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My journey into crochet began with the anticipation of motherhood, weaving love into a keepsake baby blanket for my firstborn. Since those early days, my crochet repertoire has expanded to include a delightful array of projects – from purses and stuffed animals to home decor, blankets, scarves, beanies, and even a sweater. The snapshot below captures the evolution of my crochet skills.

Now a mother of two, my daughter plays with the teddy bears crafted for her older brother. Seeing her joy has ignited the desire to create a personalized set for her. The current project on my hook? A charming family of stuffed bunnies.

However, every creative journey has its quirks. For me, the challenge lies in joining the individual pieces. While I can crochet them swiftly, the process of assembly can stretch over weeks or even months. It's curious, considering it's usually the most enjoyable part for many crocheters.

For now, I'm immersed in the creation of a single bunny rabbit, relishing the artistry and anticipating the joy it will bring to my little one. Stay tuned for updates on this ongoing crochet adventure.

Ever since my husband and I got married over 7 years ago, I've struggled with cooking and planning healthy meals for us. In the beginning of our marriage, we had a healthy weight and a more active lifestyle. My husband particularly, walked miles and was very involved in sports before he moved to the current city we live in. 

This year we decided to concentrate on practicing healthier habits starting first with food consumption. We got our hands on a nutritionist made meal plan that limits sugar and sodium. We're in the third week of a four week schedule and we've lost significant weight while eating three filling meals and two snacks a day. That being said, I do feel like my body digests the food quickly so I feel hunger an hour or so after eating and snacks hardly make a difference. We are also trying to drink more water and keep ourselves properly hydrated. I still need to add regular exercise to my schedule, something my husband already started doing. I'm interested in a workout for beginners that won't strain my bad back and preferably strengthen it. Send me a message if you have suggestions on where to start at: contact@ayearingratitude.com. 

After the meal plan is over, we are thinking of choosing our favorite recipies and making our own meal plan from those. We want to reach our target weight and then relax a bit on the rigid meal plan. We're excited to see real results and just feel healthier. 

I like and recommend this app to track your fitness journey. You can use it as a simple weight tracker or it can also register calories, food recipies, or other more complicated details. 

Drawing using traditional media has been difficult for me, I tend to lean more abstract to avoid making mistakes in the details. However, I have now discovered digital art and it has made all the difference. I am able to undo with the click of a button and not waste materials throughout the process. It makes me feel more at liberty to make mistakes (an idea I struggle with ordinarily) and go with the flow. 

These drawings have all been made using a tablet, a stylus, and an app in about a period of a month with minimal effort or skills. I give absolute credit for my rapid progress to the youtube channel Calvin at DrifterStudio. My drawings were made alongside his guided tutorial videos and I think the results speak for themselves. 

After learning several techniques and drawing along with many tutorials, I am now trying to create my own illustrations. This is proving to be much more difficult and may take much more time. I plan to view some videos on line-drawing and sketching, which I believe will help me make my own watercolor drawings.

This is a spare bedroom we had been using as storage space for pretty much the entirety of the time we've lived in this house (which is about two years). This spring break, I challenged myself to finally start finding a place for everything we wanted to keep and let go of what we no longer had room for. It's been going great, though there's still some more organizing left to do. Some pictures frames have to be placed on the walls, a closet door has to be fixed, and some other items have to be moved outside to the shed (which needed some cleaning too). Regardless, I'm looking forward to having this room ready for guests and figuring out how to double it as a workout space. I'm thinking of possibly making a murphy bed and also getting easily storable workout gear. We'll see how it goes. 

(Below: The room after the initial purge and organization)