Meatless Monday {2020

So here we are: week 48 of Meatless Monday 2020… Started the week with a rough night of insomnia but got up and showed up anyway 🙂 – finished the week with our perfect 2 turning big 4!

Here’s what we wore:

Me: Boots = Clarks, Tights = Supermarket, Skirt = French Connection (thrifted), Long Sleeve Top = New Look, Vest = Primark, Jumper = Hollister (thrifted), Leather Jacket = Hide Park, Blanket Scarf = Inherited

Boys: Trousers and Shirts, Long Sleeve Tops, Jumpers: Various sources/gifted/thrifted or supermarkets

What’s in my ears:

This week, I got my new audible credit, and I decided to use it to try Matthew McConaughey’s Green Lights. I heard about this book initially on Rachel Hollis’ podcast where she was interviewing him just after the book came out. I thought it might well be a fascinating listen, and so far, it certainly is.

Matthew McConaughey has always intrigued me as he features in both modern ROM coms like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, to far more edgy films like Dallas Buyers Club & Wolf of Wallstreet; he’s one of those people who I’m interested enough in to know what his philosophies are on life and where they come from.

With quite a crazy background, with a family who teaches you how to fight and bear hug in equal measure, this book is written from Matthew’s 50-year-old perspective, looking back over his 30-40 years of journals which he has written throughout his life to keep track of his story unfolding.

I love this concept of how he finds this theme of green lights, when something goes right, what a great way to look back on life. Here’s what the Amazon synopsis says:

From the Academy Award®-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learnt the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges – how to get relative with the inevitable – you can enjoy a state of success I call ‘catching greenlights.’
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It’s a love letter. To life.
Amazon

Here’s my week in 4:

Featured on my first Podcast: This has been a real milestone for me this week, I love venturing into new creative spaces with JamJarGill.com. I have been personally listening to podcasts for a while now, and I love how most of them are formatted around interviews, I reached out to Marla from a Little bit of Lagom after meeting her through the wonderful Eco Community on Instagram to see if she was looking for guests, she said yes, and we set up an interview. It was so wonderful to meet her via Zoom and talk about all the things about eco and wellbeing, which light us both up. We recorded the Zoom call, of course, and then each edited a copy of it, me into a vlog to feature on my new(ish) YouTube Channel (any subscribes gratefully received) and Marla to make into the following Blog Post episode:
First Trip to Santa: We went pre-booked with a newly set up Santa at the Rufus Centre in Flitwick, £5 a child with a lovely couple of gifts (Christmas cracker, some sweets and a book) along with plenty of photo opportunities, it was really nicely put together and just a short walk from Grandparents, so definitely think we’ll be back in future years. I’m glad we held off going to Santa until now as the boys really do get Christmas for the first time this year and they are just so cute with it I just wanted to soak them up.
4K on Instagram: Milestone hit this week on Instagram, and as ever, I am so grateful for the support in growing my brand and connecting with more and more like-minded entrepreneurs/ parents/environmentalists too. It just all brings me so much joy. <3 So thank you, thank you all who have helped me grow this far, and I can’t wait to carry on meeting even more like-minded people as I continue this journey.
Big 4! I can’t quite believe it; my babies are 4! They are by far the best thing we have ever done; they are most certainly MY WHY. These years have felt like a lifetime, but it is the best roller-coaster I have been on yet, and it is all 110% worth it. We celebrated low-key with Grandparents meet-up walks on both days this weekend, and in some ways, it was nice to have such a low-key and direct family-focused birthday – but I am hoping we can enjoy a party in a hall with their friends again next year, as chaotic as it is it’s always so filled with joy and love.

Video(s) of the week:

As we go into the last month of 2020, I started with this powerful video from Ms Rachel Hollis entitled “Stop Caring About What Other People Think About YOU!” there is so much powerful and relatable content here, I hope you take the time to watch it 🙂 It resonated so much with me this week…

What we ate this week…

Breakfast:

I did my yoga first and then took the breakfast tray up to the nursery and we had hot cross buns with plum and clementine, I had my favourite tea and the boys had their milk.

Lunch:

Mid-morning, I had a piece of honey on my fresh loaf of bread with butter, then had a pack of cheese and onion squares before having leftover squash and goat’s cheese pasta for lunch. For afters, I had an apple and a caramel bar.

Dinner:

When the boys got back from school, we all had a mini mince pie and an apple each. Then the boys had their usual beans and toast and fruit, and I had a special treat of baked camembert for 1, which I stuffed with fresh garlic rosemary and black pepper before baking and then served with homemade fresh bread and mango chutney – it was just what the doctor ordered – oh so naughty but oh so yummy 🙂