Still alive!!

This weekend I did something I had never ever done before. I cooked. Cooked from scratch a main course and a pudding. What is even more impressive is I am still alive and so too is the person I cooked it for!!

Reason for cooking? Well my boyfirend and I do not really get to spend all that much time together when we are both home and so my mum was out and I thought it would be nice if we did something different and took advantage of the space and spend some quality time together. I suggested cooking and my boyfriend got quite excited by the idea of being grown ups so then I had to do it!! I looked in recipe books borrowed from a friend and surfed the internet until I found a simple recipe that would look like it was complicated!! On saturday afternoon I began the task of cooking and by Saturday evening we had a barbecued chicken with fried rice and chocolate swirl cheesecake. All made from scratch and it even tasted quite nice!

Point of this blog? Well I am alive and so is he. I can now say I can cook without poisoning anybody!!

New Year, New Me?!

OK so it has been a while since I have blogged, this is mainly due to the fact I have not had anything to say, until today that is. Whilst at work bored I suddenly thought of something I could share with you all, I cannot promise it will be interesting but at least it's something!

I have decided this year I need to lose weight. I am not the only one in this I am sure but it has occurred to me recently that in the past four years of my relationship I have expanded and now is the time to stop. I am not however going to diet. Oh no. I do not believe in dieting, it just makes you hungrier, plus for it not to make you hungry you have to spend a lot of money a month to join the consumer diet world. This is money that I will be needing to spend on something else but that will be a blog for later in the year. So as I am not going to diet how exactly am I going to lose weight. A question I am sure you are eagerly awaiting the answer for!! I am going to exercise. Yes that is right little sis I am going to exercise. I do currently belong to a gym however have been once in the entire month of December. To not go is throwing money away and so that is why in this New Year I am going to make the most of my gym membership.

The question is though can you lose weight just by exercising? Can I go back to the size and figure I had four years ago? Can I be less than that?

The answer I am hoping is yes as I have lots of important engagements coming up this year, from friends 21st's to graduation balls and ceremonies (not mine but I still get to go!) to a friends wedding, and these are just the ones that I know of.

So please keep your fingers crossed that this is achievable and if you have any advice or tips they would be greatly appreciated.

Decisions, Decisions

Now I am working in the big wide world I have realised I need to start drinking grown up drinks, yes tea and coffee. There is one slight problem with that I do not like tea or coffee plus I have a bit of a thing with drinking hot drinks which I will not go into here as we could be here all day. However I have discovered I do quite like a hot chocolate. This is good especially in the winter as it will warm me up however one problem is the amount of calories in a hot chocolate. I have therefore limited myself to one hot chocolate a week, not only for the calories but it is cheaper too! Here is my dilemma though. From Oxford Circus station on the way to my office I pass a Costa, a Starbucks and a Pret all of which sell hot chocolate. The decision is therefore which is the best one to have?

The Temptation is Large!!!

As some of you who know me will know I have a new job which I am liking at the moment, fingers crossed it will remain that way, but with this job comes one of the biggest temptations.

My office is in Soho, when I say Soho I mean 5 minutes from Oxford Street and 3 minutes from Carnaby Street. This is the great temptation. Not going shopping and spending all my hard earned money in my lunch hour! You will not believe how hard it is not to go shopping when all the big shops are just a stones throw away.

Until today I had avoided stepping foot onto Oxford Street apart from when I go to the station on the way home but today I went, and I am pleased to say did not buy anything except lunch although it was really hard!

Southern Youth Councils

On Friday I helped drive members of Southampton Shirley youth to their youth councils evening in Poole. I was quite interested to go after experiencing youth councils in the LNE division for so many years and I am pleased I went. The theme was Transformers and although the evening was certainly different to the way 'we' do youth councils those that were there had a good time. There was one bit in particular that really hit me. After the sermon bit the worship band led the us in a song called God of Justice. This song had been taught to them at summer school but on Friday evening they used it in the response time. The response was to stand on a particular line of song that you will do. This may not make much sense if you do not know the words to the song so I will put them in now.


God of Justice, Saviour to all

Came to rescue the weak and the poor

Chose to serve and not be served

Jesus, You have called us

Freely we've received

Now freely we will give

We must go, live to feed the hungry

Stand beside the broken

We must go,

Stepping forward keep us from just singing

Move us into action

We must go

To act justly everyday

Loving mercy in everyway

Walking humbly before You God

You have shown us, what You require

Freely we've received

Now freely we will give

Fill us up and send us out

Fill us up and send us out

Fill us up and send us out Lord

I was truly amazed to see youth responding to this. Youth were getting up and saying yeah lets make a stand, I want to do this, this is what needs to be done. It was a special moment for me. I didn't know all the youth unlike here at home but was so proud I guess of the way they responded.

Whilst we were singing this the line that struck me the most was 'We must go, Stepping forward keep us from just singing, move us into action'. In the Salvation Army and in some ways Church in general we are known for singing lots of hymns and for many that's all we do, meet on one day a week and sing but I believe it is time we did this and we made this line our prayer and truly meant it, please Lord move us into action, keep us from just singing.

Belonging

This is going to be a mix of my thoughts, thoughts I have been thinking for a little while. I cannot promise they will make sense but this may be the most honest post of mine yet, that I cannot promise though. Apologies if this does not make any sense but just needed somewhere to write.

For a long time now I have been thinking about the term belonging in relation to how I belong and how other people see the term belonging. I have been thinking this in relation to our church, our corps, and am struggling with belonging. Just because we have been there for our entire lives does that mean we belong? If it does why do people still feel alone and that their home church no longer feels like home? Do people presume that everybody feels like they belong because they have been there forever?

I know this probably does not make much sense, it doesn't even to me really. These are just some of the thoughts in my head that I was able to put into words.

Why....

OK this may sound like it is possibly going to be a big deep philosophical or theological blog but it isn't I'm afraid as I am not that type of person. The real subject of this blog is dogs and houses.

As part of September those of us in the Salvation Army are encouraged to do door to door collecting as part of the Annual Appeal. As my mum is a minister now guess who has to help her out with this (to be fair there are only about 3 people under the age of 65!!). I do not mind the idea of it at all, my biggest problem is I am scared of dogs, and I mean scared, I cross over the road, that kind of thing. So anyway we went out last Saturday knocking on doors and I like nearly got killed like three times (FYI I am a slight drama queen!!). People opened their doors fully and out come bounding dogs. Now surely if you have a dog, who barks at visitors and is excitable, you do not open the door to its full width or am I missing some huge point? The funny thing is that once I screamed in pure terror when two big dogs came bounding at me from the same house the woman said, 'They won't hurt you', good I'm pleased but how can you categorically know that.

So the question and the point of my little rant is why do people who have dogs and other excitable animals open the door really wide and not take into account the fact the person at the door may be slightly scared of them?