Real Life

Organizing Hobbies

I enjoy a lot of craft related hobbies, but I rarely have time to dedicate to all of them, and I tend to binge craft and then forget about everything else for months at a time. Other times I’m so tired that without a clear idea and path of what to work on I’ll just sit at my desk and do nothing. Then it’s bed time. So I set out a schedule for my crafts and then organized them according to whether I can do them when the kids are awake / around or if I need to wait until they’re asleep (ie: using needles in cross stitch means I need to wait until they’re asleep).

Anyway, I’ve been using this schedule for almost a week and so far it’s going very well.

  • Knitting: Tuesdays
  • Cross Stitch: Monday/Friday
  • Miniatures: Saturday/Sunday
  • Spinning: Wednesday
  • Drawing: Thursday

I figure that this way at least my crafts / items are being used, and over time projects will get completed even if I don’t binge on them. I also made mini goals for each craft so I know what I’m working on. Now, this may seem counterproductive to a creative mind but this method works for me and actually has me feeling better about things than I have in a while. If I’m not feeling up to working on something I just don’t. No big deal, these are not hard set rules or anything like that, it’s just a bit of direction.

Maybe when I have a bit more free time than 2 hours in the evenings I’ll be able to open this up a bit more but for now, I’m just going to keep doing what works.

Happy Corner (3)

Last night was another miniatures night (Saturday & Sunday are the two evenings I’ve set aside for this hobby) and I built myself a little cash (complete with menu) and a shelf unit – I also glued together two chairs and a table, but they have to dry before I install them into the small tiny coffee cafe. My glue work needs .. some work, but at least it dries clear and shouldn’t show up quite as much.

I’ve been having fun working on this little project. It’s a trial in patience, which is pretty rare for me (as in I have no patience). I’m eager to get this place wired properly and have the lights working, it’s really going to look swell then. I also need to find a better way to photograph the thing.

Happy Corner (2)

I recently created a schedule for myself to organize my hobbies – I know, it sounds a bit silly, but I have a lot of hobbies and I wanted to make sure I worked on them a little bit each week, so that at the end of the month I could see some actual progress. I can assess the hobbies any time and they’re not in stone or anything like that, it’s more to do with the fact that in the events I tend to sit at my desk and think about all the things I could be doing instead of actually doing any of the things I could be doing (if that makes sense).

Last night was miniatures night (and so is tonight). The schedule is organized so that activities that HAVE to be done at night (ie: after the minions are sleeping) get a little more time than hobbies I could potentially do while they’re awake, or when it’s the weekend. Since this hobby uses knives and glue, it’s something I don’t want to do with the 2 and 4 year old poking into everything.

I’ve been working on my first miniatures kit. I bought it some years ago from Wish, which is pretty hit and miss if you’ve ever ordered from them before. I think I spent a total of $15 per kit, and I bought three of them. They are TINY scale, much smaller than 1:12, and that makes it awkward but I’m having a lot of fun slowly working on it. This kit is called ‘Happy Corner’ and is a bunch of little shops and some cute accessories on the street. I had to build the balcony from scratch, and you can see my glue is drying (it will turn clear once it dries) but I still love it so far. I also had to add lights, do the wiring for that, and there are a billion other little small details and pieces I’ll work on. I can’t wait to see it done and get it all wired so that it works.

Checking out Noom

Yesterday was my 40th birthday, and I decided it was the perfect day to start making some changes.

I’ve never paid for any sort of weight loss program before in my life, despite the fact that I’ve had to lose weight for many years now, and even successfully lost 60lbs after my son was born – sadly, I gained it all back (and then some) when my daughter was born. Here in the far North of Canada I’m finding things difficult. A head of regular iceberg lettuce is $20 and can go bad in a single afternoon. There might not be any fast food available, but there’s also very little fresh healthy food. Most of what’s affordable is frozen, and filled with carbs.

I wanted to try keto but that’s just not sustainable for me, especially up here. I have other real life factors to take into consideration as well. My son is autistic and requires a LOT of my energy. I have multiple sclerosis and that means I can’t always do a lot. My motor skills have slowed down significantly, I have issues opening jars, picking up utensils, some days even walking is a problem.

That means doing exercises required and suggested by about 99% of the plans I’ve seen out there is simply out of the question for me. I can’t commit. What I CAN commit to, is my diet. What I put into my mouth. Maybe not always with the ‘what’ of it – but at least with the portions of it.

So I’ve decided to try out the 2 week trial of Noom, and see how it goes. The trial is an affordable ‘pay what you can’ plan which I selected $1. I know that most of these types of programs are a very simple food logging read a bunch of not-relative-to-you articles. The thing is I simply don’t have the energy to create an entire program for myself. I KNOW I can lose weight, I’ve done it before, but circumstances have changed so much since that time, and what I can dedicate energy on has changed.

What I’m hoping is that the psychological part of their program works to keep me mindful throughout the day – almost every day (I am hoping). I’m hoping their motivation works. Since I have never paid for a program before I have a LOT of caution going into it. If I continue with it, their ‘plan’ is roughly $220 for 8 months. That’s not bad – if it works for me. It certainly won’t work for everyone. Not every plan out there is made for every person and if it was we’d all be healthier and no one would be browsing through 101 different weight loss plans at 1am on a Thursday.

I did purchase some body weight equipment to help me with some strength training. Mostly for my fingers, arms, legs. MS affects my fingers to the point where some days they just sort of rest in a claw formation and I can’t even hold a cup of coffee. I’ve bought some stress ball type things, and those tension bands you might have seen before. They should arrive in a few days, and while right now things like exercise bikes are too high impact for me, maybe as I get healthier they’re something I can look to. Walking around the neighbourhood is also not an option here where we live, but again I’m going to focus on my diet and portions more than exercise, for now.

Let’s see how this goes.

  • -1.5lbs from previous day

(Yet Another) Hobby

I have always been fascinated with miniatures. Everything from those travel sized shampoo bottles, to miniature toys, and food. I recently was gifted some polymer clay and tools – so I decided to try my hand at making miniature bread! It’s air dry clay, with chalk pastels for the colour. There are numerous ways of achieving the texture and colour of bread, you can wait until the piece dries, or in my case, you can apply the pigment right to the fresh clay. Unfortunately if you do it that way you lose a little of the detail because of the brush. Still, for my very first attempt, I’m quite excited!

I also bought two smaller shadow boxes and I have plans of creating some scenes inside of them. One will be quails (naturally) since they’re amazing, and the second one I think I’m going to turn into some sort of book nook. I might just turn it into a yarn / knitting / spinning scene instead though. I haven’t decided.

Nomadic Gamer