Well Blog friends (if I have any left) it has been a
long six months since I posted last, what a bad girl I am…
Life has been very busy and I have battled a few
health issues, some remain ongoing. But shock Horror I have managed to get some
sewing done in the last couple of weeks. I had a lovely day @Khristina’s having
a Christmas party sew-in with a couple of the local CRAFT group girls. We each
made a lovely Star Trivet from “The Bronze Wombat” Blog it was fun and I managed
finishing off the binding at home. I was so inspired that I made a cute pink
one for my friend Kate…
What else has been going on here? Well we added a new
fur baby to our family…
His Name is Phoenix and we adopted him from the RSPCA
at one of the local adoption sites throughout our area. He is such a delight
and I think Charlie is finally getting used to him. They groom each other
(mostly Phoenix does the grooming) and spend time running round the house
playing chasey.
My sewing room has often felt like a Ghost Town
because I just have not had the gumption to get in there and sew…it has not
helped that it is one of those rooms that feel the heat and the cold and is not
a place you really want to be. That will be changing in the New Year though, we
will have our large room at the back of the house back when our DD2’s best
friend moves out into another friends house. Long story short, she could not
live with her family due to some serious issues with one of the family members,
3 years later she is moving out. Don’t get me wrong we have loved having her here;
we have given her a home to live in because we believed she would have ended up
in dire straights otherwise. And it seems to have made a difference in her
life. No she still cannot move “Home” but is working on those relationships.
So having said all that we are having a big move
around, DS14 is moving into that room with his many electrical devices (Xbox,
Computer etc) and I will be moving my sewing room up into his old room in the
house. It will be cooler in summer (air con) and warmer in winter so I might be
inspired to sew something. Keep your eyes peeled for future posts.
We have just celebrated Christmas and are heading
into the New Year…what will it bring, I wonder. I pray it brings peace and joy
for us and for all the readers out there.
In keeping with the New Year and hope for the future
I will be posting a competition in the beginning of January so keep checking
back to get a chance to go in the draw.
I have meant to reply to a comment posted
after one of my Blog posts about my dietary changes but of course have been
too ill and distracted… so here goes
“Thank you for
sharing what you are going through, your diet change, and what it is~ I am also
trying to lose weight, and it has been next to impossible. I don't have any
digestive issues...just can't seem to lose. I've gone from vegetarian, to vegan
to raw to juicing to raw and juicing and I've decided I need to eat a small
amount of protein, some veggies and a little fruit and some oils. That is it.
Sounds almost like what you are doing. Anyways, it was interesting to read what
you are dealing with”.
Thanks Cathy, it sounds like you are on a
journey just as I am...I hope you find the right combination for you that will
help kick start your weight loss. I do know that the key ingredient in any
weight loss regime is exercise, bah, very sad but true. Unfortunately my
exercise regime gets forgotten or is just too hard some days...I am working on
it though.
I am a firm believer that weight loss
starts in your mind, if you are not in the right frame of mind or distracted
then it becomes a real battle, having the right frame of mind at the time is a
major help when making choices about exercise and food.
I also believe it makes it easier if you
are able to forgive yourself when you fall off the wagon so to speak…when I eat
that chocolate or drink that full milk Latte with vanilla flavor (not that I
can drink full fat milk anymore), I have to remember that it was just once and
I should not throw out the entire diet and exercise regime just because I
failed once. My trouble is I feel guilt about it and let it change my mindset
about how I am doing. Guilt is the enemy of the mind when it comes to weight
loss.
I have to say to my self OK you blew it
today but tomorrow is another day and I can start again.
Weight loss only gets harder the older you
get sadly, so I hope those who are on any kind of weight loss journey will take
my advice and be kind to yourself, forgive yourself when you fall off the wagon
and jump back on.
Well don’t fall off your rockers folks here I am
blogging again for the first time in 2 months. Life has been indeed busy and I
have had a lot of sickness to contend with hence my absence from my blog.
Now I don’t promise this is going to be any great
read, but I do promise it will be a bit of a catch up on the last 2 months.
Sickness and Battles…
After the great start to my elimination diet it all
had to go by the wayside due to having to have tests that required me to go
back on a “regular” diet. Not long after that I ended up in surgery so I have
spent a while recovering from that and trying to find out the cause of certain
illness.
No great shock it is age related (pooh) and I have
to investigate a path of treatment that suits me, I would much rather that then
just blindly follow what the GP says is OK…says HE a male Doctor who does not
have to suffer what we women must go through at a certain time of life.
We had a new fence erected and the gardens were "simplified" here are some before and after shots of the work...can you see a difference?
Our Yard was tidied up and a new fence erected.
Happier Times…
Well after not doing much sewing at all this year I
finally got my house blocks done for the house block swap I have been doing
with our online CRAFT group.
I thought I was going to die before I could get them
done, but Praise God they are done and handed in. now just waiting on the
others to come back to me and then onwards with putting it all together.
I tidied my sewing room and actually got a top
finished for my DD who has been waiting for 7 months for me to put together
something with the fabrics I bought for her at the craft fair in October last
year.I bought the Ghastlies
fabric and managed to get some yardage for the backing from the States. I just
have to sandwich it together quilt it and bind it and she will be happier.
I seem to have lost my Mojo again, I am just tired
all the time and not really motivated to get into the sewing room. That will
change I have no doubt….
I Recently found an old Genoa Lounge in an op shop
and was so happy when I got to bring it home and call it mine. Hubby and I have
longed for one of these little beauties most of our married life and yippee we
got one…it is not too shabby and will be re-covered in the next year. So now my
love for all things 1930-1940’s comes back to life.
Maybe I just yearn for the simpler life of 1940”s
yes we were a world at war but the amazing people and the things they did to “make
do” is really inspiring…
Alright this is becoming a novel and I need to rest…so
Hopefully in the near future you will see some more posts about the sewing I am
doing (hoping) and even the decorating I am doing in the lounge to match a 1940’s
style.
Don’t fall off your
chair, or sofa, or bed or wherever you are reading this blog from…But I
actually did some sewing for the first time in a long time, I must be feeling a
bit better.
I got in and sewed
up a couple of house blocks for the swap I am in, I need to finish them by the end of this month, is there hope
of that happening? Always…
I started out with
paper piecing but that was too time consuming because it required my brain to
be engaged and think about what I was doing…so what am I saying exactly? Well For
ME (not saying this is so for anyone else) I need a lot of brain power to do
the paper piecing so I don’t have to constantly “Reverse Stitch” and re-stitch
a piece. I decided to do the much easier task of wonky houses…can you see the
way I think? By doing wonky houses it does not matter if things are even or
lined up properly, as long as they look like a house and they measure out right
by the end…no problems.
I am hoping to get
a bunch of them done this weekend, but we will see how I feel…
How about you? Are you
sewing anything nice, do you have a project you would like to share?
When I started the new regime I
had no idea what to expect really, the Naturopath described a week of hell and
then taking off like a rocket…well there has been no hell and no rockets
either. Perhaps I am truly blessed because I have not had the horrible sickness
she described, and I could say I have had more energy than prior but it has
been hard to gauge because I was a solo parent for 12 days while Hubby was away
in Thailand.
So now as I continue with hubby
home and most things settling down again I may be able to see a bigger change,
Time will tell…
Very nice but not the same as real coffee sadly
In the last post I promised a
little more information about my intolerances and what kind of diet changes I
had to make. Well it is quite drastic due to those things my body has trouble
dealing with, some may just be for a season due to the fact that my body is so
depleted at present and finds it difficult to cope with things I may have a
slight intolerance to in the past but is exaggerated by a low immune system.
Totally yuckky...
Dairy, gluten, caffeine, most food
additives and colours, vinegar, yeast, chocolate, alcohol, tea, fruits such as
– nectarines, strawberry, kiwi, pineapple, berries, oranges, apple, rockmelon,
red & green grapes
All the nightshade vegetables such
as white potato, tomato, eggplant & red pepper.
White wheat flour, whole wheat,
corn, jasmine rice.
Sweet corn, mushrooms, sweet
pickles, dill pickles, tomato sauce (catsup) anything that ferments in the gut
such as soy sauce.
Most important part of the day...
Well that’s it mostly, so what is
left to eat when you eliminate all that from your diet you might ask…well quite
a lot really, it just means that most of my meals are from scratch and quite
basic, I do happen to be able to use most herbs and spices (with the exception
of the ones made from things off the list) which really lifts the game when
deciding what to make for dinner or lunch.
I can have chicken (skin free) and
most of the whole meats except pork. Olive oil to cook with or canola oil,
steamed veg that are on my list and you have a nice meal.
A big plus to all of the changes
to my diet is a renewed ability to lose weight, my weight loss had stalled
completely due to my body having a leaky gut but craving the bad things like
sugar (in many forms). So I have seen the scales go down by 5.7 kilos in the 2
weeks since I made the changes.
I guess for me the hardest thing
is thinking about what to have at every mealtime to keep it interesting and not
become repetitive and boring.
I love the web and finding recipes
that can be adapted to suit my needs, friends have sent me links or whole
recipes that might be of help (and a lot are).
Sometimes it is tough going like
when Hubby and I went out for the evening to the Glen Frey (of the Eagles)
concert, it would have been so nice to have a drink before the concert and a
coffee after, but alas it was not to be. Catching up with friends for a cuppa
has become a lot harder, I have suggested we meet in a park and BYO or
something like that…I certainly miss just grabbing a coffee while I am out
shopping. My closest companion is my water bottle.
Next time I will try to share some
of those recipe I have found that can be adapted to most diets.
Until then I hope you are healthy
and happy, enjoying your life and sewing up a storm.
Life has many twists and turns and we often
find ourselves at a point where we have to either make complete change or
perhaps lose our life to something that is overwhelming and so hard to fathom.
I have had quite a few health issues over the
last few years and I won’t really go into that but just to say that if I did
not make a complete change, well I would not be here to enjoy Grand kids.
Over the years My body has been my enemy, no
matter what I did to improve my health it didn’t seem to make much difference.
I started walking daily for 3 klm a day and Wow the benefits were amazing. But
my body started to object, in the form of my arthritis. So walking became a
thing of the past.
Frustrated with not being able to get out and
walk for a distance without paying for it for a week after with agonizing days
in bed and having many other symptoms that have seen me hospitalized a few
times. I sought medical help, but after a year of searching the medical world
was slightly stumped and could not offer me much in the way of an answer.
I knew that I had exhausted all medical paths
and after feeling like the living dead for far too long, I decided to bite the
bullet and go see a Naturopath. I have a belief that God created all things and
He created them for our own good. I do believe in modern medicine and that God
has certainly gifted people with amazing talent and brains, but when all that
modern medicine can offer has been exhausted I felt the only alternative was to
seek a more natural way.
So I am a strange subject and quite often
baffle the medical establishment. I have had many allergies for most of my life
and had to be rather careful of certain food types etc.
After all the testing and having a rather
good handle on my health issues (so I thought) I was not prepared for the
outcome of my visit.
I knew my immune system was struggling, but I
had no idea just how much. Let’s put it this way, if my body was a car and my
immune system was the fuel…I was running on empty (barely).
I have noticed over the last 5 years that I
have been having rather massive reactions to some foods that I previously had
little or no reaction to. I knew I most likely had an issue with gluten and
lactose but did not realize how much that can affect everything else.
I showed intolerance's to more things than I
could tolerate. Some were not a surprise and some were. The intolerance's showed
themselves in many forms, whether it was a rash, hives, diarrhea, constipation,
migraines etc and the list goes on. You may wonder how I managed to go along in
life with such symptoms for so long, well all I can say is that we kind of got
used to my weird body reacting to things in a weird way and medical people
could not help so I would just have to live with it.
Having said that it is most often the case
for a lot of people that Living with it is not really living and until recently
I just believed it was my lot in life. How wrong could I be, I don’t have to
put up with feeling like I have been run over by a heard of elephants and all
the time.
My most recent symptoms were the most
concerning and I have had not way of knowing it was all connected, the thought
of losing my eyesight was a little scary to say the least.
The New Beginning Begins
So after seeing the Naturopath and getting an
understanding as to what is causing a lot of my problems it was time to make
the changes that will lead to a better life with more years of joy with my
family.
You can go here to get an understanding of intolerance's.
I guess from a young age we learn that if we
don’t get sick immediately after eating a certain food then we have no problem
with it, it is not even a spoken thing it is just a natural fact that if we eat
something and we have a reaction (visible) then we would know not to eat that
food again…but intolerance's don’t work like that as you may have read.
You can eat something for years (like me) and
not been aware of the connection between the way your body reacts and the food
in question.
Is there an answer?
Of course there is but it might not be the
answer I was hoping for. Simply because it is going to take a massive amount of
work and brain energy to work through everything and come to a place of
understanding my body better and how it reacts to certain foods. Changing my
diet drastically so as to give my body time to heal.
The biggest threat for me at the moment is a
little thing called “Candida Albiacans”
What are Your Symptoms?
Do you experience
fatigue and "foggy" thinking?
Do you crave sugar, have
a bloated abdomen or abdominal pain?
Can't lose weight no
matter what you try?
Do you have
"intimate" (male or female) infections or rashes -- to the point
where they are interfering with your love life?
Do you have a white
coating on your tongue, fungus on your toenails?
Have you been sent home
time and again by doctors who say "nothing is wrong" with you --
when something so obviously is?
Do you feel 20 to 30
years older than you should?
If any of these conditions sound
familiar to you... You may be dealing with a Candida infection or Candida
yeast overgrowth.
While most of these symptoms I do have like
foggy brain, craving sugar not being able to lose weight, being sent home from
the doctors with no answer and feeling 100 years old. I don’t have the obvious
thrush symptoms ( that would have been easier to figure out) mine is strictly
contained in my gut and digestive tract.
Where To From Here?
Well I have already started on the very
strict elimination diet to starve the candida, the replacement of good enzymes
in the stomach will aid recovery and the use of some pretty heavy duty vitamins
(in powder form) will help bring my immune system back to life.
My eyesight should return to normal (hopefully
no permanent damage) but the Eye doctor will be the judge of that.
I should be able to do simple things like
have a shower without feeling like I have run a marathon. Concentrate on
something and give it my all instead of feeling like my brain is missing. But the
best thing is I should not have those debilitating migraines anymore.
I think I have jabbered on enough so I will
save some of my Jibber Jabber for another post.
I think I will talk more about my specific
intolerance's and allergies and how that affects what I can eat, and how I go
about finding recipes and changing my life completely.
I
was one very blessed woman just recently; Hubby surprised me with a weekend
trip to Launceston in Tasmania for our 22nd wedding anniversary.
He
is a romantic at heart (well he tries); he had plenty of input from loads of my
girlfriends and his mates as well so how could he go wrong.
We
flew into Launceston on Friday lunchtime and picked up our hire car.
Audi A1
Then
off to the city of Launceston we went.
Checked
into Alice’s Cottages, the Camelot cottage was waiting for us.
Dining/ Lounge looking into the bedroom
Fire Place
Bedroom Canopy Bed
Spa Love the Mural
Ceiling above canopy, note the crown
Lounge
We
had fun exploring the local scenery and shops; we had some really nice Dickens Cider
with our fresh Italian pizza for our first meal in our cottage.
We
went for a drive to the Cataract Gorge and enjoyed the beauty of it all.
We
took a drive out to the wine region and went to a lovely winery called Pipers
Brook and Janz
Came
home for a nap and spa and then we were going out for Dinner but ended up
staying in as I didn’t feel so well (sadly) we enjoyed a very beautiful Indian meal
from a local restaurant and just enjoyed each others company and the peace and
quiet.
On
the Sunday we were flying out in the afternoon so we went had a drive through
the areas of Launceston we had not seen yet, the architecture was divine.
We
went off to Evandale to the local markets where I was very sad to say I wanted
to buy everything but could only fit so much in my luggage…I found a few little
trinkets for my children as gifts and a couple of things for us, including
Hubby’s new hat.
We
had a late lunch and returned the car to the airport as we awaited our flight
home.
The
one thing I noticed most about Launceston was the quietness and lack of people,
even in the city center on a Friday afternoon there didn’t seem to be many people
around…I thought they had all been abducted by aliens (jokes). I guess it is
just a sleepy kind of country town after all.
Sewing
starts up again this week so I am excited to get back to Khristina’s for some
fun together.
