The studio is serious shoe heaven! Everything apart from the espadrilles are made in Spain (the espadrilles are made in Portugal) subsequent to which they are shipped to the UK. Claire was fabulous, talking me through her designs for A/W '17 as well as for S/S '18. She showed me her sketches and fabric swatches, as well as the details such as tassels and pom poms and I had a good feel of the three layer memory foam insert that goes into each shoe. We talked about stockists and finances and all things relating to small businesses and it's amazing how hard Claire has worked to get where she is.

There are some fabulous designs coming our way ladies and without wishing my life away, I can't wait for the S/S '18 collection to arrive. Let's just say neon, metallics and even heels may feature.


You see the boxes in the white packaging on the right hand side of the photograph? Well these were all waiting to be sent out to lovely customers.


And ta-da! A new shoe! This is a new design of Claire's and it's called "Flutter". The Flutter comes in navy, white, grey and pink and is sleeker and has less padding around the ankle, compared to the Copeland  - which means that people now have a greater choice. It's not yet available but it shouldn't be too long now.


Claire's background is in shoes and she has worked for many well known High Street brands such as Office, Fit Flop and Aldo. Essentially Claire designs shoes that she loves and it just so happens that her customers love them too. Her attention to detail is amazing. She tweaks the eyelets, laces, colour of the soles, colour of the leather - everything in fact - until she gets it just how she likes it. And because she only ever wears her own shoes, she knows exactly what else is needed in the range to make it complete.

In particular I loved the shearling high tops for the winter but as yet the design isn't quite to Claire's discerning eye, so we will all have to wait for the big reveal. What I can say, however, is that they come in tan and khaki and I think that once anyone puts a pair on, they won't want to take them off again.




Claire was due to make a day trip to Portugal the day after I saw her, to check on a trailer of shoes that had temporarily gone AWOL thanks to some friendly local bandits. Luckily it had turned up again but in true Claire style, she had to check that everything was just so. And it's that kind of commitment that has made Air & Grace so successful in such a short space of time. Claire, I take my hat (and my shoes) off to you!

I'm never very good at planning what I'm going to wear to an upcoming event. If it's a "big" do I work on the basis either that I have something that I can wear already, or that something will find me. However it works out, I don't stress too much and nor do I spend too much on something that I may not get a lot of wear out, preferring instead to keep the pennies for something that I will use and wear every day, such as a pair of trainers or my Air & Grace espadrilles 

We all know that slogan T's are a huge trend at the moment and recently I met Kayla who runs Love for the Mama. Whilst on maternity leave with her second child, Kayla started jotting down phrases that came to mind which "related to the madness of her day as a mother." A germ of an idea for a business was sewn but she painstakingly researched suppliers before launching her business.


Kayla makes a range of t-shirts for children, Mums and Dads too, with a percentage of her profits going to charities such as Women's Aid, Water Aid and Save the Children.  I love this no time to contour tee (£24) - which perfectly sums up a busy morning with young children.




This Thankful T is £25 and comes with black sparkly lettering. And for a baby or child, there's the Milk Drunk baby T (£12). I remember those days so well. That warm, snuggly, post feed stupor that babies go into.


I love supporting small businesses and Kayla is an absolute gem. She's bubbly, lively, full of energy and I'm delighted that she's holding a Body and Style Confidence event at the Plough in Harborne on  6th July at which Natalie from Style Me Sunday, Pascale from Style Mum and Victoria from Victoriagenevievestyling will be answering questions. Oh how lovely to have an event in Birmingham! And later in the year Kayla and I will be holding an event together - so I will keep you posted of developments!

A couple of weeks ago now, I wrote a post entitled Fitbit Stats and Analysis Part 1 which you can read here.

The aim of that post was to demonstrate that the amount of calories burned (energy used) was not always proportionate to the number of steps taken. In essence it's possible to take a similar number of steps on two days - the example that I used in that post was around 22,000 steps - but to use different amounts of energy - 2,241calories vs 1,597 calories. And what I wondered was how could that be?

My conclusion was that what was critical in burning calories had to be the period over which the steps were taken, what activity was being engaged in whilst the steps were taken and also an individual's heart rate during that activity.

I've written about Kathy previously on here. She lost a lot of weight using her Fitbit and she observed as follows:

"...I don't think that steps, if looked at in isolation, are a good indication of fitness or activity, as it all depends on how you do them. A 10k run followed by not much else for the rest of the day, will give you the steps and a bit of calorie burn but it will soon level off. I have found it's much better to be moderately active throughout the day ie bit of housework, bit of gardening, a dog walk etc..."

And I think that Kathy's analysis is absolutely right. It's the long slow burn throughout the day that uses the most energy, which, if you think about it, is probably why 1950s/60s/70s housewives were so slim. Whilst they weren't engaged in hard core cardio activity, they didn't sit down for the whole day and given that portion sizes were smaller then, convenience food was less readily available and that they (probably) didn't eat out so often, they would in all likelihood have burned all of the calories that they consumed in a day.

Sunday 11th June is a good example of my step count being quite low but my energy consumption being quite high. You can see from the information below that I took 9,878 steps which is way below what I would normally do in a day.



And this totally supports what Kathy says. It's the dog walk, the housework, walking around tidying up, doing the supermarket shop that burns the calories. So what can we take from this?

Well on days that we're sitting behind a desk, it is hard to get those steps in but at if an opportunity comes your way to walk up some stairs, nip out for a walk for lunch, get off a stop earlier at the tube, park further from the building - it all adds up. And whilst it sounds patronising and annoying and it's what we've been told to do for years - it's right.

And on your days off, there's no need to go flogging yourself to death. I absolutely understand all of the health benefits of cardio exercise but I suppose it's a case of not beating yourself up if you can't get to the gym and get on the treadmill, or make the exercise class, or get out because it's raining - just bake cakes, clean the house, walk around when chatting on the phone, forget what you've gone upstairs for so that you have to go up again and don't sit down until the evening!

I hope that this helps. I would love to hear your views on it!

The doors along the front of the island were colour matched to the colour that we used on the wall which is Yenston Sky from the Hemsley range at Homebase. There are four colours in the "Yenston" range, in varying shades. We've used three of them now, with the darkest one being in the new room.





And afterwards - you can see that the kitchen has much cleaner lines now. And oddly a real benefit has been that we have much more room behind the kitchen island now. Before it felt a bit squashed but removing two sets of handles has had a real impact.


This is the view when I'm standing at the cooker and looking up. Quite often squirrels play in this tree - a Christmas tree which was planted over 70 years ago now by a Mum who had just had her first child. Her daughter still comes back from time to time to take a look at it.




I realise that things are meant to be in threes and in some ways the previous lights worked better but (wait for this) I couldn't see the TV on the opposite wall when there were three lights, so I had one taken away and replaced them with these crazy lights from Graham & Green.


Then the wooden door (which was slightly orange in colour) was painted in a grey colour (sorry I can't remember its name now but it was a Homebase one) and the office style door handle was replaced with this one from John Lewis (£40 for a pack of 2).


The splash back tiles are the Attingham tiles from Topps Tiles which we also used in the utility room. The link is to the powder blue colour but these are the mist colour. I love a good geometric pattern!


And (almost) lastly, we had the wall opposite the kitchen island - where the TV is situated - papered in this star print from Cole & Son, available at Amara (£72) per roll. The ladder style radiator was from B&Q.

Next to be sorted is a shelf on which I'm going to display some lovely bits and bobs that I've bought from Oliver Bonas. It will just break things up a little and add some subtle colour.

In my heart do I know that we've compromised slightly and that there are one or two things that aren't quite 100%? Yes I do but they could easily be fixed and we've probably saved about £15-20k by doing so, so I can live with that.

I think that you've seen my pineapple t-shirt on here before - it's from Gift pop boutique and costs £22 and you've seen the espadrilles for sure! They're from Air & Grace (£99).

I'm off to Leeds tomorrow for a good old shop, cake, a lovely lunch and a good catch up with my friend from Newcastle. It's our annual meet and I can't wait! Have a super Saturday everyone!

The great thing about the Biba Body range is that there are lots of different pieces within the one print, with lots of plain pieces to complement them. So for anyone who doesn't fancy the jersey shorts, there's the Biba  jungle jaguar capri (now £15, instead of £30).





Or for the winter time, or for those who prefer the coverage that a full length running tight gives, there's the Biba  jungle jaguar legging (now £17 instead of £35).

And for those who prefer a shorter short, there's the Biba jungle jaguar running shorts which are now £10.


Now, in addition to the jaguar print, there are also some other gorgeous prints and styles. I've also slightly fallen for the Lazalea Leopard Ombre Tee (£12 down from £28). And I've identified what it is about this range that's so appealing. It's that the active wear comes in prints that I would actually choose to wear in my everyday clothing, so I actually like it for its design and aesthetics, not just because it comes in a capri, or because the capris have a high rise, or because it has a flash of orange on it.




And this print also comes in capris (£15) and leggings (£17) - I've linked to the full range here and in particular I love this lazalea leopard bra top



Or there's the zebra mono print shown in the capris below (the link I've included is to the entire range) which also includes leggings, running shorts a bra top and a bomber jacket.

Or finally, there's the black stallion print which contains lots of pieces but by way of an example, here's the vest;

I've linked to the entire Biba Active Range here as there are a number of plainer pieces that can be layered in amongst the printed pieces to break up the look.


For now I'm heading off into the distance in my full on jaguar jungle vest and shorts with huge thanks to House of Fraser for gifting* these lovely pieces to me. I shall be adding to my collection for sure!

*Just by way of clarification, whilst the active wear was gifted to me, all words and views are my own.

Oh and huge thanks to my friend Ellen, for taking the photos. She was patient beyond belief - active shots in active wear are very tricky to get!

Along with this great, dress, I'm wearing these gold tribal drop ear-rings from Alice's Wonders which are £5.00 and totally gorgeous. If you haven't nipped over yet to see what Cathy stocks on Alice's Wonders, then I recommend that you do. She has some absolute gems!

I took this screen shot at 10.35am yesterday, by which time I'd run just over 20km and taken 22,433 steps. The energy used was 1,597 calories. Seeing those figures in isolation and without a reference point would make anyone think that it's just not achievable on a regular basis and they would be right. But the point is, it doesn't need to be.

Let's do a comparison....







I'm afraid that I'm going to have to leave it here or else I'll have a miserable weekend because the house will be a tip - but I hope to continue with my musings tomorrow and in the meantime I would love to hear your thoughts. Perhaps I should wait until the post is finished before making it live but just imagine if I get run over by a bus on the school run and the most impressive body of uncompleted work in the history of the universe lays undiscovered on my laptop?

Of course I should add lots of caveats in here and say that first of all, I'm not obsessed by these stats. If I were, I would have realised all of this in about the first month of using my fitbit, not 18 months later. Oh and just to re-iterate I never weigh myself so I'm unware as to whether I'm putting on 2.1kg every week as my fit bit suggests (see screen shot above) - but I don't think that I am. 

As we all know, good nutrition is important in this being "healthy" game and this post (not that I've reached any conclusions yet) isn't designed to devise a way of eating as many cream cakes as you can whilst still staying slim - unless any of us has a red carpet event coming up and then of course all bets are off.

Also, there are of course many benefits to all types of exercise - it's not just about energy consumption. I for one know that - I suspect that if I didn't get out and run with my friends, we would have a rather large bill for the Priory. Plus it's good for bone density, your respiratory system, muscle mass and so on - so I'm really not searching for a way for us to sit on our bums and still be healthy.

Finally, no animals or young children were harmed in the writing of this post but I may have bent my daughter's boyfriend's ear with my theories and for that Michael, I am truly sorry.