Lets do Blurb first... THIS POST has some of the information on how I go about using the blurb book software. For my 365 days books I use the landscape 10x8inch books and I get them in imagewrap which is a hardcover with the photo directly printed onto it, no dust cover. I am seriously considering going digital with my everyday scrapbooking as I find things I put in the book I dont seem to then feel like scrapping, because I have basically already done it. Blurb also have an 11x13inch format but price is holding me back a bit but when i weigh the cost of printing for the big book it is probably less than what I would spend on supplies. Then I can also get 2 books printed, one for each boy.

All about lap banding...

does it hurt? for about a week after the operation and then it is uncomfortable for about another 2 weeks.

Are there things you can't eat? this varies from person to person. I can't eat bread, chicken breast are hard to eat but thighs are ok. Raw carrot was very very painful, scrambled eggs are unpleasant and get stuck but i can eat hard boiled eggs and fried or poached eggs.

I have to eat slowly, anything you eat quickly and don't chew properly is just going to drop down on the band and close it. I mainly eat soup, I can eat crackers, cereal..oh and chocolate, potato chips and icecream!! If you are interested you can see my food diary HERE as it is a public profile I don't think you will have to be a member to see it.

How do you control what you eat? This was really hard. I was still eating the same way just after the operation. I realised after about 3 weeks that I needed to count calories and my buddy Amanda mentioned the calorie king books. I went and looked and found they have an online food diary. This has helped me so so much. I am in total control, I also record every single thing I eat, so if I stand in the pantry and eat an easter egg I write it in. To lose between 800gr and 1kg per week I have set my calories at 1300 and 30 minutes of exercise a day.

I plan my food at the beginning of the day. With the food diary you can save meals, so when I make a soup I input all the ingredients into CK and how many serves it gives and save it, then I delete all that and when I want to add my meal I load it and select the serves I am having.

Where the band comes in, the capacity of the pouch above the band is one cup, so when I make my soup I freeze it in one cup serves in clip seal bags and freeze them flat. All meals come to a cups worth of food. This is my 24th week, 22 weeks since my operation and I have lost 27 kg (59lbs) and I am finding it quiet easy now. It takes discipline I have to think about everything I put in my mouth, do I want a latte or 2 ryvita with cheese.. these are the types of questions I give myself. I still go out, we have been out for a meal and to a few BBQ's and I coped. I am very careful though, if you eat too much, too quickly or the wrong food it will come back up. That has happened to me twice and I would like that to be the only two times.

I could not do this without calorie king or Michael, we have done the lap banding together and it has been a great help.

Do you have to exerice? I do!!! I go for a 50 minute walk every day I can and once a week I play indoor beach volleyball. If I don't exericse I don't lose much weight at all. Michael on the other hand has gone for calorie control and doesn't exercise. Where as I have to drag my bum out the door and power walk. Saying that though I have found exercise such a great thing, I feel better, I am calmer and I am on my way to having great legs!!

This is a life changing thing. It has to be to work. Things that have changed like 4 different meals for 4 different people isn't as hard as I thought it would be and Michael takes care of his own dinner, he has made stews and curry for the freezer and is eating lots of salad and he loves scrambled eggs. I get comments from the girls in the local bakery who see me walking and are amazed at how much weight I have lost, it makes me feel good people are noticing. The best thing of all is my kids are noticing, Alec loves to come and put his arms around me because he can hold his hands now, before he couldn't reach.

At first I was really impatient to lose the weight, it felt like it was going to take all too long and I wanted lots off quickly. Then all of a sudden I fell into a rythm and I was happy to be dropping that one kilo a week. I only weigh myself on weigh in day, yes I still have treats but now sometimes I am just not prepared to spend the calories on it, sometimes a slice of cheese seems like a treat.

So yes I would do this again, things will always be different now, I will always have the band, but I have gained so much more.

many many weeks ago I saw a gathering of photos in white frames on Ali Edwards' blog HERE , when she was giving a guided tour of baby Anna's nursery, I thought they looked great and decided to do one for above my bed.



I've used the NYTTJA frames , and I have mounted them on some 7mm plywood using strips of Velcro. I have used 6x4 photos in 5x7 mounting boards that I bought from a photo shop. It measures 87cmx50cm (35x20 inches)in total.



It has been sitting on my table for weeks, like a thorn in my side, nothing else could happen until it was done, so hopefully I can now move on and start getting some other projects done.

And look at that this is my 600th post on blogger. I have so much to catch up on, we are just finishing up school holidays now so we have been busy. Today Michael took the boys out and when they came home Riley blurted out... are we going to give mum her surprise??? well we are now! so today I got an early mothers day present from my boys.

I love it :)

The only reason you sent us outside to play was so you could listen to your music... after being sent outside after sitting in front of the television for far too long!

Mum, I think you are spending far too much money on books.... after our third visit to a book store in two days

I told Michael what he said about the books and he was surprised Alec actually noticed, but you see Alec has developed a keen interest in money and what you can buy with it. I am pretty sure he wanders around the house trying to figure out what he can flog so he can buy more Bionicles.

I'm feeling a little bit happy with myself today!

This is my first new outfit, everything else had found its way to the give away bag as it was falling down. I can't believe how much different I feel and how motivated I am to succeed. I've become a very strict calorie counter but it is what I need to do, it gives me power over food.


I didn't realise a milestone like 25k would make me feel so elated, but it did and I have to say I am pretty proud of myself. I am almost half way there.

The best thing of all is I have been feeling very satisfied, I do have to watch impulse eating, I still find myself at the pantry looking for something to eat, I have to pull myself up and say.. well are you hungry... NO... so close the door and find something to do!!! Sometimes I just go no I am going to eat something, and I will, I don't tell myself but I allow an spare 100 calories a day for walking food, you know the nibbles you have while you make the kids afternoon tea, a cracker here a nibble of cheese there.

It is working and I'm pretty happy with my progress.

done in, done over, done like a dinner

I want to check out, take a powder, take 5, take anything but I want everything around me to stop so I have 5 minutes to work out where I got so out of step with the rest of the world.

My escape right now is listening to ABBA on the ipod while I walk and walk and walk, but eventually you either get where you are going or back where you started and you haven't figured anything out at all. except for maybe I should do a blog post and get it off my chest and get some more ABBA from iTunes... or run away from home

oh and Lis sorry for the SMS... I just had to tell it to someone.

I always go back to the fact that I should just be able to deal with it, sometimes I can't. I am struggling with Alec right now, we all are. Yesterday he screamed at me for 20 minutes straight because we walked home from school. My fault partly, I didn't tell him before school, he wasn't prepared, I wasn't prepared for his reaction. Right now everything revolves around him. It is hard because he feels the emotions we feel, hurt, anger, happiness, sadness, confusion etc etc. It is just that he doesn't realise we feel too. When I tell him to look at his brother crying because he has hurt feelings Alec can not relate to Riley at all and doesn't realise he caused the hurt feelings. He feels more able to deal with reality when he plays it through his own made up world, we don't get to go to this world and sometimes it is hard to get Alec to come out and join us.

But this is autism and being a seven year old and I have to start teaching the seven year old some responsibility and what happens when you are not.

I have to be gentler with myself, do what i did last night, I went to bed with a book at 6:30pm and let Michael put them to bed, calling out prompts from the bedroom.. he got their teeth cleaned, played musical statues with them and gave them jelly... oh well

we survived though, but sometimes I want to feel like I am more than just surviving.