You know the song.. to everything there is a season. Well it looks like my scrapbooking season is over.

I have been looking at my studio for the last 12 months and have felt the accusing glare of every single thing in here, waiting for me to make a move, create something, make a decision just to do something. Well I made my decision and I called my friend Danelle, ok so I facebooked her because I avoid any direct contact with real people as much as possible. For some strange reason my friends Ali and Lis are still putting up with me after nearly 5 years, I am telling you that is a record.

So Danelle has been working with an orphanage in Bali for several years now, the Widhya Asih Bali Children and in the past has taken craft supplies for them to make cards. So I am sending my supplies to them. They will have a new home.

I still want to keep records, I still want to remember but that overwhelming burn to preserve every second has diminished. I'm going to set aside a time each week to work on a book like I did for my 365 days blurb book . So now I am going to save up and get myself a copy of Photoshop and stick to digital scrapbooking.

So what will happen to the studio? It is going to be turned into a reading room, it is already the computer room, and has sort of been rechristened the office, because nothing much creative has been happening in here I can tell you.

I have started sorting things and Danelle is coming over Thursday to take it all away. It feels right and finally for the first time in a year I have made a decision about something and I'm acting on it.

It's a start.

I gave in and started sorting out the books this morning. Now most of them are in order and grouped by author. We have a lot of books, most shelves you see are doubled up. I can only ever have as many books will fit on these book cases so to be kept it has to be a relatively good book that I will want to read again.

Now if only I could make the draws and cupboards look as tidy and organised as this!

So first the exciting news!!! at this mornings weigh in I am 100.3kg (220.6lbs), that is a loss of 29.7kg (65.3lbs) in 26 weeks. I so wanted it to go under 100, that will be my first goal reached, see I wasn't mucking around when I set my goal, I was going for a straight loss of 30kg and it feels good to see the scales moving down again. There are weeks when it hasn't moved and then I drop 1.7kg (3lbs) in a week.

This is so frustrating, every day my calorie intake is the same, I exercise and I do all the right things, and then after a week of agonising I step on the scale and noting has changed. I've never retained fluid before but i think I must be now I can't explain it, I am after a nice gentle loss of 500grams a week and while it is happening it is all over the place. I can't help feeling crabby when for two weeks everything stays the same. I haven't weakened though. At my visit to the surgeon last week he was pretty thrilled (and with Michael too who has lost 23kg in 18 weeks) and has set my goal of 75kg by may next year. So 25kg to go and 12 months to get there. The fact that I have been able to maintain this for 6 months already is fantastic and doing it together with Michael has definately made it easier. Seeing the differences in our weight loss patterns is annoying though, no hormones interfering with his efforts at all while mine ride rough shod over me making me either starving or psycotic, I can live with being starving for a week but the mild psyotic episodes are tiring, I want smooth balance and tranquility.

I'm getting there though and I am pretty pleased with myself.

Everything comes with a price. Some we are more than willing to pay, some are hard to live with and others are tolerated because we know they wont last forever.

I've had a bad week food wise, I ate a bit of cheese on Tuesday and then tried some mashed potato for tea. Well that mash feel with a thud and sat over the cheese and the band. It made itself into a little mashed potato plug and sat there. I could feel my heart beating through the band, I could feel the band and my chest got tight. The only place it could go was up, and that is what it did, after an hour of discomfort. Once it was gone I had totally lost my appetite and I felt bruised. This has happened three times before and the next meal I have, I have been fine but not this week. The next day I had another blockage and felt even more bruised, I put myself on liquids then and today I am doing really mushy or liquids. So here is the list of pro's and con's I came up with this morning while I was semi asleep.

Pro's -

you lose weight!!!!!
you lose weight!!!!!
you lose weight!!!!!
I don't snore anymore
I'm not tired all the time
my diabetes has gone
people say really nice things to me about my weight loss
clothes look better
I feel happier

Con's -

restricted food intake and type
possible blockages

So you see even though sometimes ick stuff happens I am still pretty thrilled I got the band. I just have to abide by the rules.. 1) chew your food!!!! this is where I usually go wrong, if I get too hungry I tend not to chew and hurry my food. I'm having terrible meat cravings right now, I think I am lacking iron and protein so I am going to look into a protein shake and try and remember to take my vitamin, because meat just isn't going down. I have become more comforttable with the fact I will probably eat soup for the rest of my life, well that isn't entirely true because once I reach my goal weight they will loosen the band, so it isn't forever. So I am off to obsess about my calories for the day and see what I can eat.

Ever feel like you just don't have anything that earth shattering to share? that has been me lately. Lots of things have had an impact on our lives, stuff keeps happening all the time but I am missing those moments where I want to record it. I am going to make myself record it!

So I haven't been scrapping, I haven't been keeping up to date with my 365 day photos. I have been taking photos though, they are sitting there like a burden I have to carry, I will eventually have to do something with them. In the last 3 months I have still managed to take 2243 photos. We have been to the zoo, Kings Park, soccer games and all kinds of things. I think now that I have finally settled into the year, yes I know we are almost 1/2 way through May already it just seemed to take a little longer this year to get my act together.

You see my focus is on weight loss, you could say I am consumed by it. I'm down 28kgs (62lbs)now, it has started to slow a little and I am trying not to panic, trying to keep the same focus and resolve, you always know it is going to slow but you get addicted to seeing that kilo drop off each week. I had my first day off from strict control on Mothers day, I had a baby ham and cheese croissant, some egg salad and smoked salon and a frosted cup cake and it was great! I just picked up again on Monday as though nothing had changed. This isn't to say I don't have treats. I love salt and vinegar chips so when I have done a good bit of exercise I have a small bag and for sweet snacks I eat dry Milo cereal LOL it is just nice to have something crunchy. I am still sticking to the soups, it is easiest and as it is cooling down it fits right in to the time of the year and I also only have to cook every 3 weeks this way.

It works for me.

So mothers day was great, my boys ran in at 6:15 and I sent them away, then at 6:45 Michael took them out and they made me a cup of tea and bought me my presents. The boys have been excited for days now, they had a Mothers day stall at school and both bought me a present, they have wanted to show me since last Thursday. So I got pink fluffy socks, a painting, a card and a lavender sachet from Riley and a bath set with soap and body wash and some cards from Alec and from Michael I got a Pandora bracelet and some charms and I won a Book Seat from Book Express hi Karen!! that Michael snuck out and picked up Saturday afternoon, under the guise of getting petrol, he was gone about 45 minutes.. . Mum and dad came to Alec's soccer game then we came back to our house for lunch and after they left I got to lay in bed and read all afternoon and Michael waited on the boys.

This is from game two of the season, Alec is the one in blue and white waving his arms around a lot in the black and red boots.. I'm so glad he did soccer again!

I did try to find music to go with this but in the end I decided we didn't sound like deranged soccer parents so I left it as is!

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.