Stuff & Things

I have had a busy fortnight. When I say 'busy', I've not done anything interesting, noteworthy or exciting but the hours and days seem to have disappeared up the big old time hoover. Gone. 

Now, before you read on, there are rants ahead. Skip the next few paragraphs if you don't want to experience my grump ... 

Last week I had big stress over my website domain transfer. Honestly, on Thursday I was ready to give up. I mean totally. Things got shouted, threats about selling my lampworking kit got made and I had a massive strop. Sometimes, this self-employment thing gets to you. In Evita, Madonna sings "Sometimes it's very difficult to keep momentum if it's you that you are following" and she's not wrong. Team the nightmare domain transfer with a load of other niggly bead-related stuff including an email telling me that my "work is very nice and everything but far too expensive" and yeah, you've got a recipe for Bad Mood Laura going on. (And to the woman who emailed me and told me my work is too expensive - no, no it's not, and in future please refrain from telling people who make stuff for a living that their work is too expensive because you probably don't quite get what goes into making it and your words are confidence-knocking and insulting, thank you very much.)

So yeah, I had a wobble and then I gave myself a good old talking-to and told myself to woman up and get on with things. 

Tell you what, though, I managed to retrieve half of my old mailing list. Okay, so it was only half of it but half is better than nothing at all. This meant I was able to import the list into MailChimp and send out a "Hello, remember me?!" email to folk. So that was good. 

Whilst I'm on the subject of mailing lists, and this isn't a moan or a whinge, have you ever marked a mailing list email as spam? And I don't mean unsolicited emails; I mean ones that you personally signed up to or agreed to receive when you made a purchase. By marking that email (that you asked for) as spam, you can get the company's list suspended. Now for a one person outfit, that can be quite the hindrance. So, instead of hitting the 'mark as spam' button, scroll down and use the 'unsubscribe' link instead. 

Okay, I think that's my narkiness all typed out. Thanks for reading all that. 

Tell you what, though; A Very Excellent Thing happened, people. I finally reached my Slimming World target weight!

In ten months I have lost three stone four pounds, dropped from a size 16 to a size 10-12 and I feel a bazillion times healthier for it. I reached target a couple of weeks ago and now I'm trying to maintain that weight. I still go to my Slimming World group every week to get weighed plus I'd miss everyone if I didn't go. Doing Slimming World has made me think differently about food and I cannot recommend it enough. 

I've got to have a wardrobe sort-out. Such a textbook look-I-lost-weight pose but these were the shorts that I used to wear in the shed last summer and also the garment that made me go "Laura, you need to lose weight, woman!" Height of fashion, right? Fiver from Tesco. Size sixteen and the buggers used to dig right into my thighs when I sat down, even with the buttony side legs bits unbuttoned. I put these on the day after I reached target and they literally, actually fell straight off. So yes, I need to get new shed shorts and new dresses.

I'm going to stop typing now because I have beads to make and packages to post but I'll be back later today with another (less moany) post. I know right?! Two posts in one day!

Have a fab Wednesday,