14/10/201226/03/2018 by jo

BritMums WeightWatchers Back2Best Challenge – Week 4

Week Four. I fear I’m getting a bit evangelical about it all, as I slowly tot up points and work out what I can or can’t eat. It’s all feeling quite easy, although in my head there’s a touch of self-doubt – like, I’m succeeding so much right now and losing weight, so it’s all set to go wrong soon too. I guess I’m just not used to things going well quickly, and maybe a few listens of the SlimPod (which I can recommend, while it hasn’t helped me lose weight it’s helped me think differently) and I’ll get back on track.

Anyway, I had a sad day yesterday, an anniversary so I finished it off with wine, so things are a little more ‘down’ this week than previous ones. I stayed well within my limits though. So… here’s the weigh-in…. and… I’ve lost 1lb*. But I’m happy with that. However those sneaky WW gremlins have officially moved me down to 29 points on the app, so now I’ve got to work that bit harder.

I’m starting to think we are quite boring food-wise. I get in from work at 5.30 and we eat at 6.30, so generally I have 30 minutes to prepare, cook and serve food, which isn’t very long. We’ve never taken the ready meals route, and I’ll always serve fresh vegetables, plus we always sit and eat as a family together at that time. Taking a photo of every meal this week does show this too – the same vegetables, plenty of them with different sauces – and surprisingly the biggest points is the soup! (thankyou bread rolls)

I tried out the recipe calculator for our bread making (which is done in the bread maker) to get a proper points value, and was pretty shocked to find that it’s 3 points per slice – I’d thought it was 2 – so I’m trying to find ways of improving the recipe – though the points come with the flour and there doesn’t seem to be alternatives (and with our busy lives we need to just put stuff in the bread maker and have bread in the morning) – so if anyone has any good tips to share, please do!

I do a weekly shop with Ocado and have found their WeightWatchers selection of foods to be pretty good – and most importantly of all they have the chocolate digestives in! I’ve still not found the vegetarian pizza – every supermarket has the meaty option which isn’t an option.

Other than that, I tried some different options for my lunchtime when I’m at work – though while Waitrose do a wrap which has the same points as Sainsburys (and tastes loads better) it’s double the price – so I’ll be sticking with Sainsburys for now. Also, I was making myself do their meal deal, so rather than having juice and snack a jacks with a sandwich, I’m now just getting a sandwich for 99p which does me fine and saves a bit of money too.

So, this week I decided to take a photo of my evening meal each night and add the points total. What you’ll see is a mass of sludge when I cook, and a beautifully laid out plate when Shaun does! Hey ho…

Sunday – pasta and veg with quorn – a kind of spag bol (though it’s angel hair pasta) Sunday - pasta and veg kind of bolognese

Monday – butternut squash, veg and basmati rice curry Monday - Butternut squash, veg and rice with quorn

Tuesday – left over curry and cous cous Tuesday - left over curry and cous cous

Wednesday – Butternut squash soup with bread rolls Wednesday - Butternut squash soup with bread rolls

Thursday – veg and pasta with tofu Thursday - veg and pasta with quorn

Friday – curry with vegetables, sweet potato and butternut squash
Friday - curry with vegetables, sweet potato and butternut squash

Saturday – sweet potato and butternut squash with veg and pasta

Sunday - pasta and squashed butternut squash

Goodness, we’re boring, aren’t we? (apologies for awful resizing of photos too)

One thing I found this week – Iceland do WeightWatchers chips, coming in at 5 points per portion – one to remember when the need for chips starts. Actually, that’s what I like about WW – the options are there so you don’t have to get a bag of chips from the chip shop if you felt tempted. Having said that, I was sat next to a girl on the bus eating chips from a bag and oh GOD they smelt so good, I was like the Bisto kid taking in the aromas.

There’ll be no update next week as we’re away. The next update will be when I’ve more to share. Don’t forget you can try WeightWatchers for £1 for seven days – so you get to try out the app too.

I received six months of WeightWatchers membership for free, and a load of WW food goodies to try out. All opinions are my own.

* I have been reliably informed by Shaun that our scales may be being a bit odd right now, and need a new battery which I’ll be getting tomorrow. I’m sticking with 1lb though.

10/10/2012 by jo

We Love Books – Nick Butterworth – When There’s Work To Do & When We Play Together

I have to be honest and admit that I don’t read much to my 11 month old. Receiving these lovely little books was a fantastic opportunity to start our reading habit together! The books were small and durable, with thick cardboard pages to withstand a good amount of baby handling(!!). The stories were also nice and short with only about 10 words on each page, enough to hold my little one’s attention and give me a chance to talk about the lovely pictures.

What I really like is that this series of books have a regular set of soft toys that feature, with their names on the back of the book so that you get to know them. I think this is a really nice touch as one becomes familiar with the toys and this in turn gives an extra depth to the stories.

These books are £4.99 each, which I think is a reasonable price to pay, especially as places like Amazon do offers regularly. I would definitely recommend these books as I believe they make the perfect first book to share with your little one.

When We Play Together and When We Go Shopping are both available by Nick Butterworth now!

We received copies of these books for review – all opinions are our own – review by Karen

07/10/201227/03/2018 by jo

BritMums WeightWatchers Back2Best Challenge – Week 3

I’m starting to feel like there should be some kind of announcer, a bit like when The Apprentice is on, doing a swift recap of the previous week and all the things I’ve learnt.

If you don’t want to read what I’ve found out this week, then let’s just get it over with – I’ve lost another 2lb!

Actually, one of the great things about this challenge is finding out what others are doing, stealing the idea and making it work for me – and one of those is the very excellent Sonya over at Ramblings of a Rock n Roll Mum who suggested substituting butternut squash (nul points – to be said in Eurovision voice), when everyone’s having baked potato. Even better, I made a ton of veg and added some mashed butternut squash to the top and voila, a sort of veggie Shepherds Pie which came in around six points – and there’s enough for two nights too.

Work-wise I’ve got my snacking under control (though it has been a stupidly busy week) – my Graze box I’ve been getting has snacks at around 100 calories tops, so 2-3 point snacks.

I’m finding my way around the app a bit more now too – every night I was typing out the same vegetables until tonight I spotted the ‘Recently Added’ section which saves me a bit of time. Also Clare at Seasider in the City pointed out the app will also work offline which I hadn’t realised – something that I’m going to find useful as I’m on my iPod Touch relying on free internet when I’m out and about (but not any more!).

I’ve also started looking at the recipes – and I’m liking that you can add the ingredients to your shopping list within the app, so you know exactly what to buy, so I’ll be planning my Ocado shop this way this week. I did notice some of the recipes in the cookbooks weren’t in the app, so I’m adding them manually as I go along.

Oh, and we made a Pea and Sweet Potato Korma from the WeightWatchers cookbook which was delicious!

Things I’ve found out this week: most supermarkets stock WeightWatchers food – however, most of it seems to be ready meals that are meaty, so not much use to me. Those supermarkets that don’t have their own brand ones (cough, Tesco, Waitrose), but the vegetarian options are poor – for example broccoli and pasta – which would take around 5-10 minutes to make anyway. Nowhere is stocking the cheese and tomato WeightWatchers pizza which I’m dying to try – though Sainsburys are stocking the meaty ones which is a start (even if I can’t eat them).

Poundland again came up trumps as far as snacks go – I picked up another £5 worth of snacks including pitta bread. They stock the wraps too – and there are deals to be had which is a much more impressive range than the supermarkets.

I checked out our local Iceland who have some of the Heinz WeightWatchers meals, including six chocolate eclairs at £1.50 and only two points per eclair. They taste pretty good too, we treated ourselves yesterday. A regular one would come in somewhere between 6-8 points (and I just looked up Krispy Kreme’s – 10 points – that was out of curiosity, but that’s a meals-worth; food for thought there) – worth knowing when you don’t want to deny yourself the food, but you don’t want to go over your points allowance.

Super Amazing Mum has a bloghop going on, so head over there to read others progress on the BritMums WeightWatchers Back2Best challenge – and don’t forget, you can try it for £1 if you click this link (and you get to trial the app for free too)!

I’ve been provided with six months of free WeightWatchers membership, plus I received a hamper of WW goodies. All opinions are my own.

05/10/201224/06/2018 by jo

App Time – Around the Clock by Wombi

H is a bright little girl and wants to learn, which is great. We’ve been doing lots of learning how to tell the time but couldn’t find anything which could give it a context – she’ll look at the clock on the wall and work out the time, but doesn’t quite get it yet – mainly the time of day.

Then ‘Around the Clock’ came into our lives – a really charming app which has plenty of fun as well as learning in there – you’ve a clock which has a window next to it, so you know if it’s day or night – and a little activity once you hit the ‘play’ button which will also relate to the time of day. The app is an introduction to the clock and how a day can look, rather than teaching your child to tell the time (though it helps!)

The tasks are really simple, but clever enough to be fun so H was never bored – and given there’s 24 hours in the day, that’s 24 different parts of the game. Each game has a fairly simple straightforward task for the bear to do and once a challenge is completed you get a happy bear.

The Guardian listed Around the Clock in their Top 50 Best Apps for Kids too!

Here’s a YouTube video so you get a proper idea of how it works –

Around the Clock gets a thumbs up from us – anything which is educational and fun is a good thing – and this fits exactly where we are with learning right now – I’d highly recommend if your child is starting to learn to tell the time.

Around the Clock is available from the App Store and costs £1.99

We received a promo code to review this app, all opinions are our own.

02/10/2012 by jo

Justin’s Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book – A Review and Giveaway

Justin Fletcher never needs an introduction once you have children. He’s everywhere, especially in the world of Cbeebies. He made it into the Top Twenty this year with his ‘Hands Up’ album (which was on repeat when we went to North Wales and had a CD player in the car) and he had a Joke Book published. What on earth could he come up with next?

Oh, only a fabulous sticker book – complete with fifteen pages ready for some reusable stickers. The minute it arrived H was beyond excited, with squeals of “STICKERS!” “CLOWNS!” “PIRATES!!!!!” and of course “JUSTIN!!!!” as she looked through the pages. You get four pages of stickers which peel easily from the pictures once they’re stuck and plenty of variety with your sticker options too. My only complaint – no Cliff Tumble!!

We peeled a few stickers off, and H being just three demanded we recreate all the pictures on the front of the book. Once she’d done that she then demanded we stick the stickers wherever she wanted them, so we had a few interesting creations….

As she’s currently having to wear an eyepatch for two hours every day, this was a fantastic indoor activity, plus it’s helping improve her hand-eye co-ordination (not that it’s bad, but patched up she’s using her weaker eye) – and using the stickers wasn’t a problem at all – they’re huge sturdy stickers and easy to remove.

Justin's Sticker Book

There was one pair of glasses which didn’t make it though – so I’d say your child would need adult supervision initially, but once the stickers have been removed, let them go a bit crazy!

We’re really happy to be able to offer a copy of Justin’s Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book as a giveaway – all you have to do is answer the very easy Rafflecopter question correctly – good luck!

Justin’s Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book is published by Faber Kids and has a RRP of £3.99. It’s currently £2.99 on Amazon – and we think it’s a fab stocking filler!

We were sent a copy of the book for review, all opinions are our own.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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the things we do, the things we like

Month / October 2012

BritMums WeightWatchers Back2Best Challenge – Week 4

We Love Books – Nick Butterworth – When There’s Work To Do & When We Play Together

BritMums WeightWatchers Back2Best Challenge – Week 3

App Time – Around the Clock by Wombi

Justin’s Funny Faces Sticker Activity Book – A Review and Giveaway