New Year, New Start

I have been ridiculously quiet on the blog for the past few weeks. I have not once had the urge to open WordPress, log into my account and write. I don’t know what that says. Maybe I just needed the break. Apart from the couple of Christmas recipes I posted, I didn’t really want to post any more.
And it was great.

I spent the Christmas break spending time with family. Getting excited that Santa had been to visit, and laughing with my Gran who was sipping Baileys by the fire at midday. Sure why not.

I went to the wedding of a dear friend in Kildare and it gave the perfect chance to get all dolled up and spend time with good friends laughing, joking and of course having a good old boogie.

Himself and Myself all dressed up.

I baked a delicious tray of fudgey brownies for New Years Eve dinner in my parents house – and spent the next few days nibbling on the edges that I had cut off to make them more uniform. Recipe will follow shortly. I will go into a chocolate coma if I have to make them again without an event!

An Acre of Brownies

I took advantage of the lovely crisp days and ran for miles with the dogs. I ran up and down the Head, I ran round the block twice, with one dog each time so they wouldn’t trip me up, and I ran the beach.

Clogherhead Beach

And this morning, Mr. C and I took the dogs up to the gorgeous village of Carlingford and walked some of the Slieve Foye loop. We only got half way and turned around as there were lots of sheep and we thought the dogs would drive them bananas (they were both on leads the whole time). We didn’t reckon on meeting a little herd of woolies on the way back down meaning both dogs pulled on their leads for well over a mile until the sheep finally disappeared up another hill. We will be going back though as the mission was to exhaust the dogs – they have been sleeping on the couch for the last 3 hours & aren’t going anywhere soon! Mission Accomplished.

The Cooley Peninsula from the Slieve Foye Loop.

And with that, the last three weeks of Christmas holidays passed in the blink of an eye. I am starting a new job tomorrow. I am excited about the upcoming year. I have a lot of personal goals I would like to achieve. Running more is top of the list. I completed 10 races last year, which was my goal. This year, I want to run faster. Not record breaking fast, but faster than I do at the moment. I also want to eat better than I have in the last while. Over the last couple of months I have been pretty lax about the amount of dairy I have been eating. Dairy makes me wheezy and makes my asthma a bit of an issue. It is something that I know will make a difference so I want to jump back on that bandwagon and clean up my eating. It will be hard though. I love cheese. When I don’t eat it, I don’t miss it, but when I spend a month snacking on Brie and raspberry chutney on crackers, it is tough to contemplate. But it will also mean I don’t wheeze like a 20 a day smoker!

I also plan to blog in the midst of everything. I can’t promise there will be much in the next few weeks. The new job will involve a commute to Dublin. I haven’t have more of a 30 minute door to door commute in the last 3 years so it will be a bit of a culture shock. To help make the commute more bearable, and to ensure that we are eating decent dinners I will be relying on dinners made at the weekend, and frozen, or in the (fabulous and best present ever) slow cooker like the yummy Veggie Chilli
And for a breakfast or mid morning snack I will be throwing some of my granola in a tupperware container to mix with greek yoghurt. It takes a little time to make but lasts for weeks!

So on that note, I will wish you all a very Happy New Year. I hope all your wishes, and plans/resolutions turn out the way you wish.

I am off to check out how best to spend my hour commute – I think though that it might be sleeping!

Orls
xx