healthy

5 Weeks to go…

Here we are…only five more weeks of pregnancy to go if everything goes according to plan. I kinda feel anxious, scared and happy at the same time, so I decided to give you an update on how everything is going right before we enter the last month of pregnancy and right before the holidays. To celebrate this landmark, D (thoughtful as ever – I am so lucky!) surprised me with a bouquet of my favourite flowers: pink peonies! Not the small type, but the big and fragranced ones! In December! Of course there are 5 flowers in the bouquet for each week he has to help and care for me until he will have to divide his attention between me, our bundle of joy and our little doggie. Tough times await him…maybe I should have bought him flowers… I am writing this post before our third scan so no new photos of the little one as well as no news on how everything is going in my belly, but I can tell you that thus far, I feel that everything is going according to plan and the little one is doing well inside. Lots of things have happened during these last two months of pregnancy-wise: lots of activity going on and this time some real kicks, the belly is growing unexpectedly fast, getting out from bed is becoming more and more difficult every day, eating has become a love-hate relationship and so on…

Now, let me detail on all those things for a bit. First of all, during the seventh month, I really, actually felt kicks and fists and actually saw my belly change shape while the little one was playing inside and I have to say that it does not hurt at all, but rather feels like ‘home’ – I mean I get all warm and fuzzy inside and feel like this is the most natural and beautiful feeling in the world. This is a lot coming from someone that thought this must be the most alien-like feeling in the world, and when I say ‘alien’ I mean Sigourney Weaver’s Alien, but as it turned out this actually feels so, so nice. If in the seventh month there was mild activity going on, nowadays it really feels like she is one strong lady. The feeling is so satisfying and makes both of us so happy that I can’t really describe it in words.

The growing belly is becoming more and more uncomfortable to carry around and seriously impends lots of movement on my part and thus I have become even more addicted to D. Getting out of the bed, or up from a low-couch has become nearly impossible without help, not to mention that putting on socks or shoes with laces is a real struggle. Luckily we laugh a lot about the entire situation and he helps me with most of the stuff when he is at home. To be honest I have really felt the adding of weight in the middle section and right now after going one storey up the stairs I usually struggle to get my breath back. Kinda like Kung-Fu Panda when he declared his greatest enemy the stairs. Putting on body lotion is a workout in itself, so I getting my daily cardio twice. I am now very happy that we did all the shopping for the nursery and for the little one in the second trimester because right now, only thinking about going shopping gives me blurred vision. Honestly, until this week I have never noticed how close together all the stuff in shops are. I literally have a hard time going from one side of a shop to another simply because I have a hard time fitting in through all the racks.

A bit on the eating in the last trimester, actually in the eight month as the seventh month has been very comfortable. First of all, because the bundle of joy is growing fast, I do feel the need for more fuel a.k.a. food these days. You might think that this is not such a big deal, or not really worth mentioning here, but honestly, in the past few weeks eating has become difficult because of the growing baby and the limited space inside me. If I eat my usual serving (or at least the amount I used to eat last month) in a sitting I immediately feel intestinal reflux, therefore I am always hungry as I have to eat minimal amounts of food at a time. This is tricky as you tend to eat more frequent and more of the shitty junky foods because let’s face it, you can’t always have healthy food servings with you all day long and thus getting fatter faster. As far as weight goes, thus far I have gained 13 kgs throughout the entire pregnancy, but considering the fact that fatty, sweet foods are coming this Christmas, and I am craving more sugary things than ever, I will probably gain a lot more weight by the time I give birth.

Thus far I have been lucky enough to not have swollen hands or feet and was able to still wear my wedding band and beloved cocktail rings on a regular day basis. I hope that everything will continue to go this way until the end, but I am well aware that there is a 90% chance that this might not happen and I am ready for that (I think). Also thus far, I have not had a single stretch mark in sight, but I must confess that I have been using litres of Bio-Oil twice per day throughout the entire period and I think that might have helped with that. I seriously hope that no stretch marks will appear until the end of the pregnancy as I am not morally ready for that whatsoever and will get very upset. I did however get a weird no-irritation itchiness throughout my entire body for the last two-three days that seriously annoys me, but I am trying not to panic (read about it on the internet) too much about it, as my following appointment with my doctor is on Tuesday and I do not trust Dr. Google at all as I think it really messes with your head. So keep your fingers crossed that it is nothing too serious and rather an allergy or something that does not affect the little one.

Also, this past month I have been experiencing a lowering in the quality of my brain cells. What does that mean? It means that I have gone full-pregnancy-brain and that is one serious condition as I forget stuff two seconds after I make my brain promise that it will not forget something, I have zero space orientation with a map in my hand – to be honest, I was not good at that before the pregnancy, but now I feel that I am holding some sort of alien object in my hands instead of a map. This is no biggie if you’ve got an understanding husband but I must confess that being honest with him from the moment I took notice of my failing brain did help a lot as he now knows where this is coming from.

That is about it for the seventh and eighth month. I did not experience anything out of the ordinary or uncomfortable thus far and I really hope that everything will proceed the same from now on. As far as maternity clothes go, if you have been following this blog, you’ll have noticed by now that I did not buy anything more than a few pairs of maternity jeans and I advise all future mothers to not splurge on maternity pieces but rather on different cuts. I also urge future moms to try and buy all the stuff needed for a new baby in the second trimester as the energy levels in the third trimester go down a lot. I will keep you updated on everything as much as I can considering Christmas is coming and I also promise to start a Christmas-Tree Series and choose different themes each year from now on. I can’t wait to show you this year’s theme, but I will reveal it on the 24th!

December 18, 2016

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Baby Preparations: Going BRONDE!

With about five weeks to go until the bundle of joy will join our household, I decided to make a change in my appearance that hopefully will make both my life and D‘s life easier in terms of leaving the house. I strongly believe that everyone on this planet has a soft spot for long blonde locks and I make no exception from that rule. That said, having blonde hair – even though mine is not the lightest shade, I’m more of a 9A lover – is a pain in the ass as you need to re-do your roots every four weeks tops otherwise you just look terrible no matter what your natural hair colour is. Yes, I am well aware of the fact that today dark roots are ok, however, not grown-in dark roots but rather perfectly calculated darker roots.

My hair before the colour process

With a new baby on the way, I’ve come to the conclusion that going religiously to the salon every four weeks for root touch-ups will be impossible in the beginning at least until we get into a routine, so I decided to try the much-coveted bronde-colour melt hair colour. This is kinda the compromise between having long blonde locks, bun not really having to go to the salon quicker than six-eight weeks (for me at least). My good friend and colour-guru, Maria and I decided on 7A roots because that matches my natural colour almost perfectly and that means that if I manage to squeeze in another colour appointment until the baby comes, the colour will actually catch on nicely – note: on chemically processed blonde, darker colours tend to require more than one try for the shade to actually last.

Tools used in the process

This whole bronde trend is quite lovely in a sense that it allows blonde-lovers like myself to still have lovely light locks while also having naturally coloured roots and therefore if you are a low-maintainance kinda gal and hate going to the salon monthly for about two-three hours for you colour service this is the way to go! I must admit that at first I was very skeptical as I am a blonde-all-the-way kinda gal and I was afraid that going darker plus being hormonal will result in a catastrophe, but, to be completely honest with you, I have never left Maria’s Hair Studio sad or unsatisfied. Plus, I do love a change from time to time! Here’s what my colour-master used to get this amazing, natural, trendy colour:

Joico K-Pak Color in 7A (Dark Ash Blonde) and 7N (Dark Blonde)
Joico K-Pak Chrome in V9 (Platinum)
Joico Vero K-Pak Peroxide in 6% (this is what we usually use for my roots)
Joico Vero K-Pak Chrome Activator
Olaplex Complex

Technique

Now, do not ask me how much of each she put into the magic mix that got me this amazing colour, all I can say is that she used nothing on the tips and only blended the colouring cream for about a minute before rinsing it all out. Not really touching the tips is one of my obsessions as I try and protect them as much as possible. And no, pregnancy has not helped with my hair nor with my skin and as I’ve stated in an earlier post I am not complaining as I have not experimented the bad side of pregnancy either. The process has a bit out of the box in my opinion as she knew she did not necessarily need to colour my tips in order to get this perfect bronde shade so she used foil for this natural sun kissed-highlights effect which I must confess I had serious doubts at the beginning.

The result

I now regret all those moments of doubt as I am way beyond in love with my new hair colour and if you really want to try this or any other colour trend with minimal damage to your hair you have to visit Maria’s Hair Studio as Maria’s first concern always is for the health of your natural hair and trying to do as little damage as possible while still giving you the desired result. The reason I am writing about this is because I was simply stunned yet again at how she managed to protect my natural fine hair while still giving me the desired result that most hairstylists give you with a full-length chemical colour. She amazes me and my hair with every single visit! I hope you love the end-result as much as I do!

December 16, 2016

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Hair greatness – L’Oreal Pro Fiber

You know how when you are pregnant you are supposed to have dream hair, skin and nails? But you are also supposed to feel nauseated 90% of the time and your rings are not supposed to fit you anymore and nor are your shoes? Well none of that happened to me thus far… nor the good or the bad! The jury is still out on whether I should be happy or not about all that, but I guess that feeling normal is a good thing, and by normal I mean brassy hair, a few zits, weak nails but topped by an overall good feeling about myself with rings and shoes that still fit despite being 32 weeks pregnant.That said, during my pregnancy I did not feel the need to ignore all my hair treatments and even tried a few new ones. You know how hair treatments work: you feel a slight improvement but not really that much – and right now I am talking about the really expensive ones as the ones that are mid-ranged from a price point of view do no more than a quick fix of your issues that usually lasts five minutes into the late autumn humidity. Well, not the one I am going to talk about in this post! This one, despite being a medium priced salon treatment was very impressive and three days later it still is very impressive despite the humidity levels hitting 85% in the past few days!

I am talking about the L’Oreal Professionel Pro Fiber Reconstruct treatment. While I always avoided L’Oreal because of the high silicone content, I thought I’d give this one a try because it is receiving quite the rave online. As I stated this one is a reasonably priced salon treatment (about 35 $) but it promises big results. And it does just that! Now, I have no idea if the other treatments in the line work, I can say that this one did miracles on my blonde-damaged hair despite me being quite the skeptic at first and hence not thinking about taking any before of after pics of my hair. You are just going to have to take my word for it and go ahead and try it yourself. My hair before the actual treatment was a mess. By mess I mean 90% of my top crown was brassy and it lacked shine, especially when it was not styled properly – yes, throughout the years I learned a few tips and tricks on how to style it so that it does not look like a hay stack. Going in with the mindset that I should not expect much, I totally skipped the photo/video phase of the treatment but did take a few snaps of the actual products, mainly so that I know what to buy for home if I thought the products were ok-ish (I recently ran out of shampoo and hair mask) – so this post will have to work solely on those pics.

The procedure in itself is very easy and quick and right now, given my current situation I was happy with that because I can not sit in one place for more than two hours and I dreaded the thought of having a long and complicated treatment done. Basically, the stylist washed my hair twice with the shampoo, applied a full vial of the treatment (I currently have a lot of hair with my extensions and all – otherwise you only need half) and on top of the vial applied the activation mask and all I had to do was wait 15 minutes before she gave me a good rinse and the treatment was over – all in all, about 20-25 minutes. This is so easy to do at home and the thing that impressed me the most thus far is the smell – this is perfect for the winter months – spiced vanilla, but a very intense and comforting spiced vanilla! That alone helped me decide on my next at-home haircare!Then it was off to drying but not before applying the line’s serum on wet hair (no pic unfortunately!). This is when I really started to believe that this treatment actually works wonders as you know when your hair is in a bad place it’s always complicated to style it because the brush keeps getting tangled in the damaged parts of the hair no matter how much oil or serums you put into it? Well that never happened during the drying part after this treatment and by the end my hair looked and felt healthier and stronger than ever. I was hooked! especially since, even today, three days later my hair feel amazing, looks amazing despite wearing a beanie twice a day – for the dog walks – and still smells divine!

Obviously that made me buy the at-home products instantly and I even bought the vials just to see if I can fully re-create the results at home. I will keep you posted on that in a later post as I really feel that this new treatment line deserves all the praising it can get especially since it is on the cheaper side and actually delivers the promised results. I really hope that all you ladies out there that, like me, have damaged hair and a skeptical approach to hair treatment will be convinced to give this treatment a try as it really and unexpectedly delivers great results for half the price compared to other ‘luxury’ in-salon treatments.

November 28, 2016

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Purple Mash…

Back in the potato-cravings-zone, but this time on a more healthy note than before… Never did I ever liked mashed potatoes of any kind until I tried this recipe. For some reason, in my opinion, mashed potatoes were always done by those that are too lazy to actually fry them or bake them in the oven – the way potatoes are meant to be eaten – I mean, all you have to do is boil them and mash them and you end up with one of the most boring options to cook potatoes. In my opinion, no matter how much milk or butter you added to them they always ended up tasting like paper.

Since being pregnant means that you literally go a bit insane, this weekend I was craving mashed potatoes. But not any type of mashed potatoes, blue mashed potatoes because I thought they must taste great solely based on their colour and the fact that I decided to add some of my favourite ingredients plus skipping the unhealthy butter. Obviously, blue potatoes are only called ‘blue’ to confuse the shit out of you, because in fact they are purple. Like really purple! And you do need to use gloves when you handle them raw otherwise you’ll end up with purple-stained palms for a few days – trust me, not the greatest look! While blue potatoes are a bit more expensive than plain white potatoes, they do not taste any different or make a big difference from a nutritional stand point, therefore unless you do not want to a)get your hands dirty and b)eat something a bit different in colour, you can easily swap them for plain potatoes for this recipe.

Moving on to the recipe. Here’s what I used:

1 kg blue potatoes
400 gr greek yoghurt (instead of all the milk and butter – for a very creamy result)
20 gr of fresh dill
5 cloves of garlic
150 gr shredded mozzarella (or any other shredded cheese you like – I picked mozzarella because it is lighter and has less salt)

While making this takes about an hour, there are only a few simple steps to follow:

Take pics of the lovely coloured ingredients and then start chopping everything. Peel the potatoes and cut them, chop the dill and mince the garlic.
Boil the potatoes for about 40 minutes, drain them and mash them with a hand blender.
Add the greek yoghurt and blend some more.
The garlic and the dill are next into the blending pot.
In comes the shredded mozzarella which must not be blended but mixed really well with a spoon.
That’s it! All you have to do now is serve the purple mash in cups!

Besides it looking very interesting, it is very tasty thanks to the dill and the garlic while still being very satisfying to cheese lovers like me thanks to the mozzarella. This can be a side to any dish or you could consume it the way I did, on its own as it is really filling. It is a grade A food which means it is a healthy dish and it does not pack a lot of calories (only 211 per serving) while giving you a good amount of protein. All the nutritional info is courtesy of MyNetDiary app and I’ve uploaded both the serving info as well as for the whole thing. I divided the whole quantity to 8 servings. I hope you’ll enjoy my purple mash!

November 22, 2016

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Healthy Berry-Banana Bread

Truth be told, I am craving all Christmas-y treats – mostly sweets – if I really want to be honest… But, since it is not even December yet I have to contain my cravings and go for healthier versions of sweets therefore I give you the healthiest berry banana bread! This actually tastes better than it looks and I must say that it tastes better than those healthy berry muffins I baked a while ago (see recipe here). The thing with the colder months is that we all tend to crave hot and filling dishes, but that does not mean that they have to be calorie packed and filled with all sorts of unhealthy sugars.

A while back we both decided to try and eliminate sugar from our diet, at least when it comes to our home-made meals (no, we are not avoiding sugar at all costs and actually we do indulge in traditional desserts once a week). That made us look for ingredients that will still give our treats that lovely sweet taste without compromising on the health factor. This is why we chose raw honey, fruits and spices. With honey, a little goes a long way, while with fruits and spices, it’s more of an ‘all-you-can-add’ thing. Yesterday I was seriously craving something sweet and Christmas-y, and what better substitute to the classic Panettone than a cinnamon infused banana bread. The thing with this banana-bread is that I have never ever done one before and had no idea how it will turn out. I confess that I went a bit overboard with the frozen berries and therefore the bread was a bit more moist that I expected but it is really filling and does satisfy the sweet-tooth in a very healthy way.After all that rambling I think it is time to move along to the actual recipe.

Ingredients:

240 g whole grain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp coconut butter (melted) – this again will give you a bit of sweetness and flavour
2 egg-whites
2 medium over-ripe bananas (mashed)
1 cup of plain yoghurt
2 tbsp raw honey (we used a variety that has a bit of cinnamon in it and therefore gave it even more flavour)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp cinnamon powder – for that Christmas feeling
60 ml coconut-almond milk (full of aroma)
200 g frozen berry mix

Steps to follow for this healthy goodness:

First of all preheat your oven at 175 degrees C and carefully arrange all the ingredients so that you can take loads of pictures.
Mix together the baking powder, the baking soda and the cinnamon powder in a small bowl and then put the mixture all over the flour and stir well.
Whip the egg-whites with the vanilla extract and the coconut oil and pour the mixture over the banana mash alongside the yoghurt and the honey, Make sure you mix everything really well.
Now for the tricky part… You will have to incorporate the flour and the milk into the mixture carefully, just like you did for the berry muffins (see here). I did it in three parts.
Carefully mix in the frozen berries and pour everything into a bread tray.
Off into the oven it all goes and 50 minutes later you will indulge in the best and healthiest berry banana bread! No guilt whatsoever!

While this takes a bit more time to bake than the muffins, it is more filling and it is healthier than the muffins. If you are hungry, you can always use smaller trays or even pour the mixture in a muffin tray which will probably cut your baking time in half. I have attached the nutritional info both for a serving (one 1,5 cm thick loaf) as well as for the whole thing (10 loaves) and as you can see this is a grade A food and therefore it is very healthy. All the nutritional data is courtesy of the MyNetDiary app. I hope you will enjoy this banana bread and soon we sill start baking heathy versions of all the Christmas sweet treats (apple pie, gingerbread etc)!

November 16, 2016

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Apple Watch

(Note: All Screen-shots are from my iPhone in regards to the Apple Watch. If you would like to see screen-shots of the UP App see the full post on Jawbone UP3 here)

It has been more than three weeks since I’ve switched from my Jawbone Up3 to Apple Watch and I think a review is needed as there are a lot of things to say and weight-in when a change like this emerges. I do not want to influence your fit band/smartwatch choices, but I do want to talk a bit about the advantages and disadvantages of having one or the other as well as show you how I use mine and truthfully what I think a smartwatch is most used for – let’s be honest, while it is nice to see who’s calling you on your watch, we’re not the FBI talking to our wrists therefore people talking on the ‘phone’ on their watch look stupid (to say the least) in my humble opinion. But hey, who am I to judge?

First I’ll start off by saying that I got the Apple Watch Series 1 in pink (obviously!). I did not get the Series 2 because besides it being waterproof – which in my case is completely useless as I am afraid of water and therefore stay clear of it as much as I can (daily shower not included in this category) all it has as an extra is a better (better illuminated) display and as D puts it, soon we will have white displays to look at. Since I got it right after the launch of the second series, I found it at a special price and it made no sense to me to miss the opportunity. That said, D will get the series 2 as he is the type that is mostly in the water whenever we are on vacation and waterproofing is something that he and anyone that is not afraid of the water needs in a smartwatch. Therefore, I do feel that this feature is needed for normal people and it definitely is worth the money.

Since most of our stuff is from Apple, I did not even look at other smartwatches as the OCD side in me likes everything to match and thinks that everything works better if it’s from the same brand, so no, I did not even show a bit of interest in other smartwatches. As with any Apple product, the installation is easy and fast and, unless you did not came in contact with another Apple product before, you’ll find the menu to be intuitive and very easy to use. Getting started was fairly easy, my iPhone detected the watch immediately and I was set.

Jawbone UP3 vs Apple Watch experience – health tracker

Activity Log

For the first few days, I kept both my Jawbone and my Apple Watch on just to compare the two. The nice thing about the watch is that you can see all your notifications on your watch so, if you are like me and always leave your phone somewhere in the house, you will not miss any notifications/phone calls/messages/Instagram or Facebook notifications ever again so this is a big plus on my Jawbone band. Also the screen helps a lot in keeping up with your activity. However, let’s not forget that the Apple Watch costs double than the Jawbone UP3 but it also does a lot more than track your activity. As step trackers they have the same accuracy, however the Jawbone band detects when you are exercising more easily than the Apple Watch and that is a big plus especially if you do not want to constantly log every walk you take beforehand so that the Apple Watch can measure it (both in time and length). This is one thing that I did not like as much about the Apple Watch – it fails to detect exercise on its own while the Jawbone UP3 does that impeccably.

Sleep Log

Another feature that the Jawbone UP3 has and the Apple Watch does not have is the ability to track your sleep on its own. Again, for the Apple Watch you have to manually log in when you go to bed and set an alarm to wake up – I hate alarms, but that is the only way I can track my sleep. I suspect this is because the Apple Watch uses a third party app, called Pillow to do that. Do not get me wrong, I think that the sleep tracking on the Apple Watch is a million times better than the analysis I used to get from my Jawbone UP3 and therefore, alarm or no alarm and as much as it bugs me to manually log when I am getting into bed, I think that in this category the Apple Watch is by far better. Now it all depends on how much you value a good sleep analysis. For me this is very important and that’s why I started loving the Apple Watch quickly.

Nutrition

This, in my opinion is where the Apple Watch won me over for good. Again we are talking about using a third party app and to my best knowledge the best one out there so far is MyNetDiary. This app is so complete and so easy to use! I just love it. As opposed to the Up App, I can find most of my daily food choices without having to add them myself (I hated having to add all the nutritional info to most of my food), so one can say that the database is way larger and that makes the whole logging experience a lot better. Another cool feature that this app has is the ability for the user to make their own recipe and divide it either by serving or weight. This is very helpful when you want to cook stuff and also keep things as healthy as possible. I also love the fact that this app is easy to use but I hate the fact that it does not sync with the activity tracker on my watch and therefore it does not give me a throughly ready-calculated calorie count and I have to do that by myself. It does however sync with the step-numbers on my watch and it makes no sense to me why they didn’t manage to sync it to the Activity app.

Mindfulness

This is a feature that the Jawbone UP3 does not have, or at least not to this level. The Apple Watch can track your heartbeat live and when it gets too high it usually makes you take a 1 minute break. The Jawbone UP3 only tracked your resting heart rate which, again might or might not be important to you. It is to me, especially during my pregnancy and it will probably be important post-pregnancy when I will restart going to the gym regularly.

All this data is nicely stored in the Health App that the iPhone has pre-intalled and that most people do not use until they get an Apple Watch – or at least that was my case. This is a very good nutrition analyst in my opinion and not much else. I mean, yeah, it does put everything together and all but it does not tell you anything. It does however do a great (and I mean GREAT) job at analysing your food (vitamins, minerals, etc), which no other app does. This again is very important to me right now, and to be honest it always was important, but the Up App did not provide that. This is something that I loved from the very beginning and really made me change my mind and go from the Jawbone UP3 to the Apple Watch.

This is where the comparison between the Jawbone Up3 and the Apple Watch stops as the Jawbone is just a fitness tracker while the Apple Watch does so much more. If you are only interested in a fitness tracker, then go for any of the tracking bracelets out there (I loved the Jawbone UP3) and save your money. However if you want more than that, keep on reading.

Like I said earlier, this watch is like your mini iPhone on your wrist. It basically has every app on your phone and it has most of the abilities you phone has. That being said, you must keep it connected to your phone for it to actually work and having your phone in the near vicinity usually makes you use it as opposed to using the watch. There are a few situations where I used the watch to answer and talk on the phone – when I was too lazy to actually get off the couch or when my phone battery was almost over – but overall, I use my phone. Also, it is nice to have the ability to reply to messages but scribbling every single letter on your watch tends to be time-consuming but helps in the earlier mentions situations.You can also check Instagram, use Shazam and lot more apps that are compatible with the watch. The interface, as I said at the beginning of the post, is very user-friendly, and, especially at the beginning, you are tempted to over-use it.

The Watch app on your phone allows you to customise virtually anything about your watch (see the print-screens) and also gives you a full insight on your device (apps, notifications, setting, font size, sounds, app layout, etc). The battery life is decent, and because I want to wear it all day and night, I usually charge it before I go to sleep for about 20 minutes and again in the morning for about 20 minutes, but if you do not want to wear it during the night you could get away with only charging it once.

Overall I am very happy with my watch and I have been using it non-stop for the past three weeks which means that I have been ignoring my other beloved watches, but I did also keep my Jawbone bracelet at arm’s reach as whenever I want to wear another watch I need something to track my activity (yes, I am crazy like that and that craziness only got worse one the doctor forbade me to got to the gym during the pregnancy). So, is the watch worth the money? Hell yeah! Not saying the same thing about the watch bracelets that Apple are selling and are waaaay overpriced – if you know a good third party bracelet seller for my watch please leave a comment below as I am really bored by my Sport band that the watch came with.

November 14, 2016

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Rollin, rollin, rollin…

Remember that old Limp Bizkit tune? Rollin’? Yeah, that was the soundtrack of my teenage years and it suddenly started playing in my head again the moment I started rolling this puff pastry perfection. This again is not an everyday food as this is nowhere near healthy. This is rather a weekend treat, or more say a monthly treat as the only healthy ingredient here is the parsley and, to be honest, there is not much of that either. But just as all teenage pleasures are, this is something amazing and not at all healthy. However, this is extremely easy to make and it can be really filling and satisfying during a cold rainy autumn day.

I can honestly say that this has all my favourite ingredients in it, including the puff pastry and, as with all the great food inventions, I have not had something similar in ages – like ever since my metabolism decided to give me a kick in the ass and make me adopt a more healthy lifestyle. Now that I am pregnant, I do try and keep it healthy and I am rather careful about the quantity of food I ingest, but from time to time (‘a weekly or more often’ time to time) I indulge in all of my favourite foods because hey, I am going to get fat anyways so I might as well enjoy life a bit. That being said, I try and indulge in mostly homemade fat-bombs as I have some sort of control where the ingredients are concerned. Which brings us to today’s recipe… as the temps lower, I tend to crave more fatty, not-necessarily-healthy foods that give me that much needed mental sanity during pregnancy.

Here’s the ingredients we used, but you can actually use whatever makes your tummy and brain feel happy:

1 layer puff pastry – you can buy this in virtually any supermarket and if you want to make a sweet roll try the slightly sweetened version though I prefer to use the unsweetened variety for sweet treats as well
1 cup of olive Philadelphia cream cheese – I use this variety for the earthy olive taste and because it is light and easy to spread
100 g diced bacon
1 red onion – medium sized
80 g graded emmentaler
80 g grated mozzarella
50 g parmesan flakes
20 g fresh parsley – the healthy ingredient (notice the ratio between the one healthy ingredient and all the rest)

The mechanics behind this amazing roll:

Mince the onion and the parsley and place all the ingredients in (preferably) clear bowls for the photos.
Preheat the oven at 180 degrees C.
The fun part begins… Gently unfold the puff pastry layer and spread the Philadelphia cream cheese first – this way all the ingredients will stick to the pastry.
This is where it becomes interesting. No matter which order you close to add the ingredients, the important thing is to always add a layer of cheese in between the other stuff thus making everything stick together because everyone knows that cheese is the glue to life!
This is my ingredients order: cream cheese, onion, grated emmentaler, parsley, grated mozzarella, bacon and parmesan flakes.
This is the step where that Limp Bizkit mega-hit kept playing in my brain – now you gotta roll that thing up making sure you do not a)spill the contents, b)rip the pastry.
Once you safely roll the ‘thing’ you gotta cut it – again a BE CAREFUL! moment – I cut in into 2 cm thick loaves.
Place the rolls on a tray and into the oven they go for about 20 minutes – make sure you check on them after 15 minutes as the buggers tend to burn quickly.
That’s about it!

Since this is a very unhealthy and amazing dish, packed full of fats (the unhealthy type) and calories, you should consume it with caution. It does not look extremely unhealthy if you decide to only have one serving, but let’s be honest, can you really stop after only one roll? I couldn’t and hence this is definitely a dish that I will make as rarely as possible.

It is however extremely tasty and filling and you will probably stop after two or three servings. The nutritional info is curtesy of MyNetDiary and since they rated it as a class D food it only goes to prove my theory – this is not a healthy food! But it is great for those long weekend chilly afternoons so give it a try!

November 6, 2016

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The second trimester – in pictures

This is the picture-post that sums up the last three months of carrying a very special load in my belly. As you know, a ‘feelings’ post is right around the corner, so I’m not going to write anything about how I’ve felt this second trimester here. Also, as opposed to the last similar post (click here for the first trimester), I’ve also selected some photos of only myself, as I feel that my fattening needs a bit of pic-detailing just to help you really see the evolution. Hope you’ll love this post as much as you like the first trimester one.

The Forth Month

My evolution during the forth month

The Fifth Month

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My evolution during the fifth month

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The Sixth Month

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My evolution during the sixth month

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October 29, 2016

evenlymatched2 Comments

Healthiest berry muffins

These muffins are some of the healthiest sweet things you are going to find on this blog or online, for that matter. They contain absolutely no sugar or any derivates of sugar and no white flour whatsoever. And, as an added bonus they do satisfy your sweet tooth, while also giving you some healthy nutrients.I must admit that I did use some frozen berries as those were handy at the time, but they are just as healthy and tasty as fresh berries and, to be honest, it doesn’t really matter which ones you use.About a week ago, D came home with a bag of frozen mixed berries but did not hint anything, so this week I decided to take things into my own (baking) hands and surprise him with something that is both healthy (so it won’t upset my weekly diet) and tasty (to satisfy his growing sugar cravings). There are times when I think that he is the pregnant one as he seems to have all sorts of cravings lately but I think that is partly due to the fact that he, being the gentleman that he is, is trying to keep up with my weight gain so that we can loose it all together after the baby comes.

Back to the muffins… as you’ve probably noticed, I prefer to eat savoury rather than sweet things therefore making a tray of sweet muffins is usually not my first option, but this time, I really wanted to try and make the tastiest and healthiest sweet muffins ever. They are way easier to make than it appears and only take about 40 minutes for basic ingredients to turn into perfectly moist and tasty muffins.When you think about muffin perfection, there are a few boxes that must be ticked: moisture and softness. Usually you get this by using large amounts of butter, but I did not use any here, I only used a tablespoon of coconut oil and tried to get that softness and moisture by using plain yoghurt. True, I could’ve used greek yoghurt but that would’ve just added to the fat count and I was really curious as to how these were going to turn out with simple yoghurt – they were great!

Here’s what you’ll need for 12 muffins:

240 g wholegrain flour
2 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt (not too much)
1 tbsp coconut oil (melted)
2 large egg whites (no yolk)
1 tbsp vanilla extract
125 g plain yoghurt
2 tbsp honey (I used a mixture of cinnamon and honey as I can already feel the Christmas spirit and I need to put cinnamon in everything)
1 cup milk
240 g red berries (I only had frozen at hand but you can use fresh)

What you need to do for the next 10 minutes:

Preheat the oven at 175 degrees C and mix together the baking soda and the flour in a bowl.
In another bowl, put the egg whites and whisk them for a couple of minutes then add the vanilla extract, the coconut oil, the yoghurt and the honey and mix it all together really good until there are no lumps left.
Carefully start incorporating the flour mixture and the milk – I used a spoon for each as that is going to make it easier to control the texture.
Sprinkle the frozen berries with flour as that way they are going to keep your batter from becoming murky-grey because of all the juices. If you are using fresh berries there is no need to do that.
Incorporate the berries into the muffin mixture and fill in the prepared muffin tray.
Put them into the oven for about 20 minutes, or until they are golden and look done. Before eating them, let them cool for 10 minutes – trust me they are better when they do not burn your taste buds!

That’s it! Healthy deliciousness on a tray that is easy to make and does not require any ‘exotic’ ingredients. All the nutritional information is from the MyNetDiary app that I totally recommend as it really helps you check everything you eat and has a huge database. I’ve put the serving information as well as the info for the entire quantity of the muffins. Hope you’ll enjoy them as much as we did!

October 27, 2016

evenlymatched1 Comment

At dawn…

These are among my favourite photos so far that we took for this blog, and these are the first photos we took at dawn or shall I say after dawn hence they are a bit foggy. The reason we did not take as many photos of the two of us (or at least usable photos) is because it was kinda difficult to get the camera to focus where we wanted it to because it was so dark already when we actually got to taking pics of us. But I was way beyond excited when I saw the photos and could not wait to start editing them a bit to make them blog worthy. I think D enjoyed this photoshoot the most as he got to experiment with different settings and lights and the end result is just amazing.

What I am wearing is probably going to be my autumn uniform as I feel that this combo is the winner for me right now. I just love a chunky big sweater, especially when it is paired with thigh-high boots. For some reason it just screams autumn perfection. I also love the ‘forest green’ colour but unfortunately I found out that I do not have as many pieces in that lovely regal colour as I’d like so measures must be taken, but with caution as I have no idea how things are going to fit post baby. On the other hand, chunky sweaters and thigh high boots are always going to be in style and are always going to fit the same way so I am stocking up on stuff that I will probably wear over and over again.

On me:

Sweater – ZARA; Jeans – H&M; Boots – Steve Madden; Bag – Chloe; Hat – ZARA; Bling – Swarovski; Watch – Apple

A bit more details on the outfit… As I bragged in the last fashion post, I found two new pairs of pregnancy pants in my size (34) at H&M and I will proudly wear them all autumn and winter long. The ones you get a sneak-peak of in these photos are one of them and I have to tell you that maternity jeans are the most comfortable pants I’ve ever worn but still manage to make you feel good. I paired them with this big chunky sweater from ZARA in this lovely rich green hue that just goes perfectly with my muddy-green Steve Madden boots. At first I was quite skeptical about jeans and thigh high boots as I was more accustomed to pairing these boots with thighs but after seeing these pics I am sold on this warm combo.

On D:

T-shirt – Mango; Jacket – SuperDry; Jeans – Review; Shoes – Nike; Bling – Fossil; Watch – Tissot

To keep things in the ‘exciting’ department I decided on wearing hats this season therefore I expanded my (small) collection with this lovely fun black one from ZARA that I will probably also wear over and over again. I realised that I should at some point invest in a new black bag as I only have this Chloe piece to play with and I do not want you to get bored by our posts. Also jewellery wise I did not wear much aside from the Swarovski bracelet and my new Apple Watch that I’ve grown to love more and more these days.

D really tried to go with the green theme and wore his army green Mango t-shirt as he realised that this is the only dark green piece of clothing in his closet – we really need to take measures where our greens are concerned. Since it is getting chillier and chillier he wore his badass leather jacket from SuperDry that is never going to go out of style and that he got few years ago. Since he also lacks in the green-shoes department, he went with the safe option of black Nikes that go just right with these perfectly tailored jeans from Review – yes, I know I rave about theses jeans all the time. Since he doesn’t own and Apple Watch (just yet!) he wore his lovely Tissot T-Race alongside his Fossil bracelet that is becoming as popular as his wedding band among his accessories.

I really can’t wait to take some more photos in the dark and I am so glad D enjoys them so much as we get to take so many lovely photos and thus making memories and successfully following my pregnancy belly with lots of pics each week.