Baking, Painting and Trail Running

Will it ever stop raining? Just when it looks like the weather is improving, it gets bad again! Last night was a welcome break from the rain. The sky was blue, the sun was blazing and I decided to explore some dog walking areas closer to home.

I set off with the dogs first, did a quick scout of the immediate area behind the houses and then came home, grabbed my trainers and headed off to explore more throughly.

I set off just after 7pm, Martha was in bed, Mr H was watching TV and the dogs were tired after their walk around the fields. It took me about 2 minutes to run from my house to this. Nature is good for the soul.

It was an absolutely glorious evening and there was loads to explore. Down one route I couldn't get passed a puddle that was the size of a bus, so I turned around and headed back towards a water tower. On my way I saw a couple walking through a field up and over a hill, so decided I'd turn back and head that way. The field felt never ending. The corn was really scratchy on my legs though. I will have to wear longer running tights next time as my legs were so itchy when I got back and were quite red where I had run alongside the corn. This bit of the run was probably my favourite,

there was lots of stuff that needed to be jumped over and the gap between the corn fields was quite small so it took a lot of concentration to avoid falling over.It was certainly not my quickest run, but it was certainly the most fun I've had running in a long time. I've mapped the distance out and it was only about 3.5 miles, so the time does reflect me stopping to take photos and generally poke around. There are a few buildings I'd like to go back and take a closer look out - one of them looks like an old bomb shelter and was full of teenagers last night. One to scope out on a school night or with Mr H I reckon.

At the end of my run I'd taken about 44 minutes and burnt 330 calories.





Other things I've been up to this weekend were painting the legs of our kitchen chairs to match our Branksome dinner plates. I'm so sad that the factory has decided to close, I'm still hopeful someone will buy them out and they will continue to make it. As it stands I'm not adding to our collection because if anything breaks I won't be able to replace it. We picked 4 colours and matched them as closely as possible at the Dulux Colour Centre in Homebase. I particularly like the pink as its called 'Candy Love'.

What do you think? Does that look ok or do I need to paint the entire base of the chair?

Please excuse the state of our floor, it doesn't matter how many times a day I hoover, there is ALWAYS pug fur everywhere!

Finally, I've done more baking. Mr H made one of these on Saturday and I made the recipe again on Sunday because we'd eaten it all *insert shocked face here*. It's called Icebox cake and is Mr H's most favourite childhood recipe. You'll be glad to know he took the one I made into work this morning.

However... I may have made some Black Bean and Avocado Brownies adapted to what I had in the cupboard from the recipe on Cara's Cravings (http://www.carascravings.com/2010/02/a-treat-for-your-sweet-black-bean-avocado-brownies.html) today. They came out of the oven about 30 minutes ago so will give them a go shortly. At about 90 cals each I'm quite excited about them. However my cake counter is currently at once per day since my next 30 days started.