Life and shop changes

As I’ve said before, this is a year of changes, and because of the main one, I will have to make some changes on my shop too.

I’m closing my Etsy shop. Don’t worry I will keep a shop open at Storenvy. The difference is that for now I can’t have any pre-made items. I will be moving out of this house, soon, and I don’t have my pre-made items with me anymore. And sincerely, I don’t know when I will have more, ready for sale. However, I will keep a shop open at Storenvy, with my patterns (or pattern, it’s just one for now).

I apologize for not showing much craft progress lately, but life is not leaving much time for hobbies.

My new store

Daily workout for crafters

This post has nothing to do with crafts but still, it may be interesting for crafters.

I have a job that occupies all my afternoon and evening leaving me with only a few hours in the morning to do other stuff. I didn’t have time for everything so one of the things that was always being left behind was my own health and well-being. With this I mean that for years I haven’t done any kind of workout.

Fortunately I don’t eat that much so I manage to maintain my weight but that doesn’t mean I was in shape. In fact, in the last year I noticed that I didn’t had energy for anything, I lost strength and  if I ran for 1 minute my lungs would come out of my chest. So this month I decided that I was going to do something about that.

I started to go to bed as soon as I could (I got home from work at 11:20 p.m.) and get up early in the morning  to gain 1 hour and get moving. My plan is to run 3 days a week and between these do other exercises. Since I don’t have a personal trainer to keep me on track I’ve been using some apps on my iPod touch, that can really help.

For the run part I searched for apps that could make me go from a “couch potato” to a 5k runner, and for this I tried C25K and “Zombies Run 5k“. My favourite it’s definitely Zombies Run. Not only because it’s a softer beginning than C25K and I’m a bad case of couch potato but also because you get involved in a story, and when you hear the zombies you really want to run  Another app I’ve been using for running is the Nike +. I don’t use this to guide me but only to register the distance I made and how fast I was walking/running, Just to keep track and see my evolution in the future.

For the other workout days I found an app that I really liked also. This is the most interesting part for you crafters that have no time to loose

This app is called “Daily Workouts“. You can get the abs, cardio, butt workouts (among others) separately but with this you can workout your full body. When you begin workout you can choose how much time you want it to last: 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 minutes workout. I’ve done the 15 minutes workout and by the end of it I was ready to collapse on the nearest bed. Really! I believe making 10 or 15 minutes of these everyday would be enough to give you energy and strength. And for 10 minutes a day the “no time” is no excuse.

Since I started working out I feel much better and I sleep much better. I feel I can finally rest at night and I have much more energy during the day. I hope this post helped you in some way and don’t do like me and leave your health behind.

 

 

 

A year of changes

Hello again. Finally a new post. But still this isn’t a post showing new projects.

Since the beginning of the year I said this would be a year of changes, and until now I was right. Many changes approaches and although I don’t want to talk about the biggest change for now, I can talk about the little (or not so little) changes.

1st – I really need to get in shape and be more energetic so I started “running” (mostly walking for now ). Today was the second day of training and the first with the program C25K. I’m waaayyy out of shape but it went much better than I expected and until now it seems a good program for me. Now let’s see if I can keep up

2nd – and this a little change in our lives but at the  same time a big step… Me and hubby are finally signing the papers… or should I say: me and my fiancé are getting legally married. We want to keep things simple so there won’t be a big party, just a lunch with a few people (I hope). Instead of a dress I got a simple blouse and skirt and I’m making the cake topper (that’s the fun part). I also want to make some lace gloves to wear, so there should be a new pattern soon.

For now that’s it. There will be a big change later this year but I’m not going to talk about it yet and for those of you wondering: there’s no baby on the way

Hello 2013!

Looks like we survived 2012 and it’s not only 2013 but it’s already January 15.

I keep saying 2013 is THE YEAR. I believe it will bring some big changes, not easy ones but for better. I still believe in that but for now I can only say that this year only brought chilblains and stress. And it’s not that comfortable to knit with chilblains on your fingers so there’s not much progress in that area.

But the year also brought one good thing, a new inspiration for drawing and painting. So I’m taking some of my time to work on illustrations.

Hope you are having a nice 2013 until now and remember, the best is yet to come

Gift wrap and photos

Christmas is very near, I still have much to do and time and my job are not on my side. That’s is why this is just a quick post to show you some pictures.

This is my gift wrap this year. First I thought of using craft paper but it was this dark gold paper was more accessible to me and I think it looks good. The bow was made with raffia and I add a small tatted snowflake to it. Finally the names were written with a white pen.

You can find many tatted snowflakes patterns online.

And now some photos of our Saturnalia dinner:

Olive relish (left), apa (bread – above) and moretum (right)

Salt meat stew

 

Io Saturnalia!!!

This week is Saturnalia. If you don’t know what that is, it’s an ancient Roman festival. You can read more about it in NovaRoma. But to let you with an idea of part of what was done during the 7 days of Saturnalia I quote:

“The biggest part of Saturnalia was attitude more than decoration. Feasting, drunkenness, merrymaking, hopefully the conception of more children (or at least enjoying those activities which led to conception!), pranks, gift giving, role reversals (not true ones, only symbolic ones – slaves weren’t really free to make a freedman’s decisions and anything they did or decreed would reverse at the end of Saturnalia, children weren’t really adults and could not enter into any binding contracts or make business deals, etc.) and so forth.” in NovaRoma

At our house we usually burn some incense and candles, change gifts and make a big dinner if possible with Classic dishes. This year, hubby gave me a Slytherin pouch made by him and since my gift for him hasn’t arrived yet I’m compensating with a small gift each day. Yesterday I gave him an illustration I made, today we are going to see the Hobbit, and let’s see what the next days will bring

For dinner we will have the already traditional apa (a Roman bread), and 3 recipes from The Classical Cookbook:

• Olive Relish – a sauce of olives and spices
• Moretum – garlic cheese (with lots and lots of garlic)
• Salt Meat Stew

Tomorrow I will try to post some pictures, including the photos of my gift wrapping. Until then: Io Saturnalia! or Happy Holidays

 

Crafty Corner – Wrapping Presents

At the shop where I work I have to warp presents all the time, and in December it even seems that is the only thing I do all day. And you know how shop paper is, dull and usually with the brand, saying to everyone: “Hey look I’m a book”, “Hey look I’m a t-shirt” or something like that.

At home, most of the people buy a normal Christmas wrapping paper. Some can be pretty, and you don’t have much work with wrapping, but still, they can be a bit dull and don’t show much imagination.

But we crafty people don’t like things the easy way. We know that the wrapping won’t last long, but we still feel the need of doing something different. That’s why this “Crafty Corner” is about wrapping. There are some simple ideas you can use to make your gifts more special.

Idea 1:

You can do a Topographic Gift Wrap. You have some work cutting all the letters but your gift will look great. The materials for doing this are very easy to find, you just need: craft paper, old newspapers or a used book, a utility knife, scissors, a pencil and alphabet templates.

If you want to be more original you can even design your own alphabet templates.

Idea 2:

Another idea is to make a Woven Gift Wrap. You just need some plain wrapping paper or craft paper and some colored stripes. For these you can buy quilting stripes or you can cut   them out of colored paper.

As for my gifts, I had a different idea but I haven’t wrapped anything yet. I will show it to you on a next post. Let me just tell you that you’ll need to know some tatting.