Can you believe it's the end of July already? (The weather seems to think it's October, but that's another story entirely).

Another week has rushed by in a blink of an eye and I'm struggling to even remember what's happened over the past seven days apart from the major news headlines - Trump, North Korea, Brexit, general misery.

I think I've mostly spent my time throwing myself into work as per usual and also helping out with The Guild of Entrepreneurs, as we need to plan our 2018 events schedule.

Alongside work/boring adult stuff, here are some of the other things I have been doing/enjoying:

Much gooeyness from Northern Brownies

Our winning biscuit platter

1. Visiting the Great British Food Festival at Castle Howard

There's a full blog post in the works about this, but to surmise: Des and I spent most of our Saturday at the stunning Castle Howard to visit the Great British Food Festival.

We were kindly invited by Tastecard, who are main sponsors of the GB Food Festival events which take across the country.

Our day was packed full of foodie activities, including a biscuit decorating competition where Des and I teamed up to channel our inner artistic spirits. Our fruit inspired platter ended up nabbing us second prize, which was an unexpected delight! More on this day coming your way soon...

2. Getting really into Body Pump

Despite going to the Gym solidly for almost five years now, I have never really been interested in classes or group activities.

I recently decided to get out of my comfort zone and try Body Pump, which is an hour long class of weightlifting and dynamic movements. There's a lot of squats, deadlifts and other good-for-you but not-so-fun moves.

The first few sessions were actually pure fiery hell.

I don't think I've ever sweated so much for a prolonged period of time in my entire life. Slowly though, as every class goes by, I've noticed my strength improve and my legs become less like jelly at the end of the workout.

I am *slightly* worried about the impact of these classes, as I seem to have put on 2kgs despite no other changes to my workouts or eating habits. I'm hoping this is muscle weight rather than fat, as I seem to have dropped 2% body fat in 3 weeks if the machines at the gym are to be believed.

It's something to keep an eye on though, as every kg I gain slows me down marginally as a runner.

4. Setting up a new* home office

We live in a three bedroomed house, which up until now has been split functionally into a main bedroom, guest room and shared study.

Des works exclusively from home and I occasionally spend a day or two working here too,. This can mean that alone/quiet time is hard to come by, especially as he makes quite a lot of noise as a musician. Which is totally fair and to be expected!

It actually dawned on me though this week that we have a perfectly good guest room which is now rarely used.

With the addition of a desk and some scented candles, it is now transformed into my perfectly decent solo workspace. Plus I have a great view of our road for dog watching.

I'm hoping this slight change of scenery will result in increased creative mojo. Plus there's now no need to fight about which radio station gets put on (Radio 4 - Woman's hour for the win).