A moment of gym induced narcissism...

For those who don't know me personally, I'm a total gym rat. We have one at my company and I use it religiously instead of having lunch every day. I usually do not post work out progress pictures, but I'm pretty proud of myself right now so I am indulging it. Getting a six pack after three kids is not easily done, to put it mildly. The arms and shoulders have been a huge difficulty over the years, women just don't have arm muscles like guys. I've been in total awe of Linda Hamilton's arms in T2 since I was a child. Nowhere near hers yet, but a hell of a lot closer than I was 6 months ago. I draw the line at posting pics of my ass/thighs, but suffice to say they look better than my arms/abs right now because they were already more toned to begin with and I can do more weight with them.

I've been doing a circut training and weight training regime for about 3.5 months solid, 5 days a week. I was doing cardio/weight training prior to that and wasn't seeing the results I wanted. We walk a couple miles a night, so I have cut cardio out of my day time work out completely. I wasn't sure at first if it was a good idea, but so far it has been amazing. I've been going back and forth between low weight for more reps and higher weight for less every other day. So Mon/Wed/Fri is low weight-high reps and Tues/Thurs is high weight-low reps. I do core training prior to every workout for my back and abs, then focus either on upper or lower body that day.

I haven't been doing any crazy dieting, we eat extremely healthy but I am not denying myself things I love. If I was, I'd be a lot more cut and I know it; but I like food and don't feel like I should live without things I like to get a certain muscle mass sooner. I still stock our candy dish, I still eat bread and drink wine. There are certain things I'm just not willing to sacrifice.

In any case, so that is my first fitness update on the blog. Now return to your normally scheduled posts....

Fairy house (work in progress)

This is a work in progress... I've been working on it for a week so far. I'm planning to sell it at the gallery when it is done. Thank g-d we have an orchard, I don't know where I'd find all this stuff if we had some cookie cutter yard with no trees. :)

I'll post more pictures as I go. It will be furnished as well.

Fairy Furniture

I made two fairy beds so far. They started as wood bases, I used bark and moss from our orchard to make the 'bones' of the beds. The rest of them is dried flowers, fresh water pearls and other random stuff I had in my art room. :)

Fairies

 

I've had fairies on the brain lately, no clue why. My usual fare is more towards dead stuff... in any case....

Finally finished a fairy house. The base for this was one of the dollar mini bird houses from Michaels. I papered it then made a new door. The fairy lamp is a baked marble and acorn cap. The mini snail is in a real shell.

Window in back has mica sheets as the "glass"

Finshed fairy village.

Art doll work in progress

Mini fairies for an as yet unfinished scene

Tiny cloche of toadstools

 

Thimble gardens

This technically isn't a fairy thing, though it does have fairy elements on it, so it counts. :) I made this for my mom. The beads are all done as individual wire wrap, there are charms at the bottom of each. Most of them I made, a couple I used store bought charms. The wood is from our orchard, we had to cut a few trees down recently in the older part of it. I snagged a few nicely shaped branches and some bark for later fairy houses.

Feb Gallery show

The event went great, when Toad and I left the place was packed. Such a great event.

Dicken's festival

Had such a good time... The costumes were awesome.