Accountability

And I am back.....apparently.
Forgive me blogger but I have sinned, it has been about four years since my last post!  I am glad it is actually still here. Makes things easier I guess, no need to start anew.

Anyway, I feel the need to unload about things and thought here was as good a place as any. Nameless, faceless and safe enough to pour my heart out without feeling embarrassed and having to see you all in the morning.

Four years ago I joined slimming world and so far I have, at my lightest, lost nine stone. I went from just a hair under 22 stone to 13 stone. That was about six months ago and it's fair to say my journey since then has been difficult to say the least. Don't get me wrong the journey has never been easy really, I have had many issues with the weight loss. The losing process itself is the easy part, I know what I should be eating to lose weight and I know if I follow the plan it will work. Why then am I having so much trouble following the plan? I keep making excuses to eat the things I know I shouldn't in quantities that I know is too much.

An easy excuse has been marathon training. About four months ago some running buddies of mine started training for London Marathon and I decided to train with them. Mainly to see if I could do it and partially because I knew it would help with my fitness. So fast forward four months and the Sunday morning run has become 18 miles with four hours of running. I found I really could eat what I wanted and somehow was getting away with it. Weigh in on Monday was going well and I was maintaining it if I gained a little I blamed it on the run the day before. On the 2nd April I did it, I ran 26.2 miles, completing my first marathon. It wasn't an actual race, I just ran the distance mostly with a friend, around Gloucester. I am still incredibly proud of the fact that in two short years since I started running I have completed a marathon. However, the poor eating habits I gained in training for it have not stopped. In fact if anything they have gotten worse. I am really just eating chocolate and sweet things for the sake of eating. I don't even enjoy eating them at the time and I am finding justifying eating it impossible but that's still not stopping me!

 In the last four months I have gained back a stone and a half with half of a stone being gained in the last three weeks. What on earth am I doing to myself? Why do I feel so powerless to stop it? I feel out of control and I hate it.

I hate the way I am feeling physically at the moment, my jeans are getting tight, I wake up in the morning feeling like I am groggy and have no energy. I jiggle when I run again, this bothers me because sometimes it actually hurts to run. I am physically slower when I run and it is harder to keep up with my previous pace because of the extra I am carrying.

I hate the way I am feeling mentally at the moment, I am embarrassed to have gained back the weight. I had a friend tell me the other day that my weight loss and health had spurred him into doing something about his own weight. He had lost a lot and was so grateful to have been inspired by what I had done. The whole time he is saying this I am feeling more and more like a fraud as I had eaten an Easter egg and two huge pieces of toast for breakfast that morning without a hint of thinking about being healthy. I know he was praising me and I know he meant it in the sincerest way but it made me feel crap about my current attitude. I feel like crying and it's getting me down.

I have sat down and done another for and against losing weight list, to be honest they are ridiculous as what on earth could be more important than your health? What concern about excess skin or not being able to eat freely negates the need to just be alive? I know that if I carry on the way I am going I am going to end up putting back on all of the weight I have worked hard to lose but am failing quite badly at getting the determination and motivation to start losing again. How on earth do I do it?

So I know what I need to do, I am just struggling massively with the process of doing it. I don't want to go back to class  as I know I have gained again but I also know that I need to draw a line and stop this silly behavior. I am away this week anyway so as from tomorrow I am going to make a conscious effort not to eat junk. Go back to week one and write everything down again. Try to get some of this gain off before I go back next week. I need to refocus and decide what my new long term goal is. Getting the stone and a half off is one!

Distress Markers

YAY much happiness here! I have ten of the fab distress markers from Tim Holtz and just need some playtime to enjoy them! Crop tomorrow with Lorraine Freeman and then out sunday so I guess it will be next week before I can play properly :( Oh well, onwards and upwards!

PaperArts Tag challenge

So, the lovely people at paperarts are having a challenge this weekend. The only stipulation is that you need to use an embossing folder somewhere on the tag. This is to celebrate the fact they are having a two for one sale on all Tim Holtz Texture fades right now.

I entered this tag:

It is a 8 1/4 by 3 1/2 piece of  200gsm card embossed with the Cuttlebug script folder. I texturized the top using Tim Holtz tissue tape, fusible film and PVA glue. Left it to dry then went over with Alcohol inks. The bottom was drybrushed, as were the cogs, with black and browns. The edging is Distress Crackle paint in antiqued bronze. The whole tag looked like this before I put the adornments on it:

The top set of flowers is an acrylic set which came in clear. I applied Alcohol inks in butterscotch and Raison with a very small paintbrush. I did leave one of the flowers clear to let the fusible film shimmer through. They are sat on a gold mirror card piece punched with a Nellie Snellen die on my cuttlebug.

The cogs were drybrushed the same colours as the bottom of the tag and then I put a small piece of gold mirror card under them.

The Play ticket is from Tim Holtz Adage tickets and distressed with Vintage photo ink.

Hope you enjoy it!
Shell

Honey i'm home!

So, here we are! Nearly two years on and not much wiser to be honest :)

A lot has happened in the past two years and to quickly summerise we have had a human addition to the family, two pet losses and three new pets!

I have had a some time to get back into my crafting and now thanks to a wonderful shop I frequent I am into scrapbooking! Thanks PaperArts (link below).  I have only created two pages from scratch but I am really pleased with both of them! I am really enjoying altering tags too.  Oh and I created a fab altered bookbox after I took a Andy Skinner class.

This is my first scrapbook page!



This is my husband and daughter, I really love the way this one turned out. The main page is distress inked in peeled paint.  There were two layered pieces under the photo, the top one is peeled paint and faded jeans over gesso! It looks fab.

The bottom layer was a glossy cardstock with alcohol inks in Butterscotch and Lettuce.

I used a piece of paper from K and Co Speciality sparkle pad and edged it with a fiskers edge punch. I took plain ivory pearls and coloured them in with a green promarker and stuck these on the holes in the pattern down the edge.

The words were pink cardstock cut out on my Cricut using the George basic cartridge.

The pea pod was a labour of love! I am awful at drawing and despite my best efforts all of my peas came out looking squashed or just plain not pea pod like. I trawled the net for a free template and then printed it off. I punched two peas from green cardstock and put glossy accents on them to make them stand up. Stuck it all down and voila my first page!

So a sneaky peek at my second page I will post asap:

PaperArts website is http://www.paperarts.co.uk/ they are fab people and cheap as well!

See you soon

and the point is?

What is the point taking part in an online community if the community you are taking part in just takes the mick? I mean, giving out blog candy, telling someone they sre a winner then never sending anything??? Then saying you will but ignoring mails?

Oh well, lesson learnt i guess

More Candy

See,s  only get time to post Candy here at the moment,

Great Candy over at

http://thestampmanuk.blogspot.com/2010/06/more-tim-holtz-blog-candy.html

Chance to win

You could have a chance to win a brilliant stamp at http://bevscrafts.blogspot.com

Go there now!