Raw Food Diet

Hello world,

The following link is for what is called the Raw Food Diet plan and while I don't generally subscribe to diet plans or fads this one actually seems to be the real deal in terms of nutrition.

http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/raw-food-diet-plan.html

So because I not only have a problem with shifting weight but also keeping it off I have decided to start trying to follow this diet and see how I go..

Now before you roll your eyes and click the back button I am not a size 4, 16 year old constantly complaining about the non-existent fat on her praying mantis thin body. I AM however a 23 year old who is a size 16 and overweight with most of the weight being on my stomach area and thighs which for me are the hardest areas to shift weight from.

Livelighter (website below) is another website I have been going to for healthy recipes and advice on trying to shift the weight and leading a healthier lifestyle and although so far there hasn't been a great deal of change but I need to stay positive and keep at it.

If anyone out there reading this has any great websites/books read/tips or tricks/recipes or advice that could help that would be great if you could leave a comment with it below!!

Thank you in advance!

Easter, health and gaming

So happy Easter for those that celebrate the Judaeo-Christian/Catholic celebration of Easter.

Daddy got out of hospital the other day with an all clear and yet the polyps in his stomach are still there yet there is nothing wrong showing up on ultrasounds, x-rays, blood tests or the other multitude of tests that he's had to have done. He's had this bizarre (and at times crippling) pain in his stomach/kidney are for the last year and yet it's nothing that Doctors or specialists can pick up on... On Thursday he had to go into hospital for an endoscopic biopsy so even though he got cleared on the day we're still waiting for the biopsy results. In the meantime every one keeps saying for us not to stress and not to worry until we have to but it can be really hard to do. So I pray to the Goddess and God for help and guidance and just try to stay positive. I don't want Daddy to see me worrying and make him feel worse because I'm pretty sure he's already worrying enough for the both of us.

Something I have been using to try and keep myself positive so I can be positive for Daddy is having Sims FreePlay on my phone- both a blessing and a definite curse! It means I can take my little town and Sims with me everywhere but that's also the down side...  It's a really great distraction though and it can be easy to be sucked into it.

Will the truth set me free?

"Careful"

I settled down a twisted up frown
Disguised as a smile, well
You would have never known

I had it all
But, not what I wanted
'cause hope for me was a place uncharted and overgrown

You'd make your way in
I'd resist you just like this

You can't tell me to feel
The truth never set me free
So, I did it myself

You can't be too careful anymore
When all that is waiting for you
Won't come any closer
You've got to reach out a little more
More
More
More, more

Open your eyes
Like I opened mine
It's only the real world.
A life you will never know

Shifting your weight
To throw off the pain
Well you can ignore it
But only for so long

You look like I did
You resist me just like this

You can't tell me to heal
And it hurts remembering
How it felt to shut down

You can't be too careful anymore
When all that is waiting for you
Won't come any closer
You've got to reach out a little more
More
More
More, more

The truth never set me free
The truth never set me free
The truth never set me free
So, I'll do it myself

You can't be too careful anymore
When all that is waiting for you
Won't come any closer
You've got to reach out

Can't be too careful anymore
When all that is waiting for you
Won't come any closer
You've got to reach out
More
More
More
More, more

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/paramore/careful.html

Comic-con Perth 2014

I had a lot of fun on the day despite the fact that my man and I were flat broke... I'm seriously not kidding... We had $20 cash (left on us once I had bought my MUST HAVE autograph for Jewel Staite), paid for our all day ticket to Perth and that was it!

Despite that he also really enjoyed the day. (The fact that we went with our mutual best friend really helped with the awesome making)

She bought him a plushy Creeper as a late birthday present and a Disney sanctioned plush Cheshire Cat for a (really) early birthday present for me. The Cheshire Cat has always been one of my favorite characters.

  

But anyway for the pictures!!! See below for the photos I took or had taken on the day.



















This guy did his own take on Assassin's Creed and as a result looked awesome!!



Princess Tiana from The Frog Princess



Me with Kiki! From the Studio Ghibli film "Kiki's Delivery Service"





Wow! Didn't notice before but Rapunzel looks a little freaky face wise... Sorry princess!!



Misty had a septum piercing!!!





Female Nick Fury and  Dead-pool with a random Dead-pool was pretending to shoot. :) He was good natured about it too...



Steam-punk and Star Wars in the same band of merry travelers!


Tome Baker with a Weeping Angel on either side. The one on the left is his lady with the wings being attached to her back via a backpack. The other lady's wings were carved from craft foam, also attached to a backpack and then carefully placed on her back.



My partner with his favorite Game of Thrones character.



This lovely young lady's sister was also dressed as Elsa (Frozen) but I kept missing them so I couldn't get a shot of them together but apparently they both made as much of the cos-plays as they could themselves rather than just purchasing them. Elsa's cos-play was really well done as well!



I really do look quite evil...





This lovely lady said it took her over 300 hours to hand piece the different colored pieces of tulle for the skirt. Her mom did the embroidery on the bodice.



These two were so cute!!! I think they were my favorite cos-players on the day purely for their humor and simple but well done cos-plays. The guy is dressed as Castiel and his friend (girlfriend?) had a Team Winchester top on. I just happened to get the shot as she had her hands up in what I like the call the classic Will Smith show off pose.



Best damn Anne Hathaway Catwoman and Batman cos-play I have ever seen!



Optimus-pram... (Direct quote from the makers wifey!)




I just really liked this honeys outfit. When I asked her she said it wasn't a cos-play but just her style and then happily posed for me when I asked... Her boots and dress are just so damn CUTE!!! And probably also quite expensive being lolita.

Princess Mononoke (San) Cos-play PART 3 FINISHED!!!

Well my first Comic-con was absolutely awesome and I had an absolute ball! I also got my cos-play finished in time although because of having over committed myself on the Friday night before I ended up stitching one of my ears onto the hood the morning of. (I was up at 7am to ensure I would be up in time to have it done)

I got a Firefly photo of Kaylee signed by Jewel Staite (I was so excited and happy I started tearing up!)and she was so happy and nice!!!

Signed autograph by Kaylee (Jewel Staite) with one of my favorite beaded gauze shawls draped over the top and Granddads car in front.

There were also a couple of other Studio Ghibli cos-players there as well which I was happy to see! (Due to amount of photos I took I'll put them in a new post.)

THE CLOAK:

The back of my pelt. I had sewn front and back paws onto my pelt too but you can't actually see the back paws sticking out like I thought they would. The front ones sat on my shoulders a few millimeters below my collarbone.

THE MASK AND EARS:

How my cloak sat with the mask on. Unfortunately my ears decided not to play fair and so they're sitting on an angle... But it was a comfortable and warm cos-play for a massively over air conditioned convention center and a chilly, windy, rainy day considering I get cold easily and both my legs and my arms were exposed.

A close up with the actual mixed colour I made for the inner ear and red of the mask.

My paper mache ears sewn onto my hood. That was a pain in the thumb... Literally. I accidentally stabbed my thumb trying to get the pin to stab through the paper mache so I could stitch through the holes. My partner was laughing at me when I called out to him for a bandaid "and quickly please sweetie as I'm trying not to bleed on my fur!!" I mean really. That's a normal reaction right? Right???

My San mask. I changed the colours of the lines to the dark grayish leafy green as I thought it would better reflect the forest and what someone who lives with wolves would likely make paint with.

How I attached my paper mache mask to my hood and pelt.

THE EARRINGS:
I ended up not doing the earrings as everywhere I went looking for that USUALLY sold clip on earrings (my ears are no longer pierced) were actually sold out and not knowing any other way of attaching the earrings I felt best to leave them off rather than try and half arse them.

THE MAKE-UP:

I forgot to have my lovely assistant (ahem... sorry sweetie! I mean partner) take a picture of the make-up that I actually got him to do on the day. I figured with the fact that my hands shake quite a lot and extremely noticeably, especially when trying to do fine things like painting my Beast-men and other Chaos miniatures (I also enjoy painting Warhammer- just another layer of geek to my onion) or even doing my eyeliner, that he would have steadier hands.

THE FANG NECKLACE:

My fang necklace that I made using jewelry twine, wooden beads salvaged from a truly hideous necklace bought in an op shop for $2 and air drying clay that I shaped to try and look like naturally battered wolf fangs. I then painted them in a lightened yellow and dry brushed Pearlescent White (Jo Sonja acrylic paint) over the top to dull the yellow a bit as it was very garish. I painted the tops of the fangs brown as all the photos I had looked up first showed the half of the tooth extracted from the gum as a dark brown colour.

ASHITAKA'S CRYSTAL DAGGER PENDANT:

So my crystal dagger didn't end up turning out this good which I was really disappointed about however in trying to replicate that pretty shimmery blue I did learn a fair bit about colour mixing limitations... (In other words I am really terrible at mixing paint colors.)

APRON TOP:

I didn't end up taking a picture of the apron top as I plan on making a completely new one from scratch. With the op shopped top I bought I pretty much just slit it straight up to the sleeves (and slit the sleeves off) like I'd planned and then left it as it was without hemming for that unkempt, raised by wolves look. I stitched some white ribbon to the sides and it was complete. 

THE TOP/SKIRT COMBO:
As planned I wore my fantastic op shop skirt and just a plain black strappy singlet. It was enough to keep me warm in the over air conditioned Convention Center but not too covering that I got warm too quickly!

THE BOOTS:
My op shop uggs were really comfy as first but by the end of the day they were really hurting my feet. In terms of keeping them as part of my cos-play they are a big no as I only used them as the closest (budget friendly) thing to San's boots as I could find. For the next time I wear this though I would like to learn how to make a pair of San's boots in preparation. However these served their purpose for this round.

THE DAGGER:

My knife for my Princess Mononoke cos-play. I used cut and shaped cardboard from a milo muesli bar box, duct tape paper mache (with home made glue) and my clay handle with paper mache over top and me holding the handle in place while my partner kindly used my hair dryer to set the glue so it would hold the handle properly for me to let it go... Once it was dry I painted the blade with two coats of Pearlescent White as a base coat and then two of silver over the top. The handle was painted in three coats of Carbon Black and the red boomerangs were hand painted.

THE HEAD AND ARM BANDS:

These are the cabochons I got for my Princess Mononoke cos-play.

This is one of my finished arm bands. I painted the copper cabochon in a deep purple, let it dry and then varnished it and stitched it onto the blue velvet ribbon I bought.

The finished head band. Painted the cabochon Pearlescent White from Jo Sonja's acrylic paints, let it dry, varnished it and stitched it to more blue velvet ribbon. Snap fasteners finished the three bands off.

THE FINISHED RESULT: 

Life, 42, dilemmas of a newbie cos-player

So I've had a few days off from recording my daily observations and what I've learnt. This was mainly because I was madly finishing making my Princess Mononoke cos-play in time for comic-con and partly due to avoidance of a certain ex best friend's wedding and well... because I'm lazy and forgetful.... No seriously I would probably forget my head if it wasn't already attached...

Therefor my combined observations for the week are the following:
- No one notices what you do- until you DON'T do it (then all manner of hell breaks loose)
- People can be damn ungrateful
- NAGGING ACHIEVES NOTHING BUT MAKING PEOPLE ANGRY (and yet my partner's mom is still bloody doing it)
- The Australian government are soulless, spineless leaches who don't care about the environment, heritage of state, the people they are SUPPOSEDLY governing or doing anything positive in terms of progression or improvement for the future instead of wasting money and progression for the sake of progression.

In the last week I have learnt:
- That controlling my patience and anger is getting easier with time and practice
- That being any kind of leader has complications
- And that I really like doing cos-plays...

Which brings me to my next point. For Comic-con Perth 2015 I will be getting another weekend pass and I plan on making not one, but TWO cos-plays so I have one for each day of the event.

(I finished my Princess Mononoke cos-play too. But I will leave that as a separate post!)

I am still currently trying to narrow that down because let's face it- I have a lot of favorites and my list of "narrowed down favorites" is still pretty long.

My list so far consists of the following: (And all images were found on Google)
- Kaylee ("Firefly")

 

- Jewel Staite (The actress who plays Kaylee)

 

- Julia (Tekken)


- Xiaoyu (Tekken)
 

- Kiki (Studio Ghibli's "Kiki's delivery service")

- Rogue (X-men)

- A Shirley Barber fairy (Shirley Barber is an illustrator of children's books with some truly beautiful illustrations)





- Abby Scuito (NCIS)
 

As you can see I REALLY like Abby and her entire wardrobe is pretty freaking awesome. However due to the hefty price tag of anything even VAGUELY goth (or black) I don't actually have a lot of goth stuff.

-Merida (Brave)


- Queen Elinor (Brave)
  
A really great cos-play of Merida and Queen Elinor

-Astrid (How to tame a dragon)
 

- Ally (The Notebook)
 

- Malificent (Sleeping Beauty)
   

 

- Ursula (The Little Mermaid)
   

- Human Mrs Potts (Beauty and the Beast)


- Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
 

 
\



- Red (Once upon a time)
     

- Mulan
   

 
Mulan as portrayed in Once Upon A Time


 

- Bow tie doctor (But I would make my cos-play version feminine seeing as I'm not male. :)
 

- Yuki Cross (Vampire Knight)
      

- Lena Duchannes (Beautiful Creatures)
  

- Raven (Teen Titans comic)
  

- Female Assassin (Assassin's Creed)



        

- Sailor Moon or Jupiter

 
- Sally (Nightmare before Christmas)

 


- Gretel (Hansel and Gretel)
 




- Anna Valerious (Van Helsing)
 



 


- The ball gown in David Bowie's Labyrinth




So many choices but at least now I have a nice visual inspiration board to start from. Once I have actually decided on the two new cos-plays I want to do of course...