Learning to Flourish Part 1

Last year at Colour conference there was a lot of emphasis on the word 'flourish'. I went to that conference only recently having wrestled with God to a place of peace after a very emotional journey of losing my grandma and then having a miscarriage and I turned up as a bit of a wreck who just needed to meet with God. The weekend was a soothing balm to my soul and I left knowing it was time to heal, stand up, move on and flourish, I just wasn't exactly sure how. God started revealing to me bit by bit that an area I really needed to address and flourish in was my health. I was very overweight and facing some issues because of it and knew it was time to face the giant of food that has been an ever present nemesis since my teens resulting in more than a decade of struggling with bulimia. So here I was knowing it was time to face my giant and that God was with me, but no idea how this time would be different, then I heard Dr Caroline Leaf.

I had heard of her through a friends blog and knew she was a brain scientist person but wasn't sure what to expect when she came to Hillsong sisterhood one day. Her talk on renewing our minds through the power of our choices and that we can actually regrow the barren parts of our brains into flourishing trees by choosing God switched on a lightbulb for me and I went home different. I can't explain it any better than that, what she said (which was way more complicated that what I just said) just clicked. I suddenly got that everything is a choice and that as I submit my choices to God I can choose life and flourish, and so I did. Since that day I have lost 23 kg, gone down from a size 22 to a size 14, found energy and strength, and fixed hormone issues, fatigue and headaches with no medication, just by making good choices.

It wasn't a magic potion that made it easy, it was just a revelation on the power of choice, there was plenty of hard work involved in the process. I joined a gym and started exercising, including personal training which is not something I would've ever considered before and I really enjoy the challenge of it. I have found myself doing things I never imagined like bench pressing and boxing! And I started eating right, eating the food God created for our bodies and cutting out packaged, processed crap, the difference it has made not just in my weight but in my health and how I feel has been astounding!!

The picture on the left is from my birthday in April 2012, I don't even look like the same person!

 

These are examples of what I now eat, lots of yummy salad, veggies, protein, some whole grain carbs at breakfast and lunch, fruit and lots of water. Do I feel deprived when I skip the sugary stuff? Nope I feel empowered that I am making good choices for my body and health and I can say no food is worth the way I used to feel. I love clothes shopping now and it's a whole new world that I am LOVING!! I do have occasional treats but they are just that, treats, and then I return to normal eating, the difference is I used to think I needed 'treats' to get me through every single day!!

(This is home made hummus and it's so yum. This was afternoon tea for me and my kids and yes they ate the vegies too. The rice crackers were for the kids but I did eat a couple of them, they are not a regular thing that I eat though.)

 

And I have spent many hours literally sweating my backside off like this....

to achieve goals like this. When I first started at the gym I could barely last 2 minutes on the rowing machine. Once I started doing 5 my trainer set me the goal of doing 1km in 5 minutes, this was my personal best a couple of weeks ago, 1169 metres in 5 minutes. I love it when I smash goals cause then I just set them higher for the enxt time and I love the challenge!!

 

So this year I went to Colour conference and Dr Leaf was there, I got to hear her in more detail and learnt even more, I bought a new flourish t-shirt (in a much smaller size) and I came away with fresh revelation that I will share in another post about other areas of my life where I need to make better choices. It's a journey, I will always be learning, but I think I have made a good start :-)

 

 

An oceana party!!

Back at the beginning of March Bethany turned 4 and for months beforehand she had told me she wanted an oceana party. What the uninitiated may not know is that oceana is where Merliah is a mermaid princess in the Barbie movie 'A Mermaid Tale', Bethy's favourite movie, so what she wanted was mermaids. Since quite a lot of her friends are boys I added pirates to the mix as well and made it an 'under the sea' theme. This was the first party I have thrown one of my kids since I discovered the wonder that is pinterest and to be honest I was quite overwhelmed by all the amazing ideas I found on there. So overwhelmed in fact that at some points my perfectionistic streak almost drove me crazy trying to unfold the amazing vision for the party I had in my head. Something this control freak has no control over however is the weather and for the 4th year in a row it rained for Bethany's birthday party. This meant my fabulous plans for our huge backyard were all squashed into a tiny loungeroom and a back verandah and it was pretty much chaos, but the kids still had plenty of fun which is the point of a birthday party afterall.

 

Decorations

I was busy for weeks beforehand with all sorts of craft supplies making jellyfish from plastic bowls, fish from paper lanterns and paper plates, cutting sea creatures out of cardboard, and turning boxes into a pirate ship.

 

 

 

 Since we were stuck inside I got some fish covered plastic from the local cheap shop to protect the carpet!!

 

I found these inflatable mermaids on ebay and the kids loved them, my girls carried these around for days after the party.

 

Food

I found some great ideas on pinterest like a watermelon pirate ship and a capsicum octopus dip. My octopus looked rather sad but hey I tried and my hubby did the pirate ship cause I was too stressed setting up everything else by then. I made mermaid and sea creature cookies the day before which turned out well and the pirate ship jelly cups turned out great too. The cake was my major task, it looked so simple in the pictures I had as inspiration but it took me hours!!! I made the white chocolate moulds a couple of days beforehand and that was a lot trickier than I realised cause white chocolate is a lot more sensitive than milk chocolate and it kept clumping, it took 3 attempts to get it right. I have to say though that Bethany was very impressed with the final product and I was very proud of how it looked. The sand (biscuiut crumbs) obviously looked authentic too cause my nephew thought I really put sand on the cake.

 

Games

Doing the games I had planned was a bit tricky with the number of kids in a much smaller space than I had anticipated. We did pin the tail on the mermaid which worked fine, the next game was musical islands where I had pictures of treasure islands for the kids to stand on (like musical chairs) but because it was so squishy they all stayed right next to the papers and you practically had to steal one from a child to make it smaller and get anyone out so I ended up just giving out prizes when there were still a few kids left. I also had a colouring in table set up and a tattoo station and there was the pirate ship and inflatble things to play with, the pirate ship especially was a huge hit!!

 

The rest of the games were meant to be all part of a treausure hunt and you got a piece of the treasure at each stop which would have worked fine having it all set up in our very large yard but given the space we had we ended up having to do 1 activity then set up the next 1 so it didn't flow how I had planned and was very chaotic. It started with fishing using magnets to pick up plastic sea creatures that had paper clips attached to them, the kids kept what they caught. Then at each activity you picked up another prize, bubbles for tossing rings on the octopus, stickers for walking the plank etc and it ended up at the grumpy pirate (my husband) who was guarding the treasure.

 

(sorry I can't figure out how to rotate the photo)

This was a practice run at the fishing the week before the party. On the actual day there were so many kids crowded around it you can't see the container at all.

We did an octopus toss that you can just see at the bottom of this picture, then they walked the plank.

Limbo.

Treasure chest pinata.

I borrowed this treasure chest off my mum who has had it for years and put the bags of treasure inside. The girls bags had plastic jewellery in them and the boys had plastic coins and a little bendable pirate.

 

The scary pirate who had the treasure.

 

Extra Goodies

The original plan was that all the treasure bits and pieces and the pinata lollies would actually be the lolly bags as I gave them all little bags to put all their treasures in, but I couldn't help myself and did goodie bags as well and also made some mermaid and sea creature chocolate pops to take home. I found some really gorgeous things like pirate shaped chocolates, wooden mermaid bracelets, wooden pirate stamps, pencils with bobbly sea creatures on them but the pictures I had of those things seem to have vanished from my phone, most probably with the help of little fingers who like to touch my stuff!!

The bags in the process of being filled.

 

Happy snaps 

The birthday mermaid princess.

Pirate Elora and cousin Josh.

Pirate daddy.

Very excited birthday girl at cake time!!

Very blessed young lady, all the presents didn't even fit in the photo properly!!

 

It was certainly one of the most involved and time consuming parties I have ever done but I actually really enjoyed putting in all the special touches and details and Bethany absolutey loved it which made it all worthwhile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The return of bloging!

This mumma has dusted off the keyboard and is back in blogging land. I have many posts swirling in my head of things from recent weeks I want to share, so posts may seem a bit disjointed as I catch up on my thoughts, but I am looking forward to once again sharing my crazy beautiful life with you!!