Changes

We all go through stages where we consider our life, where we've been and where we're going, what is working for us and what isn't, what can we do to reach our goals and dreams... you know... the all important questions. The last month has been one of those times of concentrated contemplation for everyone in our household and there are changes afoot....

For me the major catalyst for contemplation and change has been a minor health scare. It all worked out fine, but it has prompted me to look at a my lifestyle and think about how I can change things to try and ensure a long, happy, healthy and fulfilling life. I have a huge list of things that I want/need to change so I'm going to start on the list with baby steps: set myself small achievable goals and work towards them rather than trying to do everything in one hit.

The first thing on my list of self-improvement is to change my eating habits. My diet up until now has never been really bad but its never been ideal either; its not so much the food that I was eating (although there's some room for improvement there too), but the way in which I was eating. I was routinely skipping breakfast entirely, having something light for lunch and eating the main meal of the day at dinner; I combined this with a high caffeine intake and a tendency to substitute iced-coffee for actual food and to snack between meals.

So the baby-steps plan for now to improve my diet is:

• Make an effort to eat 4 small meals a day - no skipping breakfast!
• Cut back on the caffeine - not eliminate entirely, but cut it right back
• Drink more water
• Make healthier snack choices (raw foods or home made snacks rather than packaged)

Its been a couple of weeks and so far I'm doing OK with the changes. I've had a few slip-up but that's OK, this is a lifestyle change, not a diet - there has to be some room for flexibility every now and then. I've drastically reduced the caffeine intake (wow - those caffeine withdrawal headaches for the first couple of days were a killer!), I'm now drinking at least 2 litres of water a day, and I'm eating smaller meals more frequently.

The one that I'm really struggling with is the breakfast thing. I just don't feel like eating within a few hours of getting out of bed in the morning.  I've tried toast and cereal before work and taking breakfast with me to eat once I get to work thinking that if I gave it a bit longer between getting up and eating it might be a bit easier but its still not really doing it for me.

One thing I did try, but it ended up being more a morning or afternoon tea snack than breakfast, was a  baked oatmeal casserole. Its possibly not the healthiest ever breakfast choice, but it was super yummy.

I made it as per the recipe this time but if I were to  make it again I'd probably make a few changes like reducing or omitting the sugar, omitting the chocolate, maybe add some dried apricot or peaches and some more/different nuts. It would probably also be a good idea to halve the recipe - Its supposed to be six servings but I think it should easily be 12 - we ended up throwing out more than half of the casserole because we just couldn't get through it all within a few days (although in a larger household it would probably be fine). So here's the recipe I used:

 

Baked Oatmeal Casserole

( from http://alwaysamrsforeverakidd.blogspot.com.au/2012/01/gluten-free-baked-oatmeal-casserole.html)

2 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup walnut pieces (I also used some flaked almonds and coconut on top)
1 cup raspberries (any berries work - I used some fresh strawberries and frozen mixed berries)
1/2 cup milk chocolate chips
2 cups milk
1 large egg
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 ripe banana, peeled, sliced

Preheat oven to 190Cand generously spray the inside of a 10-1/2 by 7 inch baking dish with cooking spray and place on a baking sheet.
In a large bowl, mix together the oats, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, salt, half the walnuts, half the strawberries and half the chocolate. (Save the other half of strawberries, walnuts and chocolate for the top of the oatmeal).
In another large bowl, whisk together the milk, egg, butter and vanilla extract.
Add the oat mixture to prepared baking dish. Arrange the remaining strawberries, walnuts and chocolate on top. Add the banana slices to the top then pour the milk mixture over everything. Gently shake the baking dish to help the milk mixture go throughout the oats.
Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until the top is nicely golden brown and the milk mixture has set. For an extra tasty top, sprinkle a tablespoon or so of extra brown sugar.

This is how mine turned out:

I'll try smoothies this week and see how I go with them - there's got to be something that I can handle first thing in the morning.

Until next time
K

Catching Up

Wow. So much going on recently and so much I haven't blogged!  It will be infinitely more readable if I do it in a few posts so prepare for a deluge of those annoying facebook links (or google+, RSS feeds etc) highlighting the new posts over the next few days while I catch up on things.

K

Ruffles, ruffles and more ruffles

Well what a hectic couple of weeks. Lots going on with the family, house and work. I haven't been blogging much and I don't have any exciting new or finished projects to show off yet but I have been steadily sewing throughout the chaos.

I've given myself a deadline of Easter to have the monsters' ruffled quilt completed and  I don't want to jinx myself but I think I might just make it by the end of that weekend (only 12 days from now - must keep telling myself its do-able!).

You may recall from previous posts that I was worried I might not have enough reclaimed fabric to be do the quilt - I was contemplating a shopping trip for more fabric. The monster and I ended up going to the local red cross op-shop a couple of weekends ago and picked up some fantastically cheap sheets and fabrics that are now destined for the quilt.

 

Samples of the fabric I already had on hand - from the stash and reclaimed from old clothes.
I'm really not sure about the blue and burgundy fabrics at the top of the pile

The op-shop fabric for the quilt top
I adore the bright blue floral fabric. I think its really going to liven up the quilt.

So last week I cut all 63 of the required 21x10.5 inch rectangles of fabric for the quilt top and an equal number of 10.5 inch squares from a plain cream sheet. (The squares get stitched to the back of each quilt piece once ruffled to hold everything in shape.)

Over the weekend I ruffled all 63 top pieces - what a mission - because I'm using a lot of repurposed fabrics and the textures, thickness etc are not consistent like they would be if I used all new quilting fabrics, I had to constantly adjust the thread tension and stitch lengths. I also spent quite a lot of time rethreading the machine and detangling threads. It went a lot quicker with the ruffler foot on the Brother than if I had tried hand ruffling, but it still felt like a laborious task.

Every evening so far this week I've spent an hour or 2 attaching the cream squares to the backs of the ruffled pieces. If I keep up this pace, I should have all the top pieces ready to be arranged and sewn together by either this weekend or early next week.

After that its just working out what to do with the quilt back, sandwiching, quilting and binding then I'm done...definitely do-able by my self imposed deadline right??

While I've been doing all this cutting, ruffling and sewing the monster has been wanting to be involved. She spent a couple of evenings arranging and rearranging pieces to find a pattern/colour layout that she likes best. She even got to the point of deciding on a layout for each row and putting the pieces for each row in individual sandwich bags (1 bag per row) so I wouldn't get the order mixed up. Since then she's decided that there really isn't enough bright colours and definitely not enough purple in the quilt for her liking. I have to agree with her on this point, when she laid all the pieces out, with the exception of the occasional bright blue floral and the white and royal purple print pieces, it was a bit pastel and dull. So I've been to Spotlight and bought a few pieces of really bright, very purple fabric (yeah, more fabric - I must be up to about a million metres of fabric on this quilt now!).

Once I've got the majority of the pieces that are already ruffled sewn to their backing pieces I'll cut and sew a few pieces of each of the new purples to add into the mix. If I end up with too many pieces ruffled and sewn to backing pieces I'll just use the excess for either an accent on the quilt back, or a couple of matching throw cushions or pillow cases.

So back to sewing for now. Hopefully another update with some progress pics over the weekend.

K

BTW Have you seen the new Pinterest widget on the right hand side of the blog?
I've found craftgawker.com over the last week and have been pinning tonnes of stuff - what an amazing site to lose lots of hours to. Now you can see what's been catching my eye right here in the blog (or you can follow my Pinterest boards).

I haven't forgotten or lost interest...

Lightning  blowing up modems, phones and computers, illness, car troubles and getting back into dealing with our nightmare of a bathroom - you name it, its been happening here over the last few weeks. There's just been so much non-crafty stuff going on that I haven't been able to do much with the blog.

I've still been doing things here and there on my WIPs, but nothing major. Hopefully this weekend will be a flurry of creating and I'll have something to write about and some pictures to show off in the next few days.

K

un-whatever (maybe its just being lazy)

Well there's a zillion things I could and should be doing, but I'm doing none of them. Instead I'm flicking between playing bejeweled, watching Doctor Who (the new Doctor Who - season 1 with Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor) and staring blankly out the window.

Not sure if its unmotivated, uninspired, lazy or just tired but I'm definitely lacking in enthusiasm for anything today. It could also have something to do with the weather; its been a lovely, wet and cool monsoon day, one of the very few actual wet season days we've had this season. It makes me want to curl up in bed with a book, or laze on the couch in my pyjamas drinking hot soup and watching a movie.

Sadly, life and all the necessary domestic stuff gets in the way and soon I'm going to have to force myself to prepare a quick dinner, get the monster to bed, do a bit of a tidy up and possibly bake something to take to work for morning tea tomorrow before I can get back to the doctor.

And finally I guess just to keep things slightly on topic I should update the progress on my current WIPs...

I've given in and bought some more fabric for the monster's ruffled quilt after rummaging through all the clothes destined for the salvos and not finding enough suitable raw material. I'm aiming to have the new fabric all cut by the end of this week so that part of next weekend can be spent ruffling and assembling the squares and maybe even doing some of the piecing.

Work on the Four Seasons Knit Vest is continuing; I joined a new ball of yarn on the weekend (the 3rd so far) which means I'm more than halfway there. Hooray. I pick it up occasionally and add a few more rows while watching TV late in the evening. Its a good one to take with me to the monster's sporting activities so I get a bit more done there too. It probably needs a good solid 2-3 hour  knitting session to make it feel like its really coming together, but the last time I tried that I ended up at the physio and almost unable to move for days (can knitting be considered a sport? I'd like to be able to say it was a sporting injury).

Version 2.0 of the Frankenstein wallet has not moved beyond concept yet. I got a bit disheartened by the lack of success with last weekend's efforts so I think I'm just going to leave the first version on the bench for the next few days and see whether I can get enthused enough some time this week (or motivated or inspired or whatever it is) to start over.

OK. Enough procrastinating... time to move and get some stuff done. What is your favourite thing to do (or not do) on a gloomy but lovely cool wet day?