Eat Chocolate and lose weight – Yes I am serious

WEEK 1 – So since my darling babies I gained around 30 kg and have struggled to drop the last 10kgs of baby weight. My biggest problem is finding the time to exercise and the motivation. I am basically a Lazy dieter who is easily tempted by food (of any kind).

So I nominated myself to participate in an 8 week weight loss challenge but not just any weight loss challenge but one that appealed to my heart (and taste buds) The Chocolate (over) indulgence Diet.

New to the market, The Chocolate Diet is a meal replacement program that allows you to feed your angel by combining healthy natural foods with the goodness of cocoa rich and satisfying shakes to replace two meals a day, but also indulge your devil with a daily chocolate treat high in polyphenol rich cocoa, nature’s new super food.

So basically for the next 8 weeks I will be trialing this product and keeping you upto date on my progress as I go. I won’t post my before picture (required for the challenge) until I can actually see results. Let’s face it no one needs to see me in tight fitting clothes with lumps and bumps unless there is something pretty to see at the end. Stay tuned for more updates.

Want to join me in the challenge? pickup some supplies from The Chocolate Diet website.

To celebrate my commitment to weightloss they are giving away one weeks’ worth of free product to one lucky Australian Craftgossip.com reader to the value of $60. Check out the competition here.

Mason jars are fun to craft with, use for storage or even use to hold gifts like baking mixes or sugar scrubs. But you can make your jars even cuter — no matter what you’re using them for — by adding a bit of cross stitch to the lid.

This idea comes from Gathered, and while they are showing examples of Mason jars used for storage in the craft room, you can use these throughout the house. I’m also thinking you could do this as a way to fancy up a traditional Mason jar sewing kit, since there’s already a little batting under the piece of cross stitch you could still use it as a pincushion.

The post walks you through how to make a cross stitched Mason jar lids and a link to a PDF pattern that includes six design options.

They’re not totally for beginners because they include cross stitch, backstitch, eyelets and Rhodes stitch, but if you aren’t familiar with those techniques you can either leave them off or there’s a stitch diagram in the PDF to help you.

Either way these designs are cute and relatively quick to stitch in whatever colors you like. It’s easy to turn them into jar toppers, or you could even just use the Mason jar ring as a frame rather than using it on top of a jar (I did this with a little Christmas tree cross stitch pattern I turned into an ornament).

They’re super cute in the pastel colors shown, or work in red and green for more of a holiday look if you’re using them for gift giving.

Check out the instructions and grab the free patterns for these jar toppers at Gathered. Once you start stitching I’m sure you’ll come up with all sorts of things you want to store or gift in jars so that you can make more of them!

[Photo: Gathered]

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