Beads & Calories

So far January has been a complete whirlwind.  I can't believe we're almost halfway through the month.

I've been in the shed making bead orders like an absolute mad thing.  This afternoon I cycled to the post office with over 500 beads to send off to their new homes.  That's a lot of bead cleaning, stringing and packing!

In other news I am on a diet.  I would like to drop a dress size and I'm doing this by cutting right back on chocolate, biscuits, cakes and other food naughtiness.  I've got the MyFitnessPal app on my iPhone which is absolutely brill - very easy to use and the food diary part of it really makes me keep an eye on how much I'm eating.  Exercise-wise I am using Chris's exercise bike and I've also bought myself a weighted hula hoop.  When I used to use the Wii Fit I found the hula hoop games to be the most effective.  And fun.  Several people on Twitter suggested jogging or running but the thought of that bores me to tears.  Plus it would mean buying trainers - proper sporty trainers - and I haven't done that since I was about seventeen years old.  So yes, I have a hula hoop which was tricky to start with but I can keep it twirling for several minutes at a time now without it falling down.  It's flipping hard work and I have bruises on my waist but I was expecting this.  The Hooping book I purchased warned me about it but I tell you, hooping is a lot of fun.  I got my hoop from Handmade Hoops and it is excellent - very well made and you can choose your own colours.  Mine is purple, black and metallic red.  Groovy!

The diet is hard and the first week was like some kind of torture, especially with all the leftover Christmas food bits knocking about.  Last week I actually found myself sniffing the inside of an After Eights box trying to 'eat' the scent of the minty fondanty chocolate!

I've bought a copy of Cook Yourself Thin which has some really great recipes in it.  I made my first ever soup on Saturday from it - tomato, chilli and basil - and it was delicious!  I think I'll make a couple of batches of that this weekend and put some in the freezer.

So yeah, all in all so far 2011 has brought many many beads and much calorie-counting.

I have no picture to illustrate this post.  I did have all good intentions of getting Chris to photograph my new hats (I've knitted three since the last one I showed you) last weekend but I was making beads for most of it and by the time I remembered it was dark which isn't conducive to good photography.  I'll try and do the hat thing this weekend.

I promise I won't leave blogging so long next time ......