2010 , the start of a new year.

Now I haven’t written here for a long time but then not many follow my blog so no problem. This is my space to just muse.

This box I decorated before Christmas but I’ll come back to it later in this post.

This year I have decided to get back on the fitness wagon. My goal is to do Cycle Queensland in September which is a nine day cycling tour around some part of Queensland. The countryside we will be cycling around is from Yeppoon to Rockhampton, Mount Morgan, Biloela, Monto, Eidsvold, Mount Perry, Gin GIn and finishing in Bundaberg. The days cycling ranges from 53km to 104km.

Anyhow in an effort to get my fitness level up I have begun to walk and cycle again. I had a great start and have been sticking little stars on the calendar for each day I’ve exercised [7 days in a row!]. I’ve been doing 5.5 kms walks and one bike ride of 14kms. All was going well until I decided to jog on my walk on Monday afternoon. Wrong!! It flared up an injury I did to it in September 2009 so the last few days I have been nursing a fat knee back to normality. To help reduce the swelling/ fluid sitting in a pocket above my patella I have been  icing it and using an old horse remedy [well I am a bit of an old nag] recommended to me by one of my work colleagues. The gist of it is to pack a hand full of washing soda onto a pad then wrap your knee in it and leave it on overnight. The washing soda draws out the fluid and in the process reduces the swelling. Does it work? Yes it does but it needs to be repeated over a few nights.

I will not be attempting to jog again ,not for a while anyway, instead I will concentrate on walking and cycling.

Now enough raving about my knee back to the image at the start of this post, here’s close up image to remind you what it was…

At work we have a Secret Santa exchange, gift to the value of $20, my recipient wanted Christmas Decorations so I bought plain baubles and tizzied them up. After finishing them I wanted to put them into a box and took one of the label boxes from work, which normally get tossed after the labels come out, and decorated it with my collection of hand made papers [which I made some time ago for some collage art]. The gist of this is once I had finished the box I couldn’t part with it and ended up nipping down to cheapie shop and buying a box for the Secret Santa baubles instead.

This the box with the lid bit open.

The lid open and some of my xmas decorations inside.

The top of the box.

Another close up of the lid.The paper I use is art tissue which I have stained [coloured] and then printed designs on the top. The paper is torn into bits and glued down with PVA glue. The box had a base coat of red tissue paper [ see inside of box image] then layered with my hand made papers. The dimension of the box is the size of an A4 sheet of paper.

I enjoy this type of  collage art and the end object becomes a decorative and useful object plus I have recycled something which would have been tossed out.

Now I guess that’s enough for the moment time for a cuppa and breakfast.