My Fitness Story... - The story so far, and a plea for more posts

I'm writing this late in the evening when for the first time, I've had to admit defeat. This week, I have no lovely guest post to share with you. I'm quite sad about that because until now, I've always managed to convince someone to tell their story.

If truth be known, I didn't know if it would last more than a few weeks so to get this far is fairly impressive. I've had 23 posts so far and they've ranged from light-hearted to deadly serious, those making small changes to those transforming their lives and coming back from the brink. We've had life-saving surgery and
gastric band surgery - which, let it be said, is by no means the easy option for losing weight.
I admire the bravery of those who have chosen to tell a story of which others might not approve. The determination of those overcoming serious illness to become fit and healthy people again, and those who have had large amounts of weight to lose and achieved it.

Coconut & Lime Cake

As you know, I was away last weekend. It's been booked for months, and so felt a bit bad when I realised the school summer fair was on the same day. Never mind, I thought - I'll make some cakes for the cake stall.

Then, I get a note saying that school was having a competition to see which class could make the most cakes. Which meant I needed to make the same number of cakes for each child. Oh, and I promised someone else I'd make a cake for an NCT fundraiser too. My first idea was to make my usual chocolate cake in loaf tins so I could make two cakes in one go. And then I made a coconut sponge cake, my absolute favourite. Having made golden banana cake from Nick's book for the NCT, I still needed to make one more cake so each child had two cakes. Why do I do this to myself?

I realised I still had coconut milk left over. I didn't want to make the same basic cake so I decided to adapt it and add another flavour. I remembered I had some limes lurking in the fridge- and came up with the idea for this. It's based on the original recipe. I kind of made it up as I went along - I decided to add the lime syrup after I'd baked the cake then add the usual buttercream with a bit of lime juice. This is a really easy recipe but the syrup adds another step.

Fancy a Meal Planning app? Then vote for us!

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a Mums On Three event in Manchester. Three are working to try and help mums save time. Apparently, they discovered from a survey that mums think that they could save themselves around 135 hours a year by using their smartphones more. At the event, we designed an app to help mums save time. We're up against 4 other teams from around the country. The winning app will be designed and available for download (for free). The lovely Sandy led our team and made a video detailing our idea.

What we came up with was a meal planning application. It was a popular choice and several people had the same idea as me. What we envisage the app doing is allow you to make a weekly meal plan from popular choices of meals - it will be preloaded initially with some popular family recipes - and plan your week's meals. You'll be able to scale up or down according to the size of family that you have and allow you to set preferences for dislikes or allergies etc. And then, when you've planned your meals, it will create a shopping list. We see this as a great timesaver so that you can get your meals planned in one go and hopefully all your groceries bought in one trip to the supermarket.

If you would like to vote for us, please go to the Three UK page on Facebook and like it then go to the Mums On the Go Mums tab and like our video, which is, of course, Weekly Meal Plan.

If we win, we'll be credited in the app and will win a slap up meal but that's all that's in it for us. As you know, I really rate meal planning as a way to keep your food bills down as well as saving time, and helping you to eat a more varied diet as a family. Obviously, I think this is the best idea.

So please, vote for us!

Meal Planning Monday

Time to get back on the meal planning wagon! Everything went well last week - I've now made that Italian Meatloaf twice and still not actually eaten it as it's good for making ahead and leaving for the rest of the family to eat later. One day.

25 things I learned over the Cybermummy11 weekend

1. The Travelodge on City Road was even noisier than I thought it would be.

2. If you sleep in a noisy room, you sleep much better on the second night.

3. The Travelodge is also around the corner from a building I used to visit for meetings regularly nearly 20 years ago. I only realised this on Friday.

4. A maxi dress was a damned good choice of outfit. Nothing to ride up, nothing to slide down and comfortable for everything. And I found a dress that didn't make me look like a pair of curtains!

5. Meeting so many people that you've known for months but never met before is not only weird, but overwhelming. Had I been at a conference with over 400 real strangers and only a few people that I knew before, I don't think it would have been quite so overwhelming.

Silent Sunday

Competition: Win tickets to Pandamonium in the Park at Althorp House

The lovely people at Kellogg's offered me some tickets to an event taking place on Saturday 9th July called Pandamonium at the Park at the Althorp Estate in Northamptonshire. I can't go but Kellogg's have said I can give away tickets to some lucky readers.