A fabulous hen do in Croatia

I've been wanting to visit Croatia for a few years now, and last weekend I got to spend three glorious days there with some of my closest friends on a hen party. We simply had the BEST TIME. We stayed at the Marina Baotić apartments in Trogir and they had us all very impressed. The apartments are modern, open plan and furnished in white and grey. My apartment had a Jacuzzi in the bedroom and a balcony that overlooked the large marina with super yachts to gaze at.

We spent our first day and night exploring the lovely town of Trogir which is a beautiful World Heritage Site with narrow cobbled streets and many bars and restaurants to enjoy. We also took a taxi to Split and visited a beautiful open-air bar along the seafront called Hemingway.

The next day, we all plotted up at a relaxing beach club called Laganini where we were waited on all day with lots of drinks and a spot of lunch. The beach club is simply stunning with big bean bags, double beds and parasols set in a hilltop that overlooks the beach. The beach has white shingle stones and the sea is clean and clear. After spending the whole day there, the bill only came to £50 each and we thought it was a complete bargain!

On our last night, we had a lovely meal at the onsite restaurant where they laid out a special table for us right by the pool. The menu was personalised for the bride to be and our waiter treated us to not one but three bottles of Veuve Clicquot!

All in all, the trip was the next best thing to perfect and I can't wait to go back there. The pictures say it all...

Holiday in Puerto de la Duquesa, Spain

We spent a lovely five nights and six days in the picturesque area of Duquesa Regent, Manilva. Our flight was an early one from Gatwick so we decided to treat ourselves to an overnight stay at the Sofitel hotel. With easy meet-and-greet parking directly outside, we made our way into the grand lobby that smelt like fresh linen with two exposed glass lifts whizzing up and down.

Our room overlooked the runway and the bed was incredibly comfortable with big soft pillows. We were able to connect to Wi-Fi for free and our room had a Freeview TV, a bath and a shower, a mini fridge, plus tea and coffee making facilities. It was a great start to the holiday. We had dinner in the bar downstairs as the restaurants had waiting times of 30 mins+ and we were starving! The drinks were pretty pricey but the food was reasonable and I went for a 'char-broiled cheeseburger' which hit the spot.

After getting up at 4 am, we made the two minute walk to check-in for our flight and then somehow only managed to get to the gate just minutes before it closed! No duty free for us. We flew with easyJet and touched down in Gibraltar to sunny views of the great rock.

We spent most of our days at the beach or by the pool and did a lot of day drinking, eating and sunbathing. I enjoyed a full body massage on the beach one morning which lasted over an hour and was just 30 euros - probably the best money I've spent in a long time. We also took a boat trip out from the marina one day which offered free champagne and sangria—I caught a great tan.

One evening we took a taxi up to Mijas to visit the Olivia's La Cala restaurant owned by the lovely TOWIE member Elliott Wright. It was certainly worth the hour's drive. The food, service and views were faultless and we had a great time dancing into the night. Elliott and Sadie made us feel very welcome and the staff couldn't do enough for us. When the sun went down, they came round with freshly washed fleece blankets for the ladies - a really lovely touch.

After leaving Olivia's, we went out-out for the night in Puerto Banús and didn't get home until 7 am! The night flew by as we had such a laugh. We partied in Newscafe, Pangea and Mirage to name a few. The next day was a sleep-on-a-sunlounger one and we spent the night indoors with a film from one of the looky looky men. 

All in all, we had a great time and I was sad to come home. I actually got made redundant while I was out there so holiday blues have never been so bad! I'm spending my days at home now job-hunting and editing my CV for the 29th time.

Gatwick Sofitel

Lobby

The Rock of Gibraltar

Olivia's

Fine dining

Boat trip

Bank Holiday blues

Wasn't the long weekend such a glorious one? I didn't want it to end. :( I've managed to acquire some questionable tan lines and definitely a few extra pounds in weight but it was all very enjoyable.

On Friday evening, we started off the weekend semi healthily with a chicken Caesar salad. Then, on Saturday I spent FIVE hours cleaning the house—talk about a spring deep clean! We then made our way over to our friends' house for dinner and drinks in the garden. We got an Italian takeaway from a place called Nino's in South Woodford, Essex. We spent the evening drinking rosé with ice and put the world to rights before falling into bed during the early hours of the morning.

Sunday and Monday consisted of sunbathing plus somehow making my house an absolute tip again—typical. I struggled so much today to get out of bed. My alarm went off at 7am and I snoozed it until 7:30 and then actually got out at 7:45. I did manage to go to the gym today though which is a result. I'm a member at the lovely David Lloyd in Hatfield and this evening I spent 20 minutes on the elliptical machine within 80% of my maximum heart rate.

Nino's

Vitamin D

Feast

My garden blooms

Chicken Caesar

Bridesmaid shopping and bottomless brunch

On Saturday, myself and my friend's bridal party hit Oxford Street in the search for bridesmaid dresses. We had our first try on in Debenhams where we used the free Personal Shopping service. We picked out a handful of dresses ourselves first and then made our way over to the separate area where we were escorted to our large changing room with space for my friend's mum and auntie to sit and watch.

We had picked out some pastel-coloured maxi styles and the stylist then brought us in a couple more to try. We ended up quite liking the first one we tried on (which was picked by me!). It was a blush pink colour and Grecian-inspired. Although we didn't buy it, we now know that it's a style we're all very keen on.

After a quick look in Selfridges, we then decided to head over to Victoria earlier than expected to sit down for our booking at Aster. Aster is a fairly new restaurant-come-café and it has Nordic-inspired decor and French cuisine. We went for the bottomless weekend brunch menu where we all had two courses and unlimited prosecco with impeccable service from a lovely Colombian chap. I went for eggs Benedict to start, followed by a vegetarian spring risotto. It was lovely food and the prosecco flowed very generously.

Personal shopping

Bridesmaid dresses

Bottomless prosecco

With water to slow us down

Mercure Dartford Brands Hatch Hotel & Spa

I visited Mercure Dartford at the weekend for my friend's birthday. It was a lovely girly getaway with ten of us staying overnight. We arrived late afternoon on the Saturday just before check-in and after a short wait in the lobby we made our way to our rooms which were clean, modern and cleverly designed—plenty of plugs and mirrors! The hotel looks out over the Brands Hatch go kart track where you can hear them whizzing around in the distance.

We got changed into the robes provided and each had a 25 minute back massage in the spa. My massage was definitely deep tissue as my masseuse was super strong and actually caused me pain, but in a good way! The indoor pool was heated and there was a Jacuzzi, steam room and sauna, but unfortunately there weren't enough loungers to go round. I didn't bring my gym kit with me but I wish I had done as the gym was well equipped and nice and quiet.

After relaxing in the spa, we sat outside on the patio area and had lunch with some drinks. I went for a chicken wrap and chips, plus a couple of Sipsmith vodka and lemonades for £22.

At dinnertime, we all got semi dressed up and made our way to the restaurant. I had salt and pepper quid to start, prawn linguine for main (which was dyed with squid ink) and chocolate brownie for dessert. One of the girls brought a surprise birthday cake for my friend and the kitchen staff kindly lit the sparklers and brought it out to us. They then kept the leftovers in the fridge overnight for us to collect the next day. 

In the morning, we came down for breakfast and enjoyed the extensive continental and full English fry up buffet. We sat out after on the patio again and enjoyed the sun for a few hours before making a leisurely check-out.

Overall, I would rate this hotel 3.5 out of 5 stars. It was brilliant value for money. We each paid £88 and that included our overnight stay, massage, dinner up to £25 a head and breakfast! What let the hotel down slightly was the sometimes slow/inefficient service, lack of loungers and the location as there's not anything to do nearby apart from go kart.

5:2 diet check in

So I've been on the 5:2 diet for five and a half weeks now and I've lost eight pounds *cheers*. That works out to just over a pound and half a week and I've not even been gymming that much. (I went once last week and haven't even been this week which is really bad.)

Anyway, I'm happy with my results so far and it's becoming easier as the weeks go by. Today was the start of warmer weather in Hertfordshire and I found it quite refreshing to stick to two salads and a pot of edamame beans for my fast day.

I buy all of my groceries from Tesco and my favourite salad at the moment is the Tesco Pesto Salad Kit. It's got an amazing pesto dressing, a pack of parmigiano shavings and a pack of pine nuts on a bed of mixed leaves. I had a third of it today for dinner with two slices of turkey breast for 172 calories.

The longer you're on the diet, the more savvy you become in finding foods with a lot of mass but not many calories. Salads are an obvious one but the other day I found out that Mini Peperamis are only 40 calories each so they're ideal as a little snack when you want something "bad".

It's amazing that I've managed to lose weight after what I've consumed at the weekends. For example, I went out for an Italian on Saturday, drank a load of red wine (two bottles!) and then had a hungover McDonald's the next day.

I'm hoping to lose a couple of stone in total so will keep you posted on my 5:2 journey with hints and confessions.

Do epilators work?

I've been shaving my legs since I was a teenager and recently I decided to give epilating a go. Razors are SO expensive and shaving has to be done every day if you want to stay smooth—who has time for that?! I bought myself the Braun Silk-épil 5 5780 Epilator which is currently on offer at Boots.

I'll be honest, it does hurt, especially around the backs of your legs and on your armpits. It seems to help if you pull the skin as taut as possible, but beauty is pain, right? However, after just a few goes (I had to space out the pain) my legs and underarms are feeling nice and smoothISH. I think the more I use this epilator, the easier it will become with hopefully less regrowth.

Pros

• Lots of different attachments to try on different areas

• There's a cooling glove which you can place in the freezer to soothe the pain

• You don't have to wait for it charge it up as it uses the mains

• It's easy to keep clean, you just have to rinse the hairs out

• Hair can be super short (just two days of shaving regrowth)

Cons

• It has a European plug so you have to plug it into an adaptor (I nicked my boyfriend's shaver one)

• It stings

5:2 diet tips

I've been dipping in and out of the 5:2 diet for about four years. It seems to be the only diet that I can stick to without me having to give up that foodie life.

The 5:2 diet is pretty simple; for two days of the week you must fast and only consume 500 calories. For the remaining five days of the week you can eat ‘normally’. For me, ‘normally’ means up to 2000 calories a day. However, what I tend to do is save some extra calories for the weekend when I know I'll want to binge/eat out.

My typical week looks like this: Mon:500, Tues:1200, Wed:1200, Thurs:500, Fri:2500, Sat:2500, Sun:2500. This gives me an average of 1557 calories a day. I also (try to) go to the gym three times a week doing a mixture of cardio and weight training—I particularly like spin and body pump classes.

My latest 5:2 stint started 12th March and so far I'm five pounds down. I actually lost half a stone in my first two weeks then gained four pounds over the Easter weekend! Whoops. 

If you're looking to start the 5:2 diet, I recommend downloading the My Fitness Pal app. It's really easy to search/scan food items in order to track your calories. My fast day today consisted of the following:

Breakfast

2x Kallo dark chocolate rice cakes and a black tea (110 calories)

Lunch

Itsu miso soup, a Granny Smith apple and a can of Coca-Cola Zero (125 calories)

Dinner

Slice of toast with a smidgen of butter and two scrambled eggs (265 calories)

Dessert

Hartley's sugar free apple jelly (7 calories)

TOTAL= 507 CALORIES (I'm not gonna worry about the jelly that tipped me over the edge).