Its February which can only mean one thing….  Seville Oranges are here and its marmalade making time.

Geoff has often mentioned how he would like 52 jars of marmalade,as he eats it at a rate of one jar a week

I have never been able to achieve this in past years but after 2 marmalading days I now have made 42 jars of lovely home made marmalade 🙂

I made one batch in Cambridge on a gas hob and another batch here on my electric hob, it was amazing to see how much quicker boiling point was reached on a gas hob !

There is also another batch of oranges in the freezer,so I can make some orange and ginger marmalade at some point in the future, once I gather some cooking apples together.

So I might just get to that magical 52 Jars and have a few spare jars to give away too 🙂

The recipe I use for my marmalade can be found here…

Well I achieved my first 30 day challenge and made it through all of January with out eating one slice of cake !

I didn’t bake any cakes either and I think I missed baking them more than I did eating them 🙂

So yesterday when we went to Cafe Nero for coffee, Geoff treated me to a wonderful spiced apple and pecan muffin, which I can highly recommend 🙂

When entering my calorie data into my fitbit I noted that one of these muffins has a whopping 474 calories, so I wont be having many of these.

Anyway I decided I must be able to bake a cake with fewer calories per slice, so in the oven at this very moment is a fat free weet-a-bix cake, its like a fruit loaf….

I have worked the calories out at 2,638 for the whole loaf, so I shall slice it into 10, making it 263 calories a slice and  a good option for our Sunday post walk cake 🙂

My next 30 day challenge is not to pick at any food while at work…………….

( cake was cut into 13 slices so only 200 calories a slice  )

Much to my amazement I have just packed away all my slimming world books, something I thought I would never do, but thanks to a little gadget called a fitbit I will not be needing slimming world any more.

Geoff bought me the Fitbit for Christmas, I love gadgets so was excited about having another one to play with, although I was quite adamant that I would not be counting calories…..  BUT how wrong could I be !

Now into my 4th week , having lost half a stone, I find myself quite addicted to my little fitbit and counting calories 🙂 Its really opened my eyes to a few things, I love the fact that I can actually eat anything I want too and its me that’s in control.

I had been so worried about having to give my gym membership up but not any more as I now walk every day,because I want to get my fitbit steps in and the  more steps I do means the more calories I can eat 🙂

This wonderful little gadget costs just £80 which may seem expensive but compared to slimming world its remarkably cheap.

Another thing I have discovered by counting calories, is just how many calories are in some of the so called free to eat slimming world recipes 🙁

Just 4kg away from my target weight and I am convinced with the help of fitbit it will be easier than ever to maintain, the new slimming world magazine is due out soon too but I wont be needing  it 🙂

Ever since I moved into my house, the loo roll holder and towel rail have been hanging off the bathroom wall, to say this annoyed/stressed me is an understatement 🙁

On my return from Les Gets it was annoying me even more, then I had this brain wave of an idea 🙂

So off I went to purchase a tube of no nails glue, plus a new bathroom set.

The end result is a great looking bathroom set, which I don’t think will ever move, I am sure the wall will come down before the loo roll holder and towel rail will.

Now I am wondering how I can remove the old mirror and replace it with the matching mirror

Just a shame I cannot glue my out door fence together too.!!!

Two lovely new additions to my Beach hut collection……

First a beautiful Christmas Card , made especially for me ! Beach Huts at Old Hunstanton in the snow last year

Then I was offered a painting at a price I could not refuse, especially as it was by an Artist who did 2 of my other paintings , I also had the perfect spot for it, in my new home 🙂

Sally Gail and Louise

The sun has been wonderful and the skiing brilliant, today we managed 13 lifts and as many ski runs, enjoying the afternoon skiing with friends too.

Courgette Lasagne

In the evenings we have started watching Downton Abbey series 2 , which I missed when it was first shown on tv , as we were in Turkey …. and we are still fitting in a fitbit walk, I cannot wait to see what those scales say when I return home.

We are also enjoying some nice home cooked meals, its amazing what you can manage in a small kitchen with a small Rowenta oven.

Vegetable Crumble

Last night we had Courgette Lasagne and this evening it was vegetable crumble, both recipes came from the BBC Good Food site.

Tomorrow should be another great sunny day and we have plans to ski with more friends.

Oh and Geoff is benefiting for my massage skills 🙂

Tonight I had my last piece of cake for a while as I am going to start 2012 off with a small challange, for the next month at least I am not going to eat any cake…

last bit of cake for 30 days

As I love baking this could be difficult, but then again I can still bake then give it away to some lucky person 🙂

They do say it takes 30 days to break a habbit  and walking in Turkey certainly helped me break my addiction to bread,so it will be interesting to see how I get on with the Cake ban.

I most enjoy a piece of cake after our Sunday walks so I will have to find something else to replace the cake… maybe yoghurt as I love mullerlights but have stopped buying them as they are so expensive.

What would you have instead of cake  ????

For the past few months I have been using bloglovin as my blog reader, on the whole I have really liked its lay out and its made blog reading really enjoyable,but it has one big draw back for me !

Its very hard and even impossible at times to follow the feed back to the orginal blog post, which makes it hard to leave comments. It seems to work on some feeds and not on others. So I have found myself not leaving as many comments around as I like too.

For this reason alone I have decided to go back to Google Reader, it will take a few days to set it all back up how I like it, but expect me around your blog soon and if I have negleted you with comments in the past few months, be warned, I will soon have that sorted !