Thursday 31 May 2012

Girly fun ...

As I mentioned before my sister is down for a wee holiday, as I've also mentioned I like to spend as little money as possible on things. I love bargains, and getting things for cheap!! Anyhow I'm a bit of a shocker for maintaining my hair/ beauty regime. I always seem to have something better to spend money on, and before I know it, I have brown hair and bushy eyebrows!!
Last night we decided to have a pamper night. Jessie said she would foil my hair, and we would do our eyebrows and nails.  So off to the supermarket for some foil and some dye ...
Not sure why I actually let my 23 year old sister near my hair with scissors and bleach, but she actually did a pretty good job, and it was fun, and it was cheap! Right up my alley basically. The hair took ages to do, so we didn't get round to doing our eyes and nails, might have to do round two tonight. Wish I had a before pic, it was actually brown. The colour's not too bad considering she's an amateur!! Hopefully my hairdresser doesn't think she has ruined it next time I go and see her... in a year lol!



Such fun hanging out with my sister, we talk and laugh nonstop. Now she does my hair too, and buys me coffee,  and looks after my baby so I can go for a run!! Yay for sisters xxx

Wednesday 30 May 2012

Bitter sweet .....

My brother has been in hospital for last couple of weeks. He is pretty unwell, for a young guy it's not all that cool. We are waiting on tests and numerous other things to get a more conclusive diagnosis.
My sister has come down from up north to see him and hang out. It's nice to have her home. C loved her visit, and the kids are lapping up all the attention!

Monday 28 May 2012

With Love......



Brrrrr its getting cold in the mornings round here. Lucky for us Andy's mum (nana) is a top notch quilter and has made all the kids a cute wee lap quilt each to keep them cosy. While we were at her place on Sunday for lunch (yes she made us a full sunday roast as well, how lucky are we!) she was stitching the last bit of binding in place for Jack's quilt.



He loves it, especially the spacemen and rockets, typical boy! Quilting is something I think I could enjoy, if I ever get brave enough to try. In the mean time I have selected some fabric, for Nana to make me a lap quilt as well. Thanks Nana xxxx

Saturday 19 May 2012

Monster ......

Made a monster hoodie for Archie, it was fun. Nice to be creative and do something for my kids for a change! Charlie came home and decided he wanted one as well, I let him model Archies one for the pic ..... Do you think that will cut it?

Thursday 17 May 2012

Autumn........




Its getting cold out, we were all bundled up in our woollies this morning ready to walk to school.The leaves are dropping and there are feijoa's that need to be picked. Autumn has well and truly set in.
Ive been meaning to make Archie some new winter clothes for ages but haven't got round to it. His kindy is in a valley and it gets so cold there, I don't think the sun comes up till about 10.30! He needs lots of woollies!! The good thing about making Archie stuff is that it kills two birds with one stone. If I make his things a bit big, Charlie will fit them too, BONUS!
Unfortunately once again, by the time I had finished making things for orders, I had run out of sewing time! I did however manage to whip up a new hat each. They chose the fabric, stoked!!
Hope you are all keeping warm xx

100% merino hoodie

Reversible merino beanie

GRUMPY!! 100% merino beanie, reversible.

Tuesday 15 May 2012

Race Day .....



Nearly there!

I can see the finish line ....

Finished YEAH!!!
Well I ran the race...... And I loved it!! I was quite surprised by this as I'm not a very competative person, but thinking about it I wasn't really competing against anyone else, I just wanted to better my own time. I came 37th out of 350 odd, so pretty pleased. My 5k time was 29min18 secs, I managed to achieve all the goals that I had talked about in my previous post, stoked!!!

The kids had run a cross country race the day before, and I had told them to try their hardest. When we were watching them race past, their faces all flushed and their arms pumping, you could see that they really were trying their hardest!!! I decided to take my own advice and really push myself during the run and guess what it paid off! The kids and Andy were there watching and cheering me on, it felt great. The kids told me they were really proud of me doing the run, and that next time I would come first lol yeah right!

The rest of the day was pretty low key. Had lunch with the in laws, then headed home to relax and hang out all cosy like in front of the fire, was bliss! Andy surprised me with a special extra mother's day gift (had already got magazine, lollies and cd form the kids), he got me a heart rate monitor. Now this may not sound very exciting to most, but I've wanted one for a while but couldn't really justify the cost. So THANKS HEAPS hun! The best thing was I went for a run this morning and did my workout dvd straight after, and the HRM showed id burned double the amount of calories that id thought id been burning Bonus!!! I hope its right!

Hope you all had a lovely mother's day xxx

Friday 11 May 2012

Happy Days ......

The last couple of days have been Happy days. Days where I feel like I have accomplished things other than the normal day to day tasks. They have also been well balanced days, which is important to me as a Libran! A good balance spent on family, on myself and on crafty goodness.

Yesterday I hit a big milestone on my weight loss journey. I stood on the scales and realised Id lost 30kgs, since beginning in January 2011. I was pretty stoked, its left me with only a few kilos left to go to hit 'goal' though feeling pretty good as I am so will just see what happens. I'm hoping to get brave enough to do a post with some before and after pics. I LOVE looking at peoples before and after pics, just not so sure I want to share my own.... watch this space!

I also spent some time downstairs reconnecting with my sewing room. This room has been in a shambles for the last few weeks, as we had new carpet put it. Its starting to look a bit more organised and pretty again, and I can feel some inspiration coming on. Another Libra trait of not being able to do anything if the room isn't tidy or organised!! In fact I almost finished both my mother's days gift Ive working on, which I'm  pleased about because for a while there  I thought I was being a bit too ambitious and wasn't going to get them done! ( I will post finished pics once the mother's have received them, don't want to ruin the surprise)

This morning I went and saw a herbalist who made me up a tincture to help me sleep. Ive been sleeping so badly for a while now, its starting to have effect on my life in a bad way. This tincture is full of herby goodness such as kavakava, lemon balm, chamomile and lots more I cant thing of at the moment. Here's to some sweet dreams happening tonight!

Had a lovely lunch with my mum, where we feasted on delicious miso soup and salmon don, and now I'm about to tidy the house and make some Slutty Brownies in preparation for Book Club tonight.
I'm feeling content, like I'm doing my 'job' as a sahm well at the moment. Sometimes as you all probably know it gets so chaotic and you just feel like your running around doing a million things without actually achieving anything! Its always those bitsy things that get me as well, all the little jobs. Anyway I was just thinking today how things had been going pretty smooth the last few days, and thought it was worth blogging about!!


Its cold and grey out today so thought I would pop this pic up of our holiday in Hanmer last year, twas nice and warm then!


Wednesday 9 May 2012

Expectations ......

Yesterday I registered for this race. Its a 5k fun run, held on mother's day. I was meant to do a race last weekend, but I chickened out. Now I regret it. The thing is I have NEVER done a race before, and as I have previously mentioned have never seen myself as a race kind of person! I still wouldn't class myself as 'sporty' and have always had this image of people doing fun runs/ races etc as being these great athletes. Anyhow as I have been told numerous times this week, I am a sporty person. I run 4 times a week, and do some sort of workout 6 times a week. I am perfectly able to run a 5k race!!! Funny though how it takes so much longer mentally to catch up with the physical changes.
My other issue is my high expectations, this is a constant problem in many areas of my life but that's a complete different post. I don't want to be last. I want to have a good finish time. I have been doing most of my running training for distance and haven't really focused on pace so much. I can run 14k, but my 5k time isn't great.
Well yesterday I decided to get over it and just give it a try. I read in a running forum somewhere that it was good to set yourself a few goals for the race, in the hope that you will accomplish at least a couple ( depending on all the factors that could affect the run, weather, how you feel etc).
These are mine:
 I want to push myself and run as fast as I can
 I want to finish with a time between 29-31 mins.                                                                                      I want to enjoy the run, instead of being stressed the whole time.
I'm sure that once I get over the not knowing what its like fear, I will love it. I really enjoy running and see races as good motivation and incentive to do better and push myself. Hopefully it all goes well and I can relax and enjoy the rest of Mother's day with my family xxx

Here's Charlie. Nothing to do with the post, but he looks cute, and I need to see cute pics of him atm because he is driving me crazy! Hope this phase is a quick one!

Saturday 5 May 2012

Sport ..........

So my family likes sport..... ALOT!!! Andy and Jack could spend hours talking about sport, watching the sports news every night is great fun you get the drift!!! My mother thinks its hilarious that I have ended up with 3 boys, especially ones that are full on physically. I was such a girly girl when I was younger and hated exercise lol.
Anyhow I digress .... Sport is big in our household, basically its the main interest. Andy has played Soccer for years, he still plays now and coaches Jacks team. Charlie plays as well, so that's 3 games in one day. The boys also love mountain biking, tennis, basketball shall I go on?  Soooo I've chosen to embrace it. I decided that if I wanted to spend any time with my family that I would have to learn to love the things that they do. We now cycle together in the weekend, Jack and I go for runs, we go for many family walks!! The kids love it, it burns off excess energy, I must admit I don't mind it too much either!! Its good healthy clean fun and its free! Thankfully my boys also love to do craft, read, bake and other more sedate activities..... just not as much as they love sport!!!!!
Our weekend sports activities so far:
                                                      
Watching the Giants game:


Captivated!


Like father like son



 Saturday morning soccer:





 I only got as far as Charlie's game before I met up with a few friends who were going out for coffee and got a bit sidetracked. I'm not totally committed to the soccer mum thing quite yet, it was a bit to easy to sway!

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Home Again .......

Wellington was amazing, oh how I LOVE that city. We wined, we dined. We coffeed on Cuba. We browsed in beautiful designer stores where we couldn't afford anything, it was fabulous! I have come home feeling so inspired, the people looked fashionable, the store displays interesting, the city is so vibrant!
But as lovely as the weekend was, it was also very nice to come home to my boys. Andy did a great job as per usual, and apart form a little extra washing, the house was just as I left it YES!!!! 
Easing back in to it the last couple of days, there has been lots of baking  (spicy apple muffins and chewy muesli bars), walnut eating and smashing (the boys favourite part), and running (ME, have to work off the weekends indulgence). Also started watching season two of Game of Thrones, OMG intense!!!
Its nice to be home. Hope you all had a good weekend xxx

                                                                                   



My mum came round this afternoon with this super cute teapot for me!!
THANKS MUM!!!!