Tuesday 23 February 2016

Operation: Wedding

Some of you know that Dave and I are getting married in 2017, we are planning the wedding for somewhere in June or July, yes, I know we still haven't set the exact date!

We will not have a big lavish wedding as this is just not who we are. It will be more of a fun, homemade knees up. Our venue is already planned and kinda booked, the next step is obviously setting the date and as soon as that is done the true planning can truly begin.

With time flying by at alarming speed we both decided that the operation wedding should begin now.
starting with.... diet.....The horrible and most dreaded word in the dictionary.
The other day we were looking at pictures of when we first met and boy was there so much less of us.Of course we both know we put on weight not being able to fit into cloths is kinda a big give away.
It's just living in our happy little (or ever expanding) bauble is so easy to forget or in fact not pay any attention to the pinching trousers, the extra roll of fat around our bellies or for me the lovely dresses in my wardrobe, that just look at me sadly because I haven't been able to wear them for quite a while now.

I have recently overheard a conversation on the train between two women which still plays on my mind. They were discussing their friend who went through a divorce recently and who had 'let herself go' since then. Then I was discussing this conversation with someone else who remarked how easy it is to 'let yourself go'.... I hate that expression, to me it symbolises that we are judged only on appearance, that the way we present ourselves is the most important aspect about us. It does not matter who we are, what we have achieved, all that matters is whether we have a muffin top and remembered to put lipstick on.

We all have our usual self, the face we recognise when we look in the mirror. The way we do/or not do our make up, the way we dress, the way we wear our hair, the weight we are most comfortable at - all this factors add up to create the comfortable us, but then situation in life sometime shake the equilibrium and throw us of balance or puts us on a completely different level.

Some of these situations are wonderful and happy, like finding the one and in your contentment you put on few pounds or you rather play with your kids than spend time grooming, maybe you went through a long overdue divorce or just found the happy place in your life, where you know you don't need to impress anyone and can just totally be yourself. You might stop wearing make up, get back to your natural hair colour, wear clothes that are so comfortable no matter how baggy they are, then the face that stares at you in the mirror changes a bit, but it's a wiser, happier face and as long as you love that face then no one should care why you've stopped wearing mascara.

Some situations in life are difficult and heart breaking, they question who we are and throw completely different prospective on life. When my mum passed away 12 years ago, for months my personal grooming routine was non existent, hell it was so down on my list of priorities I would have needed a search party to find it and suddenly I hated the face that stared back at me in the mirror. I didn't hate it because I had a unibrow, no, I hated it because I wasn't strong enough to cope with my grief. I was trying to find myself, a way of dealing with the pain and a way of facing my whole life without my mum in it, which is still the scariest prospect of all. Eventually with help I found my way out of this dark tunnel and stopped hating the face that was in the mirror.

Maybe the events in our life are so overwhelming, whether they are happy or sad, that the way we look is just completely unimportant and might never be important again.
Whatever the reasons are for us looking different from our usual self it should never be judged as 'letting ourselves go', maybe it's just a beginning of new us.

Well, David and I just want to get back to the slimmer versions of us. Last night we have joined Weight Watchers and I'm planning on documenting our journey in hope that it might motivate us to stick to the diet. Once a month I shall post about our progress, fingers crossed :)

We are both so ecstatic to be starting a new diet ;)


Anna x





 




Saturday 20 February 2016

Tutorials


I have been busy bee creating and adding some new tutorials to the website.

They are about how to thread a bead onto yarn and how to work a bead into double crochet, half treble and treble (US sc, hdc, dc). 


Adding beads to your crochet is a wonderful and simple way to add new dimensions to your work. The embellishments can stand alone or be incorporated into the fabric. 

The tutorials are especially very useful for those who are making or planning on making any of the purses which include beads from my book - 20 To Make; Crochet Purses.


The book contains 4 purses that require beads: Olivia, Watermelon, Isla and Isabel.


All the beads are size 6 and I got them from DebbieAbrahams online shop. 

I have also grouped all tutorial together which are useful when making purses from my book, such as: cross stitching on crochet, magic loop and so on. 

They are all available on the tutorial page on my website- click here.

Also, don’t forget on my website there is also a list of all the purse clasps used in the book with links where to purchase them.

Anna xx