February round up

I'm not quite sure where February went, but I know it wasn't spent writing blog posts. Oops! 

Work has been a bit of a challenge as we had a couple of resignations and so have been furiously recruiting. It's all been a bit frantic, but I think we're almost there. 

My parents did their first house viewing as part of their plans to move closer to my brother and me, it was the first house viewing I've done as part of a team of five! It wasn't quite right for them, but you've got to start somewhere. 

Luckily, Andrew's on the mend. Bizarrely he's been discharged from hospital despite not being fully recovered, but everything is going in the right direction. He's planning to write a post about his operation once he's reached the end of treatment, so not one for those who are squeamish about eyes! 

We also caught up with a couple of friends over the month which has really nice, and is definitely a sign that he's well on the road to recovery. 

Unfortunately in one of the storms we lost a section of roof from one of our outbuildings. Andrew's done sterling work battling wtih the insurance company, now we just need to find someone to do the work. Luckily it seems to be watertight, but the longer it takes, the less sure I am that it will stay like that! It was apparently very impressive when the damage assessor turned up with what was effectively a camera on a very long selfie stick, operated by his mobile phone in his hand. Who needs aerial photos if you can have a selfie stick that extends further than your roof!

Thanks Storm Imogen

As for how I'm doing against my plans for the year:

Read sixteen books
No progress on this, in fact I'd even forgotten it was something I'd planned to do, so I'm still on 1/16. We're off on holiday at the end of April, so I'll hopefully make some progress then.

Find one hundred geocaches
Well, we've made a start! We're now on 1/100 :) The one we did was actually quite fun, there were a number of sections of photographs which had been taken out our local Outlet Centre which you had a locate and then use the solutions to get to the final cache location. We had a false start initially as we'd make a mistake with the calculations. Honestly, you couldn't tell that we're both accountants!

Maintain Vitality gold status
At least this is one that I don't have to do anything about until the policy renews in May!

Try three gym classes
No progress on this as I'm still struggling with my sprained ankle. I've finally got my GP to refer me to Vitality, so hopefully I can get passed to a physiotherapist who can fix me so I can get back to regular exercise.

Meet up with an old friend
One of Andrew's school friends came to see us in February. It was really nice as he spends a lot of time out of the country so opportunities to see him are few and far between. He was passing on his way home from a meeting, so it worked perfectly. We also had a nice lunch in Bristol with a friend I used to work with. It was so nice to go to Bristol for something fun, rather than just medical appointments. 

Blog once a month
I didn't do so well with blog posts in February as in January, but maybe it's settling down to a more sustainable level?!

Watch a new film once a month
We went to see the new Dad's Army film on the day it was released, probably the first time I've ever seen a new film so quickly! Andrew was keen to see it and as it had Bill Nighy in it, I thought I'd give it a go. I'd probably best describe it as harmless. It passed a couple of hours and I even managed to have a nap in the middle without losing track of the plot!

My film viewing for the year to date

Take two holidays
We've booked a trip for the end of April, which I'm really looking forward to. As we're currently looking at getting a puppy, I'm not sure what will happen with our second holiday, it may just turn into puppy maternity leave!

Take six day trips
We've not ventured far from home, but had a bracing walk around Stanton Country Park one weekend. The skies were beautiful, but it was a properly chilly day. I just keep hoping that we'll have one weekend without rain or icy winds!

The blue skies disguise how cold it really was!

It's starting to feel like spring is just around the corner, and I'm feeling a little bit like a caged animal so it can't come soon enough. I really want to get out and about, but hate trudging through mud whilst walking into an icy wind. Hopefully March will bring some weather which will encourage me to get out of the house more!

Baby Foot, the perfect treatment for soft feet

Firstly, if you really don't like feet, stop reading now. No, honestly. If however, you want a treatment to make your trotters softer and something you'd happily let out where other people may see them, then read on.  I read about Baby Foot on Twitter when someone described how amazing but disgusting it was. After some research I decided I had to give it a try and ordered it from Amazon.

Here it is!

The before shot, a bit dry and cracked, in desperate need of some TLC

The box contains some very attractive footwear, containing pads in the booties soaked with the active ingredients. You but the booties on, tape them to your legs and then wait for an hour. The advice is to put socks on over the top, you can walk around with them on, but I'd not advise it, it's all a bit skiddy underfoot. After an hour you take the booties off and wash the product off.

Attractive, huh?!

Initially I thought it might not have worked, my feet felt a bit odd, but that was all. The treatment can take two or three weeks to work, but my feet started peeling after four days, initially on the tops of my feet. After another day things were looking much worse. For the good of my carpets I wore socks 24 hours a day to avoid shedding skin everywhere. I left the skin to peel by itself, I thought if I picked at it to encourage it, it would make it sore. The worst bit was feeling the rolls of skin in my socks as I walked. Luckily, the peeling finished after about a week, helped by a bit of exfoliation.

Not my best look

The end result wasn't perfect, one of my feet still had dry spots, but some exfoliation and moisturiser seems to have solved that. All in all, it was well worth doing, I'll probably do it again when my feet are feeling beyond help again. My only tip would be not to do it in the summer, honestly it needs to be done when your feet are well under wraps for a week or two!

After treatment

If you've tried this yourself, I'd love to hear how you got on.

The real meaning of love

Love's not about giving or receiving the biggest bunch of flowers on Valentine's Day, posting about how much you love your partner on Facebook or being the one to receive gifts at work much to your colleagues' envy. It's not about going out for the flashiest meal or having the biggest white wedding. It's about being there for each other through thick and thin. When things are crappy and the only thing that makes things right is a cuddle, you just know you can get through anything together.  Six weeks on from New Year when I was spending ten hours a day at the hospital, things are on the mend and we're as strong as ever.  

Happy Valentine's Day, Andrew. xx

The perfect comfort food, chicken lasagne

On a hideous rainy day like yesterday, when the rain is horizontal and wind howling outside, there's nothing better than a plate of warm, comforting food. One of my favorites is homemade chicken lasagne, such a favorite that I thought I'd share it. It takes about half an hour to prepare and a further half hour in the oven, but I promise it's worth it.  

The first bit is the boring bit, all the chopping. I chopped up two small onions, two large chicken breasts and about 400g of mushrooms. We normally add a few garlic cloves but had run out, unfortunately. They then need frying up until the chicken had browned and the onion softened. We normally do the mushrooms separately initially as they give off so much liquid and add them over they've shrunk down.  

Next, add a can of chopped tomatoes, a couple of tablespoons of tomato puree and about 150ml of chicken stock. Let it bubble away gently for about five minutes.  

Whilst the pan is bubbling away you need to make the cheese sauce. I leave this bit to Andrew as I am destined to only make lumpy sauces. He melts some butter in a pan and mixes in some flour, warming them until they combine. He then adds a couple of pints of milk gradually, cooking all the time. Once it thickens, add about 100g of Cheddar and stir through.  

You can then start to assemble the lasagne. Pour a little of the sauce into the bottom of the dish to stop the lasagne sheets from sticking. 

Place lasagne sheets on top to cover the surface area. 

Pour half of the meaty sauce onto the lasagne sheets and spread it evenly. 

Repeat the process, add another layer of lasagne sheets and the other half of the meaty sauce. 

Finally, add another layer of lasagne sheets and the rest of the cheese sauce. Top with around 100g of Cheddar. 

Pop it in the oven for about half an hour at 200C until the cheese is golden. 

Ta daa! This feeds two of us for two nights, it's so nice not having to do anything other than pop it in the oven on the second night to warm through. The way we make it, it's about 800 calories a portion, so a great meal after a long frosty walk.

If you give it a try, let me know what you think of it. 

January round up

January had been a really odd month and I won't be sad to see the back of it. It started out badly, my husband was admitted to hospital for an emergency operation on New Year's Eve and was kept in for four nights. He's still recovering, but hopefully the operation was successful. He was on hourly drops after the operation and needed to spend most of the day horizontal, so I needed to be around to hand out medicine and feed and water him.

Only certain people can pull off the compression socks look

As a result of that and return trips to the hospital I didn't get back to work until the second week in January. My boss was great and let me work from home whilst I needed to. Honestly, I couldn't have found anyone better to work for. I've got my head down since then and have managed to do everything I needed to this month and even a little bit of unexpected recruitment. At least it means I can stop worrying about letting work down, everything's back on track.

Things have been quiet outside work as Andrew's not been able to do too much. I've watched a lot of 'Once Upon a Time' and loved 'Making a Murderer'. We also had our first cinema trip of the year to see 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens'. I'd managed to avoid the Star Wars films previously and so watched the first three releases over the weekend so that the latest film would make sense. I quite enjoyed the new film, it felt like a remake in certain respects but there was enough going on to maintain my interest and not too much of C3PO's mithering! 

As we've not needed two cars for the last few months I sold mine last weekend. I thought it would be really difficult to get rid of and was steeling myself for a trip to 'We Buy Any Car' my but a quick call to the local garage and it was gone within a couple of hours. I'm off to my parents tomorrow to pick up its replacement, a family hand me down. I'm trying to be sensible at the moment and pay off the mortgage as soon as we can, so I'm trying to ignore the pull of a flashy car!   

Apart from that, I'm not doing badly against the plans I set at the start of the month for the year:

Read sixteen books
When Andrew was in hospital I was getting there at about 8am for the doctor's rounds, and leaving at around 6pm or 7pm. As he was sleeping a lot, I got a lot of reading done in the seat next to his bed. As a result, I've finished my first book of the year, 'The Book Thief' by Markus Zusak. It's not at all the type of book I'd normally read, if anyone mentioned historical fiction I'd probably roll my eyes, but I really enjoyed it. It's narrated by Death, which was what initially hooked me and tells the story of Liesel, a girl living in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. I've not seen the film, so can't compare it, but it gave me something of an insight into life in Nazi Germany and rattled along at a decent enough speed that I didn't get bored. I gave it four stars on Goodreads.

Find one hundred geocaches
At the start of the year we were at 488 finds and we still are. Hopefully we'll be able to make a start once Andrew's back on his feet in February.

Maintain Vitality gold status
Unless a miracle happens and I manage to hit platinum, this won't change until the scheme renewal date in May, so nothing to do on this yet.

Try three gym classes
Nope, no progress on this one. I went to the gym and had a treadmill session last weekend but sprained my ankle. I sprained it badly about nine years ago, so it's prone to injury. I've been trying to rest it this week and wearing an ankle support at night so I'm hoping to get back to the gym this week.

Meet up with an old friend
No progress on this one either. I wanted to wait until I have something other than bad news to offer as part of a catch up! I'm keeping my head down until Andrew's discharged by his consultants.

Blog once a month
I've done storming work on this one, seven blog posts this month! I don't know whether it's because I've spent more time at home, had more time on my hands with Andrew being ill, or whether I've just been inspired, but it's working!

Watch a new film once a month
Another success! I've watched six films this month that I've not seen before, one of them was even a new release. It started with 'Out of Sight' an old George Clooney film, which started well and then went downhill. Then we watched 'Mockingjay Part 1', which I enjoyed, I'm just glad we'd seen the previous film relatively recently as there was no, "previously on Hunger Games" at the start of the film. Hopefully we can see the final part in the next few months whilst this one is still fresh in our minds. I'd never wanted to watch the Star Wars films, although I love Sci-Fi, the idea of lightsabers bored me to tears, I nod off during fight scenes in films. I gave them a go though and actually really enjoyed them (well, the second one not so much, but it was only two hours of my life!)

January's films

Take two holidays
We really need a break, but I don't want to go too far from home at the moment, just in case. We're currently looking at somewhere for a break in April, perhaps around the south coast. Hopefully I'll have more to report next month.

Take six day trips
Again, no progress on this one, but hopefully February will bring drier weather and we'll be able to get out to explore some of the local sights.


Not the best start to the year, but it's not been all bad. Let's see what else 2016 has to offer!

Getting rid of argyria (silver staining to skin)

To answer your first question, argyria is a condition caused by exposure to chemical compounds of silver. At the most extreme, skin turns blue or bluish-grey.

This is probably the most random post I'll ever write but when I was looking into this issue myself there was very little information available, so it may just help someone. 

When I first had my ears pierced I had problems with them a few months after they were pierced. The scar tissue on the back of one of my ears went wild and I ended up with a keloid (a lump of scar tissue). The only option was to let my piercings heal over and wait for the keloid to disappear, which it did. 

A couple of years later I had my ears pierced again and everything went much more smoothly. It was only later that I realised I had a dark patch on my earlobes where the original piercing had been. It was such a tiny thing, but it made me reluctant to go without earrings as it made it look as if I had a dirty mark on my skin. 

A couple of years ago I decided to see if anything could be done about it. My thinking was that when my ears were pierced they'd used silver studs and the silver had been absorbed into my skin. I found out that this was a thing, a condition called argyria. I couldn't really find a cure (other than getting a section of my earlobes cut out, which strangely I didn't fancy!) but found some websites that suggested that laser treatment might work. I found a laser treatment centre at our local hospital and made an appointment for a consultation. 

The doctor was used to treating birth marks and tattoos and quite liked the idea of trying something new. She wasn't sure if it'd work but we both decided to give it a go. I had three treatments with a YAG laser, of increasing intensity. I could hear the laser clicking as it fired and if felt a little like being poked with a hot implement. I jumped when the laser was first fired but it was bearable. I had some bruising after the first two treatments, but the third treatment was the strongest and actually made my skin bleed. I had scabs on both ears afterwards and was very glad I had long hair to cover my ears as they looked fairly horrific.  

The good news is that the treatment did work for me. The staining is definitely less noticeable and I now don't think twice about wearing tiny studs or going earring-less.

As I'm sure you want to see before and after photographs, here they are:

Aren't ears odd looking things? Anyway, I hope you can see the difference and if you've got similar issues that this post is helpful in finding a solution.

Interview technique

Like most people interviews used to give me the heebie-jeebies, I used to literally shake. I'm lucky that that changed about ten years ago. In that time I've spent a lot of time on the other side of the interview table, initially working in an accountancy practice but latterly in a commercial role. I've interviewed school leavers, graduates, part-qualified and qualified accountants and operations team members. I've asked so many questions that I'm now pretty confident in preparing for interviews and so I thought I'd try to pass on some of my knowledge in case it's of help to anyone.  

My first tip would be to start your preparation nice and early. If you've applied for a role through a recruitment agency, get as much information as you can from them about the role, the company and the format of the interview. Unfortunately if you've applied direct, you're limited to the information you're given. Once you've got as much detail as you can, you can start mulling it over and digging into it in more detail. Not only is it useful in the interview to demonstrate how much you know about them, you may just find something out which makes you much keener to work from them (or not!):

• Research the company, find out what they do, where they're based, who the leadership team are, what their main products or services are, have they won any awards, featured in the local press recently etc. 
• If you know who will be interviewing you, research them as well. Google them or look them up on LinkedIn, it may just give you an indication of what type of person they are and what they'll be looking for.
• Make sure you know what the job will involve. Run through the various skills required. For any which you're confident of, come up with an example of when you've demonstrated that skill before. If there are any you're inexperienced in, consider whether it's similar to something else you've done, or worst case scenario have an example up your sleeve of a time when you picked up new skills quickly. 

Once you've done all of this, it's time to consider the likely interview questions. Start with preparing for the common interview warm up question,"tell me about yourself ". I tend to just run through my CV, starting with my education, qualifications and then onto my previous jobs. I aim to describe what I did in each role and why I left, so I can present each in a positive light. Also think about what your strengths and weaknesses are (coming up with weaknesses that aren't really weaknesses is the Holy Grail), as you can often be asked about those. Finally, you need to prepare for competency based questions. If you Google the term you can find plenty of examples to prepare answers for. You're often asked to, "describe a time when you..." or, "give an example of a time when you..." There are lots of possibles but if you work through a number hopefully you'll come up with several good scenarios which you can apply to a number of questions. I love a long soak in the bath and I'm sure my husband would think me mad if he'd ever been standing outside the bathroom hearing me praticing my responses. On the upside, I've rarely been stuck for an answer!

When it comes to the interview itself, being on time is vital. Check how long it'll take you to get there and leave plenty of time, check in advance where you'll park, or where public transport arrives, don't leave anything to chance. Unless you've specifically been told not to, wear a suit, first impressions count and I've been in interviews where untidy dress has really created a bad impression. If you arrive early, take the opportunity to nip to the loo, you don't know how long you'll be in there. Make sure your hands aren't clammy and when you go into the interview room, greet your interviewer(s) with a big smile and a firm handshake. If offered, ask for a glass of water, you can take a sip if you need thinking time, and it'll stop you from getting a dry mouth from all the talking. When responding don't gabble, take a deep breath and think before answering questions. Although it's a nerve-wracking situation try your best to be confident in yourself, remember, you want to find out about them to see if they're right for you, as well as vice versa. At the end, you'll probably be asked if you have any questions. You can prepare a couple of these in advance, some may have come out of your research, it's good to have two or three as it shows you're interested in the role and company.  If they ask you whether you're interested on the spot, say yes, even if you're not sure. It at least leaves your options open for later. Collect your thoughts afterwards so you can pass on your feedback. Hopefully they'll like you and you'll like the role too.  

I hope this has been useful and good luck with your future interviews. If you have any questions or I've overlooked anything, please let me know.