MABON MENU - FOR STAYING SLIM

  Luckily I´m back at my pre-pregnancy weight, and need not lose anymore. Now it is time to stay this sized. It doesn´t happen by itself, I know, and therefore I have put together an eating plan for Mabon (from now on until about late October).

  Feeling full and satisfied after a meal is important to me in order to stick to any plan. This menu is an all-you-can eat style, just keep the meals vegan and low fat.

Breakfast: (every day of the week)
1/2 liter green tea + soymilk
2 dl yogurt + berries/fruit + nuts/seeds

Lunch:
1/2 liter water
+ Mon: pasta dish
+ Tue: dip delight (for example veggies, bread sticks, tofu, baked potatoe wedges, vegan weenies, etc.)
+ Wed: soup and bread
+ Thu: pie/quiche
+ Fri: hamburgers (make vegan patties and assemble as usual)
+ Sat: pancakes
+ Sun: mashed potatoes, some sort of sauce, and a side salad

Dinner: (every day of the week)
1/2 liter green tea + soymilk
oatmeal porridge/home made bread with jam (or other flavorings, such as cocoa)

Supper/dessert:
1/2 liter herbal tea
+ Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri: 4 chocolate topped Digestives (I use store-bought)
+ Sat: candy
+ Sun: dried fruit pieces (my favorites are coconut, banana, and strawberry)

  The recipes vary according to what ingredients I happen to have. That also gives variety from week to week. I like to have a core plan to my eatings,  because then I don´t have to ponder what to eat every day, and it keeps my diet in some sort of order, making sure I don´t go overboard with unhealthy goodies.

  Right now tomatoes are in season, and I get them for free from a farmer in my village. He is an 83-year-old man who grows them as a hobby aside from the actual farming he still is involved in with his son. This is my luxurious recipe I always use his tomatoes for at this time of year:

Perfect Monday lunch!

Tomato sauce:
7 dl tomatoes
3 Tbsp olive oil
3 sage leaves
salt
margarine (vegan)
2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar

+  Remove the navels of the tomatoes, chop coarsly, and puré in a blender. (Fine people peel the skins off and remove the seeds too, but I have better things to do with my time so I don´t bother.) Place the puré in a pan with the oil and sage, let cook for about 15 min. Remove the sage and add salt according to your liking. Remove from heat, pour in  the vinegar and do not cook anymore.
  Serve with pasta and add a dollop of margarine on top (this is very important in order to achieve the perfect flavor).

  With this menu I hope to maintain my current weight, which is around BMI 20. You can easily check your BMI here.

MABON DRESS FOR BABY GIRL

  Mabon is upon us, and it is time to update my baby´s wardrobe. (She also grows so quickly that she really needs bigger clothes.)
  Mabon is the time of year when nature turns brown as all the summer plants, grasses, and leaves wilt and die. Therefore dark brown is the core color in my Mabon palette. Baby clothes are traditionally pastel year round, but I feel most comfortable dressing my kids in darker colors now.

  Here is the latest outfit I made for my baby girl:

A bonnet, body shirt, and pants. All made of soft, stretchy jersey. This brown looks good on my baby, and is quite girly even thanks to the dress. Often there is too little variation in baby clothes in the stores. Making clothes yourself is a great way to achieve the look and feeling you like, and really isn´t very hard (but a little time consuming, I admit).

The pants also needed a piece of the frog fabric, but I had difficulty figuring out where to place it. Until it hit me. The soles of the feet is the perfect place to show a little of this theme fabric. Plus it makes them look more detailed (where in reality it really is as easy to make as of the other fabric). I have learned to digg these type of pants because they have sort of built-in socks. It is not possible for a baby to kick these socks off! My firstborn is a boy, and therefore I never realized the world of pantyhose or these type of pants before. (They wouldn´t look very manly on boys...)

I fell in love with this fabric in the spring, when I saw it in the store, and had to buy it. Little did I know at the time what I would make of it, but now I´m glad I did buy it! I have always had a thing for frogs. For some reason I simply love them!

This is where everything started. I only meant to make a simple bonnet, since she had outgrown her previous ones during the summer. Then I added the bow to make it more girly. But it looked so nice I wanted to expand the look.

  Now my baby is all set for autumn trips to relatives´ place, the doctor´s, shopping, etc. Maybe I should next focus on myself... Often when I see kids with their parents, the kids are way better dressed! Why is that? Anyway, I don´t want to fall for that. Beauty and style is a luxury for all of us, and doesn´t need much money to achieve!
  I know people who only buy stuff from grand lables, mixing and matching without a second thought, and then belive to be stylish. How I secretly pitty them... Price tags and style don´t walk hand in hand. That gives hope for the rest of us who are armed with a thinner wallet!

PILATES OUTFIT

  Every now and then I like to challenge myself by learning something completely new. I have taken different classes; raw living foods, foreign language, and acting/theater in the past years. Now it is time to learn Pilates.
  I don´t know much about the practice, only that it focuses to strengthen the middle section of the human body. And that is just what I need after pregnancy and childbirth!
  But what to wear?! The eternal question for us women. I have no gym gear or any sports clothes what so ever. I don´t exercise. (Shame on me...) A little imagination and planning gave me an idea of what might be needed, and I created this:

Subtle grey is a neutral color that leaves me feeling calm and safe in my expedition to the Pilates world. The pants are made of very stretchy swimsuit-like fabric, so they allow the tunic to flow straight down and not cling on. The top is made of stretchy and soft viscose rayon, and is a pleasure to touch.

A long tunic bottom covers the critical areas... I wouldn´t feel comfortable bending over with my panties showing in the back (which I see happening and dislike the sight).

My hair is braided like this in the class, so it won´t fall in my face and get tangled up around my arms as I move. Here you can see how I have extended the torso piece by adding a simple mini skirt to the hem. It is practical to have a shirt tight at the waist in Pilates, so the instructor can see if you aren´t doing something well.

  The first class of the Pilates course is behind now. Judging by that experience, I can say I´m very pleased with this outfit!

LUGHNASADH FASHION

  Trends come and go - style is forever. My fashion styles remain the same year after year, which is both ecological and handy. I can pull out the same good outfits from storage over and over again. And they always feel fresh and up to date. After all, I only wear each collection by the sabbat for about six weeks. Then it is time for a change again. I love this system!

  This outfit is my "old faithful". I made it about five years ago, and have worn it each Lughnasadh since.

My favorite patterns are used to make these pants and shirt again. Loose, comfortable pants go well with my pear-shaped figure (and with every figure by the way). The bat-sleeved t-shirt adds volume to the top, balancing the bottom.

The trouble with today´s clothes in stores is that they mosty look horrific when seen from this angle. Side profile makes up to half of us, so it is important we look good that way too. Even in fashion catalogues they should put profile pictures of the models so we could get a realistic view of the garments advertised.

Jewellery here is quite big to my size standards, but subtle in color. Therefore the whole look remains natural.

The no-makeup- makeup. In my Lughnasadh look it is essential to look very natural, like I´m hardly wearing any makeup. For this look I used concealer and translucent finishing powder, no foundation at all. The key is to choose colors that are very close to my natural colors, and only slightly to accentuate them. In short, nude tones.

  My old faithful saved my butt this week, when we attended our goddaughter´s fourth birthday party. I haven´t had any time to sew for myself, and I was very happy to have had this outfit in my wardrobe, again! (I just hope they didn´t remember that I wore these clothes to her first birthday too...)     =)

HOME MADE CAMOMILE TEA

  In many summers I have collected wild herbs from nature and dried them for brewing tea in winter. Herbs such as raspberry, stinging nettle, and rowan leaves. This summer I tried to grow some camomile. It did grow, but not as generously as I was expecting. None the less, I was still able to collect a few bunches of it for tea. And that´s enough.

  The recipe:

1 tsp dried camomile flowers
2,5 dl hot water
(honey)

+ Pour hot, almost boilig water over the camomile and let simmer for 10min (or longer for more intensive flavor). Sweeten with honey if desired.
  The flavor of camomile always brings summer to my mind, and therefore is a perfect drink for winter.

HOORAY FOR LOCAL FARMERS!

  Shame on me! For over ten years I have lived next to a farmer who grows organic produce (only plants, no smelling animals luckily!), and until now I have never bought anything from him. I always thought he would only sell huge bunches to big supermarkets or restaurants. But I was wrong.

  Yesterday I went and bought my first batch of his lovely organic veggies. Earlier we talked and agreed on a deal that I would give him twenty bucks, and he put together a suitable bunch of produce worth the money.

Potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage, and yellow onions are in season. (There were a lot more potatoes, but there´s no sense in stuffing them all in the picture.)

Lovely, smooth potatoes with the thinnest peel.

It is funny how you appreciate your food more when you know where it comes from. And I´m totally happy that all of my money went straight to the farmer, not into the pockets of faceless supermarkets (which do stand their place in stuff we can´t grow or produce locally).

Perfect...

  Now all I need to do is conjure up different dishes of these lovely veggies. It makes cooking somewhat more simple too; now I don´t have to figure out what to buy, only to use the ingredients I have.
  Today it is time for a cabbage pie. I have a bag of tomatoes, which I got from a friend in our village (who is also a farmer, but not an organic one,) waiting in the fridge. I will combine those two into a healthy pie.
   I just love this time of year with it´s abundance of fresh produce!

LOSING BABY FAT, PART 3: MISSION COMPLETED

  I have done it! All the weight I gained during my second pregnancy is gone. All of the 20+ kilos. I can hardly believe it myself.

I´m so happy to be back at my normal weight range!

  It took less than five months. I gave myself time until the end of this year, but I´m at the finishing point already. Yippee!
  It feels like the weight just melted off on it´s own, since I have done no exercising and have eaten as much as I wanted. I have followed the all-I-can-eat diet plans I put together, which I have also shared in my earlier posts. I am active in my everyday life, and I believe that counts as "exercise" in practice.
  In addition to staring at the kilos on the scale, I also like to keep in mind the BMI chart. Making sure that my weight stays in the healthy zone. I like to keep the index around 20. Too skinny is not good or healthy either.

  A toast for me is in order, I will now go and make a nice cup of green tea.   =)