Liar Liar Pants On Fire

What can you say when you have a dispute with someone and they lie to your face? About stuff they've said to you? And they brazen it out and call you a liar and deranged for disputing them (sticking up for yourself and disagreeing with their lies about you)?

Ignore them until they go away, I suppose.

Piss Poor Peepers

Bloody hell, this make up malarky is a lot harder than I thought. I think I'm okay-ish with blending in that there are no definite lines where two colours meet but it always looks really washed out in photos. I mean, these piss poor peepers below.

 


This was quite a daunting task; I don't have a lot of colours or brushes and I seem to have a problem with building up colour. With brushes I patted on each colour several times which did build up intensity but nowhere near the vibrancy of the original photo I decided to copy (after three glasses of the fruitiest Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc).

On the inner third of the lid (No 7) gold followed by Benefit Gilded to try to intensify
Middle third of the lid (Rimmel) light green
Outer third of the lid (Rimmel) olive goldy green
Crease, wing and under eye (No 7) midnight blue
Outer brow bone - (Benefit) gold rose from Dallas pallete
Black lashes and black kohl (Elizabeth Arden) waterline

I was inspired by the girls over at this site http://www.makeupgeek.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=2967&st=0&sk=t&sd=a Make Up Geek. My initial thoughts from seeing everyone's efforts ranged from "wow" to "oh", but even the eyes I was less than impressed with look better than mine! Is it the products (not MAC), the brushes or my technique, I wonder?

I think it's fair to suggest I'm being kind to myself. I think application must be the key. I can see I haven't got even coverage over areas of my lid; the blending isn't great; the shading is not correctly placed and the colours! This was meant to be gold to golden green to midnight blue to sunset red sweeping over and across my lids and I achieved five day old bruise.

Here is the original. Compare and contrast.

Me damn fool.

But I'll just throw wine and artificial lighthing into the workman blames her tools mix.

Tuna Meatballs

I've been on a mission to empty my freezer as it was jam packed with meat, poultry and fish with no room for my home-made ready meals.

I fished out two large tuna steaks and this is what happened...

2 tuna steak (400g), chopped finely (minced really as I did in the Magimix)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
4 spring onions
2 garlic clove, finely chopped
200g breadcrumbs, plus extra for dusting
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1 tbsp fresh coriander
1/2 tsp chilli powder

Mix everything together, form into balls, roll in the extra breadcrubms to coat.
Shallow fry for 5-6 minutes, turning to evenly cook/ colour.

I made a tomato sauce, then placed the fried balls in for 5 minutes to carry on cooking and served with fettucine.

Bubble and Squeak

After Sunday's Best Roast Ever where Partner catered for the 5000 even though there was only three of us there was plenty left so I decided to make bubble and squeak. I had a mixture of leftover mashed and roast potatoes and savoy. I popped the roast potatoes into the food processor until they formed a paste. These were added to the mash and cabbage, mixed well, formed into cakes, lightly dusted with flour before chilling for half an hour or more.

When they were required for munching I fried them on a moderate heat in vegetable oil for 5 minutes each side and served with poached eggs.

200g mashed potatoes
A quarter of a cabbage, shredded and cooked
Flour for dusting
Salt and pepper to season

Down

I feel down today and yesterday. When I feel down I don't exercise, so that's two days missed. However, I am down in another way and this is 2lbs down since I weighed in at the beginning of the week! Woo-hoo, that's me slightly perkier in mood. Not only that I took my measurements today and compared them with my previous all time high weight (which I am now under; just) and there is a substantial difference in the measurements despite there being marginal difference in the weight. I think it's safe to say that my keen exercising in the last couple of years have reduced my overall bulk.

I shall run again on Monday blue or not for half an hour and will get a 20 minute Shred session in.

Pork Stir Fry

So last night we had 5 spice chinese pork stir fry. Partner cooked pork shoulder on Sunday and there was a substantial bit leftover that pulled apart perfectly. I marinated it for a couple of hours before stir frying with vegetable and serving with rice.

Leftover pork

1 clove garlic, crushed

2.5cm knob of ginger, grated

1 red chilli, chopped

1 tsp 5 spice

2 tbsp light soy

1 tbsp rice vinegar

Half a tsp brown sugar

The meat is stir fried quickly in a mix of sunflower and sesame oil, make sure you retain the marinade liquid.

Remove the pork and quickly stir fry your chosen vegetables, in my case yesterday it was red and green pepper and broccoli, then add the pork stirring all the while and quickly add the marinade before turning out to serve with rice. 

Today I also sported the same eyes as yesterday, I'm only adding the photos to compare as I tried to be a bit more heavy-handed today. Just to note it's my Clinique mascara rather than the Estee Lauder one.

 

Massive Bird

What a freezing cold, windy morning! My legs were still aching a bit and so I thought I'd take the bike out for an hour's ride. Five minutes into the ride I was frozen to core, wondering when I might warm up and having an inner battle with myself. The hour was knocked down to forty minutes in my mind but after a particularly biting gust of wind I began to head back after seventeen pathetic minutes. I was quite glad I turned around when I did as it meant I saw an immensly massive bird swooping up and down ahead of me. My first thought was that it was an eagle quickly followed by a metaphorical slap for being so stupid and then a fleeting thought it might be an owl. It didn't look anything like an owl to be fair so before any pictoral research commences I will hazzard a guess at some kind of kestral.

That wasn't the only massive bird I saw this morning unfortunately. I finally weighed myself and it is an all time high. So high I can't bring myself to say it out loud. I am hoping it will focus my mind for the journey to Hollywood Thin.

I bought some new eyeshadow palettes yesterday on Boots 2 for 3 offer and decided to have a play with them today. This is a smoky look using rose gold in the inner half of the lid, olive green on the outer half of the lid, plum at the outer corner and crease. I used a dark purple to line my lower lid and my lashes were blackened with Estee Lauder Projectionist.

First Soup Of The Month

I jumped out of bed this morning to run. It was cold and my legs were tired after yesterday's exertion, so instead of running solidly I had a couple of short walks to ease me into it. Despite that I ran the same distance as yesterday in the same length of time which can only mean I was faster today.

After returning, I perused the contents of the fridge and decided soup was in order. I had cream of celery soup in mind, however Partner had used half of it for last night's Coq au Vin and had finished off the cream for dessert, so I threw in bits of this and that and made a delicious, relatively low fat soup.

Serves 3-4

Half head of celery, chopped (reserve leaves for chopping to add later)

Half an onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 broccoli stem, peeled and chopped

4 medium sized new potatoes, peeled and halved

Good knob of butter

150mls milk

1 pint chicken stock

Sweat veg in butter on low heat for 25 minutes stirring occasionally.

Pour in stock and bring to boil, reducing to a low simmer for 15 minutes.

Add chopped celery leaves and season to taste.

Blend until smooth.

Add milk then bring back to a simmer before serving.

Okay, this doesn't do it justice as it is a bit bleached out by the flash!

EOTD

As you can see this is a subtle look you can wear in the day without causing offence to anyone's eyes. My friend bought me a Benefit Dallas palette a couple of years ago which I love because the colours really work for me. The two eye shadows seem to give my eyes an amber glow that isn't visible on the photos. A golden pink over the whole lid with a golden brown at the outer corner and crease with just a smidge dark chocolate brown shadow at the very outer edge gives me a subtle shimmering smoky daytime look. It looks very subtle in the photos! Maybe I need to trowel it on a bit more? 

This little pot of black inkiness lined my upper lids. With the brush that comes with it I smudged the gel into my upper lash-line creating subtle definition to the lashes. I haven't used a gel liner before but I have long wanted the more expensive Bobbi Brown and MAC versions. While I haven't anything to compare it with I am very pleased with this little purchase; currently on special in Boots for £5.99 instead of £7.99 this should last a fair old while and the sales assistant implied that there would be more colours available if this sold well. 

Finally Estee Lauder Projectionist was applied to my upper lashes, looking at the photos it is apparent to me that I should also use mascara on my lower lashes (which was highly frowned upon in the Nineties!) and I could do with a touch of liner too. I'm not faithful to a particular brand of mascara. At the moment I switch between this and Clinique High Impact. I like both :non-committal shrug:

Introduction

This is it.

After five years of carrying around this extra lard I have had enough. Yo-yoing between 8st 9lbs and 9st 8lbs is taking its toil on my self-confidence, my style and happiness. I can't wear the clothes I want to wear; I don't know how to dress for my size. I look like a fat frump basically.

I haven't always looked like this; five years ago I was lean and lithe coming in at 8st. I had good muscle definition, slender limbs and a stomach as taut as a washboard. My body shape and size wasn't far off Jennifer Aniston and that is what I aspire to be like again.

So how am I going to go about this?! We-ell - boringly -slowly slowly catchy monkey. I think. At least to start.

What did I do about it today? I got out and ran. Not for long admittedly but I ran nonetheless. For twenty minutes which was 2.28 miles . So well done me for breaking my three month running cherry and hopefully I will be back up to 8 mile runs in no time.

I will take my measurements and weight to post tomorrow.