It's beginning to look a lot like...

...CHRISTMAS! Yay!

Apologies for the complete lack of blogging action recently - I've been ridiculously busy and my internet connection at home has been playing up. Anyway, here I am! Since I last posted, I've done all sorts - I put on a posh dress and went to a ball, I drank far too much at the running club's Christmas party, and I did a bit of celeb-spotting at the work Christmas lunch.

I also managed a PB on my usual Wednesday night 4.4-mile run - look!

I'd promised myself a night off, as it was the day after the aforementioned work do and I was anticipating a monster hangover, but I actually woke up feeling fine and therefore had no excuse for not getting out there for a run. I'd joked with one of the running club chaps that he should coach me to a PB, and he was as good as his word - he paced me round and I knocked a whole minute off my previous best! Just goes to show what I can do when I actually put some effort in...!

I've also been doing some Christmas shopping and baking - this year I made little gift bags for my friends with all sorts of homemade goodies inside, like rhubarb gin, caramel apple jam, and chocolate, cherry and almond cookies. And I also made some gingerbread men for some vegan friends of mine - they were the ones I made a vegan banana and mango loaf for a few months ago, but unfortunately I'd somehow managed to forget that my friend Janet hates bananas, so that didn't go down quite as well as planned! So this time I wanted to make sure I made something extra delicious, and this recipe from The Post Punk Kitchen was fab. I think my mini gingerbread man cutter must have been extra small, because I got hundreds of the little buggers! They looked brilliant all packaged up and ready to go - I just hope they've survived the post!

I've only got two days at work before I head down to the Westcountry for a (well-deserved, I like to think) Christmas break, but I'm sure I'll be taking lots of photos and I'll try to blog about all of our festive adventures as often as I can!