General - Not dead, just very busy

*whooooooosh*

That's the sound that almost 4 months passing by make, it seems. I've been pretty busy, from my kids starting school through crafting quite a lot, following the clean eating and working out trail to lots of things happening work-wise. All summed up, life got busy.

Since my last craft-related blog entry I finished six pieces of work. From the Aurinko shawl to a sweater for myself, some socks and some more shawl and lace work. I will try to write them all up separately soon (hah!).

Food-wise there have been a ton of "kitchen first" adventures! Clean eating is still working out like a charm and while I don't manage to do it -all of the time- I think most of the time counts. Time constraints are a bit different since my kids started school, so... I'm still working out two to three times a week and I've been sticking with Jillian Michael's DVDs - and will probably continue to do so as I just started working on my six-pack proper ;-)

Seriously? My day should have 48 hours, minimum. My "old love" progressive/metal music has been coming back full force, I'd like to be able to read a good book every now and then, so there ain't much time to spare. Oh yes, did I mention I need to catch up on sleep?

Food - Clean eating and getting (back) into shape

While I lost the big part of my excess weight already a year ago I've been battling the beginning weight gain again and have/had the desire to get into shape. The natural consequence of this is to focus on two things - food/eating habits and exercise/work-out/sports.

For the latter I found that doing aerobics seems to work for me per se, but I had to find a way to incorporate it into my daily routine without much time to spare around so, apart from the costs, I ruled out going to the gym again. Through a very helpful group of twin moms on Facebook I stumbled across the home workout DVDs of Jillian Michaels (most notably her 30 Day Shred series) and a food/diet concept called "Clean Eating". I've tried both now for about two months and am super-happy with the results! My work out consists of about 30mins every other day and I'm curious about the other DVDs as I'm about to finish the 30 Day Shred series. While I haven't really lost much weight (4kg) I do have reduced measurements - about 7cm of waistline (almost 3") and 5cm (about 2") of upper leg circumference. Next goal - six pack ;-)

One of the consequences of Clean Eating - which basically means to avoid processed foods and artificial ingredients - is that I've learned to do more things from scratch, which always has been a strong interest of mine. As an IT specialist I always want(ed) to find out what's under the hood, poke at the basic elements and learn how to make things, so it's perfect for me!

My favorite things so far which I made from scratch:

Mexican (hot) salsa

Peanut sauce to go with satay skewers

Vanilla extract (which can't be found/bought here in Austria anyway)