Real Life

Adventurous Christmas Present

stargrace September 16, 2017 0Comment

Because I don’t already have enough hobbies and projects on the go, I decided to start one more. It’s a Christmas gift for my other half, so I am not going to post a picture here (he probably wouldn’t see it any way, but just in case) and I’m thinking I may have bit off more than I can chew. It’s a complicated cross stitch, and there’s only a few months before Christmas (where I’m working on other projects at the same time). I can’t work on it at night because I’m usually in a dark room, and this particular project is being done on navy aida cloth (18 count). I’m not sure I can get it done in time but I wanted to give it a try. If anything it can be a Christmas present for next year.

My mother taught me to cross stitch when I was probably around 12-13 years old. She had been doing it for years and continues to. Her stuff is very intricate, and she has even won some local awards for her (she did a huge afghan one year). Me, I don’t particularly have the patience for larger projects. I have one on the go that I’ve had started for many years now, a European Bistro. It will look amazing when it’s done, but “when it’s done” is probably not for another 20 years and I think I started it 10 years ago.

I do well with smaller projects, or projects that are near and dear to my heart, like the adventure time one above (completed for the husband, it hangs over his desk. I have a fluttershy one that hangs over mine). Cross stitching is a relaxing hobby that you can customize to suit any person in the world because it’s just taking images and using tiny threaded X’s in different colours to transfer that image.

When I was first starting out I used to buy kits from Michaels or online, but now I prefer to make my own designs, and I just buy the floss (typically DMC). I don’t get a chance to cross stitch as much as I’d like since I am typically busy with the 1 year old or a different hobby (gaming, knitting, crochet, spinning yarn, cooking, photography, you get the point..) but it’s one I like to come back to and one that I pick up a few times a year.

I started an afghan a few years ago and each square of the afghan is going to be a blizzard battle pet, but I haven’t gotten very far on it yet. I’ve also been slowly working away on the Hufflepuff crest from Harry Potter (happens to be my house of course) but that’s on the back burner while I work on this new Christmas present. I have more cross stitch projects on the go than I do knitting projects, which is something I have always wanted to change. I want to FINISH projects, and not just have a collection of half completed bits and bobs. It’s always one of my new years resolutions, actually.

So we’ll see how far I get with this new one. Maybe I’ll buckle down and focus enough to finish the others.

Right.

Gaming Real Life

Extra-Life Hype (Contest Hype!)

stargrace September 15, 2017 0Comment

It’s getting close to that time of year again – extra-life. Now I know a TON of my gamer friends are going to be participating, but I’m hoping that I’m still able to reach my goal raised this year. This will be the 4th year I’ve participated, and every year is a lot of fun. I won’t be doing the full 24h myself, but I’ll be streaming off and on from November 3rd (Friday) and November 4th (the “official” EL day). You’ll be able to see me, my husband, and probably my kiddo make silly faces and fools of ourselves as we try to raise money for one of the best causes out there – all while playing video games. I don’t have a schedule yet but that will be coming soon(tm).

This year I’m raising money for the B.C. Children’s Hospital Foundation. As most of you know, my son was born premature and it’s because of foundations like these and hospitals like these that we’re able to cope and deal with issues that come along with having a premature baby. As the saying goes, our children are our future, and lets help them get the best care and equipment possible.

I’ll be doing giveaways on the stream – but to help hype things up lets get a contest going here on MmoQuests. It will run until October 31st, so have fun entering!

Want to make an extra-life donation (click here!)
Want to enter to win some cool games (click here!)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Real Life

Lets Talk Gamer Health

stargrace September 12, 2017 1Comment

There are a lot of really healthy gamers out there. People who exercise, eat well, are slim, and who have never had to deal with weight issues before.

I am not one of these people.

For the longest time I was ashamed of how I looked and I was reluctant to put any pictures of myself out there for the world to see. As time went on my views on this have shifted slightly because honestly, this is me. Not everyone is going to like me and those who judge me by my physical appearance are probably not people I wanted to be friends with anyway.

Now the point of this post. When I got pregnant I was already 235 pounds. During the pregnancy I gained to 247 at my highest. Since giving birth in September of last year, I’ve lost 48 pounds and for the first time in MANY years my scale actually reads below 200 pounds. I never want to see the scale that high again.

I went from class 3 obesity to class 1. If I lose another 19 pounds I’ll be ‘overweight’ and no longer obese. Every time you reduce your weight like this you cut down the percentages of health issues that affect you. It’s really hard. It’s even harder if you’ve dealt with weight issues before – our bodies work against us. We’re hungrier, we have more cravings. If you happen to be one of those lucky women who have PCOS (she says sarcastically) your body works even harder against you.

I have PCOS and with it comes easy weight gain and all the other not-so-fun stuff but I can’t let that be an excuse as to why I am this size.

I haven’t been doing a lot to lose weight, but the small changes I made have been adding up over time. I’m more active now (thank having a toddler for that) and make sure I go for some pretty intense walks during the week. I only drink tea (one a day) and water (lots a day). I don’t eat fast food, I don’t eat anything that I don’t make myself. If I’m hungry, I eat. I loosely calculate my calories, but I find I lose more weight when I don’t pay attention to the intake quite so much. I eat what I feel like eating – so long as I prepare it myself. I use containers for my meals so I have some form of portion control.

I also suffer from mental illness (depression, anxiety) and while it’s not as bad as it used to be, it’s still there because it’s a chemical imbalance in my brain and that means it will ALWAYS be there. It is a chemical imbalance that can be fine for months on end and then for absolutely no reason at all will trigger. The only thing that helps me in this case is medication to get the imbalance under control. I’ve tried therapy and various means of self medication, I’ve done the whole “think happy thoughts!” bit, I’ve tried exercise, “just get out more!” and I have a pretty good life but it doesn’t matter how good my life is, this mental illness doesn’t give a flying turtle about that stuff. So it takes medication and yes for a while that bugged me. I’ve lost friends over it, I’ve had to distance myself from family members, I’ve had to put myself first out of necessity which is something I find really difficult, it always seems so selfish. Turns out being selfish is alright in certain instances.

I want to have a long and healthy life for my son. I want to be around to see all of his important moments. I want so many things – and this is important because for a long time I didn’t want anything. I was convinced that this rendition of myself would be the one I would always be. Turns out that’s not true.

So for other gamers (or anyone, really) out there who want to change things around – you CAN do it. If you fail, that’s OK. I’ve failed a lot. I mean, a LOT, but you need to dust yourself off and just get back up and try something new. Keep trying, over and over and over until you find what works for you and until you’re happy with yourself. I finally feel like I’m getting there.

Slowly.

Real Life

Sunday: Meals for the Week

stargrace September 10, 2017 2Comments

When Amazon Prime came around this year I decided to buy an Instant Pot. It was an item that I had seen previous years and those who owned one talked about it almost non-stop. As I looked around my kitchen at the collection of other appliances, I decided I had to have one. It would soon replace my slow cooker, my pressure cooker, my frying pan, and my rice cooker. In fact I’m not even sure I used my oven this summer except once or twice.

The invention of the Instant Pot is Canadian (all the more reason to support it) and it acts as a 7-in-1 appliance that can basically do everything except toast (although I made apple bread in it, so just because it doesn’t toast doesn’t mean you can’t make very moist bread). With the husband gone for another four months and me at home cooking for myself (plus whatever scraps mini-me is eating these days) I decided to also invest in some plastic portion containers and instead of making a new meal (or two, or three) every single day, I would just make one meal for lunch, one meal for dinner, and eat them all week long.

You have to be really comfortable with the meals you decide to make. I’ve learned a few things, like it doesn’t matter how delicious pasta is, after a week of eating it for dinner I’m tired of it. Some things I don’t get tired of though, like lentils and rice. I’ve also been working on spending less on groceries. In fact if you were to look in my fridge you would wonder if I ate anything at all because the only groceries I have in there are the items I’m using for that week.

Thanks to friends I came across this web site for recipes, which has been an absolute life saver. I typically use it for inspiration and then adapt the recipes to my own tastes and use the IP in some way-shape-form.

This week I’m making roasted corn quesadillas for lunch and for dinner I’m making a variation of mini garden turkey loaves with mixed veggies, stuffing, and gravy (I’m using beef, I’m omitting the carrots, and I’m using my own smokey bbq sauce). For the quesadillas I plan on cooking an entire frozen chicken in the IP, I bought two of them last week and only used one. The meatloaf I plan on making in the IP in silicone containers for individual servings. I was thinking of making mashed potato with it but honestly I prefer stuffing, so I’m going with that instead. I typically check the local grocery flyers on Friday and then plan my menu around that. Groceries are on Sunday and lists are my very best friend. I rarely ever buy something that’s not on my list.

I also made 16+ cups of yogurt this week in my IP. I had no idea it was so easy. Yogurt (especially greek) is very expensive here (we’re talking $7 for 4 cups worth, if that) and for the cost of a carton of whole milk I ended up with creamy delicious yogurt that I strained to the consistency I wanted. I took a portion of that and made it into tzatziki sauce which I served over spicy chicken fried rice (no recipe available for that one, it’s just my own concoction). Delicious. I had that for lunch every day this week and I’m still not tired of it. The same cannot be said however for these lasagna rolls. Delicious? Yes, but I’m tired of them now. There’s just something about pasta.

For breakfast I plan on making some spiced apple compote in the IP and layering it with my homemade yogurt and some oats to create overnight apple oatmeal. It’s another experiment so we’ll see how it turns out.

So those are my meals for the week. I spend an average of $60-80 CAD ($49-65 USD) a week on groceries (this includes things like baby digestible cookies and 3-4 veggie pouches) for me and the little guy and we live in an area where groceries tend to be quite expensive, especially if you want fresh. In the past two months using this new method I’ve saved approx. $50 a week on groceries, and I’ve lost 15lbs. I don’t drink anything except water (and tea, I love tea), and I don’t eat anything I don’t make myself (ie: no fast food or pre-made meals). It’s difficult, but so far I find it rewarding and worth it. Plus I only have to cook meals one day a week instead of stressing about what I’m going to eat every single day.

Real Life

Changes at MmoQuests

stargrace September 6, 2017 2Comments

In the 11 years that I’ve been writing on this blog I would say about 99% of the posts have been about video games in some way shape or form. I love games, I love the friends I’ve made through gaming and games are large part of my life. That’s not going to change.

The thing is they’re not the only part of my life. I have two other blogs, one for knitting and one for book reviews. Neither site gets very much attention (lets face it, these days I rarely post here as it is) and having multiple blogs for all of my little hobbies is getting… annoying.

I don’t want to change the site name from MmoQuests because I’ve had it for so long now and it would just feel awkward – but I do want to change things up and include more posts that talk about whatever happens to be holding my attention. I’d also like to change up the look of the blog, but that will take some time because I’m pretty particular about what I want (and what I don’t want).

For those who enjoy only reading about the gaming – don’t fear. I’ll add a gaming category along with the individual game categories, and you can subscribe to an RSS of just that. I’ll also be adding a few new categories like knitting, cross stitch, and cooking. I understand that readers may go down because you’re pretty used to me writing about specific things here, but I really feel that my blog should be able to incorporate ALL of me, and not just the side that enjoys video games.

These changes should be seen as good things. It gives me a bigger incentive to write and not feel lost that I don’t have a video game to write about. It expands the audience (hopefully), and broadens topic searches. I’ll be keeping my book review site because I pay for that one, but my knitting site I’ll be taking down and merging into MmoQuests. I haven’t written there since August 2016 and I doubt it will be missed.

If you’re absolutely against me merging non game related topics into MmoQuests let me know, either in comments or by email, and be sure to include why you think it’s a bad idea. I can’t promise I’ll act on your advice, but I will listen to it.

Adventurous Christmas Present

Extra-Life Hype (Contest Hype!)

Lets Talk Gamer Health

Sunday: Meals for the Week

Changes at MmoQuests

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