January/February in photos…

Oh Hi There March, month that has snuck up on me!!
Hmmm… where has this year gone?

It may (or may not) have slipped your notice that I have been rather absent from this space of late…
Thank you to the sweet people who have checked up on me to make sure I’m ok! It means a lot!

In short, everything is fine!
What can I say but that it’s been summer school holidays, Mr Flutter was home all summer, I was working a lot, then we had the beginning of the school year chaos to navigate…
Basically life happened and I let it.
Stopping blogging was quite unintentional. One day just passed, and then another.
Before I knew it I was sitting here and it was March!

So here is our January/February in photos with a brief description of what we’ve been up to…

January saw us spend a LOT of time outside renovating our garden…
We cut down at least 10-15 large trees, focusing predominately on clearing our lower bank.
We worked tirelessly over the month taking about 13 compacted trailer loads such as the one above to the tip.

Now our view has improved dramatically not to mention our space.
When we first started clearing it, the bush was so dense we could hardly poke our noses in. As it stands today we still have lots of large beautiful trees that we plan to keep, but the rest of the bank is cleared to ground level in preparation for us to landscape and cultivate it.
While clearing our bank we discovered 3 peach trees, 1 nectarine tree and 2 fejoia trees that we had no idea we owned. That made all the achy muscles well worth it!

At the beginning of January my brother also helped us build some new planter boxes for our deck and we were able to expand our vege crop significantly. (planter box tutorial coming soon)
We have since enjoyed cherry tomatoes, celery, bok choy, carrots, courgettes, cucumbers, strawberries, blueberries, lettuces, and capsicums as well as fruit from our 8 fruit trees.
It has been more productive than I ever dreamed and I feel really proud of myself every time I serve up an organic salad entirely from our garden.
Then there were the 30 or so litres of lemons and grapefruits that we had to pick in order to prune the trees!!!

Last year I shared with you that Mr Flutter got made redundant…
He finished his job and came back home to us on Dec 6th, so we were very blessed to have him home for the entire holiday season and the four of us lived it up spending a lot of time together doing fun things as a family.

While it was nice to have him home, by the end of January we were starting to get a little worried. He had been at home for almost 2 months and there was still no job in sight.
Then alas a phone call came out of the blue to say that his old company had won the Phase B round of work (the follow on job from the contract he was working on all last year) and did he want his old job back with an immediate start.
Ummmm, let us think about that for a moment?! YES PLEASE!
So, he started his “new” old job on February the 6th.
That means he flies back and forth from NZ to Australia to work again and it is pretty taxing on both of us, but for now it works.
And hey, a job is a job!!

My business has been extremely busy over the “holiday” period…

I had 7 markets in November/December and 3 in January/February which kept me extremely busy making stock like a crazy woman.
I have stopped having markets now for the meantime since it’s really difficult to organise while Mr F is working away.
I will still make sales through my website, and do the occasional market but the drive will be much lower until next Summer when I will crank back up again.

The girls have been great. Healthy & busy.
Miss Hannah has just started her year 2 of school…

She appears to be excelling.

And finally, let me introduce you to my last major reason for being quiet…

Once we knew Mr F definitely had a job, I went and joined the gym.
I’ve been aware for a while that I need to do something about my weight and my health. I live with chronic pain and in the last few years have really noticed my body aging significantly. So I needed to make a choice and I decided that my goal this year would be to get into the best shape of my life!

Since I joined 6 weeks ago I  have been working out 4-6 times a week since and it has been liberating.
Never in my life have I enjoyed exercise until now!! Don’t ask me what changed either, but I love going!

Today I had my reassessment and in the last 6 weeks I have lost 2kg (7lbs), 1.5% body fat and 12cm combined TOTAL off my waist, butt and thighs.
Most importantly I have noticed a HUGE increase in my cardiovascular fitness, flexibility and strength.

I’m so pleased with my effort! All I’ve really changed in my diet is to reduce my sugar intake and pay more close attention to my portion size, but by adding in daily high intensity exercise it has finally helped me see results.
I can feel my body changing almost daily for the better.

Of course more time at the gym means less time for sewing and blogging.
Between being a single Mum for 3 weeks a month, working out, and managing the kids busy schedules I am finding it really hard to find time to sew or blog. Let alone study towards my diploma!
(my what? Yup my Diploma of Dress making and Pattern making – more on that soon).

So I’m not sure what the next few months will look like for my blog I’m afraid. But I will try and be more regular with posts at least 2-3 times per week now that we are back into a routine.

Starting with a giveaway post tomorrow – so watch this space…. 🙂

And that’s about it for now…