F*uck Yeah Friday!

Today has been a series of niggles and gripes, and it's only 8:06am! Let's change it around with a F*ck Yeah Friday and think about awesome stuff. Yes? Yes!

These are some things that have been making me smile this week:

• Riding Susan. I'm really enjoying this bike. I feel safe and steady, and even managed to overtake someone! Granted she was grandma age. But sometimes you gotta take a win where you find it. 
• I went to hot yoga for the first time last week and loved it! I haven't sweated that much in... Well, ever I think, but it was good. It felt very detoxing.
• On Sunday I was in the area so called a friend and went to a bar in the hills I've wanted to try for ages. Cider on a sunny day = win
• I went for my first run in three weeks last night. 8kms of slow awesomeness right there. 
• My husband. It's been a stressful week and he's cooked and cleaned and been generally awesome <3
• Cats That Look Like Pinup Girls
• Ben Davis' book is being released on New Year's Eve. It's my birthday two weeks later. Just sayin'
• How good does this fruity Christmas tree look? Via pinterest

I hope everyone has had a wonderful week and takes some time to think about the amount of awesome, no matter how small, in their lives. Have a great weekend xx

F*ck Yeah Friday!

I've haven't done a F*ck Yeah Friday for a while, so without further ado, here are some things that have been making me thankful of late :-D

• Melbourne Cup public holiday means that this is a 4 day week. Since it was a Tuesday it really feels like it's a 3 day week. YES!
• I joined the iPhone brigade. Expect instagrams and other iPhone-type stuff
• I did chin ups for the first time in ages and hurt everywhere!
• Obama won, and Romney lost. Even in Australia we're pleased with this result. 
• Speaking of Obama, this story made me laugh
• Gala's account of Hurricane Sandy was amazing
• Good things are happening at work
• I went for my first run in two weeks (and got thwarted by my dog who insisted on eating dead birds). Nevertheless, it was good
• I'm on my way to doing splits again. It will happen by the end of the year
• I've ridden by bike into work once this week and lived! Woohoo!

It has been a good week. I hope everyone else has had a good week too :)

Weekend stuff - the 5 minute chocolate mug cake

It's been a pretty cruisey weekend so far, which has been good. It's been one of those weekends which has been a bit of a struggle between what you want to do, what you should do, and what you can do. Don't you hate that? Finding the right balance is always hard.

Friday night started off well, with me making a healthy dinner (Asian soup with vegies and noodles) for my housemate. She kept on craving cake, despite the crazy amount of chocolate currently in the house. I suddenly had a brain wave and remembered that you can make a chocolate mug cake. That's right, a cake in a mug. Dangerous. Only not so much, it turns out.

She made the nutella mug cake, and I made a generic chocolate cake whose recipe I can't find again, although I added some peanut butter. How did it turn out?

Chocolate cake just out of the microwave

...and you see what I mean

Yeah. It was rubbery, dense and lacking in flavour. We ended up putting nutella over them, and they both tasted a little better. Although with the amount of ingredients used, you could easily make something just as awesome, and if you have nutella all you need is a spoon!

This weekend was also for bike rides with the dog. I'm still loving Susan my bike - she's perfect for lazy rides. Bike riding should not be a race in my opinion (I may just be saying that because I ride very slow).

Cookie and Susan

Cookie enjoying the creek

I'm really missing running (it's been 9 days since my last run), but at least having a bike is helping a little.

Operation Kickstart

Last week I was feeling sore and stressed out of my eyeballs. Life is really good, but it reached the point that even the things I love doing such as spending time with wonderful friends was stressing me. I needed some me time.

I had a bath on Saturday night with crystals, oils and candles, and it occurred to me that I haven't taken my crystals out since well before the wedding which was seven months ago tomorrow(!). Nor have I been to the hills and out on one of my sanity saving hikes through the ferns for around the same amount of time.

Even though life has been great, I haven't been focusing on the things that make me truly happy or that make me a better person. And so Operation Kickstart was born.

Operation Kickstart - because every campaign must have a wanky name. 

I decided that I needed to make some changes in my life, both on a personal and a physical level. And the best way of doing that is to do one small thing every day towards that goal. 

Sometimes it's about changing habits, or sometimes it's about taking tiny steps towards something big.

There's lots of ways Operation Kickstart can work. The point of it is to make a promise to yourself to start making changes, and then actually doing them. It's a good way of being mindful of the fact that you do have something you want to work towards and keeping it in the front of your mind rather than forgetting about it (tax returns are a good example of this!).

To start it off, here's a couple of my pledges:

• Go for a solo hike in the forest (Sunday)
• Having bircher muesli for brekkie yesterday rather than toast (Monday)
• Having a delicious noodle and vegie soup for dinner rather than pasta (Monday)
• Catching up with family today and it will not be strained. 

And most importantly, I bought a new bike!! A friend was selling it so I snapped it up. I rode it home on Sunday and it rode like a dream, so I'm very much looking forward to many lazy bike rides this Spring and Summer!  

Meet Susan

It will definitely help with getting more exercise in and since it has a basket I will be able to ride it up to the shops. This will assist with Operation Kickstart I'm sure.

I'm looking forward to Operation Kickstart. I hope you join me :)

Stuff

I haven't posted in a while, so here's a picture:

:)

Final pole class

This week was my final class in beginner's pole. Since I couldn't make it on Monday as I was in Sydney, they were able to fit me in on Tuesday, which was absolutely fantastic. 

The first thing I noticed about the girls in the new class is that they were good. We had to climb three times and then invert, which they all did easily. Compared to my class where it was only me and another girl (who was on her third round of Beginners and is also doing Intermediate) that could invert, it was really inspiring and made me want to lift my game! 

We had to do a performance for the other group and vice versa, so we learned a routine based on most of what we'd learnt over the past 8 weeks. I always forget what comes next in things like dances, tai chi or karate (which is why I no longer do them), so this was an interesting challenge. For the most part it was fine -  I did better than expected, although I did forget a step which meant that Fan Legs didn't work. And because a lot of it was on the floor my knees are still bruised, several days later. But all in all, it was fun! 

Someone took a photo and put it on FB, so you can see what it was like! 

I'm in the green shorts

We did our routine in front of the girls doing Fan Dance 2, so we had an audience. It was pretty good when they'd cheer at an awesome move, particulalry when we all slid down in Fireman's pose at the same time. We then watched the them do their routine, and it was great to see. It really is quite body affirming as there are all these women of different shapes, fitness and colours doing their thing wearing not a lot. It takes balls to do it, so well done to them!

Unfortunately both Beginners and Intermediate 1 are booked out for term 5, but I might be able to do a casual pole strength class. I'm interested to see what that is like. I'm hoping it will be a heap of conditioning and stretching exercises and will fill the void until next year. Fingers crossed!

Pole dancing

Unfortunately, this was my last class in pole dancing tonight. And due to a last minute (yet awesome) work trip I couldn't make it!

My friend K and I had been deliberating whether or not we'd do another class. I was keen to, but she wasn't sure. If we weren't going to do it I had plans to follow my physio's instructions and do Pilates instead.

In the last session I was the only one who was able to do the basics for Spiderman ( I still don't think that's it's real name). Basically it's where you jump upside down on the pole, wrap your legs around it and then slide down to the bottom. Next class would have been removing my hands so it was just being held up by my legs, but unfortunately I wasn't in class today. Boo!

It looks a little something like this, minus the arms holding on. And in this photo doesn't look nearly as awesome as it is:

I realised after spending a tram trip to work thinking about how I could do a vertical splits move up the pole and what grip I'd need my hands to be in for maximum effect, that I should probably do another class. Luckily, my friend decided she wanted to continue so we've reenrolled in Basics again. I could probably do Intermediate, but it will be good to perfect some of the moves and keep on practicing them.

After looking at a lot of the Sillygirrl archives where she had been trying to get stronger and more flexible, it inspired me to do the same. So now I am pledging to do the splits by the end of the year (which I haven't done in about 12 years), and open up my hips so my middle splits are more splitty (which they're so not at the moment).

I'm really looking forward to it. It's nice to have something where being strong and flexible is a requirement. rather than just a nice to have tacked on the end. I'm really looking forward to getting bendy flexy again. To goals!