Category: life

life

New Year’s Resolutions and Goals!

christinahopgood
Happy New Year everyone!  Gosh what a month it’s been.  Since last time I posted, I’ve been really busy and away!  Christmas happened, then we went down the coast, then New Year happened, then we went on an 11 day trip to Adelaide!  I’ll write a whole new post for that.

New Year’s Resolutions.  I’ve made 7!  Here they are.

1. Floss my teeth DAILY!
This one is self-explanatory.

2. Write in my diary daily.
I don’t mean writing long entries about my feelings and opinions, but I do like to write down what I did each day before I go to sleep.  That way, I can look back and remember each day and they don’t blur together.  I find it really helpful to write things down so I can find out when things happened later.

3. Get up earlier.
I’ve found that we tend to stay up too late and then sleep in, especially on weekends or when I have to go in to work later.  This really knocks me around when I have to get up at 6:30 for percussion ensemble on Monday morning!  So I would like to train my body to generally get up and sleep earlier.  I’m going to schedule my teaching for mornings when I can this term.   Charles also finds that when he goes in to uni earlier he gets more work done and can come home sooner.  Sounds obvious but it’s taken us this long to figure out!

4. Buy less and have less.
I feel like I’ve already started this resolution.  I am just tired of having so much stuff – and in particular, having so many clothes.  Yesterday I went through my clothes and gave away 28 items, and it felt so cleansing.  I still have hundreds of items left, but it’s a start!  Going through, I found lots of clothes I’d just forgotten about.  Also, having a small house and a few big things we need to have (our instruments), space is in short supply.  

This is all the stuff I got rid of: 9 tops, 5 cardigans, 4 skirts, 3 dresses, 1 pair shoes, 1 bra, 2 tights, 1 spencer, 1 dressing gown.

5. Use up a bunch of my stash.
I have a lot of fabric.  Most of it was bought with a purpose in mind, but also a lot was gifted to me or an impulse purchase.  I want to try to get it down to a reasonable size!  This also applies to my yarn stash!


6. Sew more wearable clothes for me.
I know this is against my previous resolution of having less stuff, but I can’t live with the same clothes forever.  They wear out and get old!  So instead of buying I want to make myself wearable clothes.  This means not making another party dress, but instead making a plain blouse to go with my skirts.  Not making an experimental jacket out of blue tartan, but instead making a basic fit-and-flare dress to go with my cardigans.  Make more underpants!  In this way I hope to have a better thought out wardrobe that is easy to mix and match.  You need to put more thought into making a garment than buying one, so this mindfulness will help with my other resolutions.

7. Finish projects before starting new ones.
Sometimes this can’t be helped, like when it’s Christmas coming up and SOMEONE asked for a Dr Who scarf.  Projects can still be put on hold for things like this.  But currently, I have 4 knitting projects on the go, and 4 with wool bought queued, and a bunch of sewing projects ready to start. On top of my crochet and needle felt and everything.  This is too much and it makes me stressed!  So until my current projects are down to a reasonable level, I am NOT ALLOWED to start anything new.  I need to stop getting bored with my projects!  Plus, the feeling of finishing something lovely is so worth the wait.  I’d like more of that and less frustration with myself!


Next, some of my goals for 2014.
1. Start up my custom underpants business!
2. Save up a bunch of money for the future!
3. Design and make some of my own patterns!
4. Become a better teacher!

How about you?  What are your New Year’s Resolutions?

CIT, life, sewing

What happened to me??

christinahopgood
So my last post is from the end of Frocktober!  That’s quite a while ago.  I ended up making $641 for Frocktober, which is pretty good!  So why haven’t I posted for like a month?  

Firstly, Frocktober totally burnt me out.  I haven’t taken any photos of myself in this whole time, no photos of my projects, no instagrams!  I’ve just been going along doing my normal work things and home things.  After sharing so much I just wanted a bit of privacy, you know?

Then Charles went away to America for 2 weeks to go to PASIC – a percussion convention.  During that time, I had one good night’s sleep.  I don’t know what came over me, it was stupid.  Also he’s my photographer, so even if I’d wanted to take photos I couldn’t!

Last Saturday we performed at Voices in the Forest, a huge opera pops concert at the National Arboretum.  Right now it’s more like “Voices in the Saplings” because of course the trees all burnt down 10 years ago and are still little.  It’s a fantastic place though – high above the rest of Canberra, you can see for miles and miles.  It’s spectacular.  The concert was good too!

Then on Sunday I woke up with this terrible pain in my stomach.  It was so bad I couldn’t get out of bed.  On Sunday night Charles took me to emergency at Calvary hospital and I stayed overnight for observation.  It’s pretty traumatic staying in Emergency because everyone’s so terribly sick.  People were much sicker than me.  And gosh!  Hospitals go through a lot of sick bags.  Everyone was so spewy (except me).  Charles left around 1am, I felt so bad for him, he had to get up at 6 for school!


The entire time I was in there I was hooked up to this heartbeat monitor, which beeps annoyingly when your heartrate either stops or goes too high.  Because I was of a slightly nervous disposition (i.e. totally flipping the heck out) my machine was beeping pretty much all the time, the nurse had to set it to a higher tolerance! My heartrate was almost always over 100, and in the day almost always over 110. For musicians, that’s a fairly moderate march tempo.
Mum and dad came to be with me first thing in the morning.  Everyone thought I had appendicitis, but some things didn’t fit.  I wasn’t nauseous or feverish and I didn’t have reboud pain (more pain when you release pressure than when you press on the spot), and I was hungry.  I just had pain.  They put several litres of water in me via a canular so I could have an ultrasound on a full bladder (they press so hard in the ultrasound I’m surprised I didn’t wet my pants, sorry TMI).  
So they were about to operate on Monday afternoon when the radiology report came back from my ultrasound, saying that I have an inflammation in my terminal ileum.  So your terminal ileum is close to your appendix, it’s the last part of your small intestine. And mine was all swollen and tender.  So they said “go home and come back if it gets worse”.  With some assisstance I walked out of there.  They don’t know why it was sore.
I took two days off teaching (which is a total pain in the butt when you’re self-employed) and now I’m mostly back to normal.  I’m pretty tired still from the ordeal, and my tummy hurts a little still.

I have been doing projects – I made another Miette cardigan (this time in black – which attracts every piece of dust in my vicinity), I’ve been working on another jumper, finished my two assessment garments for CIT… and haven’t blogged any of it.  Here are some dodgy phone photos of my projects!

Hope you’ve been having a good month!  Bring on Christmas!

life, monday

No Monday Musings this week? WHAT

christinahopgood
So you may have noticed (or more accurately, you probably didn’t notice) that there wasn’t a Monday Musings post this week.
It’s been a really rough few days.  I don’t want to go into details but a close family member has been in hospital since Friday with a complicated problem.  Things are getting better though and hopefully everything will be back to normal in a few days.
But gosh it’s been tough!
In the meanwhile, please enjoy this picture of Kevin Smith as Ares in Xena.

so handsome

dress, life, wedding

Our 1st Anniversary

christinahopgood
On the 18th of August it was our one year wedding anniversary.  It was a Sunday and we were pretty busy that weekend, so we didn’t celebrate much.  Charles had been away in Perth all week too!
To mark the occasion, I got dressed up in my wedding dress again!  It still fits 🙂
 It is a pretty nice dress.  I’m happy with it.
Holding up one finger because it’s our first anniversary!
I was happy to take it off about half an hour later… that thing is tight around my chest!  I don’t know how I managed it for a whole day last year.  I remember being a bit uncomfortable but put up with it!
Charles gave me the Merchant & Mills Sewing Book as a present.  He bought it in Perth.  Such a lovely hipster book about sewing!  It has some simple patterns in it too.  Mabye I’ll do a review of this sometime if you like?

Yay for a whole year of marriage!  So far I love being married, it’s just great to be able to hug the person you love anytime you want.  Highly recommended.
life, monday, wedding

Monday musings

christinahopgood
I thought I’d start a thing for Mondays where I write about what’s been happening over the week, and what I plan for my life and my blog for the coming week!  On Mondays I teach from 7:15am until about 2, so then I can come home and relax and blog!

So much has been happening over the last few weeks!  But I’m going to keep this one about my friend’s wedding. My friend Kerrie got married on Saturday!
Kerrie, who is quite a bit older than me, ran then youth group at my church until recently when it kind of dissolved (we all became adults and not youths.  Actually that happened ages ago).  She is the most kind and loving person I know!  Last year she had some very bad health problems and had to go through Chemotherapy, and she lost all of her hair, so I made her this beanie which she wore the whole time.  She’s all better now, and she has beautiful short hair!  I organised a youth group party for her and her fiance two weeks before the wedding.  Pics:

 We had kareoke, or Kerrieoke since it was Kerrie.  Here’s me and my best friend Shona singing some spice girls song.

 We played that game where you make a wedding dress out of crepe paper and stuff!  

The cake I made.  It was pretty yummy!
It was a really fun party and quite a few people came.  Kerrie loved it!  Then a couple of days later I went and made chocolates with her.  She wanted to give everyone at the wedding handmade chocolates!

A pretty poor Instagram pic, but we made literally hundreds of these little heart chocolates in dark, milk, and white chocolate!  She wanted everyone to have 5 chocolates and there were like 90 guests.  I think we probably made too many!  I also went and helped her fold little chocolate boxes another day!
Kerrie did a reading at my wedding, so she asked me to do one for her as well!  I was nervous but I think I read well. It was the Corinthians reading, love is patient, love is kind, etc.  

The service was beautiful!  Kerrie had 5 bridesmaids, two of her nieces and three were John’s daughters from his previous marriage.  I just think it is wonderful that Kerrie has this new family to love!
When she walked down the aisle me, my mum, and Shona all burst into tears, we were so happy and she looked so happy and beautiful.  She didn’t stop smiling all day!
My friend Rohan took the photos (see the advantages of having a youthgroup), just like he took ours.  I can’t wait to see them all in a few weeks.  
The reception was at a restaurant called The Lobby, where Julia Gillard famously lost her shoe in a protest. It was a lovely reception!  I got to sit next to Shona and we behaved like silly 16 year olds which was SO FUN.  My parents were also invited to the reception so it was particularly nice.  Sorry about the poor quality photos, but here they are!

 Poor Charles had a really bad cold, he was doped up on Codral!!

 Me and Shona being awesome.

The only photo taken with a flash – me and my rad parents.  Dad is wearing his bicycle tie.
So I know it’s not particularly interesting to people who don’t know Kerrie, but this is what has been occupying my thoughts and time for the past few weeks.  Many things about the wedding were handmade: the invitations, place cards, chocolates and chocolate boxes, chocolate box cards, and pew decorations.  I feel really lucky that Kerrie let me help for her special day!