GOLD! (Lurex)

I haven't felt much like sewing lately - as those of you who follow my blog will know, I managed to get a whole bunch of great fabric from fabric-a-brac earlier this month. All my great fabric finds - sharks, peacocks, stars, lurex! should have been incredibly inspiring - but as it turns out they just weren't.

I think I've felt a bit bleh for most of this year and things seem to just "keep going wrong" and I don't feel like I'm able to do anything very productive. My latest problem is that my laptop is all but ready to say farewell to the world. I AM using it right now, but in safe mode and its pretty tedious. Fortunately Ria has come to the rescue and I'm able to buy one of her computers that's she's not using any longer. I could buy a new computer - but to be honest its all a bit overwhelming and its just one more thing I DON'T need right now. It's not even about the cost of a new computer, I'm just so over stuff going wrong!

I feel like a have a very LONG list of sewing projects I SHOULD have done by now, like my Miss Bossy sewing challenge which I haven't even started! I also have stuff I want to make for Rich, I promised my friend Dani I would make some stuff for her and I want to make some clothes for our holiday in late June. I basically keep getting myself all upset about all that I HAVEN'T done, and do nothing at all because I'm stressed out about it.

So over Easter I decided I would just make something, anything, and it was the gold lurex from fabric-a-brac which was the first thing in my stash that caught my eye. I decided to use a tried and true pattern, rather than putting additional pressure on myself and making a brand new pattern. I chose to make the classic wrap dress from Simple & Chic Sewing.

I have made this dress before, but in a woven, the lurex has a whole lot of stretch so I thought it would be better for a wrap dress. However, I didn't think to cut the dress a size smaller due to the stretch (I have NO idea why it didn't occur to me - its seems so logical now) so it's a little on the big size. It is a wrap dress though, so I can kind of "make it work" even though its a little big.

I went out to Ria's house on Saturday for a crafting type afternoon and she was nice enough to take a couple of me wearing the dress I made.She lives at Breaker Bay so her view is MUCH nicer than mine. Living in the inner city all we can see from our living room window is a car park.

Now truth time, I do have one problem with this dress, I'm not sure I even LIKE it! I know, first make in AGES and its meant to be a "quick win" and it kind of leaves me feeling *meh* in general. Although Ria loved it - but then others always see you more positively than you see yourself right?

Why don't I like it - I honestly don't have any reasons, maybe I just feel *meh* about it because I'm generally feeling *meh*. Maybe I'll wear it in six months time and think its the greatest dress in the world and it will make me want to scream "Lurex FOREVER!"

Well its nearly time for dinner - so I best say farewell, I hope you've all had a wonderful weekend and I will try and pull myself out of this slump soon.

Things have gotten turned upside down!

Hello all - you may have noticed I've been a little bit vacant from the world of blogging for a bit. The truth of the matter is, my brother has had an accident which had lead to him ending up in the hospital, the time frame of how long he will be in the hospital is currently unknown. He lives up north in Hamilton, fortunately I also lived in Hamilton for the better part of eight years and whilst I was here I made some pretty wonderful friends, who are more than happy to have me stay with them as long as is needed. So right now, my whole life is operating out of Hamilton. I will be going back to work tomorrow in my organisations Hamilton office, but I will be heading up to the hospital after work each day. My plan at this stage is to return to Wellington this coming Saturday, lets hope it all works out.

I'm trying to make the best of a bad situation, spending time with old friends in my old city, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't tough right now - because it is.

However, there are some good times - like last Saturday we took my brother to the Hamilton Botanical Gardens. The gardens were always one of my favourite things about the city, I decided to take a few pictures to share with the world. In some ways they are a standard city botanical gardens, however, they do have an area of "themed" gardens which are just incredible.

First up in the Japanese Garden - complete with zen garden, haiku and coy carp.

My favourite garden is the Chinese garden, although it was super busy on the day we went, it really is a lovely calm place.

Next up is the American Modernist garden, only a few photos, as it was modernist - not too much to take photos of when its all clean lines. Also, its not really my favourite garden - sorry American Modernist Garden.

Since I last lived in Hamilton a new garden has been built, the Indian Garden and it sure is beautiful. I could easily spend plenty of time hanging out here (plus imagine the great photo shoots you could have).

Last, but not least is the Italian Renaissance Garden, for some reason I feel like this was the first of these themed gardens. However, I could totally be making that up. It is a really beautiful spot - I've seen a lot of wedding parties having photos taken here over my years of living in Hamilton - you guys can see why right?

Well its time for me to head up to the hospital - I hope to see you all in the blog-o-sphere sooner rather than later. But will have to take it one day at a time right now, hope to be back soon (and also hopefully I can catch up on my blog reading).

Sometimes things don't work out quite how I plan

I like to plan things, I'm a pretty analytic person by nature - I like to know what's happening and when and what the likely outcome will be. If something isn't working out, I like to work out how to fix it. I'm a problem solver and I generally like routine and order.

This weekend Meg and I decided to do a sew-a-long - we bought bought the Chloe Pattern from Victory Patterns. I even had a general idea of where I was going with the pattern and what I wanted it to look like when it was finished.

I spent FOREVER on Saturday sticking together the pattern and cutting it out (my most hated part of buying PDF patterns online) but I knew once that was done I'd be all ready to go for a Sunday sewing day.

But Sunday is when disaster struck, I was able to cut out the pattern (I'm making it from an old bed sheet that I thought was really cool) but that's pretty much all I was able to do. Once I cut the pattern out I was totally exhausted.

The reason why? Well its something I've lived with for years now - I've got Endometriosis. I don't really talk about it much on here as I don't like it get the better of me. In general, I'm a pretty positive person which has helped me deal with having endometriosis - I was "officially" diagnosed when I was 27 (although I had known long before that something was wrong) and I've had to have two surgeries for endometriosis.

I go to the gym quite a lot (at least 5 times a week) and I also try and eat as well as I can - the reason for this is that if I don't look after myself then my Endometriosis gets really bad. I've had times in my life where I have been in pain every waking hour and taking codeine every day and its no life at all. It's much easier to get inspired to go to the gym at 6:00 - 6:30 five times a week when you know the alternative is going to be pretty terrible.

Lately I have been much better - I've had generally 2 or 3 "bad" days a month, but they have been manageable. I've been feeling like things are under "control". Some women have the same surgery that I've had and their pain is literally gone. I envy those women! I've had two surgeries and whilst they have helped (I'm not in constant pain every day) they haven't "cured" my problem. I can't cure my problems (unless I have a hysterectomy) so I have to try and manage them the best I can.

But sometimes - it just gets the better of me, the pain is fairly terrible, that's for sure. But even worse than the pain is the sheer exhaustion. When your body is in a lot of pain for days at a time, you simply become exhausted and eventually you just have to stop and rest because there's nothing else you can do.

Today my body just told me I had to stop for a while - after I cut out my fabric, I just felt so exhausted. I just couldn't do any more. There were lots of other little projects I have on the go at the moment,  but I simply did not have the energy to do any of them. The thought of picking up an embroidery hoop and needle even made me feel tired.

Apart from the pain and the tiredness the thing that makes me most crazy about having this disease is that at times I can't control it and I get frustrated as I want to get out there and live my life but at times I just can't do the things I want to do, I HAVE to rest. I can think of times I've had to miss out events like friends birthdays and other celebrations due to my endometriosis and its been pretty terrible.

So today, rather than whipping up a new and fabulous dress, I spent most of the day looking at craft stuff on the internet and watching Community on DVD. Not exactly the most exciting day ever, but unfortunately, sometimes I have to take it easy.

Here's hoping I'll be feeling a little more like myself tomorrow and that I can get onto the "belated" sew-a-long later this week.

Progress - so far....

Hello All! I just felt like it was time I should do a bit of a "reflection" post on how my change into a healthier lifestyle is going - you many notice I don't use the work "diet" that's because I think diets are total crap!

Most diets seems to put ridiculous constraints on people - usually they lose weight to start with but then put it all back on as its just so hard to maintain. I've also heard of some pretty crazy diets, one of my friends told me that his mum was on a "bread diet" in the 1980's where one day a week all she would eat was bread - literally just bread, no butter or sandwich filling just bread. Madness.

Anyway, last year I decided I needed to do something about my diet and exercise we had come back home from living in Korea and Taiwan and I was just feeling kind of bleh. I think its due to the fact that when living in Asia I was eating a better diet (especially in Korea) and also moving a lot more during the day. When I returned home I went back to a desk job and food here is much heavier/richer than food in Asia. Plus I had just come home for being away from home and it turned out I wanted to eat all the food!

Although my sensible and logical brain knew this was a pretty crappy idea - the part of my brain that said food is delicious and exercise is boring took over and I put on too much weight for my liking and started feeling generally crappy and bummed.

But fortunately, I'm not the "woe is me" type so I decided to join a gym and get back on a healthy eating plan.

These two photos were taken about the time I decided it was time for a change, the one in the red dress was taken pretty much on the week I started a programme at my gym called "break" - which I have now done twice.

I do realise I wasn't hugely overweight or anything, but I just felt bleh and I didn't want to feel like that - I didn't want to get puffed walking up stairs or hills (and there is a LOT of those in Wellington) and I just wanted to feel good about myself.

So for the first time ever I got a personal trainer - which was a little scary, as I like to think I can do EVERYTHING by myself. But the truth is you can't do everything by yourself - my first trainer Aimee was just incredible. She was really good at reading people and their abilities and if you tried your best, she was just pleased as punch BUT if you were slacking she would tell you that you need to sort yourself out. One time in a class a lady in one of my classes who doesn't always give it 100% was complaining to Aimee she wasn't losing weight and she just told her straight out "It's most likely your diet and you need to work harder" woah.

My current trainer is Cara, who is a recent arrival to our part of the world and originally from Ireland (she came to Wellington in September last year) and she is really great too.

The first time I did the break programme I lost around 10 kilos, the second time I did it I didn't lost so much weight but I gained a lot of muscle and a generally better body shape - by that I don't mean skinny! I am still an hour glass, but an hour glass with a lot more definition.

Here's a couple of more recent photos so you can see the difference the healthy eating and exercise has made - I'm not on some crash and burn exercise/diet regime where the goal is to lose as much weight as quickly as possible, but rather I'm working slowly and surely to get to my goals.

So has it been worth all the time and money? I really think it has - I feel a lot better about where I am now than I was about a year ago.I still have a way to go to reach my final weight loss goal - but that's why its a goal right? I'll just keep working hard and in the long run it will all pay off.

I hope you all have a great Friday xoxox