Busy in the kitchen

I've been very busy in the kitchen lately making many delicious dishes. Here are a few I recommend, and that I remembered to take pictures of:

Mexican Lasagne

Wood pigeon with sweet potato rosti, buttered cabbage and red wine sauce

Courgette (zucchinni) and goat's cheese tart

Beet and caramelised onion tart

Love

Tom's hurt ankle

Tom has hurt his ankle. He came home from rugby on Wednesday evening limping horribly. He could barley walk, but elevated his ankle and put some ice on it thinking that would do the trick.

It didn't work. He woke me up at 4am saying he was in absolute agony. So being the good girlfriend I am I offered to drive him to hospital (that's how they say it here, not the hospital). We arrived by 4.30am. Despite being ridiculously early, it was actually nice. It was very easy to find a parking space, the nurse saw Tom right away and he even got his x-ray taken immediately. We probably hadn't been there half an hour when all of that was done.

Then it turned bad. We had to wait HOURS to get the results. Seriously, it was 7.30 by the time they called Tom back for his results. We were both tired and bored by this time, luckily I had a book on me.

The diagnoses - a severe sprain. The doctor had to get a second opinion because he said it looked broken with all of the swelling, but nothing was showing in the x-ray. Doctor man said that breaks don't always show on x-rays in the first 24 hours, so that's when he went for a second opinion. When he got back he asked Tom to try and walk. Tom was able to shuffle for a few steps, so doctor man decided not to plaster his ankle. He was just sent home with pain killers and told to completely rest for the next two days.

Six days later and Tom's ankle is still big and he is still having difficulty walking. But he does say it's not really painful, unless he moves it in the wrong direction. He is lucky that he can work from home and is taking advantage of that this week.

I'm taking good care of him, making lots of yummy food. But more on that in a later post.

Love

My day job

I've been a Marketing Executive for over four months now, and I Love it! I think this probably surprises my parents who say I get bored of everything after three months. I just hadn't found the right job until now. Since I spend so much of my time at my office I figure you might be interested in what I'm working on.

This week we had a three day strategy meeting. I was involved in the last two days and was so happy the meeting took place at a hotel in Hove, which meant I got to sleep in and walk to work. During the meeting each department presented on what they are working on, how it is going and their future goals. The meeting ended in overall business planning and budgeting.

So what has Marketing been working on? I've been so busy completing the numerous tasks my boss assigns. Here are most of current projects (I've probably forgot one or two):

Book Launch: The founder of my company, David Miller, has just released his book Successful Change. My job is to promote it. I've sent a press release to many publications, bloggers and professional bodies in hopes of securing book reviews. The book is getting a very good response, I've secured about 6 reviews, an interview with a blogger out of Seattle and a partner deal with a large professional body who is going to do a lot of promotion of the book to their members based on the discount we are giving them. This week I'll be releasing the book to our database of contacts and spreading it on social media.

White papers: We release a white paper about every other month. I've just been assigned to research and write the next one.

Webinars: Alongside each white paper we host a webinar on the same topic. Our last webinar I created most of the slides for and I'm sure I'll do the same for the next one. I also participate in the webinar, introducing the presenters and taking questions.

PPC: Google Adwords is a form of advertising where you create short ads that appear on Google searches, and whenever anyone clicks on them you have to pay a little. I've been re-evaluating our current ads and putting together a new strategy to hopefully improve our results.

Landing pages: When someone clicks on one of our PPC ads obviously they are directed to another webpage. I've been creating pages, called landing pages, that directly relate to the ads and give people the content they are looking for without any hassel.

Twitter: I'm in charge of the company Twitter account, daily tweeting and retweeting.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is one of our most used social media platforms. I post many discussions in our Changefirst group. I also, post discussions in many other relevant groups hoping to spread awareness of Changefirst and increase our network.

Slideshare: On Slideshare you can post powerpoint presentations and short videos. I've been cutting up each of our webinars into segments and posting them on Slideshare. We are getting a very good response here.

Ahh, I'm sure there is loads more that I do, but these tasks are what come to mind right away. As we are a small company pretty much all of our marketing is online due to it being most cost effective. I'm loving getting to play online every day, and all of our stats have increased significantly since I've started which keeps the bosses happy.

Love

Pram Race 2011

I know I've been a bit bad at posting here lately. I've been very busy with work, which is still going very well and I love, working out in the evenings and doing a lot more cooking.

This past weekend however was an event worth writing about. It was Oxted's annual pram race. Tom and his friends have participated for the past three years. It's not really something that appeals to me, but spectating is fun. For this event each team has to race through Oxted whilst pushing a pram with someone inside, the end bit of the run is up a steep hill. It takes each team about 10min or so to complete. There are eight pubs along the way and they have to stop at each to quickly down a half pint of beer. To add to the fun loads of kids line the streets armed with water ballons, guns and buckets of water to attack the participants with.

This years Tom's team dressed up as The Axis of Evil. Slightly bad taste I would say, but I had fun sewing him a white dress thing to make up part of his Taliban costume. His team ended up starting 5th out of over 70. I think this proved to be a disadvantage. All of the little kids had been standing on the side of the street in anticipation for ages and since Tom's team was one of the first to go the kids had plenty of ammo to attack them with. By the end they were absolutely soaked!

I was a little disappointed the other girls bailed at the last minute, but luckily I ran into Tom's cousin Holly and her little girl Sophie and chatted to them during the race. Afterwards the village turns into one big party. Many of the pubs had live bands and BBQ's/Hog roasts. It's like a big street party as people mingle and mosey between pubs.

It was a fun night that ended in an hour long walk back to Brook Farm. There are not many cabs in Oxted, and with that many people out it's near impossible to get one. I enjoyed the walk though, even when it started raining - I had my umbrella.

Love

Barn Dance

Saturday night, after the girly spa experience, was the Barn Dance at the farm just over the road. It's actually where one of Tom's aunts lives. I'd never been to a barn dance before. I was quite excited. Freddie and Emma joined our group for a few drinks around the pool before we went over to dance the night away. We got so lucky with the weather too, it's been hot again this weekend! In fact today I got very silly tan lines in the shape of a V across my chest.

Then it was off to the dance we went. I knew a lot of the people there, many of Tom's parent's friends. First order of business was food. They had put on a massive hog roast. There were two pigs spinning on their spits, Tom's Dad cooked something like 400 venison sausages, and there were plenty of salads to go with the meat. It was tasty!

I cant believe what I did next... I rode the mechanical bull! I think Tom talked me into it. Sooo embarrassing! I think I did alright.

Then we danced, danced, danced the night away. The bad they had was really good and we had a great time bopping about. No line dancing though. I thought there might be some organised line dancing, but it wasn't that hick. We had a great time.

We all got up bright and early today as it was hot! The sun starting shinning through the windows way before we wanted to see it. But good weather meant more time by the pool, like I said I've got some silly lines. To end this weekend Tom and Siobhan went for a pub lunch with us. I opted for a yummy blue cheese, poached pear and walnut salad rather than a roast because I still felt a bit full from the night before.

All in all a good weekend! And it's back to the farm next weekend for the Pram Race.

My first spa experience

This weekend Tom and I invited some friends to Brook Farm. There was a big barn dance on Saturday night at a neighboring farm, which I'll tell you about in a later post. James and Megan came from the Cotswolds and Tom and Siobhan came down from Brighton. Everyone arrived in time for a BBQ early on Saturday afternoon. After enjoying a variety of burgers us girls went off to the spa for some girly time.

For a while we've been talking about doing a spa day as we never do things just the girls. But, we found it very difficult to plan a weekend when everone was available. I stumbled across an amazing spa deal a few weeks ago that happened to be only 10 minutes away from Brook Farm, at Breathe Spa, which I thought would be perfect - most of our friends from this group were already planning on being together.

We were booked in for a mud serial bath. I imagined we would all lie down on a comfortable table and have mud massaged into us. It was not at all like I imagined. A very friendly girl greeted us and gave us towels, robes and slippers. Once changed we were led to our treatment room. As we walked in a big bowl of mud was staring at us. We just started laughing. There were three little spatulas in the pot and we had to cover ourselves with the mud!! It took ages using the spatulas and after not too long we just reaching in with our hands and covering ourselves with the lovely brown mud. I was really sad I didn't take my camera in with me! Once fully covered we stepped into the steam room. We sat there chatting and relaxing waiting until it would start to rain "like we were in a rainforest". That's what the girl said. But the "rainforest" was actually two shower heads that came on suddenly at full force. Siobhan and I both screamed!

Once rinsed of mud us girls enjoyed the sauna, ice shower and the pool. It actually was a really fun experience and my leg do feel very smooth now!

Love

My UK driving license

It's finally here (well I've had it about a week, but was a bit late with this post). My UK driving license. Isn't it pretty:

Don't mind the picture its agggeeessss old! Horrendous.

It's really nice finally having a UK license. First of all I do feel a lot more comfortable driving. If something were to accidently happen I'm sure it's much easier to deal with with a proper license rather than a combination of the provisional and foreign license I was using. Also, it's much easier when I get ID'd at the shops and stuff. People know where to look for the date.

Cool, huh?

Love