Fallen off the wagon

Okay so I fell of the wagon, I have had no portion control for the last week and a half and I have not been moving enough. Just yoga once a week and sporadicly a bit of pilates at home. I studied my habits and motivation and came to the conclusion that I am not motivated when I have no goal. My initial goal was to reach a healthy BMI now that I accomplished that I am suffering from lack of motivation. I decided to reach for an old hearts desire. My ultimate goal is to take up ballet again. I haven't danced in 11 yrs!! I used to dance a few times a day (jazz ballet, african dance and my favorite classical ballet) then I got pregnant with son#1 and got really really ill. I never fully recovered since the pregnancy triggered my anemia. Anyway I am straying from subject. I will start balletlessons in september of 2008. Wich means that I have 8,5 months to get lithe!

1st goal is to re-teach myself this stretch

2nd goal is to re-teach myself this one

Well enough goals to reach for now, I will be keeping you posted on the progress.

I am soooo exited by the thought of buying a ballet outfit next summer! I used to visit this lil shop almost weekly when I was a dancer and I was shocked that they didn't go bankrupt when I stopped dancing LOL

Blessings,

Groceries 12/8/07 till 12/14/07

I try to spend a max of 100 euro's weekly on the groceries (food, tioletries, cleaningsupplies etc) In about six months time I want to spend a max of 75 euro's. Sadly enough groceries especially biological/organic fruit and veggies are extremely expensive in NL (not all but most of the tropical fruits and veggies and as a caribeangirl I like my okra/stringbeans and what nots ;-)

Market 6.99 euro's

1 kilo tomatoes

1 cabbage

2 zuchinni's

1 cucumber

1 kilo banana's

Healthstore 3.59 euro's

1 biological/organic tioletcleaner

1 roll of biological candy

Grocery store 37.62 euro's

Gouda cheese slices 2x

biological/organic patatoes

spinach

kitchentowel

juice

cola for dh

muesli

strawberry and vanilla custard

e.v. olive oil

smarties

bulb

paper hancherchiefs

tomatosoup 2x

coffee

biological/organic handsoap

seasalt

veggie sausages

whole weat bread

corn (can)

lettuce

Xenos 9.83 euro's

casa fiesta wraps

naanbread 2x

salsa mild

joy strawberry (healthdrink for kids)

green punch soda 2 lil cans for sunday after dinner treat

sweet and sour saus

capri sonne 4x

Total: 54.63 euro's

That leaves me with 45.37 euro's I still need to buy fish and milk/bread for the rest of the week.

Update:

Grocery store 17.95 euro

Tilapiafilet 1500 grams

2x whole weat bread

1 plant for fishtank

vanilla yoghurt

Budget left: 27.42 euro I am probably going to overspend this week because I am getting guests. My auntie and niece are coming to spend a few days with us so I need to adapt the budget to 6 ppl instead of 4 wich is perfectly ok caus it's going to be fun the kids love having family around and I haven't seen my aunt in 2 years (she lives in surinam)!!

Edit:

Grocery store 15.36 euro

caprisonne 2x

low fat milk

whole weat bread

cookies

gouda cheese

pancakes

prunes

stroopwafels this is actually a gift for my dh his american collegues, I send some over for them when dh was last there and they have all become somewhat addicted lol

Market (wednesday) 4.25 euro (auntie paid the fruitman she was so quick I could not even protest)

1 kilo banana's

5 pears

5 apples

10 tangerines

2 zucchini's

1 cabbage

Budget left: 7.81 euro I fed a family of 6 and still stayed within my budget. The 7,81 one will go straight into my saving can.

Friday Menu's

I decided to share my weekmenu's with you. I will do this on fridays but since I came up with this brilliant idea today this one time I will do it on a saturday. I make my menu's every friday and go to the market and grocery store every saturday.
* We don't eat meat or poultry, however we do eat fish and animal by products like eggs and milkproducts. The only time we do eat red meat is when I am anemic and need the iron.

Saturday: Rice with steamed cabbage and fried fish
cabbage
butterfish
tomatoes
onion
garlic
rice

Sunday: wraps with tilapia
tortilla's
salsa mild
grated cheese
tilapiafilet
spinach
onions
garlic
burrito seasoning

Monday: tomatoe soup and grilled cheese sandwiches
bags of tomatosoup 2x
whole weat bread
cheese

Tuesday: chile con "carne"
kidneybeans
ground mushrooms
tomatoes
bayleaf
onions
garlic
rice

Wednesday: homemade fries with vegan or fishnuggets and salad
patatoes
fishsticks
lettuce
tomatoes
cucumber
corn (canned)

Thursday: spaghetti with zucchini
Spaghetti
Canned tomatoes 3x
courgette (zuchini) 2x
grated cheese 1x
dried italian herbs
onions
garlic

Friday: dhal (yellow split peas) with naan (indian flat bread)
yellow split peas
onions
masala spices
garlic
gira
naan

Blessings,

Errhmmmm yeah so I.....

was playing around with the looks of the blog and couldn't remember wich one I had to begin with

I decided instead of driving myself nuts trying to find the old lay-out to just go with the flow and choose a new one. So TADAAAAA I introduce my new blog lay-out and background

YEAH I finished my yoga bag....

.... but now I am too tired for yogaclass :-( I am going to cook and than take a nap perhaps I can recharge and go show off my bag LOL

Ok this is just a really quick post caus I need to start cooking!

The bag modelled by my big lil man ;-) Don't ya just love purple and pink :-D

Idle hands are the devil's playground.

Have you ever heard of http://www.ymib.com/? If so you are probably just as hooked as I am. Since discovering YMIB it has become my lil sanctuary online. It's THE place to find inspiration, relaxation, information, support, beautiful passionate natural living sister, it is my home on world wide web.

I never thought of myself as the creative kind, never had the patience to create. Visiting YMIB has put me in touch with a whole different side of my being. A side that loves making life beautiful, see the sisters @ YMIB enjoy all aspects of living. Cleaning the home, cooking dinner they have simply made an art out of every day otherwise trite activities.

Creativity not only feeds the soul it also doesn't give the devil time to put insecurity and fear into my head. Being stressed out about the lil man being ill, and being home with him 24/7 put a lot of fear in my head. I was so scared that there was something horribly wrong with my baby. I needed to stop doomthinking and needed something to concentrate on.

My cousin was here with me and since we were not able to leave the home and do any outdoors activity (read: shopping) We decided to try collaging. Well it certainly stopped me from doomthinking caus I was getting frustrated as h*ll with cutting out and glueing tiny pieces of paper. Creativity cannot dwell in the same place as perfectionism I soon learned. It took me 6 hours to finish my collage in between taking care of my son. I love the end result but was pretty sure I would never ever do that again.

About a week later I found myself by the phone staring at it wondering when it would ring. My lil man was feeling much better and wanted to go to the daycare. Dh had just brought him but I was worried sick that it might be to soon and stayed staring at the phone just in case they would call to tell me to pick him up. Devil was putting all kinds of horrid thoughts in my head again and I needed to shut him up! I decided to go to my online sanctuary and read some. Suddenly the urge to create was to hard to resist, and I decided to make another collage. While searching through magazines, cutting pictures, words and quotes my soul was easing a bit. My brain stopped the negativity and I was truly enjoying myself.

Thank you YMIB for teaching me patients to create, for helping me let go of my perfectionism and for giving me the tools to exorcize the devil ;-)

Blessings,

Chayil

Yoga bag drama...

Okay forget about all the other projects I told you about ;-) I started yoga and being me, having a yogamat (cute pinkribbon yogamat) in a large shopper that says intertoys, cramps my style LMAO

After searching for a yoga bag in all (3) sport related stores in this lil village and having very odd stares and a few recommendations for a large sportingbag to fit my yogamat I decided to continue my search online. I found one fell in love and after noticing the price fell back out of love real quick! Bagprices ranged from 45 euro's and up!!!

I decided that making a yoga bag would be a great challenge and project and would test all my new sewingskills. I searched all over the net for a free yoga bag pattern and found one

This project was turning out to be much much more challenging than I imagined. First of all all the measurements are in inches and my tapemeasure is in cm, so I had to start turning all inch into cm wich was horrible caus now I was left with measurements like 75.8 cm :-(

Than I discovered that I needed lining for the inside of the bag. Since I didn't have that either I decided to make the bag without lining. So far so good I cut out all the patternpieces and started assembling my bag. Only to discover that I cut the circle (bottom of bag) and added seem allowance wich wasn't nescesarry caus it was already in the pattern LOL So I had to trim some off didn't want to go back and remeasure so I just took a guestamate. Because the original patterns and explanation expects me to use the lining I had no idea how to attach the strap neatly. See they made it disappear somewhere in the lining. Well I did the best I could improvising and eventhought the bag is cute I will not take it out of the house LOL So now the bag is used for hanging the mat on my door for @home yoga.

I started making a new bag lining and all even cut out all the pieces but I want to adjust the pattern just slightly so the bag will close with a drawstring. Back to the drawingboard. Will keep ya posted.

Here is a pic of the first yogabag (modeled by dh) always great for a chuckle or 2 The fabric kind of sux but it was the only suitable fabric I had in the house. (fabric by ikea) The next bag will be dark purple with pink trimmings :-D

Blessings,

Chayil