Outfit Challenge, Round 2

Chirp, chirp! My friend at http://ethelandilearntosew.wordpress.com chose today's theme which was to be inspired by a bird. So today I picked my brain and my closet for options. I settled on a relatively simple outfit, suited for the easy going-ness of Sunday, inspired by...

The English Robin!

I don't have much in brown in my collection so I just replaced with black. Here I am (photoshopped the messy balcony background away :-P)! The hair is not looking the best as it was still wet from showering. I did take the opportunity to do my eye make-up to match the outfit. 

My turn to come up with round 3. Time for the thinking cap!

The Outfit Challenge, Day 1

So, as promised in my previous post. Here is the first result of the outfit challenge. I got to pick the first theme, which I decided was "subtle cosplay." I decided to cosplay Tara from Bufy the Vampire Slayer. Although it's more an outfit inspired by...than a cosplay. But that's okay. So in below photo, I am on the left and Amber Benson as Tara is on the right. Please excuse my terrible posture, it was early.

Make ALL the changes, do ALL the challenges!

Long post ahead!

A few weeks ago I finally accepted that I am not able to solve my problems on my own and saw a doctor about it.

If I was to label my problems, I guess mild depression or dysthymia would be appropriate. Basically, since about October 2012, I have been sinking. I started taking less joy in things, became less tolerant of people's mistakes and pushed them away and/or withdrew from social situations as a result, including terminating my Facebook page. I do not regret that last one as I continue to read more and more about how manipulative Facebook really is as a social media site but it has made me realise how reliant people have become on it. If you don't shove profile pictures and status updates down your 300+ friends' throats, you get forgotten about. And that is exactly how I feel a lot of the time. Forgotten, ignored, passed over. To avoid feeling like that, I withdraw, I alienate myself to give myself a sense of control. Reaching out to people to me reads as desperately begging for the attention of people who have no interest in me.  Fortunately for me, I do have support in the form of a husband and some REAL friends so I am not always the social pariah.

They say your outlook on life is a reflection on how you see yourself. I have never had particularly high self esteem. Insecurity creeps in at any given opportunity. This has also led to me not doing much as I never believe I will do it well enough. My tolerance for learning if very low as the low competency at the start of a learning process makes me very anxious. I am far from an optimist so I am inclined to think that if I show no talent at what I am learning, I will never improve.

So for a long time, my life consisted of working, watching TV and occasionally throwing in some things that might make it look like I have a life. Most of the time I enjoy those things, especially when they have a low level of responsibility, but it's not enough and my life feels stagnant. I feel stuck in my situations, which is another thing eating away at my motivation. Why make an effort to do things if I am stuck anyway, right?

But I want to change, I have always wanted to change. If I had spent half the time I spent making to do lists actually doing stuff on those lists, I would be so productive!

So, I went to the doctor. And now I am taking antidepressants, 20mg of Citalopram a day. I am in my third week of them and my mind is not exactly blown by the effects so far. But I have heard it needs time, so time is what I shall give it.

And admittedly, I have been doing a bit more. I have started several challenges with my friend (find her in all her fabulousness at http://ethelandilearntosew.wordpress.com/), adding that necessary accountability. And it's fun! My challenges for the moment:
- The water challenge, basically drink as much water (herbal tea counts) as possible. 3 litres a day is the aim.
- The 30 day yoga challenge. This can be found on YouTube. I am on day 3.
- The outfit challenge, friend and I set ourselves and each other outfit themes twice weekly and post the photos here.
- The blog challenge. A minimum of one blog post a month. Obviously the outfit challenge will cover this but I am hoping to add another post on top of them.
- The creative challenge. This we run via Pinterest. Make something, Pin it. Updates on Sundays.
- The frugal challenge. I need to save more money. This one has no real structure yet. Just spend less money overall. I have plenty of unnecessary expenses.
- Declutter challenges. Sell/give or throw away as much as possible. Especially when buying something new. Do not let stuff acummulate.

These things give my free time a bit of structure and make me feel productive. And some of them will obviously have beneficial effects on my health.

So there it is. I have been hoping to change for a long time now, but I might just be at the start of something.

If anyone has any questions (about citalopram, or anything), please feel free to ask!

Thanks for reading!

Love List

I read a lot of blogs on how to make myself happier. Recently I came across a good one:

The Freedom Experiment

Some of the articles on the Norsewoman's blog really appealed to me. She has gone through her own share of pain and her writing hits home.

One of her articles deal with how to get back passion and inspiration. This is a big one for me. For a long time I have felt empty. Not in the mood to do much of anything. And for me, creating was a perhaps not a big emotional outlet, but something I took pride in at the very least.

And at the top of the list I receive the advice of making a love list. So here goes. Without limiting myself, I will try to write down what I love, in no particular order of priority.

1. Eating out
2. Watching the sunrise and sunset
3. Being around animals
4. A clean, tidy, decluttered house
5. A hot bath
6. Scents: essential oils, perfume, incense, you name it.
7. My husband (being with him, talking to him, sex with him...)
8. Craft beers
9. Wine
10. Food
11. Nailing a recipe
12. Amending a recipe and nailing that
13. The cruelty free lifestyle: freerange meat/eggs, non animal tested cosmetics...
14. Birdsong
15. My bed: sleeping, reading...
16. Being engrossed in a book
17. Discovering something awesome: a film, tv show, book, website...
18. Being creative: drawing, crochet, origami...etc.
19. Getting recognised for something I did well.
20. Little luxuries: nice handcreme, lipbalms, etc.
21. Massages
22. Horse riding
23. A good night out
24. The fantasy genre (also, medieval etc.)
25. A good hike
26. Beautiful art
27. Language: English in particular.
28. Watching ballet
29. A good hair day
30. An awesome gig
31. Tasty tea
32. Coke Zero
33. Middle-Earth
34. Pre Christian Cultures, folklore, mythologies...
35. Nordic culture
36. Nature: the sea, the forest...
37. Friendship and family
38. The feeling after exercise
39. The feeling after meditation


So there is a few already. I will add more!

Insert Title Here

Once again I welcome myself back to my own blog. I am actually quite amazed I have mustered up the motivation to write. Because I don't have motivation for much nowadays. My funk has been long and deep so far and to be honest, I don't know when I see myself crawling out.

Obviously I want to. Everyone wants to be happy, right? But should happy be taking this much work? Exercise, meditate, force yourself to smile...I have heard and read many tips over the last year and I wonder...why am I not just happy? I have plenty to smile about, husband, cat, steadyandnothorrible job...
Anxiety is a big part of it. Last year I started a lot and gave up a lot in the space of a few months. And now it seems I cannot start anything without self doubt crashing down immediately.

I don't know, maybe one day I will wake up and it will all be different. That seems to have happened the last time...

I have kindasorta picked up a new hobby in the form of origami. Here are some of the models I folded in the last few weeks.

It is fun to do and it does take my mind off my issues. Of course I have started looking at other people's work and I get horribly jealous of their original designs and perfect execution thereof. But maybe one day?

One final side note: new Essence nailpolish. I decided my Yule colour this year will be green. So I got this:

Pretty, right?

Right, thanks for reading to those who do. Let's get on with it!

The locals

I like to indulge in animal photography when given the opportunity and wanted to share some pictures of some of the locals.

Back to Red

Hello readers!

For autumn I decided there are a few things I want to do. One of them being going back to having red hair. And because I did not want to ruin my hair any further, I decided to dye it with henna.

Here's a nice picture of my before hair, dark blonde with highlights.

I bought a few bags of skin quality henna from Amazon and latex gloves, concentrated lemon juice and cling film in the local Tesco. I used a mixture of 200 gr henna (2 bags) and 500 ml lemon juice. I left the mixture to sit in a glass bowl under clingfilm for about 24 hours before the long suffering hubs pasted it all onto my head. This is no easy task and I would definitely hate to do it alone. The stuff dries quickly and is very claylike, not as easy to apply as other hair dyes. Once it was all on I wrapped my head in clingfilm and put a bathing cap over it. I slept in that (somewhat poorly) and the next morning the rinsing process began. I read a tip to run a bath and just lie back in it, soaking your hair until the henna rinses out easily. I did that and it worked pretty well. 

The initial results were quite orangey, as predicted. But here is the result after a couple of days of oxidising. 

I am very happy with the results and will be repeating the process once necessary. Getting used to red again was remarkably easy ^^!