Around 6 weeks ago I decided to dive back into a Hobby of mine, Fish keeping. I have kept fish since I was around 14. Growing up, my father had his own tropical fish tank and also a very large Koi pond in our back garden. I found them fascinating to watch and as I got slightly older my interest in keeping my own tank grew.

Its been 4 weeks since the house move. We have relocated to the east end of London to start another chapter of this journey.

We have rented a beautiful 2 bed house which has lots of space and a lovely small garden. This time the garden is square, a nicer change from what we previously had - which was a long narrow garden. It has artificial grass for easy maintenance, a lovely raised pond (yet to be used) patio area and a shed. The outside space will be great for the summer next year, and there will be a small area I can use to plant some fruit and veg in the spring, my little bliss.

Living in London comes at a price, it is not cheap! Rent is high and bills need to be paid. We were getting by where we were in our previous little house.  However the rent was expensive and we had little money spare each month.

Two friends of ours were in a similar position, they were relocating to London from Brazil and staying with friends whilst looking for an apartment. They had been looking since March however their budget was low. Me and Andy had spoken a few times about the idea of house sharing to make the bills and rent cheaper and in August we decided it was the right thing to do. So we are now sharing with another professional married couple Carmen and Priscila.

New house, new house mates & a whole lot of the unknown. 

The area is nice, we are right beside a large park which is convenient for the dog. 30 minutes to London Liverpool street and we have a lot of local amenities within a 20 minute walk. We also have Stratford on our doorstep! So a 20 minutes commute to the heart of stratford shopping centre Westfield. However I am going to miss my weekend walks to Ladywell park and the walks to Greenwich. However with some further exploring we found a lovely park called Valentines Park. Perfect for weekend strolls with the pup and it will be beautiful in the summer.

A friend of mine has recently been sharing his success pictures this summer of the Spartan events he had attended. I have barely been able to keep with my jogging routine let alone tackle a 3+ miles obstacle course. However I was intrigued and for some odd reason it looked fun.

I think it must be the fact that there are obstacles along the way, such as climbing over walls, swimming and crawling under barbed wire fencing that made me want to tackle it. Im not the kind of girl who would just enjoy running a marathon for instance.  So i did the stupid thing of convincing myself to give it ago and sign up for 2016.

I knew I would need someone to join me for extra encouragement and to help me get into shape and train for this event. So I have got a group of friends together who are also interested in tackling the sprint next year. Shortly after I has signed both myself and Andy up I received an email with a workout guide to prepare yourself for the sprint. My first thoughts, what am I getting myself into.

My trainers that I ordered finally arrived. I had previously been running in my converse and I just didn't feel comfortable jogging with such flat shoes. I ordered some pretty basic Puma running trainers from M&M direct for £25 and they seem to be doing the job. They even match my running outfit - another cheap purchase I recently made from Primark: lycra shorts, sports bra and vest top. I didn't want to heavily invest with named running gear as I wasn't certain I would enjoy it.

A few weeks in now and I am still on/off with the jogging. I haven't yet quite managed to do a full 2 weeks. I have been very distracted the past week or so as we have decided we are going to be moving. Looking for a place to rent which allows pets is not that easy in London. We did however manage to find a lovely home which we are hoping to share with our two friends. This is so we can save money and start saving towards a Mortgage. Fingers crossed we hear next week.

So in between juggling work with house hunting, walking the dog and cooking dinners I have hardly made time for myself and my running! Mostly due to being slightly more stressed than usual and incredibly tired in the mornings. I have struggled to find the motivation to get out of bed first thing and just go. Im going to be away this weekend, however I am planning on getting back into my routine on the Monday and I have a new cool gadget to try.



Last week my Fitbit Flex arrived. I was using the Fitbit app for a while on my iphone which I liked as it counts my steps, tracks my running and has some fun achievement medals when you reach certain goals. However having my phone strapped to my arm was not the most comfortable thing whilst jogging. So I decided to invest into one last purchase for this new running malarky.

Its a small sleek device that you wear on your wrist. Its really easy and comfortable to wear and I even sleep in it as it records how well you slept. It also has a silent alarm which gently vibrates to wake you up in the mornings another nice feature. You can set different goals, challenge friends and keep track of a range of different categories such as calories, weight, sleep patterns, walking / running / cycling. I recently earned the penguin march badge - 112 kilometers.

I have very recently gotten myself into jogging. Its something that I  have never wanted or even thought of doing if i'm completely honest. Im not a very sporty girl, I am the average joe who smacks the alarm at 6.45am in the morning to stay in bed that extra hour (or 2) longer. I am not a morning person - far from it. 

Im pretty lucky in that I am a self employed graphic designer and I work from home, so I do not have to rush to commute to my job in the mornings. My typical days since loosing my job (the company moved to another location) & moving to London usually start with my husband kissing me goodbye as he went off to work and I  crawl out of bed at a certain part of the day to see what work needed finishing. On good days I am sat at my work desk by 10am and tackling my design jobs, replying to emails and contacting clients about future projects.

However as I have found freelancing can also be lonely, team that with anxiety and depression and you get bad days. When I have no work on or even when I have very low mood days I can actually struggle to get myself up before 1pm. This does have a big impact on my work and can cause more self loathing and upset. Depression makes me not want to do anything and it results in me sleeping my days away - literally.

I was continually going in these vicious cycles.  
I have lived in London for 2 years now, for me the first year was the biggest challenge. It was a roller coaster of emotion pretty much for a solid year. I have always had anxiety so moving to London was a huge challenge and the anxiety rocketed and hit me hard. New places, new faces, trying to get use to a big city and tackle a job. It made me really Ill. 

With the help of CBT I am slowly on the mend. This second year has been less challenging and although it has not been as hard or daunting - Im getting very use to London now, however I do still struggle with bad & low days and Im getting tired of being on this rollercoaster. So as I was saying in this previous blog post - its time to break the bad habits. In order to overcome anxiety and depression, you have to do.

Thats where the jogging comes in. My husband is fairly active, he loves his job and he also cycles to work up to 4 times a week. A huge 50 minute bike ride from our tiny house in Hither green all the way to shoreditch. He is also the genius behind me jogging. He suggesting one day I come jogging with him in the mornings. At first I laughed it off, no way was I getting up at 7am to go jogging! But more recently when another wave of depression hit it came hard and I couldn't keep doing this to myself. Thats when I decided I needed to make changes for me and my husband.

It works and it makes your feel great. 

Its really hard work! Im only managing a mile at the moment which is around 10 minutes and i won't lie it hasn't been consistent each morning. Yesterday I just could not find the will to get out of bed - my biggest challenge. Today I managed to get myself to go, however I then got back into bed and fell asleep for another 3 hours. I lost the feel good feeling and just felt bad for the rest of the day. So learning from this my aim for the rest of this week is too get up and go and not allow myself to climb back into bed! Small steps everyday.

So welcome to my new blogging direction, feel free to stick around and watch as my journey to a better and healthier me unfolds. I fully intend to find my blogging niche, let’s break the bad habits.

Its been around 6 weeks since I got the raised bed set up and sown. The vegetables are well on there way, growing well - I think? The dog has since pinched most of my markers so I am not 100% sure what is growing where now. However she has stopped getting on it and flattening the poor plants.

I plan to start cutting a lot of the salads which are growing this week - you can see the large mixed salad leaved at the back have grown nice and large and have to been spoiled too much buy the intense afternoon sun like I feared. In the top right corner I have just planted my cucumber plant - its a bit slow growing however I am hoping it will start growing faster outdoors.

In the front left row is my second crop of carrots I really need to thin these followed on with lettuce, pak choi and I think beetroot?
The middle row gets a bit muddled I think there is onions, chard, spinach and spring onions growing.
The Back row from left is leeks, mixed salad, marigolds and cucumber. Although the leeks could be onions and the leeks could be middle row? Haha who knows - I guess I will eventually find out and make a note for next years crop rotation.

My garden is very narrow and small, it is roughly around 8mx2m. So I tend to use one side of the garden to grow the majority of my plants in this small space. I would happily use both sides, however we currently don't have the space for this as we need easy bike access in and out of the garden.

With this limited amount of ground space you may be surprised to hear I am attempting to grow winter squash. Winter squash (butternut) tends to be a ground dwelling plant and would happily cover a 4ft x 3ft raised bed on its own! This is where vertical gardening comes in! By training and supporting the squash within a cage you can get it to grow upwards rather than out. I have not attempted this before - its going to be my first try. However I have read and seen on you tube that with a little bit of help it can be done. So I have planted both my squash and courgette into a separate large container each ready to start making the support around them.

The recent weather has resulted in some very happy plants. My roses are growing incredibly well with little sign of pests or blackspot this summer. The lilies are getting rather tall and look like they are also going to be another wonderful summer display. I also purchased a Hydrangea this year which was a little bit slow to show signs of growth, however has finally started to shoot leaves.
Among these plants I have 2 mixed summer flower containers and some marigolds growing in the raised bed.

Despite Lily trampling the raised bed a few times when I first sowed the seeds, the bed is growing well. You can finally see each of the squares growing seedlings - each at different speeds. Since my previous blog I have thinned down the lettuce and bok choy which was growing far to closely together. The mixed salad leaves I have left to grow further, although they are crowded they are doing ok and its preventing some of the leaves burning in the afternoon sun.

One thing I have noticed which is due to the pup getting onto the raised bed is that some seeds were mixed across over squares. Mostly the odd carrot, salad or chard seedling. I have decided to leave the odd seedling in place as many of them will grow and be eaten before they become a problem for the leeks and onions - which is mainly where they were spread to.

I mixed up another batch of my 3 part compost and decided to use a spare container to grow another set of lettuce, spinach and chard. I have been keeping my eye on it and I can see seedlings slowly starting to emerge, pushing up through the compost. This was mainly an experiment to A) attempt at getting some correct spacing between plants and B) seeing how little space I can actually get away with.

The bell peppers, chilli peppers and tomatoes appear to be doing ok. The Tomatoes are the red robin variety so will not grow as large this year and may only need a slightly larger container to the one they are already in. The first flowers are starting to set on them so they will soon start being fed.

The bell peppers & chillies appear to be smaller this year, I am not too sure if it is because I have put them outside slightly sooner or because I used a compost which had no food added to it (cheaper wilko variety). I will be potting them on soon to their larger containers and will add some manure which will hopefully help.

Sowing seeds in rows! How do you do it? Especially with the likes of the tiniest seeds such as carrots and mixed salads! My seedlings are coming up in the raised bed and its looking like an order of chaos, not lovely structured rows.

I think I am starting to see my first errors in this years sowing.

My temporary built cage / protection netting has been really rubbish. The dog has been getting through it, along with cats! so some of the soil is really turned up, messy and in some placed dented.
Im going to take some time to redesign the cage making it super animal proof this week.
It is my first time having a raised planter and seeing the seedlings grow is brilliant. However they are really bunched together and all over the place. I definitely need to spend more time sowing the seeds in rows which is easier said than done! As you can see in the pictures I am going to seriously need to thin out a lot of the seedlings, however I am going to let them grow on a little bit more first!

If you have any tips on sowing your tiny seeds I would be very grateful to hear them!

Its  been a good few weeks since I sowed the first batch of seeds. They have been growing really well on the bathroom south facing window. I finally got around to potting them up to 5 litre pots - the final stage before they go into their final positions. I don't really know if it was the right time - or if maybe it was a bit late to pot on. However I generally go with when I can either start to see the roots at the bottom of the small pots or if they appear to slow down in growth. As you can see in the second picture I think it was a good time to pot up.

Its been a bit longer than I planned to get this post up. However I have been super busy at work so have not had the time to update this blog. In the last post I decided to grow some more plants than last year (even though I originally stated I was going to grow less). I guess the gardening bug kicked in and I wanted to challenge myself even further.

The Raised bed came whilst I was away and my lovely neighbours who were looking after the cats managed to take the parcels in for us. Along with many bags of composts!
I planned it out and placed it where I know is the best position and got building!

In my previous post I did state that I was only growing a few fruit & veg this year. This however has kind of gone out the window. I have been researching a lot about square foot gardening - which is ideal for small spaces and allowing you to grow a variety. After some careful thought and consideration I decided to go all in and test out a 4ft x 2ft raised bed.

The raised bed will allow me to divide the area into 8 sections (1ftx1ft). I have decided to grow the following:

• Spring onions 
• mixed leaf salad leaves
• Marigolds x2
• 1 cucumber plant
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Onions
• Lettuce

This weekend the weather was glorious, it was warm and sunny for most of the weekend here in London. Just what I needed to sort the front and back gardens out.

I have decided to get some clip together decking this year similar to the type Ikea do, which you can pick up and store in the winter. So after getting the hubby to help me, we started in the back garden first deciding where we want the decking to go!

We settled with the top part of the garden as you walk out of the back door, for two reasons - it would stop us (and the dog) kicking up stones into the house and it also made sense! Otherwise it would be walking across stones to get to decking?? Nah!

So we had to measure and push all the stones back to reveal what was underneath and it was mainly concrete and rock. After a bit of levelling out its pretty much good to go. Just need to order the tiles..
I will post some pictures up of this once it is finished as I think it will look pretty nice.

After that we rearranged and put into place all the plants and trees that I have built up over the past year during my container gardening, Some new plants since then:

I purchased a pack of 6 ornamental grasses - 2 of 1 type. These have been planted up into the trough with my lavender.

I have also purchased a magnolia tree - its currently only small arrived in a 9" pot so it has a lot of establishing to do.

I also purchased a hydrangea which again is currently a few twigs in a pot :)

I have purchased a camellia tree also, this will be the last purchase this year as it will use my last spare plant pot :) Hopefully it will arrive this week.

........................................................................

So I realised I haven't posted here in a while and now its a new year and spring is coming! I thought I would update how my first fruit and veg growing went this last year! There are a few things I would certainly do differently this year.

First thing, I am not going to grow runner beans. They grew and grew and grew and did incredibly well. We also got a lot of produce from them. We had the 4 bean poles climbing up a wigwam in a large deep tomato grow bag (the reusable kind). They were very thirsty so drank a lot of water but that was not the issue. We just didn't eat them, Im not a huge fan of runner beans. The main reason I grew them was a) they are easy first time vegetables to grow b) did I mention they were easy.

The tomato plants were really strong too, we had so many tomatoes from them and I still have around 40 in my fridge. I didn't seem to get many issues with these guys which I was surprised at because I expected them to be easy to catch blight etc.

The pepper plants were ok, however they did not grow to a very large size and none of them turned red, so were all green. They tasted nice but this year  I have bought a sweet red bell pepper to grow, it does say mini so they may still be small?

The chilli pepper plants did really well, I cook alot of spiced food so we were constantly cutting them off and using them in so many different dishes. These guys also turned red and had such a nice kick to them.

Carrots! after the first batch being a bit of a disaster - I replanted them which they didn't like! so ended up throwing it away. I decided to grow a second batch, after around 12 weeks of waiting I did get around 2 - 4 meals worth of really yummy baby carrots. They did not grow as big as I expected however I think this was due to them a) being two crowded and b) not on the full sun side of the garden. So this year less seeds planting and more sun! Im starting to sow these next month!

Managed to get some nice strawberries, but not that many? I may buy a few more this year in addition to last years plants (which have survived and are growing!)

Overall I was happy with my small crop of vegetables I did make the mistake of not feeding them enough tomorite so this time I will follow the labels directions and stick with it.

I have started them indoors again which is the same as last year, around end of Feb. I have cut down on the amount of the same vegetables and im trying a smaller tomato variety this year. I will get 2 different types of peppers growing and perhaps the one chilli plant. I have replaced growing beans for a squash and courgette which I will start next month indoors. A new addition to growing veg I am sowing some marigolds and petunias. In the hope of repelling the nasty pests.

If you have anything you think I should try to grow - let me know! I am a container gardener and have a small garden - but happy to try anything else you would recommend!