I know that I am usually all about all things healthy and fitness, but the odd sweet treat can be good for the soul too!
We were very lucky as a family to be invited to the launch of the world’s first 3D printer for Candy at the official opening of Mr Simm’s Olde Sweet Shoppe in Bromley. Powered by magic, obviously, Katjes Magic Candy Factory 3D printer is amazing to watch in action.
I was introduced to this amazing site by my friend and I think it’s too good not to share! I’ve told so many others about it already, I really felt it deserved a blog post!
If your kiddies (or you) are into drawing, then this is the site for you. Run by Rob – a dad of four, he takes you through step by simple step to create amazing works of art. The kids (and you) will never feel intimidated by his amazing artistic talent as he always has one of his children doing the drawing at the same time.
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So it’s that time of year again and my second Juneathon! Can’t believe we’re already halfway through 2016!!! Where is the time going!?! Anyway, I digress, back to Juneathon – this time, though, we don’t have to do a daily blog post, but I think a weekly round-up of the exercise I’ve been up to would be good (it’ll help me remember what I’ve been up to – my memory is appalling, I blame the kids ;-P)! So here we go…
Day 1
20 Squats
20 Bicep Curls (under own body weight)
Fitness Blender workout – HIIT Cardio Butt and Thigh Workout 5 Day Challenge to Burn Fat and Build Lean Muscle Day 5 – I did this at my mum and dad’s house and unfortunately didn’t bring my weights with me, but it was still an intense workout!
Finished with a 30-second plank and 30-second side plank repeated twice.
Day 2
20 Squats
Then an arm workout with 1.5kg weights (20 bicep curls, 20 upright rows, 20 tricep kickbacks, 20 overhead shoulder presses and 15 bent over reverse fly) repeated 3 times
30-second plank and 30-second side plank twice
…when you’re dealing with a four-year-old boy!!!
This is how the conversation with my four-year-old Blue One went today…
Me: “What do you want for lunch – a sandwich thin or a crumpet?”
Blue One: “Hmmm, a crumpet”
Me: “Are you sure?”
Blue One: “Yes”
Me: “I’m putting your crumpet in the toaster”
Blue One: “Ok”
A couple of minutes later the crumpet is toasted and I’m buttering it…
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It’s been a crappy week since my last Boxercise session, the Blue One has been really poorly with an evil virus, he’s had scarily high temperatures (kept spiking to 40). So there were trips to the walk in clinic at our doctors, the Urgent Care Unit at Queen Mary’s and even rung my friend’s husband who is a doctor. All agreed it was an upper respiratory tract viral infection, so it was a case of sit it out and wait, dosing him up on Calpol and Nurofen and just keeping a close eye on him (I checked him so many time for rashes). So I’ve been stuck in the house, and as much as I love my home, staring at the same four walls, you do begin to develop cabin fever. So with the little man finally seeming to be on the mend, I definitely wanted to get out to my Boxercise session, even though I can feel my son has kindly shared his germs with me (this morning I had even lost my voice – which I am sure some people were quite happy about!!! haha!!!).
So, warm up session tonight was alternating between the orthodox and southpaw stance, bouncing from foot to foot, then with a jab, then with the back leg kick your bum, then lift the front leg up. We then, to the beat, went backwards to the back of the hall and then we came forward again whilst also doing jabs. Then general jog/run round the hall, then on the spot, elbow and then arm strike, then we were all thoroughly warmed up!
Time to glove and pad up! In our pairs, we started off in southpaw, and then just punching with the right hand worked our way across the room, then once on the other side of the room, did five jabs, then five jumps for the person in the gloves and five jumping jacks for the person in the pads, then do 10 jabs – with ten jumps or jumping jacks, and do the same again for 15 and 20. Once complete, boxer’s bounce so facing the other way, now in orthodox stance, this time making the way back across the room jabbing with the left hand. Repeating the five, 10, 15 and 20 jab and jump routine again. I must admit, when I was in the gloves I didn’t manage all the jumps and did do some squats instead, blaming the cold I’m getting…
Once we’d both had a go in the gloves and pads, it was onto the next routine. Again in our pairs, two cones on the floor between us, then both in a squat position, we did step and hooks for a count of 3o, then in between swapping hands, we had to do 20 skaters. Then swap pads/gloves. This was a thigh burner for both the glove and pad wearer!!!
Squat Hooks
Skaters
For the last section we did some work with resistance bands. First move was the band under the foot and then into the lunge position with knee on the floor, lifting up – so 20 dips and pulling the bands up as you come up. Hold at the end and then pulses. repeat on the other leg.
Next interval was for the arms, so the resistance band is held under the ball of the foot, again in the lunge position and pulling the arm straight back, again hold at the end and pulsing for eight, hold again and another pulse for eight. Could definitely feel the burn! Repeated again on the other arm.
Now holding the resistance band in both hands, squat down and then come up and put the band up and over your head and stretch the arms out for a count of 30 – ouch!
Finally sixteen stretches in front of your chest and then sixteen behind – then it was cool down time!
Really good session, hard work, but after a pants week – perfect for releasing some stress and hopefully this week I don’t have any dodgy bruises on my knees!!!
Come and join us – you know you want to – see our instructor Michelle’s Facebook page for all the details! 🙂 xxx
A week or so back my Blue One turned four (I feel so emotional about this…) and he is a massive Ben Ten fan – knows the aliens, loves all the different series (when Ben is 10 or when he is 15) so it was only fitting that he should have an Omnitrix birthday cake!
So as usual with the help and support of my beloved and exceptionally talented sister (of Caking it fame) I went about making his birthday cake oooo and some cool biscuits he gave to his friends to celebrate his birthday, below are the photos showing the journey, I hope you enjoy!
I did this initial sketch to work out colours as there are numerous styles of Omnitrix (possibly with different names) so I amalgamated a few styles and varied the colours. I was actually pretty chuffed with this drawing! Easily pleased me!
My sister helped me immensely with direction of the best way to carve the initial shape of the cake. Then I had to give each of the sponges a light crumb coat.
Prior to this, I coloured up the icing I needed, dark grey, light grey, green, black and some left white. Didn’t have to be exact as could add shadows and colours in later with a little mixed up food colouring and a little airbrushing.
Added the first layer of fondant icing and etched in some of the Omnitrix pattern, and quite quickly the cake was taking shape.
As the Omnitrix is a watch, a big part of it is the strap, it’s amazing what a difference it makes adding details in like this.
It’s amazing what a huge difference adding a little bit of shading can do!!!
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Today was the Blue One’s fourth birthday therefore I was feeling rather emotional, my baby is growing up – so really needed my Boxercise tonight, so will write about that first!
Had a good warm up, jogging, some fast jabbing, side running, fast hooks – getting our heart rates up.
Then with three ropes placed across the hall we had to go across, under the rope flat on our fronts, get up run to the next rope, again flat on your front back up and the same with the third rope – get to your partner who has the pads, do ten jabs and then go back and repeat until you’ve done four lot of ten jabs – swap with your partner.
Once in the pads, whilst the other person was negotiating the ropes, we were doing cross jacks!
I must confess though I didn’t go flat on my front under the ropes – the floor is hard and it hurts my knees, and I just didn’t need questionable bruises on my knees! haha! So I did go low, but not completely flat.
Swapped again, repeated the process but this time with ten hooks, again repeated four times. The person on the pads had to do high leg jogging whilst waiting.
Next up was weaving under the ropes, touching with your shoulder each side, bending the knees not the back – repeating on each of the three ropes, then jog back to the beginning to then weave under and swing yourself round and put your back to the rope, working your way along and to be done on each of the three ropes. Then alternate between shoulder touch and back to the rope on each of the ropes.
This was harder than you realised, and it was only once I’d stopped I realised how much I was sweating, but really enjoyed this section!
We then paired up, initial set was four jabs and then the person with the pads had to strike. Starting in orthodox stance and therefore the right hand, repeated ten times. Then swap and do the same starting with the left hand – then swap.
In between another interval, we did some deep squats – my left thigh is still not happy from last week and could really feel it! Maybe I need a massage!?
Then it was back to pads and gloves work, this time just strikes by the person in the pads, 20 to the right and 20 to the left meaning the person in the gloves had to duck. Swap and repeat – then swap back and do 30 strikes and again swap!
Then it was cold down – it was a fab session, thoroughly enjoyed it! Boxercise photos courtesy of Michelle Fox our wonderful Boxercise instructor – check out Foxlee Fitness!
As I said at the beginning, it was the Blue One’s birthday and he had a fab day, we gave him an Iron Man figure as one of his presents and he had to come with us on the school run! As hubby had the day off, we then walked to the Café for a cooked brekkie – where Iron Man had to join us!
When we collected the boy, we were able to sit with him whilst he sat on the nursery birthday throne to hand out his sweets. He loved it.
His birthday treat was a trip to soft play with two of his nursery friends and they had a phenomenal time! He loved his new Rescue Bots Blades toy.
Once home, both sets of grandparents came to visit – he got his first football goal (lots of fun in the garden to be had!), a Darth Vadar costume and an Optimus Prime figure. His uncles bought him a Captain American costume!
He has an Omnitrix birthday cake as made by mummy (a further post to follow on the making of this cake), but we’re saving that for the family birthday celebration on Sunday, so my wonderful sister of Caking it fame – made him a lightsaber cakelet, complete with lights and sound effects!
Also, I recorded a little a video of the Blue One at his football session with AW Football Coaching on Tuesday – which I shared on Instagram and Tekkers TV asked that I load it to their website (all about showcasing grass roots players) and they’d tweet it out and they have 33k followers – and they did that today, so that was a bonus!
All in all a great day! :-)xxx
What do your small people like doing to keep active?
Today I was meant to be going for a 5km run with other members of the UK Fitness Bloggers Facebook group who were participants of the virtual 5km. I was meant to travel with the lovely Helen, who had organised this event with the equally delightful Mollie, getting to The Running Works for around 9.30am. Unfortunately for me and the hubby, at 1.30am our poor little Pink One was sick! This put paid to my plans!
I’ve had a bad week with my anxiety, so this wasn’t particularly great timing, I know no one likes anyone throwing up, but I am emetophobic, I am really not good with this! Kindly my hubby dealt with the poorly throwing up child and I dealt with the Blue One who had woken up strolling into our room saying his sister had a ‘Big cough’.
So pretty much a sleepless night all round (except the Blue One) who cuddled up and slept on me, literally, all night.
Come the morning, the hubby stayed with the Pink One, whilst I took the Blue One to his new footie session – which initially seemed like it wasn’t going to go so well – he was being all nervous and kept saying he wanted to sit with me and didn’t want to play, but fortunately he came around and listened to Coach Alex and thoroughly enjoyed his hour of football!
From there the Blue One and I did the Morrison’s Big Shop – which is exercise in itself I assure you, lugging 6 pint bottles of milk around is heavy lifting!
We then came home, I helped the hubby put the shopping away. He then took the Blue One to a birthday party – the little social boy! I stayed with the Pink One, who even though she had a high temperature was pretty perky. She played with her Play-Doh (from this you can gage how sorry I felt for her, she had meant to be going with her uncles, granddad and cousin to the Cosmonaut Exhibition at the Science Museum, she would have so loved it, fortunately we hadn’t told her she was going. So I let her play with the Play-Doh, I can’t stand Play-Doh, it messes with my head!) whilst I got on with some OU study.
When the Hubby returned with the Blue One, I asked if he minded whether I went for a walk, which he didn’t, because he is the kindest Hubby ever! So I went for a good solid 5km walk in the fresh evening air, and it felt so good.
So there we have it, my penultimate day of Janathon! Not quite what I had planned, but a full and busy day none the less! 🙂 xxx
It’s my rush around day! There’s school/nursery drop off, nursery pick up, Blue One football, school pick up and swimming!
So this morning I snuck in 2 minutes of skipping!
Also it turns out I’ve also walked 6.32km!
🙂 xxx
Today was a very easy day, but I think that’s fairly reasonable considering yesterday’s exertions!
There was walking to and from the school for the various drop offs and pick ups.
I did the Morrisons big shop with the Blue One, and he sat in the trolley, so it was quite heavy to push to start with, even more so once the shopping was in there. Lifting the packed bags into the trolley, then into the boot and then taking them in once home! One bag contained 2 x 6 pint milks, 1 x 4 pint milk and a litre of soya milk – I think that was some good heavy lifting!
Finally, I did 30 seconds of jumping jacks with the small people for extra merit!
All being well, I hope to attend Parkrun tomorrow, which is probably a good thing as today ended with a Chinese takeaway, yum yum!!! xxx
Jog on Mum 