it costs $1 to eat there on your birthday).. Lots of happy people!

Birthday's aren't complete without cake! I was rather impressed with my efforts this year, Pecan-pumpkin cupcakes with rum buttercream icing. (No I didn't even lick the spoon!!)

Fun stuff aside, today was a bit of a scary day as the most precious pup in the world, Oscar-Riley had emergency spinal surgery. The surgery went well and he should be back to his rascal ways in no time, so before I sign out for the night, here is a picture for you to admire.. xxx