Challenges – Currently Clueless

October – the month of many’s

Posted on October 1, 2012Leave a comment

So I’ve been seeing things all over the internet about things that are happening in October – First there’s Rocktober – which goal are you going to try and rock? Secondly there is Octsober – obviously, that’s keeping sober and not drinking all October. Thirdly, there is Blogtoberfest – a month long blogging festival. Fourthly (is fourthly a word?), there is Photo a Day for October. There was another one, but do you think I can remember it with my guppy brain? Last, but not least, October is the month before NaNoWriMo. So, which ones will I be participating in?

All of them!

Yes folks, you heard me correctly. October is going to be the month of stressing myself out.

So here are my goals:
Rocktober – My goal that I want to smash is to exercise 4 times a week – or 20 times. Do-able a lot of you out there might say, but for those who have kept track of my blog over time, you will all know that exercise is something that I struggle with. So 20 times is a big deal for me. I would also like to smash out a bit of a weight loss goal – 5kg. Time to really get back onto this weight loss gig that I’ve been struggling with – forever it seems.

Octsober – Well this one probably won’t be hard for me. I very rarely drink anyway, so not having alcohol for a month isn’t really going to faze me either way. So this one, I think is a slam dunk.

Blogtoberfest – This one I might just struggle with. I said in my last post that I wanted this blog to get away from only talking about weight loss and fitness. These are still issues very close to my heart, but it’s not all I’m about. I also love to be crafty. I love quilting, and I’ve recently come to love crocheting too. I would like to share more about the things I’m doing in that regard. I think that by joining in with Blogtoberfest I may actually get a chance to be a bit more crafty in my day to day life, rather than hiding myself behind the computer all the time as I seem to do. (Though, having just bought a new computer, tearing myself away from her, might prove a little hard…)

Photo a Day for October – I’ve been trying to do this one for the last couple of months, and every month I get a few days in, and I forget to start taking photos. So, I’m trying again. And I’ll be posting them all up here for you to see, so if you see that I miss a day, please remind me.

And last, but by no means least – Lead up to NaNoWriMo. I love NaNo, I’ve written about it a few times here. Last year, I started to do it, but just couldn’t get into it. There were so many other things going on in my life, like trying to find a job after having moved to a new city, that I just stressed myself out even thinking about NaNo. The first time I did NaNo, I just winged it. Didn’t go in with a clear thought of how I wanted to proceed, didn’t even go into it with a real storyline in mind. Just let my mind and fingers wander and let happen, what happened. It was a success. But this time, I have a plan of what I want to write. A story that has been hanging around in my head for quite some time now. I really want to do it justice. So I think this October, I will be sitting down and organising and planning exactly how this story will go – and hopefully have another NaNo success.

So that’s my plan for this month. What are your plans? Will you be joining in on any October festivities?

Before I leave you tonight, here’s my first photo of the day for October. (Phew, one day down, 30 more to go…)

Where you stood — There I am, standing in my dining room, because I couldn’t stray too far from the computer today. It just wasn’t happening. Dig the groovy slippers :)

Yummy ugly balls

Posted on February 29, 2012Leave a comment

Our weekly surprise for 12WBT is to create a snack. The rules were that we had to only have 5 ingredients and be quick to make. Well these technically don’t qualify because they have 10 ingredients and are not super quick to make, but I love these. They came about by a bit of an accident, I had so much dried fruit left over from another recipe and I bought Quinoa and had no idea what to do with it, so here we go:

Yummy ugly balls

Each ball is about 25g and has only 58 calories.
You should get 16 balls out of this mix.

Ingredients

1/3 cup quinoa
1/3 cup oats
3/4 orange juice
3 tablespoon craisins
3 tablespoon prunes
3 tablespoon dried figs
1/8 cup almonds
1/8 cup walnuts
1 tablespoon maple syrup
20g Dessicated coconut

Method

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees (celcius).
Place the quinoa and orange juice in a pan and cook the quinoa until it has soaked up all the orange juice.
Meanwhile, chop (or blitz) the almonds (I use flaked almonds), walnuts, dried figs and prunes.
Place in a bowl with the oats and add the cranberries. When the quinoa has soaked up all the juice add this to the mix.
Let the mixture cool slightly and then add 1 tablespoon maple syrup to the mix and mix up well.
Take a tablespoon full of the mixture and roll into a ball, flatten slightly and roll in the coconut.
Place on a baking sheet and put into the oven to cook for about 12 minutes.
(The cooking step is optional – you can just roll these into coconut and put in the fridge, but I like the extra crunch you get when you cook these).
When they’re cooked, let them cool and put in the fridge.

So if you’re looking for something that’s maybe a little like a muesli bar, but with less calories and super yummy, then may I suggest these. And if you do make them, drop me a line and let me know what you think. Are my tastebuds just weird?

Challenges ahead

Posted on January 5, 2012Leave a comment

As part of the 12WBT I have joined a couple of Facebook groups and yesterday I was lurking around on the 12WBT over 30kg to lose group (because, you know, I have 46.1kg to lose, which is a bit!) when I saw a challenge – 2012 kilometers in 2012 – and I thought what a great idea to join this and keep me in line and exercising. I know it doesn’t make me accountable to anyone but myself, but I will know and there is nothing like a challenge to get me going. I’m mildly competitive so even competing against myself should keep me going. Maybe I’ve mentioned how much I detest exercising right? So I need anything that will get me motivated and keep me exercising.

Then this morning I was doing a little more lurking on another Facebook group when I noticed a new challenge. Post a new status on your wall saying that for every like you get you will walk, run (in my case shuffle), ride, swim or crawl if you have to 1km. YES! This is definitely the challenge for me. This one really will keep me accountable to everyone. These are my friends that are encouraging me. I can’t let them down, I have to do what I say I’m going to do. I admit, when I thought about this challenge, there was a teeny tiny hope that maybe no one would like the status, that it would go over largely un-noticed, so I thought why not. Then I posted it. Within a couple of minutes I had 5 likes. That’s okay I can do that. Now, two hours on I’m up to 33 likes, and I still have 22 hours left to leave the status open to likes. I’m now slightly worried.

However – I can combine these two challenges. These 33 kilometres that I have to do can go against my 2012 kilometres, so it’s killing two birds with one stone (sidenote – that really is a horrid saying, why would anyone want to kill a bird?) – I do my (now 38) personal challenge km’s and knock the same off the 2012, thereby hopefully bringing my daily average of km’s down… Because when I worked it out the yesterday I had to do 5.6km a day to keep on track. I’m already behind by 4.6km.

The thing that has me worried though is, am I setting myself up for failure? Am I going in too hard and fast and will I burn myself out. Will I do so much blasted exercise that I end up hating it more and just stopping it all? Or will it hopefully turn me around the other way? Am I going to have so much fun doing this that I end up loving the exercise? I’m hoping for that outcome, but I have this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I’m setting myself up for failure. I know I said that in 2012 I was going to look at the world in a glass half full kind of way and that this is not a half full but half empty way of looking at it, but a lifetime of habit is hard to break just “like that”.

So, who else would like to join me on this little challenge? It’s going to be fun! No really, IT IS!