Why I love the weekend

I get woken up by cuddles and faces like this.




And then get to spend the weekend knitting with this for company.


Home life is pretty great.



I think I need a nap now.

So it the New Year. 2012 will be an exciting year for me I think. This will be the first year without any of my family living in the same state as me with my mother moving literally to the other side of the country for her job. It's not so scary though, mostly I think this will give me an opportunity to find my own feet better. And of course, the Big Day is happening in 3.5 months. I am pretty damned excited about the wedding. When my headache (sadly not related to a fabulous New Year's Eve, I've just had this bloody headache for 4 days now) calms down a little, I plan to make some wedding invites and see how my second idea looks.
So looking back on 2011, I actually achieved all of my goals except losing weight and I've made some really healthy steps towards that lately. I have a full time non retail job, I knit both hanami and La Cumparastia, I even designed my owl lace shawl, which I am in the process of happily knitting. The wedding planning is going well. My craft room is pretty damned awesome, I even made myself a skirt in there over the last few days, which I am wearing right now! It doesn't have the lemon yellow curtains, but with summer here, I am slightly relieved that the nice heavy blackout curtains are in place.
So my 2012 goals:
1) Minimise - minimise my weight, minimise the amount of crap I buy, minimise my spendings (and maximise my savings). These are 3 things that continue to be an epic nightmare for me. At least with the weight, I have a very clear goal of the wedding and getting into my dress. The others are just something I have to really work on. I did up a budget last week and know how much play room I have each fortnight now though, and I honestly think that will help a lot.
2) Knit more of my own patterns - I have all these ideas, a lot of half started projects and I just kind of stop with them. So this year, I want to keep on it, and keep producing my own patterns and really get it moving.
3) My etsy store. I reopened my etsy store Here a little while ago, so I want to try and update it at least fortnightly.
4) This I think is the most important one. ENJOY THE WEDDING! I want it to be a happy and fun day with no stress. I am really excited about marrying Dinosaur and enjoy every minute of our life together.

Be happy in 2012 everyone!

What I did on Friday night.

So Its been a while

So I forgot to blog one week and then life happened in a big way. My mum accidentally ran over my dog, and sadly she lost the battle with the 4wd. So that was really sad and painful and horrible and was only the beginning. Mum had surgery, which whilst not unexpected, was still stressful and tiring and long. Then the cat got into fight and got very sick and had to have surgery. So that's been a whole lot of fun. Also wham surprise lady stuff. So that was all a bit of suck. So I didn't make the gym as much as I wanted, but I also didn't turn to food as a comfort, I maintained smaller portion sizes and lost weight instead of gaining it. Overall a satisfactory outcome.
Today I went to the gym after work and really pushed myself with the C25K. And then I actually did weights. I had a lovely personal trainer come and help me because I was trying to read the instructions on the weights machine, and it was really helpful having her help me with it, so tomorrow I am going to call and find out all the details and give it a go.
So that is where I am at.

Success, failure and strategies.

So this week had mixed results. On the one hand, I made it to the gym 3 days and successfully completed week 1 of the c25k program. This success was tinged a little on the final day because of the ankle injury. It flared up after 2 runs and I wasn't smart enough to strap it before the third run which means I had to run a bit slower than the others. So before tomorrow I will strap my still sore ankle. I realise running on an injury is potentially dangerous, but at the same time, I've been putting off exercising for nearly 2 years now because of an ankle. So I plan to continue on and if necessary slow the running pace on bad ankle days. Despite this, I actually managed to gain 1.4kg. I'd like to pretend this was muscle growth, but the reality is I had a shit food week. On Sunday night we went to Nandos with friends, on Tuesday we ate Italian with friends, on Thursday (and then I may have eaten left overs for the next 2 days) we got pizza and then last night was the Nara festival, so I ate tako yaki. On the upside, I had salad and tuna for lunch most days last week (I think there was one day where I ate crap but I honestly don't remember).
So onto a new week. Last week having prepared salad that I could add tuna/chicken/goats cheese to really worked for me. So when I did the groceries, I made sure to buy more of the prepared salad. One of my major problems last week was snacking. The increase in exercise meant that I was a lot hungrier. So I've got 2 plans to tackle this. 1) I bought a big box of single serve instant porridge. This is the good carmen's stuff, so it's got fruit and nuts and tasty things in it, and I can prepare it at work after the gym. I did this on Friday and it got me through until lunch. So I'm going to start having porridge at work every morning. 2) Prepared healthy snacks. I find that I struggle to eat a lot of fruit. I like fruit, but I get easily bored with it, and don't really like apples, the difficulty of peeling oranges in work clothes, or bananas when they go brown (and I'm sure you're now all thinking good god woman, grow up and stop being a baby). So yesterday, I bought 1/2 a honey dew melon, a rock melon and a big piece of watermelon, and cut them up. They are now in a container in my fridge. It means that at night when I make my lunch, I can put the fruit in a smaller container, and when I'm at home I have an easily accessible healthy snack.
So those are my strategies for this week. Along with drinking lots of water, which is actually very easy when it's this hot.

On a totally different note, I bought a hand held butane torch this week, which inspired me to go back to making stitch markers and jewelery. So tonight, I reopened my etsy store. It can be found here.

Broken Record

Well as everyone knows, my weight has been a topic of much concern for me for a couple of years and i seem incapable of staying motivated enough to stick with anything long enough to lose more than 5kg before I go bouncing back up again. Which sucks and is stupid and I know the block is all mental. So I ordered my wedding dress 2 sizes too small. This gives me 181 one days to shift 2 dress sizes, which is a completely manageable feet. Realistically if I'm motivated, it can be shifted in time for Christmas and New Years. So I've joined the gym that is on the way to work, and will go in the morning before work. This was a strategy that really worked for me when I was shifting weight for a friend's wedding, but I stopped after I hurt my knee and then life just kind of happened at me.
So I am currently 86.3kg. Tomorrow I am going to start with run 1 of the C25K run, I'm about to set up a playlist on my phone to help keep me going. My plan is to go at least 3 times a week, but I'm hoping as I adjust to working out again I'll go more.
So to keep myself motivated, I am doing 2 things. 1) putting a picture of my wedding dress on my phone, and 2)every 5kg (although 6.3 the first time because I am a little ocd and would like the numbers to be pretty) going to treat myself to a back massage and then when I hit my goal of 65kg I'm going to buy myself some shiny new clothes (because I will need something to wear when I am skinny and cute again).
This is the plan people, let's see how well I stick to it :P

Seriously?!

If someone resigns from a job and explains to you that they had deeply unpleasant experiences with 4 different departments and do not want to work for the company at all EVER again, do not, I repeat DO NOT, try and get them another job there. I don't care how shiny the company thinks they are and how much the company would love to have them back, IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

END