I’ve been thinking a lot about diet lately – not the crazy ‘starve yourself’ type diets that never last very long, but a maintainable, balanced, healthy, long-term way of eating. I’ve been reading a lot of different books about nutrition – some of which I agree more with than others – and come to my own conclusions about how I want to be eating. I’m not 100% there yet, but here’s my ideas so far:

Food is not just fuel. It’s not just calories, it’s not just macro-nutrients, it’s not even just the vitamins and nutrients within that. There’s a lot more to it than that. I hate the argument of “why would you put something that’s bad for you into your body?”, because nutrition is just one aspect of food. Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, food choices also have social, environmental, ethical, financial, gastronomical and political aspects as well, and these ends don’t always align with each other. I think any maintainable diet has to reflect a balance of the individual’s personal preferences and ideals.

And thus, diet is personal. A set number of calories or particular style of eating is not going to be practical or preferable for everyone.

Food is a joyful thing, for me at least, and a diet which is going to suck that joy out of it is simple not maintainable for me.

It’s difficult, but I’m trying to balance everything whilst making food choices which are as ethical and environmentally friendly as possible – free-range chickens, eggs and pork; grass-fed and finished beef; sustainable options like kangaroo meat. The animals we eat, especially chickens, are kept and slaughtered in horrific and unhealthy conditions. If you’re still under any illusions that it’s still like The Children of Cherry Tree Farm, I suggest you read The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan and Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. Even if you don’t give a crap about animal cruelty or the environment, remember that these are animals that are fed an unnatural diet, kept in extremely unhygenic disease-spreading conditions, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics and then fed to you. Free-range stuff is pricey and even grass-fed beef is going to contribute to global warming, so I try to eat small portions of meat and have a meatless day once or twice a week.

The less processed, the better. And cheaper. And more versatile for cooking. Anything with weird, artificial sounding ingredients or added Vitamin X is a no.

And therefore: full fat dairy all the way. Have less, but have it in all its full fat glory. And oh is it glorious.

Have fruit and/or vegetables make up at least half of each meal (in terms of volume), with the rest being made up of protein and sometimes carbs. I’ve experimented enough to know which vegetables I like and how to cook them the way I like, so most of the time this isn’t too hard! Fruit usually just plays a role in my breakfasts, where I find it difficult to include veggies.

Reduce grains and sugar as much as possible (so bread, pasta, rice, oats) and stock up on veggies instead. I find this one very very difficult. At the moment I’m doing okay limiting it to just a serve each with lunch and dinner, and I think I’m happy with that for now. I get that grains and sugars are nutritionally a bad deal, but as I mentioned above nutrition is not the only motivation for eating.

Cook at home rather than eating out as much as possible – to save money and have more control over the ingredients and process. I’m trying to eat well at home, and save indulgences for the occasional outing.

Variety is more fun to cook and to eat.

Alcohol is nutritionally bad but I really enjoy it so I’m going to drink it anyway. Just not too much.

Indulge sometimes but consider it carefully. The following indulgences are lame (and also weak points for me) and should be avoided in favour of more awesome ones: muesli bars, potato chips, soft drinks, stale curry puffs, apricot delight, any kind of chain fast food, chocolate bars. Awesome indulgences: homemade sweets, crackers with fancy cheese, BMTs, pizza (homemade or gourmet, I’m too much of a snob for Domino’s), poached eggs on toast, ice-cream, dark chocolate (the expensive, organic kind), wine, white rice, stuff cooked by friends and family at gatherings, nice meals out.

Listen to yourself and your body, because science, and especially media, often make sweeping generalisations and assumptions about all aspects of diet, despite the fact that it’s something which is very difficult to accurately study.

So that’s the ideal for me! I want to emphasise that this approach definitely doesn’t work for everyone. I’m lucky that I have the time and inclination to cook most of my meals from scratch, and that I live in a city where there are lots of food options and fresh local produce most of the year. If I was really gung-ho about losing weight I’d probably cut back more on the indulgences, dairy, alcohol and carbs but honestly at this point I’m not convinced that it’s worth the trade-off. Overall I still feel very healthy and also still derive much joy from food!

What affects your food choices? What would your ideal diet (in a long-term, balanced sense rather than one based on short-term deprivation) be like?

So for this photo I set up in my living room, as I’m still too self-conscious to take self-portraits outside in the sunlight! It meant that I had to use a mounted flash, which I just pointed up mostly towards the (white) ceiling and pointing a bit towards me. Thankfully the walls of my apartment are all white and light bounces around reasonably nicely, although it still came out a bit darker than I wanted. The camera with mounted flash was on a tripod, and I got fed up with the timer and just used a remote (which you can see in my hand). For the geeks out there, this was shot in RAW format on a Canon 7D with a 16-30mm f2.4L (not ideal, but I don’t have a large space to work with) at 26mm, f4.0 and 1/20s with an ISO of 1600.

So anyway, this is my new post-processing process:

1. Import photos in RAW format. If your camera can do this, I really recommend it – it gives a lot more options when editing and leaves you greater room for making errors when shooting (which is something I do a lot…).
2. Since this photo was a little dark and yellowy, I played around with the levels and white balance in RAW mode to get it to the look that I wanted. Usually I aim to not have to do this and get things correct in camera, but I’m not really there yet!
3. Bit of vanity – I removed dark circles under my eyes, smoothed out skin-tone, darkened and sharpened around my eyes and made my cheeks rosy. Mainly this is because I was too lazy to put on makeup! For a closer portrait I would definitely bother though, as it’s a bit more difficult to paint in makeup in Photoshop when it’s under closer scrutiny.
4. My magic buttons – I ran my current favorite Totally Rad Photoshop actions, starting with “Boutwell Magic Glasses” which does some sharpening and adds a bit more depth to shadows, and “Lux” which gives a bit of a vintage effect. Both of these actions are a bit over-the-top at full strength, so I usually tone them down a bit – “magic glasses” usually at a bit below full opacity, and “Lux” at quite a low opacity or not at all depending on the look I’m after. My other favourite (not used here) is “Bitchn’ B&W” which produces much nicer black and white photos than I can do manually.

This is actually more complex than what I usually do with food and random out and about photos, which I tend to spend less time on. I’ve set up actions that also contain the TR actions, which resize the photo to fit on my blog then run “Magic Glasses” to sharpen and contrast things up a bit. Then I can tone it down a bit if needed and save it out ready for the blog, all with just a few mouse clicks. So much easier than what I was doing before! I’ve been using these actions for all the photos on here since my Singapore trip. Here’s a photo that shows things a little better:

These were actually done with the free demo of the Totally Rad Action Pack because I was waiting for some clients to pay me before forking out for the paid pack. The free demo actually includes my favourite actions, so I definitely recommend grabbing it if you don’t have the cash for the full set! But Totally Rad sent out an email about a Mother’s Day sale with $50 off, so I figured now was a good time for me to get the real thing. I can’t wait to play around with it!

If you’re thinking of buying anything from Totally Rad, use the coupon code MOMSDAY to get $50 off, until 16th May. And yes, I am an affiliate, but I do wholeheartedly endorse it (especially for bloggers) and was going to write up something about it before they even started an affiliate program, so I figure that’s not so bad. If it’s too much moolah for you then I really recommend just getting the free demo as it has the best bits anyway and you can keep using it indefinitely!

If you want to try doing more adjustments to photos manually, I found the tutorials over on Sabatomic really easy to follow and useful – I’m always in awe of her skills.

Random aside – I feel like it’s a bit of a breakthrough for me to post pics of myself and not hate the way that I look, even without makeup and sleepy morning eyes! Okay yes it ‘shopped my face quite a bit in the end, but it came as a bit of a surprise to me to look at a photo and not feel that I hate the way my body looks. Not fishing for compliments here, just feeling like I’ve come a long way!

FINALLY finished this dress! If you’re new around here or not paying attention, I actually started this dress back in February and was having a really hard time fitting the muslin. I did manage to finish the muslin not long after and cut out all the pieces in the final fabric, a bring pink linen, then managed to take another couple of months to actually finish it. If you can’t tell I’m trying to imitate the photograph of this dress on the front of the Colette Patterns Sewing Handbook.

If you’re looking at the above photo and thinking that it isn’t really very well fitted then well, you’re right. I had a lot of problems fitting the bodice piece initially because I chose the size to fit my waist, which is apparently a bit on the large side in proportion to my hips and bust. A few mockups later I realised that starting from a smaller size and grading larger for my waist was much easier than starting with the correct size waist and then attempting to do small bust/hip adjustments and take in everything else. Once I figured that out making a better muslin was easy, and I was pretty happy with the way that it fitted. Then in the couple of months I took to sew the final dress I managed to lose a few centimetres (from the bust, why is it always the place you want to lose the least?) and maybe lost something in the translation from muslin to pattern to final cut, because it’s now rather loose around the waist and shoulder blades, and even my waist. I also managed to not pay enough attention to the ‘caps’ at the shoulders or armholes, which I think are a bit on the large side in comparison to the reference photo.

So yeah, not perfect. I wore this dress in to work today and it’s definitely lovely and comfortable to wear, and this bright pink is one of my favourite colours to wear. It’s also the most involved and most neat garments I’ve ever sewn, and I think I’ll be a lot more confident going into my next sewing project.

So a few random thoughts on Colette Pattern’s Pastille dress:

• The pattern is actually pretty easy to follow and isn’t difficult at all to put together, if you’re not a noob like me!
• I did have to look up how to do a centered zipper in another book though, as I found the instructions a bit brief and unclear.
• I think extra resources are also necessary for fitting, as well as a bit of trial and error. There’s some info in the chapter preceding this pattern that explains things with nice diagrams, but if you’re new enough to this kind of thing to need step-by-step instructions then you’ll need to do some research online or in more comprehensive books.
• I’m developing a healthy dislike for facings. Luckily this linen hides my extra tacks holding it down pretty well, but I think for the next project I’ll attempt a proper lining.
• I didn’t have any issues with the skirt and think the pleats are a pretty touch, so I might remake it just as a skirt sometime – there’s some instructions on how to do this here.
• I’ve decided to retrace the patterns instead of cutting the original tissue pattern from now on – I seem to be great at cutting things wrong or choosing the wrong size, and sometimes this means a bit of guesstimation when trying to fix it! I’d also like to be able to remake things if my weight and size changes in the future.
• I still feel like a dork taking photos of myself, but I’m pretty pleased with how these turned out! I’ll write a bit about my setup for these photos and the post-processing (which is where the magic lies, if I’m honest) later.
• Apparently I have chronic bitchface and don’t appear to be smiling when I think that I am, so must learn to smile more obviously!

Next up in the book is the Truffle dress! I’m slightly dubious about how well it will fit into my personal style, but I suspect that it’s all about choosing the right fabric for the job. Hopefully this one won’t take anywhere near as long!

Last round of purchases, from my trip to Singapore in March

It seems like almost everyone I know (myself included) is trying to save up for something. I suppose we’re just at that age – everyone wants to either get into the housing market (if they haven’t already) or take the chance to do some extended travel before settling down to being a proper ‘grown-up’. For most of my friends and I, this has come down to seriously cutting back on unnecessary purchases of clothes, shoes, accessories and cosmetics. Which actually is harder than you would think!

I’m not on a ‘ban’ per say, but this year I’ve been trying really hard to simplify my wardrobe and work more towards minimalism. I’ve managed to stick to only buying a few things so far this year (all shown in the photo above), and am considering my next few purchases quite seriously before making them. It probably also helps that I’m being so vigorous with my saving that I don’t really have anything left over for new clothes! So anyway, here’s a few things that worked for me:

• Doing Project333 helped heaps – what’s the point in buying new things if you can’t wear them for another 3 months?
• Unsubscribing from all the (many) shop mailing lists I had invading my mailbox every day. Email and shopping minimalism in one go.
• Deciding to no longer buy shoes or clothes online – I seem to have a 50/50 rate of getting something that both fits and looks good on me, and I used to waste a lot of time browsing online stores. It’s also much easier to spend on a credit card than spending cash.
• Mending, altering or dyeing items from my current wardrobe to give them a bit more life.
• Sorting through my current wardrobe and finding things that I’d forgotten about, or new combinations of items to try out.
• Really carefully considering purchases. I’ve bought things in the past that have turned out to not really be flattering, fitted badly, made of problematic fabric or just don’t really suit my style or lifestyle. I’ve heard people say they like to think of at least three different outfits they could use an item in before purchasing it, and I think that’s a great idea!
• Not going shopping. Sounds obvious, but I think some people find this difficult. Window shopping is like sniffing a donut and thinking you’re not going to want to eat it. If you don’t seek out the donut then it’s less tempting.
• Having a tangible goal to work towards – I don’t think I’d be able to be anywhere near as good if I was saving just for the sake of it.
• Setting a limit rather than a ban – I used to set aside $50 per week for ‘frivolous’ things, like dining out, drinks at bars, coffees, clothes, cosmetics etc – everyone apart from everyday bills and expenses. I find this more useful than going completely cold turkey, and it also made me think about priorities – do I want to have drinks with friends or buy a new top? Do I want to buy a coffee every day, or have a nice dinner with The Boy?
• Finding a different hobby. Not an issue for me, I have more hobbies than I know what to do with!
• Gathering momentum. I think it gets easier over time, and now that I have a bit of savings I’m clinging to it and feeling very reluctant to let go of any money that I could put in there.

Currently I have a little wishlist of items but have been too lazy, too busy and too stingy to go searching for them at the right price, which I’ve taken to mean that really I’m fine without them for now. My last little shopping stint in Singapore (oh come on, you can’t go to Singapore and not buy stuff!) has satisfied me for now, and I’m working on making a few things to get through autumn and winter. I feel like I have much more willpower in resisting shopping than resisting food. I wonder if I could make it through the rest of the year without buying stuff?

Got any other good tips for surviving a shopping ban for me?

• I’ve had body-image issues most of my life (even when I was really very skinny) – nothing serious, but enough to dent my self-esteem and confidence. Sadly I think that this is extremely common – I remember someone telling me that 2 out of 3 women dislike their bodies? Thankfully these days despite being far from pinup material I feel much more accepting of my size and shape, and happy with where I am.
• I don’t find slim, model-looking people inspiring – I feel more like they’re an alien species rather than something that’s a realistically attainable goal for me. And, as horrible as it sounds, some self-defense mechanism in my brain likes to assume they are mean and/or dumb to balance out their attractiveness. Often after actually talking with people like this it turns out to not be the case at all. I apologise for the assumption; really it just means I think you’re hot.
• I’m just coming out of the famine part of the always a feast or a famine cycle of freelancing. It was pretty rough. There’s definitely a lot of good things about freelancing, but there’s also a lot of stress and uncertainty too. Imagine not being paid for a month – would you survive? I’m now heading into the feast part, which means more money but also a lot more working hours!
• I definitely sometimes have doubts about whether I’m doing the right thing in sticking with freelancing – usually during the ‘famines’. But I figure if there’s ever a time to be doing something like this, it’s now. I don’t want to be stuck with a mortgage and a kid wondering if I didn’t give myself enough of a chance to succeed working for myself.
• For some reason some people are under the impression I’m a good cook and we eat gourmet for every meal – but I’m not a very good cook! I rarely make anything inedible, but generally it’s pretty average. I usually try to put in some effort though, and absolutely refuse to eat packaged dinners or a dinner consisting only of steamed vegetables.
• Also, if I’ve given you the impression that I’m a star dressmaker, I’m definitely not! I’m incredibly slow and inaccurate with sewing, and am slowly getting better at the basics.
• I’ve completely converted to full fat dairy and I’m never going back.
• I’m an extremely passive aggressive jogger. I mentally abuse people I jog past, especially if they block my way or have a good body. I don’t mean it. Really.

Got any secrets or something to come clean about on your blog?

I’ve been a bit of a lax blogger lately, for various reasons – but I’m determined to make a comeback! Anyway, as a light post to get back into the swing of things, here’s some lovely links for your weekend.

Editors of Vogue around the world have pledged to stop using models under 16 or with obvious eating disorders. Definitely a step in the right direction – I can’t believe they actually have to Photoshop extra meat onto catwalk models who are too skinny!

Things I’m Afraid to Tell You is sort of a meme started on the Creature Comforts blog, encouraging bloggers to write something a little personal and show something more authentic and vulnerable. It’s a bit scary, but I think I’ll put up my own ‘Things I’m Afraid to Tell You’ post this weekend.

I’m going to this place for breakfast tomorrow with The Boy and a friend of ours – it looks great (I’m a sucker for a pretty website). We’re trying to test out and blog about various breakfast place around Perth – hit me up with your favourites!

I’ve decided that I’ll be requesting this cake as my birthday cake (to be baked by The Boy) this year – it looks amazing, and surprisingly is also completely vegan!

IKEA made a camera! It’s made of cardboard, digital, and plugs straight into the usb port of a computer. I have way more cameras than I know what to do with, but I’m curious to see what the photos from this camera looks like.

I think next time I make vanilla ice-cream, I’ll make some salted caramel like this to go with it. Anyone got a good recipe?

Lovely nailpolishes from Aly

Adorable art from paperbeatsscissors

I usually don’t bother entering contests on blogs because I never win anything, but decided to try a couple just for the heck of it. And I won! Maybe I should enter things more often?

I got a set of lovely nailpolishes from Aly of alyinlalaland, which is a sweet personal blog, and some adorable Pokemon art from awesome artist/designer paperbeatsscissors (I’m not going to explain it; if you don’t get it straight away then you won’t find it amusing anyway). I love prizes!

Maybe I should do a giveaway? I’m not sure what I’d put up for grabs though – maybe some of my cute crafts or button badges, or some custom illustration work?

I’ve changed my exercise routine a bit lately, partially egged on and trained by Ms T. She said that she hoped I enjoyed it, and I couldn’t completely say that I did. I’m not sure that I’ll ever be able to get to a point where exercise is something that I do simply because I enjoy it, rather than because I have to.

For me, doing exercise is like cleaning. It’s not my favourite thing in the world to do. There are other (less productive) things that I’d often rather do. Sometimes I’ll make excuses and put it off. But it is a necessary evil to keep things in ship shape and running smoothly, and if I neglect it for long I can feel it dragging me down. Depending on how it’s done, it sometimes gives me time to ponder things on my own or chat with people, which are things that I do enjoy. Sometimes it makes a nice break or distraction from something else (like work), so I actually look forward to it. When completed there’s a sense of relief and satisfaction of getting something useful done, ticking it off the mental checklist.

Anyway, here’s my current exercise routine:

• Group fitness classes in the park Mondays and Wednesdays (can’t recommend this class enough – I’ve now managed to stick with it for over a year, making it the longest I’ve stuck with any form of exercise by a long shot).
• Pilates mat class on Thursdays – more low key, but I’m hoping that the core strength will help my back problems and (slowly improving but still very weak) ab muscles.
• Zombie running missions or interval training with Ms T on Saturdays.
• Pilates DVD with Ms T and Ms N on Sundays.
• Extra walking/cycling when I feel like it.
• 5 minutes of morning yoga when I have the time for it.

This is actually quite a lot of exercise for me!  But then again, I do really love my food so have to work for it. Apart from the group classes this routine is fairly new; hopefully I’ll stick to it despite not being at a point where I love exercise for its own sake.

Do you exercise much? Do you enjoy it?

I’ve been seeing a lot of hype about DIY dye jobs lately (okay, just on A Pair and A Spare but I figure she knows what she’s talking about) and decided to have a go at it myself. It was sort of a last minute decision so I bought some fabric dye from the local pharmacy and just followed the instructions. Mostly I wanted to dye a Forever New tee that was originally a lovely peach but got washed with some dark colours and ended up grey. Not nice grey, but washed-with-the-darks grey. Since I wasn’t able to get it back to its original shade, I decided to go another colour instead. I chose ocean blue.

In addition to the tee I tried to dye a slightly stained dress and, at the last minute, tried dip-dying a pair of white socks for a subtle ombré effect. The tee came out perfectly; the socks are coloured oddly where they were folded whilst drying so aren’t quite right; the dress, which was polyester, didn’t take the colour at all for now obvious reasons. It was more of an experiment than anything so I’m not too sad about my failed ombré socks, but I think dyeing with fabric is something I need to experiment more with!

Tips which are probably very obvious but weren’t to me:

• If the dye says that it won’t work on polyester, it won’t work on polyester. It doesn’t matter if you leave it in there for days, it’s like trying to dye a piece of plastic by dipping it in dye. Apparently you can use regular fabric dyes on polyester by using rubbing alcohol instead of water and then ironing it dry without rinsing (effectively melting the colour into the plasticy fabric), but that sounds too difficult and messy for me. Cotton on the other hand takes dye fantastically. My tee and socks are a cotton/elastaine blend.
• Likewise, polyester thread won’t take dye – if you look at the photo above, the white stitching on my tee remained white. I don’t mind it in this instance, but something to keep in mind.
• The dye instructions will tell you a weight of fabric you can dye with it – you can exceed this amount, just remember that the colour might not be as strong.
• Take care when drying items that don’t have seams (like socks) – dye will gather where the fabric is folded, so the result might not be even.

Have you dyed fabric before? I’m very new to it but really want to do some more and especially have another go at the dip dyed effect!

This dark chocolate sorbet was a last minute decision last weekend, for a casual dinner at a friend’s place. We didn’t have any cream on hand so couldn’t make it an ice-cream, but I’m starting to think that a super intense sorbet is actually better anyway. I followed Smitten Kitchen’s chocolate sorbet recipe, which is based on a recipe by David Lebovitz – two of my favourite sources of foodie inspiration. I like to think that since there’s no cream and not much sugar in there it’s not too unhealthy, although there is almost an entire block of chocolate in there.

Despite chilling the chocolate mixture thoroughly before putting it through my ice-cream machine, it didn’t manage to set very well – so when I served it I jokingly referred to it as ‘chocolate soup’. Everyone was very nice about it at least. We took the leftovers home and it came good after a bit more freezing. Intense and so so chocolatey!