My Raw Food Diet Progress

Well, it has been one month since I have been on my raw food diet and here are some things I have discovered:

I LOVE

avocados - so filling

dried pears- so divinely sweet!

sundried tomatoes - so much flavour!

gherkins - so tasty!

Some sad things I have found are that I can not eat

grapes

or any kind of nut

 because my digestive system reacts badly!

GOOD NEWS: I have lost 5 kilos in 1 month!

I have decided to reintroduce bread into my diet, because I tried it and it digested well.

Plus, the raw food diet is quite restricted if you can't eat nuts.

I'm just loving preparing fruit and vegetables for meals!

Linen Cupboard Overhaul

I've been a bit distracted lately, and my new routines have flown out the window a bit. But I did give my linen cupboard a makeover and wanted to share it with you. (By the way, this is really the wardrobe in our guest bedroom, not your standard linen cupboard.)

I bought 2 lots of linen storage bags from Avon (they often have good storage ideas) to pack all my spare pillows, cushions, blankets, and linen into. I packed all my winter clothes into one suitcase, and all Jonathon's winter clothes into another suitcase, packed another suitcase full of sleeping bags, and then rested the linen bags on top. It is packed in pretty tight, but at least it doesn't all fall out when you open the door like it used to when it looked like this:

Hilarious! And scary.  I managed to send on 4 blankets, a woollen underlay, and 4 pillows to different pastures, and found proper homes for all the extraneous clutter. I'm glad that's done!

For more inspiring makeover ideas, pop over to mousehouse!

My little work room

I'd love to say that I have a massive room for my desk and all my crafty stuff, but alas, it is all squashed into one of our little bedrooms! However, after adding some more Ikea shelves to the ones we got last year, I can now say that I'm getting things organised - finally! And I'm loving the floor-nearly-to-ceiling bookcase.
The desk attaches to the bookshelf, which I think is genius!

This is also where I blog and do computery things. One day, when I get the opposite side of the room looking fab I'll show you that too! Hee, hee.

Check out Megan's organised linen cupboard ideas here.
Join in her Organised Home Challenge here.

xx

Queensland Flood Appeal Auctions

I've found it difficult over the last week to post on this blog, because with the devastating floods I felt that anything I was to say that wasn't about the floods would be self-indulgent and flippant.

But now, I have found new momentum because Toni over at Make it Perfect has organised a brilliant auction site, enabling people to bid on crafty items - quilts, artwork, jewellery and such - with the final bids being donated to the Queensland Flood Appeal. Already, the current bids add up to $45000, and the auctions don't close until Monday 24th January! I am bidding on a gorgeous item, and keep checking to see that I haven't been outbid - I sooo want to have the highest bid! People have been extremely generous with their bids over all the auctions; I've seen people offer up to $400 on one item!!

As I am pretty much hanging out at Make it Perfect all the time now, I thought it might be worthwhile offering some of my own pieces of art for auction. The first one is my Tweedledee and Tweedledum mug.

I drew the picture, coloured it in photoshop and had it printed on a mug. It is pretty cute!

As part of the same auction, I am also including a framed photo of the carousel picture I took at the Perth Royal Show that is on my blog header. It is vibrant and colourful and would liven up a corner in your home!

Here's all the info about how this auction works:
1. Bidding will start at $20 (Australian).

2. You can place a bid by leaving a comment on this blog post with your bid amount and email address. Please make sure that your bid is higher than the previous bidder.

3. Your bid must be in whole dollar increments.

4. This auction is open to everyone and postage will be FREE to the highest bidder.

5. The auction begins NOW and will END at 9am on Monday 24th January 2011.

6. At the close of the auction, I will contact the winner (please make sure your bid comment includes your email address). The winner will pay the winning amount directly into the Premier's Flood Relief Appeal and send me proof of payment via email. Once proof of payment has been received, I will post the mug and framed photo to you.

7. Thank you for participating and happy bidding!

My Dad's 70th Birthday Party!

On Saturday night it was my Dad's 70th birthday party! Here he is, about to blow out the candles on his cake. (Sorry about all the blurry photos on this post, I need to figure out properly how to use my camera at night!)

It was a HUGE yummy-looking cake...

It was great to catch up with all of Dad's and my stepmum Jane's family and friends. There were a heap of family and friends from Collie, from the Apex Club, from the SEC, where he used to work, and from his work in cinemas. I got to catch up with a few of them and we had a good natter.

My nephew James and his girlfriend Sarah had put together a heap of photos (about 85) of Dad and his adventures over the years. The photos were shown on a big screen throughout the night and were very entertaining (I cringed at one of me from the eighties! Bad hair moment!)

Here is a nice one of Dad when he was young:

My nephew and his dad had set up the sound system for the venue, and after dinner, Dad's friend Barry sang a few old 60s songs with his acoustic guitar. Shock me, I even sang back up with my sister on Gloria!

My sister Leonie's family are way into music and have always encouraged Dad to sing along on karaoke nights.  After she sang Happy Birthday, by Concrete Blonde, with a beautiful crystal clear voice, Dad and Leonie got on stage, and gave their rendition of Dream, by the Everly Brothers. It was great! I was so proud of my Dad for getting up there and singing in front of friends he has had for 50 years!

Then my nephew James had a turn, singing When You Were Young, by the Killers. Man, he rocked the place! James has always been a drummer, plays guitar, has played in bands, and generally knows all things music, but singing up there like a true rock star really surprised me! He was amazing, and I think he should be the front man in a band!

My brother-in-law, Mal, is a singer from way back. He sang David Bowie's Let's Dance.
 (Again, sorry about the blurry shots!)

Then James' girlfriend, Sarah sang along with Britney Spears' Lucky. She is so pretty, and a real sweetie.

After a few more songs by James and Leonie, everyone started heading for the dance floor, with Dad and Jane, jiving the night away. Dad loves a good jive - there's no slowing him down!

Just before we went home at midnight I managed to get Jack to take a photo of me and Dad. Dad was a bit puffed after dancing for about an hour straight.

I'm so lucky to have a Dad like mine. He's a good, kind, straight-laced man, who loves music and movies, and looks out for his family and friends.

Hope you have a ton more birthdays, Dad - love you!!!

Cherry-flavoured

Soooo, I've been making little discoveries about fruit as I go on this raw food adventure. Something I realised yesterday, while eating a bowl of cherries, (mmm),

was that all those cherry flavoured products out there, like lip-balm, and lollies, don't really taste like cherries!

Cherries have a watery flavour, and the very sweetest ones tast like plums. I don't know who came up with this well-known cherry flavour, but it does not taste like cherries!!

What do you think?

Rocking the Raw Food Revolution!

I'm 7 days into my raw food journey, and I'm impressed that I'm going so well with it! Amazingly, I lost 2 kg in 5 days(!!!) which I'm very thankful for, because it has gone straight off my tummy. That bloated, uncomfortable feeling has gone, and, be warned, this is a bit of an over share, but, no flatulence, pretty much at all!

And I am enjoying the food! Banana for breakfast, fruit salad for lunch, hearty vegetable salad, or zucchini pasta dish for dinner, smoothie for dessert. Handfuls of nuts, strips of veges and dates for snacks. How can you not love it!

Probably the only thing I miss is some of the tastes of certain foods (such as lamb chops, and cake) but there are some raw food recipes out there which will give me more variety and some access to sweet foods, when I get the ingredients.

Not spending hours over cooking is great! Food is so quick and easy to prepare. And Jack is eating way more salad and fruit.

Another thing that is really helping my digestion is a daily dose of probiotic supplement. I have had it heaps before, but only really as a cure for bad digestion, rather than as a prevention. SOOO much more worthwhile used as a prevention, let me tell you!

The one I use is from our organic shop, found at http://www.worldorganic.mionegroup.com/. We've been reps for this company for about 3 years now and I LOVE all their products. But now I want to put out a good word for this product In-liven.

Pricey, as, taken daily it will last about a month, but the benefits, as I have found this week, are brilliant. It's best mixed in with fruit juice, especially freshly squeezed, and will do you the world of good, not just for digestion, and weight-loss, but nutrition too.

Highly recommended!

Lily's First Birthday!

This post is WAY overdue, but I can't just not post it!

A month ago, it was my niece's birthday, and my sister made the cutest bunting for the occasion. I love it!

Lily was adorable, and she had the best set-up of castles, tunnels and toys in the backyard!

My sister was amazing in the creativity department, making the cake and the cupcakes, which were yummo!
Mum made a lot of yummy sweets too!

Blowing out the candle...

And a gorgeous family shot.

Thanks for the beautiful party, Kristie and Dave!

Addicted to Tangle

I had this great big pile of ironing that built up and I tried to ignore it for so long, but I've been spending this week trying to conquer it! To keep me entertained I recorded 10 episodes of  Series 1 of the Aussie show Tangle and I've watched all of it in two days.

I didn't even catch a glimpse of it the first time around, but they played it the other day on Showtime because Series 2 starts today.

Tangle is a depiction of family life in Australia, with parents who don't know their kids, wives who don't know their husbands and past flames coming into their lives to stir up trouble. There is also a pretty scary take on teenage kids and how they can be doing the wrong things right under your nose. We all think we're raising our kids right, but are we?

There is a whole lot of sneaky, two-timing, activity going on, which you can see on any show, but the most thought-provoking stuff is what the kids are up to. Sneaking into each others' bedrooms to have sex, finding dead bodies and playing with them, having parties in deserted houses, smoking dope in their upstairs bedrooms while the parents are downstairs, driving cars underage, being beaten up by a friend and then going on a joyride with them in the next scene. So scary. This show completely gives the message to BE AWARE.

Why would I watch a show like this? The actors are well-known and include Ben Mendelsohn, Justine Clarke, Matt Day and Catherine McClements, the houses are very cool, and the twists and turns in the story are interesting to watch. I like to study character and see how people make choices.

At the end of Series 1, one of the main characters is hit by a car, so I'm intrigued to see what happens... Series 2 starts tonight if you want to tune into an eye-opening Australian drama!

Lemon boost

On my raw food revolution journey, I'm picking up little tidbits of information that I thought you might want to know. I have the cutest little book called 100 Ways to Boost Your Immune System, that has so many great ideas for improving your health.

One thing I've learned from this book, is that it is good to have a glass of lemon juice (with filtered water) each morning.

(source: blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com)

Lemons contain bioflavonoids, nutrients that protect your body from environmental pollutants. I love this analogy - Along the membrane of each cell there are microscopic parking spaces called receptor sites. Pollutants, toxins and germs can park here and gradually eat ther way into the membrane of the cell, but when bioflavanoids fill up these parking spots, there is no room for toxins to park.

Bioflavanoids also reduce cholesterol's ability to form plaques in arteries and lessen the formation of blood clots which can lead to heart atacks and strokes.

Lemon also restores the acid-alkali balance in your body. Drinking freshly squeezed lemon juice in water first thing in the morning helps maintain your body's internal balance at a pH that supports healthy bacteria, instead of the viruses and harmful bactiera that thrive in more acidic environments.

If you can't handle drinking the juice of a whole lemon at once, have half in the morning, and half throughout the day in your bottle of water!

(source:skinniepiggie.blogspot.com)

Welcoming the New Year

Hi, everyone! Hope you had the kind of New Year celebrations you wanted, whether it be party time, or a quiet evening at home maybe watching the fireworks on tele, like we did.

I had to start the year with a fresh new look to the blog. I took the carousel photo at the Perth Royal Show in October, and I just love the vibrant colours.

In terms of resolutions, it's same old, same old for me; more organisation, more crafting, lose weight etc, etc. All valid and worthwhile, but usually not achieved!

My BIG change this year is that I have started a raw food diet. After watching copious episodes of the Spa of Embarrassing Illnesses, and seeing what a thorough detox can do for your body, I decided to take out all the crap from my diet. That is, cakes, biscuits, meat, cooked food, cereal, chips, lollies, soft drink.
All I am eating now are salads, fruit, smoothies, dried fruit and nuts. So far I am loving it! There are lots of recipes and youtube videos on line to help get ideas for meals, so it is not too difficult. And it is so nice having only fruit and veg in a shopping trolley, rather than piles of frozen chips and packets of processed foods.
I'm not going to be able to convince Jonathon and Jack too quickly, but you never know.

Apparently a raw food diet can reverse diabetes which, to me, and surely to the world of people living with diabetes, would be a great motivaton to start this diet. I don't know if I have diabetes, but I certainly sleep after eating sugar, and am often sluggish throughout my days. I am also trying to defeat my allergies, as they tire me too.

At the risk of being too personal, I will say that so far all bloatedness is gone and all uncomfortable digestion pains are gone. I've been a little bit headachy before bed, but that's probably because my sleeping pattern isn't great at the moment. Something else to work on!

Anyway, I'll tell you how things go with the diet and see if it has more life changing effects!

Good luck with all your resolutions!