Great North Swim and my First Training Sessions

As you know, last year I started a fab new hobby.....lake swimming. Now, I'm not the fastest but I absolutely love it. I'm also sure you know by now my lovely Grandma has been suffering with Alzheimer's for the last few years. One of forty before forty things is to do some work for charity. I did some voluntary work with the Alzheimer's Society at their Nottingham Memory Walk which was fabulous but very emotionally draining (blog post to follow).

To combine these two awesome things I've signed up to the Great North Swim and will be trying to raise as much as possible for the Society on behalf of my lovely Grandma:

With this is mind I have already started training. I've managed to swim a mile in the pool (OMG it's so far!!) and I also managed to get out into the open water for 15 minutes for my January swim:

The water was a rather chilly 4 degrees but I managed it and it was lovely apart from the numb feet! I'll keep you updated on progress and sponsorship details :)

Blogging round up........or lack thereof.....

I've been so slack at blogging this year it's been unbelievable. Mainly due to all of my available time being sucked up by university and work. Instead of a 'look at what I've already told you about' round up this is more of a 'look at what I didn't get around to blogging about in 2015!! Happy New Year :)

Seeing in the new year with two of my favourite girls

February saw me on a date night with the Leicester Riders!

 In March I finally got my 2014 Christmas present which was a trip to the Northampton Shoe Museum and the most FANTASTIC gig I've ever been to with the Quireboys.

April saw my lovely Nat's hen do and us staying in the most amazing house:

May found us in Cornwall for the first time:

June found us back at the seaside but this time in Norfolk:

This is getting silly now but July also found me at the beach.....

erm.......and August:

In September we fancied a bit of a change so went to the Lakes instead......

October was immense and not only did we go to the City of Love but my Chick also got to hang out at the most magical place on earth for Halloween:

December was long and busy but I'm sure you can guess where we ended it.....

All the best for an amazing 2016. Much love x

Review - Griff House Beefeater Nuneaton

As you know I'm a big fan of receiving emails that offer us a review experience as a family, so when I was asked if I fancied a visit to Griff House Beefeater in Nuneaton I thought why the hell not.

They explained that they'd had a makeover and so were looking for bloggers to check it out. In all honesty I was expecting it to be very much a 'chain restaurant' feel with 1970's decor and awful patterned carpets but actually it was really cool and funky! I do apologise now for the fact that there are very few photos but a) I was having too much of a good time and b) It was packed and you look a bit deranged taking pictures of random furnishings on a busy Friday night even for a blogger :)

We were greeted by a very lovely lady who saw us to our chairs and then our 'host' for the evening who looked after us was called Sarah. She was awesome and really looked after us well. I thought maybe it was because I was there to do a review but actually from observation everyone got the friendly treatment which can be surprisingly unusual in the service industries of the UK.

Totally loving the sign made out of astroturf!!

There was humming and hawing over what to pick from the menu:

Me and JoJo decided to save ourselves for pudding but the man had a camembert starter which was lovely and just the perfect size. Apparently the onion marmalade that came with it was 'fantastic'!:

Chick also had a nachos starter, followed by a pizza and desert which also included a drink from the kids menu. The 3 courses and the drink were a total of £5.99 with several options at each course level which I thought was a bargain quite frankly. Portion sizes were good too and she was stuffed when she finished it!!

Us adults had a variety of mains with me and the man opting for various burgers and JoJo going for the Chilli Con Carne:

My burger was immense. It was juicy, the sauce was lovely and the seasoned fries just rounded it off nicely. JoJo also loved the chilli. Her only complaint was that there wasn't enough of it and she could have eaten more!

For dessert we decided to go all out. Chick had a build your own dessert which came with marshmallows, chocolate brownies, ice cream and chocolate sauce:

We all agreed that the desserts were fab and thought that the ice cream was incredible. It was vanilla but made with proper vanilla pod and seeds rather than shop bought and seemed luxurious. These were the other desserts:

One huge chocolate sundae and a melt in the middle chocolate pudding. What a lovely end to a fabulous meal.

We really enjoyed our evening at Beefeater, the decor was funky and modern:

The food was good and it was decent value for money. For 2 starters, 4 mains, 4 desserts and plenty of drinks the bill came to £73 which I felt was pretty reasonable. I'm sure we'll be back again :)

 Disclosure: Beefeater gave us £50 worth of vouchers towards our meal however we were free to pick and choose our reservation slot and whatever we wanted from the menu. All thoughts, views and pictures are mine!

Silent Sunday