It has been a long time....

I have been away from this blog for a long time.  I haven't been sewing.  I haven't been doing much except following along with everyone else.  But over the last month or so I have felt ready to get back into it.  In fact I have started a new blog called Create.

I want to keep this a sewing blog yet I wanted to talk about my other creative outlets.  I am not a sewing but nothing else kind of gal.  I go through stages.  I follow a lot of design blogs and motivational blogs.  And lately Paleo blogs.  I will cover all of this on Create.  I would love you all to follow me on Create as well as here.  I plan to keep sewing mainly to this blog.  I think sewing blogs are a pretty special place and I didn't want to clutter this with other random stuff you may not be interested in.

Many thanks to all of you who have been sewing up a storm while I have been absent.  I have loved following along.  And a special thank you to Rhonda who has included me on her Wednesday Showcase Hall of Fame!  Woo hoo, I hardly deserve it but am very appreciative none the less.  I also need to thank Rhonda for posting about The Artist's Way a few months back.  I read her posts, then purchased the book, and spent 3 months working my way through the exercises.  You just never know when you post something how it will effect a reader.  This creative exercise started the ball rolling.

I was lucky to follow up the Artist's Way with a Women's retreat in Bali.  This trip I shared with my sister and it was a spiritual and creative reflective time.  Bali is beautiful and very spiritual.  I had never been before.  I created two dream boards - one with the Artist's Way and another during the retreat.  A dream board is a collection of images that inspired your put together on a board as inspiration.  In both cases I came up with home and garden pictures mainly.  Beautiful images of serene places.  My quest for 2013 is to create these beautiful images around me in my home and my garden. I hope to explore this on the new blog Create.

I also discovered that I am very much a DIY person.  Always  "I could do that".  But as would be shown by my lack of posts here, I have lots of plans to DIY but little energy or motivation to follow through.  So what is different now?  Paleo.  Yes, change of diet. I was looking for ideas to help me sleep and googling up I found details of the caveman diet.  I have previously followed strict eating plans due to digestive issues but I have never cut out all grains.  I found the 30 day challenge and I thought why not give it a go.  I am good at following through when I decide what I am going to do and completed the challenge on 22 December.  And following this diet plan was easy to do.  The results? I somehow lost my "can't be bothered" and have since been completing projects ever since.  Not any garment sewing...yet.

My sleeping has improved but I still tend to wake up early.  But rather than complain, I am OK with it and use the time to read blogs!  And an unexpected bonus is I lost 4.6 kgs in weigh - without even trying!  So I am looking forward to 2013 and hope my enthusiasm to get things done continues.

Anyone else follow a similar diet and noticed similar results?

Next up is some well overdue home sewing projects :)

Goddesses dancing in the retreat pavilion amongst the rice paddies.  Beautiful way to start the day at out Bali Women's retreat.