Red Nose Day Glossybox Raffle - UPDATED

We have a winner! Emma Mae has won the raffle.

I used the Random Picker website to draw the winner. All names were uploaded and the site does the selection for you. 

Here's an image showing there were 55 entrants, one for each pound donated, as well as confirmation that I couldn't edit the result. 

After a mix up with friends over who was ordering a 3 month subscription for a birthday present, we have ended up with one too many boxes this month. We have therefore decided to raffle the box for Comic Relief.

The box is unopened so we cannot guarantee the exact contents but brands featured this month include Jelly Pong Pong, Juicy Couture, Nails Inc and Monu. You can view the full list of brands and products at the Glossybox website.

The rules and entry are very simple. Entry will cost you £1 but you can purchase additional entries for every £1 you donate. We will pay the postage to a Mainland UK address. The winner will be announced at 10pm on Friday 15th March here and on the sponsorship page.

Normally a single Glossybox would cost £10 with an additional £2.95 postage so for a small £1 donation you could be getting quite a bargain.

We have joined Dawn O'Porters fundraising team so please feel free to promote this raffle using the Twitter hashtag #teamhotpats. We've set ourselves the target of £50 so we need 50 lovely people to enter the raffle before 10pm on Friday. It's a bit short notice but we're hoping for the best.

You can enter the raffle here:

https://my.rednoseday.com/sponsor/romanyscarlett

Thank you so much for your support.

Valentine's Chocolate Bouquet

Valentine's Chocolate Bouquet

I made this chocolate monstrosity for Rich and it was supposed to be for Valentine's Day but due to the unexpected snow flurry he was working from home this afternoon and he's already seen it. Oops! Still, it means I can do this blog a bit earlier.

We don't usually bother with Valentine's Day and never get each other cards let alone gifts. There's only 4 weeks between mine and Rich's birthdays and Valentine's is right in the middle so it's not really something that we feel the need to celebrate. But I've wanted to make a chocolate bouquet for ages so Valentine's is the perfect excuse. 

To make this bouquet you'll need a few simple pieces of kit.

I used a cylindrical gift box that I got from The Card Shop, wooden garden cane from Wilkinsons and some oasis (usually used by florists) from Hobbycraft. I also used some flower themed cupcake wrappers from Cakes Cookies and Crafts. I had everything apart from the container already lying around the house and if you don't want to have to go to several shops there are other things you can use. Kebab skewers instead of garden cane, polystyrene instead of oasis and the cupcake wrappers are entirely optional. There are a lot more options for the container - vases, gift bags, bowls etc.  

You'll also need some goodies. I picked up some of Rich's favourite chocolates but I also got a marshmallow Me to You bear lolly because I thought it was a nice addition to the Valentine's theme. 

Additional items needed are sellotape and something to cut your rods - I used secateurs. You can also add some decorations, I used a piece of shredded tissue paper to cover up the oasis and these cute heart picks I got from the 99p Store. 

Here comes the science.

Step 1

Put the oasis inside your container. Cover up with shredded tissue paper if desired.

Step 2

Push your rod through a cupcake wrapper like this. If you're not using cupcake wrappers then just skip this step. Pull the wrapper down to the bottom of the rod ready for the next step. 

Step 3

Secure a chocolate bar to the rod using a couple of strips of sellotape on the back. You could use glue but it's a lot messier and if you use tape you can easily remove the chocolate when it's time to eat it. 

Step 4

Pull up the cupcake wrapper so it sits underneath the chocolate bar like petals. 

Step 5

Insert your rods into the oasis. You'll want the chocolates to be at different heights so you can cut your rods down to size. I found it easier to put the rods into the oasis first to judge how much I needed to cut off. Play around with the arrangements until you find something you like. 

Step 6

Keep adding the rest of your chocolate until you're happy with how everything looks. It doesn't matter if you don't use everything you've bought. I ended up with a spare Toffee Crisp and box of Malteasers. They're unlikely to survive the rest of the week. Yum. 

Step 7

Add some decorations. I used the felt and glitter hearts but you can use anything your imagination can think of. Fresh flowers, ribbons, feathers - whatever you like. 

Step 8

You could finish things at step 7 but I do like to go over the top whenever I can so I tied on some bags of chocolates onto the base. Voila - a completed bouquet. 

While you're making this you'll have to be careful that the whole thing doesn't topple over. Keep the rods as short as possible and every time you add a chocolate, put the next one on the opposite side to balance things out. Once it's completed it will be stable, it's just during the creative process you'll need to watch out. This project is incredibly easy and only took me an hour. Chocolate bouquets cost an absolute fortune in the shops, similar ones online with the same amount of sweets are over £30 and that's without postage. And, perhaps best of all, there's no way one person can eat that much chocolate on their own so they'll have to share - huzzah!

Diabetes? I Dia-beat-it.

On Monday I had what is known as a glucose tolerance test. You have a blood test and then you drink a small cup of glucose solution and two hours later you have another blood test. Today I saw the diabetes specialist for the results and got the news I'd been hoping for - I no longer have diabetes.

I'm writing this blog because I knew I'd get questions and they've already started. You can't cure diabetes, it's not something you can take antibiotics for and after a few weeks it goes away. It's usually a life long condition but can be managed with a variety of drugs and informed choices about food and drink.

By way of background I had type 2 diabetes and it was what is known as NODAT - Now Onset Diabetes After Transplant. It is incredibly common to get diabetes after any kind of organ transplant. The anti-rejection drugs and steroids artificially push blood sugar levels up as well as causing rapid weight gain. Personally, I put on 3 stone in 4 months.

I started to get symptoms at the beginning of March last year, around 8 months after my transplant. Routine transplant blood tests showed that my blood sugars were exceptionally high. I was referred to the diabetes nurse at my local GP surgery and was closely monitored for a fortnight because the healthy range of blood sugar should be between 5 and 7 whereas mine was between 26 and 33. Very scary indeed. With the help of medication I was able to bring it down to safe levels but it meant a daily cocktail of 2 tablets, Metformin and Gliclazide and 2 injections, Insulin and Victoza. It took a few weeks to mix the perfect cocktail, a few times I'd have cold sweats and shaky hands. In the space of 3 weeks my sugars had gone from 33 to 3.

Over the next few months with the help of the renal doctors my transplant medication was reduced. I was weaned off of steroids and finally came off them in July. That made a phenomenal difference and I was able to decrease my dosage of Insulin.

I lost the 3 stone I'd gained after the transplant, coming off the steroids really helped this, and as the dosage of the other transplant medications were reduced, I was able to gradually drop the diabetes medication. First I stopped taking the Gliclazide, then I stopped the Insulin, then the Victoza and finally the Metformin. I haven't taken any medication for diabetes since November and my blood sugar averages a healthy 5.6 reading even on Christmas Day after champagne and orange juice for breakfast, a huge roast dinner and mountains of chocolate.

It's not unusual for a transplant patient to be able to get rid of their diabetes as long as they do what the doctors tell them, which is exactly what I did. It's taken almost a year but I've followed all their instructions and the hard work has paid off. There is no guarantee that I won't get it again in the future but my doctor says that I keep on doing what I'm doing then I've got no reason to be worried. I'll have another glucose tolerance test in 6 months time just to see how everything is and I've got a diabetic eye test in a few weeks time just to check whether any damage has been caused but other than that I can forget all about it. No medication, no sugar level tests in the morning and after meals and no more worrying. Huzzah!

Five Years Since My Friend Took Her Own Life

Next week is the fifth anniversary of a friend taking her own life. We all know the cliche of time being a great healer but it isn't. The emotions today are as raw as they were back then.

I can remember in vivid detail what happened the moment I found out. The text message came in and it was so blunt and to the point. The final sentence was 'She's gone' and it will stay with me forever. I didn't believe it at first and called the sender, my best friend, to ask what she was talking about. It was late at night, around 11pm, and I was living on my own in London. Our conversation was brief as we were both in shock and five minutes after I hung up I was crying like I'd never cried before. I phoned someone who didn't know my friend and sobbed down the phone at them saying that I couldn't believe what had happened.

The next morning is a total blur. I woke up, showered, got dressed, caught the train and went to work. I sat at my desk but instead of starting work I logged into Facebook. I began looking at photos of her and getting more and more worked up to the point of hysteria. A colleague walked by and said good morning. Thankfully it was a colleague I was friendly with because within seconds of her words coming out I broke down and all the emotion came out. I can't remember her taking me out of the building but I found myself sat on a wall outside the office on an incredibly busy street in the middle of the city with a cigarette in my hand which was so weird because I made sure never to smoke at work. I'd stopped screaming by that point and was calm but the tears were still coming so I sat there silently crying. I didn't care that people were looking at me as though I was some kind of lunatic, my friend was dead and at that moment it was the only important thing in the world. I don't recall the conversation I had with my colleague but whatever she said must have helped because she snapped my brain back to reality. What the hell was I doing still in London and why the hell was I at work. I went to the head of the department and said I had to take some time off at short notice and then I left. Within an hour I'd gotten back to my flat, packed a bag and got in my car to head to my home town.

I went straight to the place where my group of friends were congregating. I remember people coming and going, I remember people crying and I remember the big joke about one of our group taking longer to get there from the other side of town than it had taken me to get there all the way from London. I was there for a few days but I can hardly recall a single solid thing, it's like those days are gone from my memory. I know we talked about her and shared stories but that's it. I think we were all just so stunned. I'd been talking to her only a couple of days before hand about arranging a stripper for our youngest friend as he was about to turn 18. She had plans, things to look forward to.

When I got back to London I sat on my bed and ate an entire tub of Ben & Jerry's Baked Alaska. I cried the whole time. And then the world started turning once more. Normal life resumed except it could never be normal again. My beautiful friend is dead.

Every year since then I've followed the same ritual. Every day in the week leading up to the anniversary I look at photos of her, I watch her YouTube videos and I listen to the song she was playing when she died. I feel so sad for her that it becomes a physical pain. Sometimes I get angry, sometimes I smile and sometimes I cry but whatever the reaction, it hurts so very much. I miss her.

I've purposely not revealed her name or how she died - her story is not mine to tell. What I will say though is that her death is down to depression. She was such a beautiful person inside and out. I know that is what everyone says but in this case it's the truth. She had a figure that people pay a lot of money to replicate and she loved kids, animals and her friends. She was always up for a good time and always had a smile on her lovely face. But the thing with depression is you can't see it and underneath it all she was hurting.

Her pain is now ours to carry. We have lost somebody special and we also have to live with the fact that we couldn't help her. Deep down we know its not our fault but it still doesn't make it any easier.

The impact of suicide was not new to me. My maternal grandmother took her own life many years before I was born. Again, depression was to blame. The ripples and aftershock of suicide travel through the years and can never be forgotten. They find ways of encroaching into happy times and tainting things. When something good happens and then you remember you can't share it with that person. The memories you have of that person become bittersweet. The death of my friend and the circumstances around it are just so tragic and it scares me to know that other people may be feeling what she did.

So much has happened in the last five years from world wide events to small personal victories. But every February I'm back in my tiny flat in London reading a text message with the worst possible news. It will be the same in another five years time. These emotions are never going to go and in a twisted kind of way, I like it. It means I'll never forget her.

TwitFit Club - So it begins

With the arrival of the new year comes the obligatory resolutions about losing weight, being healthy and dieting. Well, 2013 is no different and a few of us on Twitter have teamed up to motivate each other and provide helpful little tips and tricks. Go team!

This TwitFit Club will be the same as your average diet club but without the inconvenience of having to go to meetings and handing over a fiver each week. It's just a bunch of people with similar goals helping each other out. 

At no point will you ever have to disclose your weight and your level of participation is entirely up to you and can vary from week to week depending on how you feel and how busy you are. You can follow whatever diet or fitness plan that suits you most (personally I will doing the Slimming World plan). No embarrassment, no regime and no pressure. 

I will be documenting my weight losses each week and have chosen Wednesday mornings as my weigh-in time. Obviously with any diet you have good weeks and bad and there's no shame in putting on a couple of pounds after a big event or bad week so I'll be documenting that too. If you want to do the same then let me know and I'll create a chart. I've been dieting for exactly 7 days and today was my first weigh-in. The scales were particularly kind and said I'd lost 5lbs. Not a bad start but the first week on any diet is always the most successful and delivers the biggest loss so I'm not expecting anything quite as dramatic next week. I'm happy to admit that I'm quite worried by the prospect of sharing my losses/gains as the various medications I take have some adverse effects. Eek!

Charleynew lost a fabulous 3lb this week. You can find her on Twitter. 

I'll start off TwitFit Club with an easy recipe for guilt-free chips that are very popular on the Slimming World plan. If you happen to be following that diet then these chips are syn free on a green day. Even if you're not following it, these chips are delicious but don't have all the fat that come with the deep fried variety. It's a well researched and documented fact that if you deny all treats you're more likely to fall off the wagon. Armed with this recipe you'll be less likely to make an impulse purchase at the chippy on the way home after a bad day at work.

Ingredients: Potatoes, Fry-Light oil, salt and vinegar. 

Method: Peel your potatoes and cut them into chips. Thick cut chips work best. Par-boil your chips and drain well. Spread them out on a baking tray and spritz a few times with Fry-Light. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes at 200 degrees. Season with salt and vinegar. Devour. If you want them a bit crispier you can cook them for longer. 

So, if you want to join in, share a recipe, offer an exercise tip or if you want to take part in the weight loss monitoring - get in touch and let me know. I'm especially interested in calorie burning stats ie how many calories a 30 minute bike ride burns. If you've got any particular requests, share them here and maybe somebody will be able to help you out. 

Liebster Award

I was tagged to do this post (called the Liebster Award) by Penny from Lillies and Love.  It's just a bit of fun but I rather like this kind of thing and it's a way of getting to know people better. 


The Rules
- The nominees must link back to the blogger who awarded them
- If you are nominated, write "11 Random Facts" about yourself, then answer the 11 questions the awarder wrote for you 
- Make up 11 new questions to be answered, then nominate 11 other bloggers to take part. 

I'm going to have to cheat a bit here because I don't know 11 other bloggers well enough to tag them. Penny has tagged a couple of people I would have so I'll have to skip them but I'm going to tag three bloggers and leave it up to anyone else if they want to take part. You can say I tagged you, don't worry I'll back you up. 

11 Random Facts About Me...

I have a phobia of turkeys.

I used to be addicted to Extra Strong Mints and would eat up to 5 packs a day.

I was once an extra in a tv puppet show and had to get covered in pretend poo.

Cliff Richard accidentally touched my bum at a funeral.

I have been boycotting McDonalds for over 9 years.

I have had a kidney transplant (thanks for the gift, Mum!).

It's my life ambition to one day own a tank full of axolotls. 

My favourite food is, and always will be, pizza.

My favourite colour is purple.

I've never had a filling in any of my teeth.

I used to drive a white car with black cow spots painted on it.

My Questions From Penny...

- How old are you? - I'm 27 but I will be 28 in three weeks time (yikes!)

- What are your favourite boys and girls names? - Opal for a girl, Harry for a boy.

- If you could have any career, what would it be? - When I was a kid I always wanted to be a scientist. I think my inner child still wishes this was a possibility! 

- Who are the three people you consider your heroes/heroines? - Eddie Izzard, Richard O'Brien and Terry Pratchett. I actually wrote a blog (here) on it a while ago. 

- What has been the proudest moment of your life so far? - Surviving renal failure. I got pretty close to giving up a few times.

- What ambitions do you have? - To own a home with Rich. Oh, and to have a tank full of axolotls in it of course. 

- Do you have a lucky number? - The superstition says that 13 is unlucky for some but I've always found it to be a good luck charm.

- If you won £17,000,000 on the lottery, what would you do with it? - I'd buy a house for Rich and I, pay off all the debts for both our families and friends, make some donations to charity and travel the world. I'd also set up my own charity that specifically helps young transplant patients funding the costs of their education, holidays and deposits for homes. 

- If you could spend 2-weeks anywhere in the world, where would you go? - I'd love to go to Japan. I'd spend a few days in Tokyo and then the rest of the time I'd travel the country looking at the natural beauty of the land.

- What is your favourite film and television programme? - My favourite film has absolutely got to be Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's hard to pick a single favourite tv show but I'm especially fond of cheesy American crime dramas like CSI, Castle and Criminal Minds. 

- If you could only read three books for the rest of your life, what would they be? - Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett because it's my favourite book from his Discworld series, Each Peach Pear Plum by Janet and Allan Ahlberg because it reminds me of my childhood, Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien because it's an escape into a fantasy land and can be whatever your imagination wants it to be.

My Questions For You Lot...

- How old are you?
- What is your first memory?
- Who would play you in a movie of your life?
- What is your favourite book?
- If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life what would it be?
- Do you have any hobbies?
- Where is your favourite place in the world?
- Do you have any interesting scars?
- Do you have phobias?
- Do you have any pets?
- Pirates or ninjas?

Ok, so here are my tags:

Rachel from Things that make me go aagghh!

Jeni from Make up for the Morrissey fan

Scott aka Scooshmeister

Charity Begins At Home

I've wanted to write this post for a long time but I've never gotten around to doing it. I've been put off because charity is a tricky subject and getting the right tone is tough. It's considered bad taste if you loudly broadcast all the things you do for charity, doing nothing at all is frowned upon, it gets a bit preachy if you bang on about it all the time and avoiding chuggers on the high street has become a new sport. Yikes.

Almost a year ago I decided that I would only support local charities. Having been a corporate whore for many years and working in the legal sector, last year I got a job with a charity. It's not a front line charity nor is it run by donations. Our purpose is to help other charities and we are funded by the council as well as other organisations like the Big Lottery Fund. We provide free services to other charities such as helping them with their constitutions, finding them volunteers, organising forums and networking events for them to attend, we offer training in subjects such as writing bids or tenders and we also loan them expensive equipment they cannot afford to purchase or hire from elsewhere (eg laptops, projectors etc). We aren't the only charity like this, there are at least 290 similar charities in the UK. Each one helps local charities offering a service in the town they are based. 

Anyway, the point is that the moment I started working there my eyes were opened. I was suddenly made aware of how many small charities and voluntary organisations there were in my area and how hard it was for them to help people. These charities don't have monthly direct debits from countless residents across the country, they don't have high profile advertising campaigns and they don't have thousands of sponsored events taking place. What they do have is staff who believe in the cause they are working for, volunteers giving up their time to help and a huge sense of community spirit. 

I never really understood what 'charity begins at home' meant and I've probably still got it all wrong but for me, at this moment in time, it means helping the charities in my home town. Instead of sponsoring people to run/cycle/climb on behalf of well known national charities, I've been donating the money locally instead. One person I spoke to through work recently told me that their charity's annual income is £2,000 a year. A whole year! I used to earn more than that each month and it's probably less than what some of the big charities spend on a single airing of a tv advert. 

Money reserves at charities has always been an issue for me. I was once told that Oxfam always had a reserve of £30 million for advertising. I have no idea whether that information is true or accurate but I do know that it set off a seed of doubt in my mind about where the money goes for every major charity. How much is spent on advertising, staffing, building maintenance and general expenses? Some of it seems so wasteful. I've never been keen on sponsored gimmicks either. The 'raise £2.5k and go on a jungle trek' concept doesn't sit well with me. If you happen to have taken part in one of those events, please don't take it personally. I'm not saying it isn't a good cause or that it wasn't hard to achieve I simply mean that having to raise a minimum amount to make it worthwhile for the charity to let you go ahead with it seems a bit of an odd idea. 

These days I prefer to make donations of objects rather than money, that way I know that whatever I give is going to reach the people who need it rather than being used to fund an advert. It's a happy coincidence that supporting local charities makes my preferred method of donation even easier. The Foodbank always need new food supplies,homeless shelters/dry houses always need bedding clothing and toiletries, pet rescue homes always need bags of kibble. Of course it's not always feasible to make anything other than a monetary donation but if you give £10 a month to a national charity, that pays for someone to stand in the street with a clipboard for an hour and half while they try to convince other people to sign up for monthly donations. The same amount of money goes a lot further when you give it to a smaller charity staffed entirely by volunteers. 

You will be amazed at some of the charities in your area and the services that they offer in your own community. One of my favourite discoveries is the animal charity here that offers a scheme where dogs help children who struggle with reading. The idea is that kids may find it embarrassing to read aloud in front of their peers or family but not in front of a dog as it won't judge their abilities. 

I'm not saying that you shouldn't give to the larger charities, that would be ridiculous. I'm just saying that for me, it's not how I want to do things anymore. Obviously I still buy a poppy for Remembrance Day, put some coins in the Comic Relief buckets and round up the extra pennies on my shopping whenever I'm asked and I also still support the national charities that have a personal meaning to me. But, if you ask me to sponsor you to grow a moustache, run a marathon or stay off the alcohol for a month please don't be offended when I congratulate you on your efforts but give my donation to a charity who needs it here.