I have an old belt that was very worn around the holes and seemed to be on the verge of tearing. I was going to throw it out, but it seemed such a shame to waste the rest of it, which is quite nice. I realised I could make wrist cuffs out of it!

I found a tutorial at The Project Spot, which gave me the idea for the snap fasteners and reassured me that they weren’t too difficult to use. It took me a while to find the snaps at the shops: there’s a dearth of craft shops around here, but I found some good ones at a fabric shop and away I went!

Here’s the result!

The belt has a nice pattern on it that you can’t see in the photo from my iPhone, but it’s there. As you can see, I added some rivets to the second one, for a bit more flare.

I have a $3 notebook from Office Works that is great! It has heavy, creamy pages, an elastic band to keep the cover closed and a pen holder that fits my fountain pen nicely. Then I have a 2012 diary that is almost great: it has a beautiful cover, lovely pages and typography, but no pen holder… I didn’t realise how much I valued a pen holder on my notebooks and diaries until I had an excellent one on my notebook and none on my diary.

So, I cut the elastic off a 2011 diary that I barely used and used a craft brad and a little glue to secure it to my 2012 diary. Problem solved!

Thanks to Twitter I caught wind of Fitarella’s 12 in 12. Not only does Jacqueline have a cool screen name, she also has a great idea for this year!

The rules for 12 in 12 are that you do something every day for each month of 2012, at the end of each month you decide whether to continue with what you have been doing and choose a new thing to do every day for the next month. The “thing” can be pretty much anything: exercise, giving up a food or activity, trying a new food or activity.

12 in 12 is a great opportunity to try new things, build new habits, practice activities that you haven’t made time to practice in the past. I like the idea because it’s a measurable goal, it’s good for developing discipline, and you can make it as easy or difficult on yourself as you like.

For January I am doing 3 sets of abdominal crunches when I get up each morning. I haven’t decided on any challenges for future months, but I have got a list of ideas. You’re welcome to draw from this list if you want to take up the challenge too!

• pushups
• squats
• lunges
• walk up & down stairs
• no coffee
• no chocolate
• dark chocolate instead of milk
• eat at least 3 greens
• cook a new recipe
• wake up earlier
• don’t take a daytime nap
• read at least 1 Christian (or topic of your choice) article
• play guitar
• play flute
• learn to play piano
• write a blog post
• write a letter

What new thing are you hoping to do this year?

I hate new year resolutions!

At least I have for quite a long time. I think they’re cliché, they’re too often setting yourself up for failure — people don’t realise that change and improvement usually don’t happen in a linear fashion — and if you really want to make a change, or want to achieve something, just do it! You don’t have to wait for new year to better yourself or achieve goals.

That said, this last week or so has been pretty chilled for me, and a good opportunity to think, review and plan. It is actually a nice chance to think about what to work on and how to approach it. One of the things I hate about new year resolutions is the lack of follow through: people say they want something to happen, but do nothing to make it happen. And it’s a failing of my own as well: too often I think about doing something, but don’t do it. So, the how to approach it stage is a grand step towards actually taking action.

Some tips for successful change

• Don’t just think, do
• Change usually doesn’t happen overnight, nor is it consistent — there will be ups and downs
• If you fall off the wagon, you haven’t failed (or if you have, your goal might have been too ambitious), just get back on at the first available opportunity

What changes do I want to make?

Well, unfortunately, due to a lack of exercise and possibly too much take away food, I’ve put back on a fair bit of the weight I lost. I’m super keen to lose that and keep it off. One of the methods to achieve this is to practice my karate kata at home every weekday, or close to it. I’ll need more exercise than that, but it’s a start.

I want to make more Thesis skins and plugins. It was my hope to do that last year, and while I made a couple of free plugins and one paid child theme, I want to do more.

I want to make a series of video tutorials about making websites (I think the series will be called Websites Back to Front). These will involve using FTP, HTML, CSS, WordPress and Thesis. I believe there are good videos and tutorials out there, but I think I’m in a good position to reach some keen beans that those other tutorials haven’t reached yet.

There is much more I want to do, but I don’t want to set myself up for failure by listing too many of them here (and I don’t mind if some of them happen in years to come).

Happy new year everyone!

Good luck, or if you believe in him, happy God’s providence to you.

No, this is not my first WordPress post with the default title, but I’ve been mostly away from the internet for so long, that I feel like I need to say HI!

Where was I?

Towards the end of last year I was overwhelmed by work, and then I was sick for some time. I don’t really want to get into the details, except to say: I’m not 100% well again, but I am so much better and I think I’m getting better all the time. Also, I’m so sorry to anyone who was affected by my illness, whether it was delayed jobs or delayed replies to email, or anything else.

There are a few jobs and emails that I still need to catch up on, but I hope to be completely up to date soon. If you think you should have been contacted by me and haven’t been, please feel free to email me.

What have I been doing?

Well, for some time the answer was not a whole darn lot! A lot of stressing, panicking, lying on the couch watching TV or sleeping. It wasn’t all bad though; have a look at some of the good times in pictures…

Walking

My doc told me that to get better I had to get out, get some sunshine and exercise. So I took that prescription and explored a couple of local places, including a pretty interesting cemetery.

Celebrating

Yeah, celebrating isn’t the easiest thing to do when you’re not feeling up to snuff, but the world keeps on turning and you have to go with it. I am very blessed to have such beautiful family and friends, with whom I gathered for Christmas, a couple of weddings, and to usher in the new year.

I also learnt how to make cut-out cookies and decorate them, which was fun, and quite relaxing too.

What’s next?

For some time I’ve been wanting to change my business around a bit so that both you and I get more bang for our buck. This includes some plans to move servers, rearrange my site structure a little, release some premium Thesis skins and more. I don’t have the details ready to announce to you yet, but I look forward to having something for you all (soon, I hope)!

In the mean time I hope to get back to posting tutorials and photos and whatever else strikes my fancy…

365

Speaking of posting photos… I’ve started a 365 project. Yeah, they’re all the rage at the moment. With Camera+ back in the app store and its associated Mostly 365, I feel a little like I’m just jumping on the bandwagon. But I’ve wanted to do this for so long! I even announced a couple of years ago that I was doing one, but I guess I gave up, or forgot, or something.

Anyway, I’m committed, and I’ve set myself very few rules to make it as easy as possible. The only real rule is that I need to take at least one photo every day that either teaches me something about photography, my camera, or the world, or take a photo that is technically good, or a photo that I just like. I’m not going to be posting these photos every day: it’s too hard. However, every photo will have its timestamp, and I will post them eventually (when I’ve moved servers).

I hope I’ll learn loads about photography, train my eyes, train my brain, and master my camera. Already I’ve learnt that self-portraits are difficult without a remote trigger (I’ve bought a new battery for mine), butterflies are very difficult to capture, and food photography is not easy— but is best in natural light with not too shallow a depth of field.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who was concerned about my absence, contacted me to see if I was alright, spared a thought for me, and was patient with me. I really appreciate it!

Have you heard of Mooo? Nope, it’s not Moo.com (but they do some brilliant digital printing work, and generally rock the box). Mooo (with three Os) is an Australian company that prints children’s products — decorative, interactive, practical and fun.

Mooo sent me some samples of their invitations, t-shirts, notecards, and a few other things, to check out what they’re like… I was very impressed! The designs vary in personality and style for all kinds of kids; all of them are really cute (or cool, if boys are too manly to be cute), and really well done. The print quality is very nice (and I mean nice! For example, the cards and invitations use lovely, smooth heavy card), and the final products are very professional.

I’m sure any kids that receive Mooo products with their own name on them would feel quite special!

The products are so cute that I would even use them myself! I recently used some of their Thank You cards at a dinner, and I bought some of their name labels and envelope seals for my own personal use. I also got some name labels and iron-on name tags for friends’ kids.

I would even wear their t-shirts if the neck was big enough to fit over my head! I guess that’s a pleasure I’ll have to save for my own kids, whenever they might come into being.

Thanks Mooo for making me aware of your company with great samples, and for the great personalised products I’ve now got!

If you need some presents for children, or even something cute to help keep track of your kids’ gear definitely check out Mooo.com.au!

Why DIY?

In my search for flash diffuser ideas I saw this comment:

I don’t get it. People spend thousands of dollars on their camera gear and then skip a few bucks on buying a decent flash diffuser and make one out of domestic waste instead? Brilliant.

I agree! Although back in the day I used up all my money buying the camera gear and didn’t have much left for accessories… in that case I think DIY is pretty justified. That particular forum conversation ended in jest and my inclination towards DIY wasn’t especially marred.

I found the Lumiquest Soft Screen, which looks really nifty for a nice low price, but only two shops that are not particularly near by sell it, and I want to use it this week.

Failed attempts

I’ve seen a few different pop-up flash diffuser idea, including a film canister and cigarette packet. Alas, I didn’t have those things and they’re not particularly cheap to buy new.

I did have several translucent shopping bags and a newsagent down the road selling cardboard and plastic folders. So I attempted my own flash diffuser designs. I used black plastic from a folio folder (the kind with the flap that velcros down) and white plastic from an Apple Store shopping bag.

The first two I made were modelled on the Lumiquest soft screen with different attachment mechanisms. One had a paperclip wrapped in tape as a hook to loop through the back of the popped-up flash. The other had a tab that looped through the front of the popped-up flash and inserted into the back flap. In both designs the front of the structure wasn’t sturdy enough to hold up in front of the flash quite like the Lumiquest one seems to. It might need flexible wire reinforcement, or something.

Success

As a last ditch effort I took one of my left over squares from the shopping bag and cut a rectangle out of the folder (about 5.5x15cm). I made a cone out of the plastic and stapled it together, I cut the back of the cone off for the flash to slip in and trimmed the front of the cone so that it was in a oval shape (with pointy sides, from the corners of the rectangle). I covered the front with the plastic and stapled it on at the back.

It’s not especially attractive, although it’s not ridiculously ugly either. It just slips on the flash and it manages to stay on, not particularly tightly, but I’d be comfortable walking around a room with it (at least comfortable with it not falling off!). And it works to make using the built-in flash a little less horrid (essentially by making the light source bigger)!

Test photos

These photos are with and without the flash diffuser, the white balance could do with some adjusting (it was on auto), but the shadows are definitely softer and the light is less harsh.

Time vs. Money

The design could certainly use refining. I could tidy up the edges of the white plastic. I could put foil on the inside to direct the flash and avoid light absorbance. I could try to come up with a different structure that can fold up into a pocket or camera bag more easily…

Even though this whole exercise only cost $3.95, I realised, after my experimenting, that it had cost a lot more in time, and if I’d just driven to one of the shops that sells the Lumiquest Soft Screen and spent the rest of my time working I probably would have come out ahead. Then again, there is a certain sense of achievement and a gaining of knowledge that comes from doing these things, so who knows, perhaps that value will come into play sometime… I think I’ll still check out the Soft Screen!

Mental conditioning

I’ve never been “skinny”. Throughout primary school and high school the mean boys called me fat. I truly believed I was. Sometimes I was depressed about it and other times I would just get on with enjoying life with people who didn’t want to put me down.

The truth is, I don’t think I was ever really fat, at least not when I was in school. I was on the pudgy side, sure. I was not skinny, but my BMI was probably in a healthy range, or possibly the low end of overweight. However, when I did leave school — left the convenience of organised sport, no longer had set meal times, left Mum’s cooking — I put on weight. It was reasonably gradual; on the order of 20kg (about 44lb) over 5 years.

The worst weight increase was over 2008 when I was doing honours at uni (and mostly hating it), doing almost no exercise (because I spent so much time at uni) and eating a lot of big carb-filled meals (very good pasta, risotto and curries at uni).

Going up

Why am I talking about this?

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned being overweight on my blog before… Partly because I was embarrassed: why, when you can present any version of yourself that you want, would you include the fat part? Also, I didn’t realise how much weight I’d actually put on. When you start putting on weight there are some natural reflexes, such as avoiding mirrors and photographs, that help you fool yourself into thinking that you haven’t really put on that much. And since I’ve had it in my head since childhood that I am fat, it’s easy to dismiss an increase in weight as “just the way I am”.

But now, losing weight has been such a significant part of the last year, that I feel the need to document it in some way.

The realisation

My weight loss journey started on a pretty ordinary day. I was in my local shopping centre and I saw my reflection in a shop window. I thought to myself “What the hell? You don’t look like that! When did you get so fat?” I decided something had to be done.

The reasons

It’s not just about looks. My Mum survived Breast Cancer and my Dad has Type II Diabetes; being overweight is a risk factor for both of those diseases, and I would rather not get them too! Not to mention the host of other diseases and health risks associated with being overweight.

Although losing weight doesn’t guarantee I won’t get them (I don’t think Mum was overweight when she got cancer), at least I know I’ve done what I can to reduce my chances.

For those that look at the photos above and think “she’s not that fat”, or “I’ve seen worse”, if being that size was a health risk for me (and it was!), imagine what a health risk it is to be bigger! For a long time I didn’t worry about my weight because there is always someone bigger, but your health is not something that you should put at risk because the risks are socially acceptable. Disease doesn’t grade on a curve.

The change

On the 23^rd April 2009 I joined Weight Watchers. I chose Weight Watchers because Mum had done it before and I was a bit familiar with the POINTS system. I don’t regret joining for a moment! I have really enjoyed learning about food and health and I really enjoy eating healthier and feeling better.

Weight Watchers has some really good resources and they give you so much useful information in non-overwhelming batches. For example, at the start they give you booklets about getting started (which I still go back to for recipes sometimes) and about the Good Health Guidelines. When you try to stick to those guidelines (1 portion of carbs with every meal, protein 2-3 times a day, 5 serves of veggies, 2 serves of fruit, 8 glasses of water etc) your body functions so much better. It’s brilliant!

Over the last 10 months I’ve lost 22.4kg (and still going). Everything seems so much easier now! Moving, exercising, clothes shopping… it’s all loads easier. I even feel like I can relate to people better because I’m not self-conscious, and I’m no longer uncomfortable in my own skin.

Going down

A lot of people are embarrassed to discuss weight loss or eating habits, and I empathise completely. It would be nice if we weren’t though. It’d be great if we could openly encourage each other to be healthier, without seeming superficial.

I haven’t been reading weight loss blogs or anything, but one blog crossed my Twitter stream recently. Kudos to Tyler for sharing his journey and giving others handy hints along the way!

Avoiding vanity

Sometimes I’ve wondered how taking care of ourselves fits in with a Christian worldview. Sometimes the health reasons for losing weight can seem like excuses and one can get caught up in just looking good.

I have found myself falling into that trap and need to remind myself that a godly women adorns herself in good works (1 Tim 2), she’s a woman who loves Christ and loves others.

However, there are so many benefits to losing excess weight that will benefit your ministry too, I think it’s not only okay, but maybe even wise. God has given us this body and it’s the only one we’re gonna get (until Jesus returns). Healthier eating and regular exercise strengthens your body against illness, strengthens your muscles and bones, increases your metabolism, gives you more energy and helps you to sleep better. Also, there’s the relational stuff I mentioned before. Having more energy, getting sick less often, and feeling confident to relate to others sound like excellent assets to ministry to me.

Big thanks to everyone who has supported me thus far!

One of our friends had his 21st recently. Since he is an enormous movie buff it was a dress-up party: “retro TV/movie characters or actors”. I was so plagued by indecision that I almost didn’t want to go, and having left it until that day to finalise a costume, the options were not too grand.

I went to a couple of op-shops and there were some cute dresses and coats that might have turned into something good for me, but not really for hubby. I found some good cartoon characters, but I didn’t have the right coloured clothes.

We ended up not really going as anyone, although I wore jeans and a singlet top and called myself Faith the Vampire Slayer… not retro enough for some, I’m sure.

Now that the party is over I know that there were a lot more options than I realised. So, here are some for future reference. Not all are boy/girl matches, but you could go as a single character or girls can dress up as boys… or vice versa!

Well, I was tagged by Lisa Firke to do the 7 things meme… again. Yes, I’ve done this one in 2007, in 2008 and also an eighth fact in there too. However, since I like Lisa, I haven’t posted for a week or so and I don’t want to force feed you too much PHP and CSS, I’ll do another one for 2009. I’ll also try not to repeat anything from the other ones, nor from my 100 things.

1. I really love the movie Stardust. I’m not quite sure what it is about it — perhaps the unique setting, or the genius of Robert De Niro — but I could watch that thing over and over.
2. I have really annoying dermatitis where my engagement and wedding rings should be. It’s usually fine in winter, but in summer, when my fingers are more swollen and sweaty, I can only wear my rings about once every seven days.
3. I like playing backgammon. I used to beat my husband all the time (after he taught me to play), but someone at his work has been teaching him how to play and now I win slightly less than half the time. Backgammon on the iPod Touch is not much fun because the computer’s tactics suck.
4. I seem to need a mostly black desktop wallpaper. Anything too lightly coloured makes me uneasy.
5. I bought Bionic Woman the complete series on DVD. Little did I know that the complete series was 8 episodes because it paused for the writers strike and then got axed! Kind of a bummer: it wasn’t the greatest show, but I definitely enjoyed it.
6. I’ve never had any desire to do a 9–5 job and there was no profession that really excited me… Now here I am, working from home, doing website customisations for you guys. Rockin’.
7. I have mp3s of all the songs ever on the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (well, I think I have all of them, might be missing some). That show was awesome for music.