Category: Bloggy Stuff

(Collaborative Post)

Gifts play an essential role to give some unforgettable moments to the recipients. It is the perfect way of strengthening the bond of love and care with close ones. We all live in a beautiful relationship with our siblings and parents in the family. Everyone finds time for the ceremonial occasions of each other like birthday, anniversary and other special events at home. These celebrations give us a chance to express our feelings to the family and friends.

Gifts make it simple for you to show the sincere feelings to your close ones. The unique gifts always make a remarkable impression for the recipients on their particular occasions. The gift selection for men is never an easy task. It should be according to the passions and hobbies of the recipient. You can also dedicate some gifts which they wish to buy in the upcoming time. The primary purpose of gift-giving is to give the memorable moments of the day. You can also create new memories by sending unique gifts for your brothers, boyfriends and the best man in your life on their special occasions.

Here are some creative gifts ideas for him (man) to give some surprising moments of the day.

Box of nutritious dry fruits: 

Most of the men are health conscious and follow the balanced diet plan. They like to eat light food items and also do regular exercises. The dry fruits are best to provide the essential nutrients with a unique taste. You can dedicate a box of delicious dry fruits to your elder brother. Sisters can also Send Rakhi with dry fruits hamper to their distant brothers on the Raksha Bandhan. It will be a perfect food gift for them on this day.

 Dedicate personalized gifts for him: 

Everyone knows the importance of unique gifts to give some remarkable moments to the recipients. The occasions give you the opportunity to dedicate something from your heart to the close ones. You can make the personalized gifts like photo frames, photo coffee mugs, and photo cushions, etc. to give the best moments of the day. It is the best gifts choice to dedicate some personalized items to men. They will remember you for these unique gifts on their occasions like birthday, anniversary, and other special days.

Gift apparels for him:

Men are also a fashion freak, and they love to carry some cool apparels according to the latest trends. You can dedicate a dress of his choice to surprise on the particular occasions. Girls can also purchase the printed t-shirts to gift their boyfriends on the birthday. They can also make personalized by using their photos to print on the t-shirts. It will help to create the new memory of the special day. They will outshine with your gifted apparels on their birthday.

Delicious cake for him:

A cake is an essential dessert to celebrate the memorable occasions. It is also the most awaited sweet item to commemorate the event. You can prepare a designer birthday cake to surprise your partner. Make it choosing his favorite flavors and ingredients to give him an appetizing feeling of the day. You can also make a photo cake to refresh the beautiful memories of your past time together. It will be the perfect dessert to spread the happiness of the day.

After doing so well right until after Christmas, my daily life schedule took a nosedive.  My mum went into hospital with a broken hip, and ended up in a much worse state, that I’m not going to mention again today, and I lost complete control over my eating and life for a while.  It happens, and as disappointing as it is, dealing with life changes is something almost all of us have to do as we get older.  Yes, there are people who never change when it comes to weight, and it’s a fortunate thing for them, but I’m not one of them.

Now don’t get me wrong, I haven’t gained stones and stones of weight, I’ve gained a few pounds, but it’s where that weight is that had me so disappointed.

I talked about my first In-Body scan here, which tells us about our body fat percentage, distribution of fat, protein and muscle, and what the visceral fat levels are.  They’re eye opening for sure.  I looked a bit on the thin side for a while, yet my visceral fat was still borderline.   In January, I went back for my second In-Body scan, and I’d done great.  I’d managed to increase my overall muscle by 0.5kg and increased the amount of calories I could eat in a day without gaining weight by a smidgen.  A few weeks later, post stressful month or so, and I’d gained a couple of pounds, yet I LOST a fair bit of muscle, reduced the amount of calories I can eat in a day, and my visceral fat went up by a fair bit.  The shift in my visceral body fat was just not visible on the scales at all.  Visceral fat is the dangerous fat around our midsections, that can lead to fatty liver disease.  I felt incredibly deflated after that, but at the same time, finding out the information from the scan, was incredibly empowering.

I gained weight..  Ok, it’s not great, but we’re all only human.  I’ve done really badly these last few weeks, but I know what I need to do, as I’ve seen the evidence on the In Body scan from Temple Medical, that it works.  Going to the hospital most days, work, and juggling daily life, means I haven’t had the time for me.  I know I need to change that, but it looks unlikely to happen any time soon, and I need to work more too, so I’ll just wing the best way I can for now.

What I wanted to write about, was the Body Contouring that Temple Medical let me review.  I have to say, that I have been very fortunate in having the opportunity to take part in this, as body contouring involves a treatment that helps to tighten loose skin.  I’ve seen people on TV having the treatments, but actually hadn’t thought about them for myself, even though I do have some loose skin that means I cover up more than I need to in warmer weather.

What Happens

You put on a lovely stocking suit.  I say lovely, as it’s actually not as bad as I first thought it would be.  It’s a bit like thick white tights material, and seems to make the treatments more comfortable. It does, I have to say, help hold in some of the wobbly bits for when your measurements get taken.   The treatment is in two parts.  The Ultrasound, to help with fat reduction and LPG Massage, to encourage collagen and elastin

The suit is pretty see through, so I’m not going full out on the blog in that, but you get the idea from my pictures.  Just look at those rosy cheeks with no make-up on and a hot room…

For the Ultrasound, at the beginning, you sort of shimmy out of your suit on the top half and cover up with a towel, while the ultrasound does it’s job on your tummy.  The therapist moves the head around the area to be targeted, for me the belly, which creates friction and heat as it’s moved around the skin, with plenty oil.  I didn’t find the heat uncomfortable at all.  It was a lovely warm sensation for me.

The second half of the treatment is the LPG, which Jana says is known as lipo massage.  It uses suction and rollers, moved across the body in sections, to help tighten skin.  There’s more about the detail below.  Now, I’d be fibbing if I said this part of the treatment was without any discomfort at all.  I wouldn’t call it painful, but you definitely know something is happening to your wobbly bits.  I felt it more on bony parts, like upper arms and upper thighs etc, which are more sensitive.  The therapist makes her way around your whole body, rollering as she goes.

At the beginning, I doubted there would be any difference whatsoever, but the weird thing was, that at around the last couple of sessions, I suddenly realised I wasn’t ashamed of my upper arms anymore.  After losing the weight, I had loose skin on my upper arms which really bothered me.  I often used to wear a long sleeved t-shirt under a short sleeved one to hide them.  One day, I popped on a short sleeve top, and didn’t instantly whip it off again to put another one under it.  I think it took me a couple of days to realise what had happened there.

What was also interesting, was that even after my last disappointing In-Body, where I’d gained a bit of weight and lost muscle, I’d strangely had a shift in my measurements.  Although heavier, my abdomen looked better, and had pulled in, and that was my biggest problem area.  I got off lucky in the loose skin stakes, considering my weight loss, but there’s always room for improvement I think.  I did leave happier than I went in, and I know what I need to do now.

I’ve come towards the end of my treatments with Temple Medical, however, I’ll always be grateful to them for helping me see what can be achievable with a bit more work, and that it’s not all about picking one exercise and thinking that’s enough to actually be fit and healthy.

I’ll let one of the therapists, Jana, give you the official information on the treatments I had.

Temple Medical Body Contouring

Ultrasound

The ultrasound device is called Med Contour. The treatment objective is to reduce adipose tissue in the affected area.

Med Contour is a non-surgical and non-invasive US machine specializing in fat reduction and fat loss. It does this by breaking down stored subcutaneous fat.  MedContour features its own patented FDA approved dual hand piece helping focus treatments better and leaving surrounding structures (i.e. skin, blood vessels, nerves and connective tissue) undamaged. Med Contour also has its own built in lymphatic drainage system helping the body to remove toxins, excess fluids and waste from the body. It carried a CE mark allowing it to be used as a medical device.  It operates at a frequency of 1000kHz. The frequency pitch is too high to be heard therefore no buzzing will be heard/felt in ears. Heat is generated as a result of the high energy, which is an advantage as it assists with skin tightening. If temperatures of >41C can be reached and maintained, the skin will tighten in the area.

Please be aware that the heating  is a secondary effect. It is not important for the mechanical ultrasound vibrations and not by the heat. The treatment will work even if the skin doesn’t get hot.

The treatment time in a combined treatment is 20 minutes.

LPG treatment

LPG (also known as lipo massage) is an intense and deep mechanical massage using suction and rollers to tighten the skin. It works in multi direction forces to activate the fibroblasts (skin cells) to create more collagen and elastin.

Fibroblasts are dormant and repair the skin after trauma to stop infection. The collagen and elastin they create pull the skin of the wound together. The LPG activates the fibroblast to wake them up, imitating trauma to the tissue. This creates collagen and elastin for repair, hence the tightening of the skin.

The treatment also breaks down surface fat calls me

• Tightens the skin by the stimulation of the fibroblasts.
• Helps to break down surface fat.  It is worked through the lymphatic system improving circulation, which will smooth out the uneven fat storage and trapped fluid under the skin. This leaves the body via normal bodily fluids.

In summary LPG

• Enhances the surface of the skin by improving the appearance of cellulite, stretch marks and scarring.
• Increases lymphatic drainage and speeds up the removal of toxins from the body.
• LPG treatment will take approximately 30 minutes.

templemedical.co.uk

This has niggled me for a while.  I know some stat couters use it, but to be honest, it’s pretty worthless as a method of establishing follower counts these days.  I changed my RSS (think Google Reader eg) over to Feedburner a few years ago, lost all my original RSS subscribers and it was at the point where Feedburner began to wind down.

I took my e-mail subscribers and duly let them all know about my change back to WordPress E-Mail, then Mailchimp came along for those.  I’m making a change to that too, more as a means of keeping control and being able to have them all in one place for the long term.

What it does leave me with, is around 150 older subscribers I haven’t managed to find, who still have my Feedburner RSS feed directed to them.

I have no way of ever knowing who they are and Google isn’t supporting Feedburner any more, so it’s old hat, even older software, and I don’t trust it anymore.

I do know that those subscribers regularly read the posts, as Feedburner tells me they do, so to stay with me, you’ll need to do one of the following.

Old RSS Feedburner Subscribers

This was my last feed address:  

If you’re subscribed to this, your posts shouldn’t stop too soon, but they will stop eventually.  To keep subscribing, simply delete that option and resubscribe.

My New RSS Feed Address 

http://scottishmum.com/feed/

If It Doesn’t Work?

If you are redirected to Feedburner, your cache may need cleared, or you could subscribe by some of the other ways to keep in touch.

Subscribe By E-Mail

With this option, even if I post multiple times a day, you will only ever get one e-mail as a digest at a time.

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There is still the option of subscribing by simply using the WordPress Direct Subscription options.  I’ll leave one active on the blog for those of you who do prefer that, but some of you may prefer to delete your old blog e-mail subscription and sign up to the Mailchimp version above.  Even if I post three times a day, you’ll only get one e-mail 🙂

Social Media

In those little square boxes above this post on the right hand side, are most of my social media channels.  Feel free to visit me there and catch up on what’s going on.

The House of Fraser have been doing some sterling work with bloggers recently.  We much appreciate the time and effort gone into what they do while they work with us.  I’m delighted to show you the results of my recipe in their fabulous book.

I chose one of my recipes that is easy to make and even easier to eat.  Quiche is one of the most undercooked dishes around, and that’s not because people don’t like it.  It’s more to do with it being a pastry dish, and just the thought of cooking pastry, hardens the heart of most home cooks who are trying to make a meal on a budget or within a time constraint.

For me, shortcrust pastry is the one I will make at home.  I know some cooks who will go all out and make their own puff pastry, but that’s one step too far for me.  I like to keep things simple.  For this recipe, I’ve let you off easy, with the option to buy your own, as I begin the process from rolling the dough.

My recipe is on pages 40 – 45.  I’m delighted with the result and my book stands in pride of place on my bookshelf.  It’s not every day you see one of your recipes in print.

So here it is, my simple recipe for Cheese and Tomato Quiche.

Cheese & Tomato Quiche Recipe

Print Recipe Pin Recipe

Ingredients

  

• 700 g Shortcrust Pastry
• 250 g Cherry Tomatoes Cut Into Thirds
• 500 g Mild Cheddar Cheese Grated
• 12 Eggs
• 200 ml Milk

Instructions

 

• Taking the dough out of the fridge, flour a surface so that you can roll out the dough to the shape you need. For 8 small dishes, I break my dough into two equal sections, break each of those into two again and then once again half each piece until I have 8 equal sized portions. Set your oven to 160-170C.
• I use my rolling pin to roll the dough to a slightly larger size than I need for my flan dishes. I used to butter the dish before putting my pastry in, but now I have more professional baking tins, the ones I use for my flans (which came from tesco) don’t need greased before cooking, but I often still spray on some one cal spray or oven release spray.
• I plop my rolled out piece of dough in the flan dish, press around the bottom and the top, which takes the excess dough off the tin. I'm never precise with this and sometimes have to take some bits that overlap off the top and fill in any gaps. You won't notice it when your flan is cooked.
• Fill the flan dishes equally with the cheese and half the chopped tomatoes.
• Break your eggs into a jug and add the milk. Beat the egg and milk together until it is fully mixed.
• Fill each flan dish to about half an inch from the top with the egg/milk mix, and push the rest of the tomatoes into the top.
• Bake in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes, or until the flans don't wobble if you shake the tray. The tops should be a lovely golden colour. When you take them out of the oven, the flans will have risen in the middle, approximately an inch or two high. They will flatten down after a few minutes out of the oven, and look more like shop bought quiche looks.
• Serve hot, or put them in the fridge when they are cool, to eat cold on another day.

Loyalty and fairness are words that we hear bandied around our family a lot.

Most readers know that my three boys are adopted.  They have many birth brothers and sisters who live in other adoptive and foster families.  Being able to cope with that, and treat everyone fairly is quite a tricky body of water to navigate, even for us adults.

As far as we can, we try to include the parents and children who live with other families in our news.  Just this morning, we received an updated picture of one of my boys birth sisters, which winged its way over to us from half way around the world.   From our side, returning the favour will be our next step in the keeping everyone up to date plan.  That’s no mean feat when there are seven other families to include.

For the boys, it’s also keeping the expectations realistic, as well as keeping their loyalty to their birth family, but not alienating their adoptive one at the same time.  It’s hard enough for adults to cope, but for the children, and hopefully, their long-term relationships with each other, it’s necessary.

It’s turning out quite nice really, as if they have some good news to share, they often pick up the phone to a sibling before telling anyone else.

There are occasions where they fall out, of course there are, so we are working to manage those awkward times, but so far, the boys have done a good job of working things out and remaining polite and respectful of each other.   Friends can come and go during our lifetimes, but we hope the boys sibling relationships will remain as good as they are now, where they are fiercely loyal to each other when it comes to those outside the family.

At the same time, the boys have to stay on good terms with their friends and of course the adoptive families they’ve all grown up in.

We have spells where the kids spend hours on the phone to one or other of their siblings.  Quite often, with them simply on the other end of the phone, while a child in each family goes about their daily business, eats meals, plays computer games etc, and they chat to each other as if they were in the same room.  There are some long spells of silences, and some disjointed conversations, but mostly, they simply comment on what’s going on at home in their own houses, and chat to each other as if they were sitting side by side.

Thank goodness for unlimited minute mobile phone contracts…..and Facetime (when it works, as our Internet connection is often diabolical).  Where money is concerned, any saving is a good one.

Talking about fairness, loyalty and money, brings me to the new Royal Bank of Scotland RBS Hello/Goodbye campaign.  Fairness and loyalty is an image that banks can often struggle to overcome, but I was pleased to see the RBS have decided to reward loyalty and not ignore existing customers.

I think that watching the video says it all.  I hate being treated differently to new customers when I’m looking for new services and I’ll tell other people I know too.  Just being fair at home isn’t enough, businesses need to be fair to all their customers too, just to make us feel special enough to stay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQDGm8sy7uU&feature=youtu.be

I’m working with BritMums and RBS on this project and have been compensated. All opinions are my own. 

Some of you reading will know my mother is diabetic and has lots of other things going on, as well as the arthritis and now dementia taking hold.

My car has been playing up this week.  Sometimes the central locking works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Today, I broke the only physical key lock on the car, when I tried to force it open.

The kidlets sniggered and snuffled on the driveway, yelling things like ‘I’m telling dad on you,’ and singing ‘she’s a key breaker, you won’t get in no more, no more, no more, no more.’

Yeah, I know, stupido to try and force it!

Anyway, I can’t just leave it unlocked as it has a safety mechanism whereby if you leave the car alone for over five minutes with no key in the ignition, it auto locks!  It can’t be turned off.

It finally decided to work tonight, so I took my mother round to our local shop to get some bits and bobs.  From there, it went downhill.

We parked in one of the two empty disabled spaces.  Quite rightly as the badge was displayed and she sat in the passenger seat.

The problem was, that when I opened my door and hopped out, middler did the same behind me.

At which point, I heard an extremely loud voice that caught my attention just in time to see a well dressed gentleman raise his hand and shout to someone else walking to the shop door. He was making it clear that the spaces were meant for disabled people only and implying I was parked where I shouldn’t be.

I was meant to hear that.

He hadn’t seen my mum struggle to get out of the passenger door.  

He’d seen me and jumped on his high hobby horse.  The hackles rose on the back of my neck, but I pushed down the anger.  My mum doesn’t like conflict of any kind.

Then, middler, who never forgets a face, pointed madly at a man standing at the checkout.  I wouldn’t have recognised him as the two men who entered looked similar, and I had a mother to help out.

My feet took up a life of their own, and I walked to where he was leaving the checkouts, asking him if he was the man who made the snarky comment about the disabled space.

He smirked and said, yes, they were meant for disabled people.  At which point, I said my piece about being entitled to park there as the car is displaying the correct badge and the disabled person was doing her shopping at the back of the shop.  I told him to stop making snarky comments that I was meant to hear.

Middler was sniggering up his sleeve at this point as I rose to be a short term hero in his eyes.

The snarky commenter’s sneer told me he didn’t believe me.  Whatever his bad mood was about tonight, I suspect I made it worse.  It’s his family I feel sorry for.

Imagine having to live with that!

You’d think it would be easy to buy a dirt sucker upper wouldn’t you?

It slipped being imprinted on my mind with all that’s been going on at home recently.

Today, I went to look for a vacuum cleaner.  A petty thing in the grand scheme of keeping heads above water, but the right ones do cut cleaning time to half of a rubbish one.

Shopping for a hoover should be easy?  Right?

Only it’s not, as it turns out I’ve missed the Euro disciplinarians rules and when current stocks run out, none of us can buy anything more powerful than a 1,600 watt machine for the next few years.

The EU rules came into force on the 1st September apparently.  And worse than that, from 2017, we’ll only be allowed to buy a 900 watt hoover.

What’ll that hoover up?

Oh right! Sod all.

I seriously doubt it would make manufacturers invest in better technology and low powered machines with animals is going to get tricky to cope with.

There’s not much point in having carpets as we can’t get much of the dirt out of them.  We might as well simply lay laminate or wood.  It would be much less hassle, but bye bye carpet industry and soft cozy toes when it’s cold outside.

Apparently, restrictions on things like hair dryers could very well come soon too.  That means I’ll stand with a gently puffing stream of air for half an hour, instead of a high blast from my 2200 watt hairdryer for five minutes.   I know which version uses more energy as I have a travel hairdryer around 900 watts and it DOES take about half an hour to dry my hair with.

I know this is too simplistic a way to view the calculation but it helps me look at the difference.

• 30 minutes at 900 watts = 27,000
• 5- 10 minutes at 2200 watts = 11,000 – 22,000

Which version is the flaming ‘energy’ saver?

But wait…..

Is there a positive to this story?  I’m not sure.   I know Dyson’s are all under about 1300 or 1400 watts, yet they clean well, but what happens when the rules go down to 900 watts?

I am a carer for 2 people with significant needs and 2 others with less.

Higher powered appliances are the difference between me coping and not coping.  I do like to sleep sometimes.

This is one shitty rule in my eyes!!

Rant over!

I made a decision today.  It’s mostly based around the time aspect, and more importantly, around how I feel about it.

For a few years, I’ve been a member, and taken part in some lovely blogging groups which have blog stats.  I didn’t really care where I sat in the stats, as the blog just does it’s own thing and Google is very good to me these days.

My blog went down (out of action) for a few days recently and although I’ve only dropped about 100 places in one ranking, the others are likely to tank in the next few weeks.  Yes, I know by next month, I’d be back where I was, but when I spotted the drop, I instantly began planning a couple of competitions etc to temporarily up the blog reader number.

Then I stopped myself.

To be part of a couple of the groups, I felt myself giving in to not posting many of the types of things that I would really like to, as it means that the blog was going down a more specific route than I really wanted it to, and becoming more niche than I’d like.  My blog isn’t a business, it’s a hobby, and I felt myself losing that.

Yes, I’ll lose offers from PRs that use the blog ranking places, but that’s not all bad either. Anyone who knows the blog can work out it’s level as an SEO value, and it should drop some of the spam enquiries, that some days, actually fill the blog e-mail address up so much that I can spend ages just wading through them all.

I plan to pop on my Google page rank, play with the blog and do some posts around the business that I have unexpectedly had returned after being rented out to someone for the last 12 years.  It’s going to be a busy time, and to keep up with it all, I can’t be distracted by where I sit in ranking stats.

I feel slightly liberated today without blog badges reporting my stats back to the ranking websites.  Yes, I know I will be bottom of the rankings pile by next month with no stats reporting back, but I will have my blog back the way I used to feel. There will undoubtedly be days I will regret removing them, but I don’t want to feel I can’t post things as it won’t fit into my niche.

I am quite surprised to be nominated for the BritMums Brilliance in Blogging Awards for 2014

Stage 1

I’ve been nominated in the Food category, so for whoever put me forward for it, I am very grateful indeed.  It’s lovely to think that someone made the effort to have us listed.  The shortlist consists of 16 bloggers out of the man who have been nominated. 11 were chosen by other bloggers, and 5 were chosen by the BritMums judges.

BritMums has about 4000ish bloggers as part of it’s continually growing network. I can’t remember how many there were when I started off, but it wasn’t a lot.  I’ve not been to a BritMums conference since 2011, so its been a long time since I’ve really met many other bloggers from the network.

Getting down to the 16 shortlisted bloggers in the food category is really nice and quite a surprise.  There are so many great blogs out there, that I’m quite shocked, in a lovely way.

Stage 2

The BIBS have now opened up for voters to choose which if their favourite blogs from each category will win the overall award for 2014.

I know most of you who read my blog do it by e-mail rather than coming directly to the blog online as I send out the whole post, so I know it would be a big ask to get you to log in online and give me a wee vote, but if any of you feel up to it, I’d be delighted.

Out of the 16 bloggers in each category, there will be 6 finalists in total.  4 will be chosen by blogger votes and 2 will be selected by the BritMums to go forward to the judging panel.

You can only vote once as the form has been designed to only allow one vote per person in each category.

Finalists will be announced on the 23rd May.

Voting is open now and the form will stay online until Friday 16th May.

Obviously, if you do decide to vote for your favourite bloggers, I’d be delighted if you included me as one of the votes in the food category, but even if you don’t vote for me, please do vote in the BiBs as each vote counts for whoever you vote for.

BritMums is hosting an award and party night at BritMums Live on 20th June, and the winners will be announced then.

The last thing I would say is that I wish all the shortlisted bloggers in their categories the best of luck.   Thank you to those who put me into the shortlist, I am very grateful for my lovely readers. x