jawbone

Grey Matter!

As you know, we rarely ever find ourselves in the centre of Bucharest, but this weekend I really needed to buy a few pairs of maternity jeans and the only H&M that has the maternity line is in the city centre. Yes, I know, online shopping is a must in this situation, but to be honest, these past two weeks I have been feeling better and more energetic than ever during this pregnancy so I thought a shopping day with D would be perfect. And it was! Once again I received the confirmation that I have not yet changed sizes in pants, the only difference being the fact that I need the maternity belt as I can’t stand anything pressing on my belly and all of a sudden the shopping spirit came back to me.

It’s amazing what sizes can do to ones’ morale. Especially when that someone is almost in the third trimester of pregnancy. Do not get me wrong, I have gained a healthy amount of weight thus far, but apparently it is mostly on my belly and on my butt, which, in my opinion is ok – I will do a post on what I am eating during this pregnancy, nutritional info and all, but I have to say that the main difference is I’ve added an extra day of cheating in my diet simply because I will have lots of time to be a diet-natzi after the little princess arrives.

On me:

Dress – Amisu (impossible to find online but you can shop it in all NewYorker stores); Shoes – Carvela; Bag – DKNY; Jacket – Pull and Bear (only found an alternative); Bling – Swarovski (bracelet and ring); Sunglasses – Dior; Watch – Tissot

Back to this weekend’s photoshoot…we were lucky enough to have a few wonderful day last week and we took full advantage of them. The thing about pregnant women is that they hardly feel any cold, hence I did not feel the need to wear tights at 15 degrees C and actually felt quite hot at some point (weird, right? – more details on that in the upcoming ‘pregnancy feelings’ post). For the first time I did not feel the need to cover up my expanding booty with a long cardigan or jacket and chose a short faux leather jacket instead. We both opted for a grey theme as that is one neutral colour that is both forgiving and appropriate for the cold season.

On D:

T-shirt – Tommy Hilfiger; Jeans – Scotch and Soda; Vest – Bershka (alternative here); Shoes – Converse; Bling – Fossil; Sunglasses – Ray-Ban; Watch – Tissot

The dress… this dress was a very big surprise to me as when I first saw it it didn’t seem like a very good option to me. It is from Amisu and you can shop it in any New Yorker store (can’t find it online) and it is the most comfortable knit dress ever! You know how some knit dresses tend to irritate your skin? Well not this one! This one is so soft and comfortable that I can spend forever dressed in it, plus it hugs my expanding curves just right and the length is to-die-for! This is part of the reason I felt confident enough to top it with my short jacket from Pull and Bear that I’ve had for ages and that I never thought I’d wear during this period.

My shoes are from Carvela and I got them the year I was away in London to get my MA degree therefore I was really surprised to still find them online (this was more than four years ago, after all!) but I guess the two main trends that characterises them are hot right now: platform and wood! They are very comfortable, but not to the point where you can wear them all day long as they are quite high (13 cm) which can be a little dangerous especially because my centre of gravity is changing all the time. Being a sunny day out, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to wear my beloved Dior sunglasses. I also opted for the grey DKNY bucket bag as that was the obvious option for a day filled with shopping because I need both of my hands to be free.

D also played along with grey hues and opted for his Scotch and Soda grey jeans with a grey v-neck t-shirt from Tommy Hilfiger. Because he seems to feel the cold a bit more than me, he wore his vest from Bershka to keep him warm. His grey classic Converse shoes could not be left at home – as you can see he has quite the variety of grey Converse shoes. Naturally he decided on finally wearing sunglasses for this photoshoot and chose his Ray-Ban Aviators to complete the look. Bling-wise we were both quite scarce as he only wore his Fossil bracelet while I wore a Swarovski bracelet and ring. We both decided to wear our Tissot watches.

We are keeping our fingers crossed for as many sunny lovely days like this one this autumn and I can’t wait to show you what we ended up buying during our shopping weekend!

October 19, 2016

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Pinky Promise!

Nope, this is not the announcement post, mainly because we still do not know 100% what the baby’s sex is. Yes, I know that by the 20th week I should’ve known, but the truth is that my next ultrasound is in two weeks and we didn’t want to submit our bundle of joy to a useless ultrasound just for our own selfish reasons. We can wait a few more weeks, even though, the reality is that the suspense is killing us. The good thing about not knowing combined with the fact that the constructors will be in our house in a few days is that we will not be tempted to do the nursery in pink or blue, but rather in a neutral shade like yellow or green.

Processed with Snapseed.

So, these photos were taken a few days ago, but, as I mentioned in our last post, processing and texts takes a bit of time and right now I am seriously lacking in that department. The belly appears to keep getting larger and larger every single day and we do make a lot of effort to find the time to photo-document this amazing period almost on a daily basis, but unfortunately, the photos will come up online with a delay of a day or two.

Processed with Snapseed.

On me:

Dress – Tommy Hilfiger; Shoes – Bigote Paris; Bag – Furla; Bling – Swarovski, Pandora and Tomorrowland; Watch – Daniel Wellington

This time we went for a pink based ensemble, again, because this is yet another dress that I did not want to go to waste simply because it could not fit my belly anymore and I honestly think that in two weeks time that will happen. I just love this dress, I have worn it numerous times this summer but didn’t get a chance to take photos in it. I think we had about three or four missed photo attempts. Anyway…this is a Tommy Hilfiger dress that I think I bought even before knowing anything about the pregnancy and now, you can find it on sale. I love it because of the cut and the very soft material – I have no idea what it is but it is lovely! To keep the pink theme all the way I wore my pink Bigote Paris espadrilles that are yet another find in my (now) clean dressing-room and that I have for at least three years.I could only find their blog online but any pink espadrilles will do, really…

Processed with Snapseed.

On D:

T-shirt – EXE; Shorts – H&M; Shoes – Paez; Bling – Fossil and Constantin Nautics; Watch – Daniel Wellington

I also wore my beloved pink bag from Furla that for some reason I’ve been neglecting this summer, even though it was a staple for me last summer. As for the accessories, I opted for my pink floral Swarovski ring that you can’t currently find online as it is from last spring’s collection, but I have linked a decent alternative. I also wore my usual Pandora and Tomorrowland rings that I can’t seem to get enough of lately. Both D and I decided to wear our Daniel Wellington watches with the original nato straps they cam with.

Processed with Snapseed.

D seems to always be happy whenever we wear pinkish clothes or light blueish ones, so he was really responsive to my pink theme. He opted for his H&M shorts that are currently nowhere to be found online and paired them with his lovely asymmetric t-shirt from EXE, a Romanian brand, that he got while at Untold festival. To complete his look, he wore his blue and pink espadrilles from Paez that he also got from the recently mentioned festival. Bling wise he wore his usual Fossil and Constantin Nautics bracelets.

Processed with Snapseed.

We took these photos in the park as recently that seems to be our go-to place mainly because it’s a very comfortable location, especially since we’ve been out and about in the city quite a lot lately.

September 5, 2016

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Lazy days…

Baby bump happening yet again here… Do not be fooled by the title as these past two days have been hectic hence the lack of posting, but fear not, we have been shooting every day. The reason we were so busy these past days is because we visited the baby expo twice as apparently choosing stuff for the baby isn’t as simple as we thought. Right now we are struggling to choose a stroller and there are hundreds of options out there. The big thing about out future stroller is that it has to be as comfortable as possible for me to use it, as light as possible, it must be perfectly tailored for the baby’s needs AND it has to fit into my MINI. I will not change my beloved car for a stroller!

Processed with Snapseed.

Therefore, between getting ready for the constructors to invade us, visiting baby expo twice and me trying to decide on furniture and fittings, we did manage to squeeze in a few photoshoots, but editing and text takes more than the said photoshoot and I was simply too tired when we finally got home these past two days. Saturday is here and I woke up committed to editing and posting at least one photoshoot despite the fact that today will be a full day. It seems to be harder and harder to hide the growing baby bump and to be honest, I did not believe at first when people told me that at around week 19 to 20 it will just pop out and there will only be one direction of growing from that point on: larger and larger.

Processed with Snapseed.

On me:

Dress – Pull&Bear (alternative from H&M); Shoes – Melissa; Bag – Furla; Bling – Pandora and Tomorrowland; Sunglasses – Dior; Watch – Tissot

Despite the fact that this is a more autumnish dress, I really wanted to take pics in it and was lucky enough to have a slightly chillier day on Thursday. I bought the said dress from Pull and Bear last summer while in Milan and I confess that I am afraid that in a month it will not fit me anymore, so here it is in all its splendour. Naturally, it was in last summer’s collection and the only similar alternative I could find online is from H&M.I just the love grey and yellow together. I think they are the perfect couple for any season therefore I always make sure to have a few garments of each colour just waiting to be worn. I paired the grey dress with my Melissa Patchouli grey wedges which conveniently have a yellow stripe at the back. To make matters even more obvious, I wore my yellow Furla tote that you can’t currently find online right now. the alternative I’ve linked isn’t a very good one as it has a bit of brown in it that I honestly am not a fan of.

Processed with Snapseed.

On D:

Shorts – H&M; T-shirt – Review; Shoes – H&M; Bling – Constantin Nautics (bracelet 1 and bracelet 2); Sunglasses – Oakley; Watch – Tissot

D also has lots of grey things lying around in his closet and luckily for me a few yellow ones as well. This time he chose his zipper t-shirt from Review that matches the grey in my dress perfectly. To make me happier than ever he decided on his yellow shorts from H&M – yes, the H&M shorts are back into action – and the striped espadrilles also from H&M. I have to say that I was a bit surprised that he didn’t opt for a pair of grey shoes as we all know by now that he has quite a few.

Processed with Snapseed.

When it comes to accessories, he payed way more attention than I did to the subject and chose two bracelets from Constantin Nautics, while I wore my usual Pandora and Tomorrowland rings. We both opted for our Tissot T-Race watches and we both wore sunglasses, I, my beloved Dior So Real and D wore his long-lost (in my car) Oakley Holbrook pair.

As the weeks keep passing we realise that having a kid is not only about literally giving birth to it, but actually it is way more complicated than that! We have to re-do our house, buy furniture, decide an various things, make sure we take photos of this entire period, have a lot of medical visits, decide on the birth plan, make sure I do not forget that I am still a woman (cosmetic procedures and stuff)…and so on… So this might be a time when we are not as active online as we usually are, or at least for the time being, while the constructors are in the house, but we will try and post as often as possible.

September 3, 2016

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Full House/Table!!!

A few weeks back we had the whole family for a late lunch/early dinner party. The thing is, when we all get together, there’s 15 of us around the table, and we’re all foodies, so we needed to make something that was satisfying for all of us – yup, we’re all picky when it comes to our food! What better way to please everyone than pasta? And not just any pasta, but a melange of taco and pasta to surprise everyone with our creativity!

Obviously, buying food for more than a dozen people is no problem for us, and, for the first time since we started throwing these parties, the food was almost completely devoured and everyone was happy and full. At the end, when you are going to read the nutritional info (it’s scary) keep in mind that all the data is for the whole quantity, and you should divide it by 16 to get a real portion’s worth of information.

Here’s what we bought for our very own Taco-Pasta (I’m sticking to this name!):

1 kg minced veal meat
500 gr brown mushrooms
30 gr fresh basil
250 gr cherry tomatoes
750 gr whole wheat pasta (we used two different shapes and they were both equally appreciated)
2 jars of Jamie Oliver’s Tomato and Chilly pasta sauce
500 gr of law-fat cheddar
2 medium onions
2 garlic cloves
about 10 olives (we just had them lying around in our fridge so we decided to use them, but they gave the dish a fabulous aroma)
1 can of sweet boiled corn (just to get you into that taco mood)

That’s about all you need for this dinner dish, but you can always add beans to fill your Mexican appetite. To be honest, like any pasta, the preparation is the easy part, buying everything was the hard part. It took us about 2 hours to have everything ready, but keep in mind that we had to track our recipe with photos every step of the way and that is time-consuming.

Here are the steps you need to follow:

As usual, take as many photos of the lovely ingredients you just bought, as one of the pics is going to be used for the Instagram account.
Cut, dice and mince everything as there’s not one single ingredient that will be needed whole. Again, take some pics of the lovely diced ingredients and then it’s actually time to start cooking.
In a pot (you’ll need two in the end, but just use one for the sauce and then divide it so that the aroma is evenly distributed) melt a pat of butter just to be sure that none of the ingredients stick to it.
Pour all the onion into it and let it cook until it’s turned golden. After that, add all the meat and stir well until it has reached an earthy brown colour.
Add the mushrooms and the tomatoes and stir well. Let them all cook until the mushrooms start leaving a bit of water.
Add the tomato sauce, the olives, the corn, the minced garlic and the basil and stir well. By this point you’ve used most of your ingredients. Let the sauce boil for a few minutes just to get all the aromas out.
Add two glasses of water just to get the whole sauce in a more liquid state and to get it out of boiling mode so you can safely divide it into two parts (this is when the second pot comes into play).
Add the pasta and let it boil for 15 minutes stirring regularly.
The last step is the cheese-step. Add all the cheese, stir well and let it boil for another 2 minutes than switch off the stove. You’re done!

That’s about all it takes to feed 15 people and have some leftovers for the next day. All you have to do now is decorate a few plates and take some photos before everyone arrives! Remember what I told you about the nutritional info. Using the same quantities as we did you’ll end up with 16 servings, so keep that in mind when you read all about those health data provided by my Jawbone UP app. This dish is rated at 9.1/10 so it’s on the very healthy side, but you do need to consume it in moderation as each serving gives you about 320 kcals and quite a lot of saturated fats!

June 24, 2016

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UP we go!

It’s finally time for me to review the one jewellery (not really jewellery) item I’m wearing all the time… Yes, even when I sleep. I wear this item more than I wear my wedding band as I don’t sleep with any jewellery on except for this one. I’m talking bout my Jawbone UP3. Yes, all of the nutritional info I post is curtesy of their mobile app, and yes, it’s the one thing that keeps me healthy. If not for my own good, than for the shame I feel whenever my food score or my steps start to go down.

As you probably know by now, two and a half years ago I had a massive intestinal blockage (E.R. and everything), so the next step was to talk to a nutritionist in order to prevent that from ever happening again. Apparently I have some problems where digestion is concerned. I had to be extra careful with what I ate for more than three months, so D did some intensive research online and bought me Jawbone‘s UP 24 (you can’t find it now as new and more exciting models are for sale). I know that he bought me the best of the best at the moment because he a) takes health very seriously and b) he always does extensive research before buying any gizmo. I had my UP24 for about a year and I loved it. I loved it because it kept me on the right track where my eating habits were concerned and because it was very accurate when it came to actually measuring my steps. I found the app very user-friendly and very complex. I simply loved the whole experience and I never took the bloody thing off. Even at weddings and other formal affairs, to D‘s disapproval, I didn’t take it off.

Time passed and the bracelet degraded to a point where D said that I needed a new one. Yes, in about a year, the tracker looked terrible, but it still did the job it was intended to do. Since he realised that I was addicted to my UP band, he decided than when we celebrated 6 years of an amazing relationship and 2 years of marriage, we should get ourselves the brand new (then) UP3. And so we did! Unlucky for us, that they had just launched it back then and the only colour they had was black. By now, they came up with lots of wonderful and trendy colours (I got my eye on you, Golden beauty!). Boy, was this one an improvement! If I thought that this tracker couldn’t get any better, well this one is better.

First of all, the strap is a lot better than the old one. True, I’ve experienced some moments when I almost lost my tracker because the strap got loose, but I just moved it on my right hand instead of my left and that problem never emerged again. The other cool thing about this new tracker is the fact that it keeps track of your resting heart beat, which you can read about here. The other definite improvement about this one is the fact that unlike the old one, you can shower with this on. Surely, you should’t swim with it on, but it’s not as sensitive to water as the old one.

The app is more or less the same as the old one, because why fix something that’s not broken? The cool thing about the app is that when you are not in an undeveloped country like Romania, you can actually find the menus to some of the restaurants and you can instantly add the food with all their nutritional info. Another cool thing about the app is that for some foods you can actually scan the barcode and all the data is there. If the barcode doesn’t work, you can manually add the said food and if you log in enough info, the said food gets a health grade. Basically what this app does, it constantly challenges you to eat healthy and it also reminds you to et off that chair and move, just like mine did right now, as I’m sitting on this chair for an hour.

You can log all sorts of activities into it that are preset in the app, that way you get a better view of just how much physical activity you’ve had during the day and how many calories you burned. Another cool feature this tracker has it’s that you can specifically set different types of alarms: movement, step count,silent wake-up alarm.

Of course D being the free-spirited soul that he is, couldn’t be bothered with actually keeping any track of his food because as he says, it’s too complicated to log everything. He does however have periods of intense fitness tracking when he also wears it all the time. But he’s not as obsessed as I am. If you look through all my Instagram photos, you’re going to notice that I always have it on, and I do not plan on giving it up any time soon. To be honest, I can’t wait for this one to actually be broken so I can buy it again in a different colour. No, I am not really interested in buying the UP4 mainly because I find no use for paying anything with my bracelet, I can reach for my own credit card thank you very much! That’s the only difference between the UP3 and the UP4.

Overall, this little gizmo changed my life for the better and if you are a health fanatic just like me, I honestly think that this is the best and most complete tracker you can find on the market!