Eat For You Dietitian

Anyone else thought that they should have more hobbies than ‘going out to eat/drink’ once we were told that all our hobby locations/restaurants/bars were shut and we were only allowed out once a day.

As a runner and home workout junkie already, there’s only so many exercises classes to do before causing yourself an injury. Also during lockdown I remained in a studio flat with my partner, he wasn’t too keen on my HIIT workouts in the only space available. My body doesn’t appreciate regular jumping movements anyways as alongside running this is too much pressure on my knees. Mostly recently I’ve started using weights, but I will expand on another post.

My new hobbies … Gardening and Painting.
Once we got the green light to go ahead with the exchange and completion of our first home at the end of May, we did it! Finally we had the space to embrace more opportunities.

Most importantly the pleasure in decorating our home with furniture and then with houseplants and artwork.

Before I was known as the plant-killer. I’ve killed many orchids and herb plants have never survived more than a couple of weeks. In our studio flat I only kept one tiny plant (can’t even remember where I bought it) and watered it when I remembered which was about once a month maybe. Surprisingly it was in pretty good shape so brought it along with us to the new house. I left my dead orchid for my mum to try to bring back to life. Since my houseplants collection has grown thanks to Patch Plants I’ve kept to watering on the weekends and misting the plants every few days. I was shocked to see my tiny plant had grown amazingly and I’ve even repotted it, so now a small plant with bright orange flowers.

Houseplants, to name a few I can remember the names of : Umbrella Tree

Golden Dragon Tree

Rubber plant

Gerbera daisies

So far I’ve had my new houseplants for about a month and none of them seem to be showing signs of dieing. I’ve also gone to the garden centre about 3 times in a month, coming away with one more indoor plant. Even my boyfriend chose some plants for his home office. They brighten up any space in my opinion.

I’ve also started an experiment to grow sustainable Basil from a 50p basil plant from Lidl. After watching a couple YouTube videos on how to ensure that you can continue to grow more basil from a shop-bought basil plant I carefully separated my basil plant into several smaller pots. Supposedly this is to make the basic plants stronger, I pinched them off (I think that’s the correct term) so they continue to grow and after 20 days they should look better and I can transfer them to bigger pots. Currently I am on Day 6 so fingers crossed it is a success as I love basil.

My little raised herb garden outside isn’t going so smoothly but I’ve tried sowing coriander again (again not sure if that’s the correct terminology). The oregano and thyme plants I potted in my larger planter seem to be doing well but I need to remember to prune more often.

Artwork I’ve realised is quite expensive. Prints are cheaper and CK Prints have been my personal favourites. I had another idea of decorating the walls of our house. Using acrylic paints and canvases. Very new to me and I thank Chessie King for posting about Brush and Bubbles instagram painting tutorials. I absolutely love it! By no means could I create these paintings without guidance but there are many tutorials by Brush and Bubbles and they continue to add more so no worry I will complete them all.
No surprise that my first painting was of a houseplant! Since I have expanded to fields of grass with ladybirds, yellow flowers, the northern lights, celebration of Pride, abstract, lemons, mountains and an african sunset. Personally I don’t think they’re amazing but my boyfriend says they’re pretty good, otherwise he wouldn’t be happy with them going around the whole house. Subtle compliments all around.

What new hobbies have you started?

Next one I am keen to try is learning how to use a sewing machine. I’m worried that could turn out to be quite an expensive hobby though. Sewing machine, materials, thread etc. Currently my sewing box is the size of a small coffee tin.