Feel Good Friday – The Flylady MR

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote a Feel Good Friday blogpost about the Flylady BBR. You can read it here. Today it’s the turn of the Flylady MR. What’s MR, you ask? Morning Routine. A simple checklist to help you FLY through your day.

Mine looks like this:

  • Shower/coffee/dress to shoes/fix hair and makeup
  • Check the calendar, what’s going on today?
  • Clear away the breakfast things, wipe down kitchen, start dishwasher
  • Schoolrun
  • Hang up washing/iron the dry stuff from previous day/put away
  • Empty dishwasher
  • Check what’s for dinner
  • NEWO interval run with a friend, or 6 minute strength train
  • Post today’s blogpost 😉

I’m normally finished by around 9.30am, leaving me lots of ‘playtime’. Or, as the case is today, hopefully plenty of time to prepare for tonight’s school Summer Party – one of the highlights of the kids social calender 🙂

In my pre-Flylady days, I would go full steam ahead with preparations for the party, be up half the night beforehand, forget to eat properly/drink enough water and generally run myself (and the house) ragged. Ha, those days are gone! Now I just stick to my routines like g-l-u-e and all the rest will – usually – fall into place. Today I’m baking my world-famous cold-risen bread (you can find my recipehere). Preparing crockpot lasagne (Krista’s recipe is here). Chopping lots of veggie sticks. Packing our picnic basket with glasses, cutlery, plates, rubbish bag, serviettes, a purse (full of small coins for the kids to spend at the various stalls). And – perhaps the most important part – icing our entry for this year’s Cake Competition. (And, yes, I baked the cake yesterday – forward planning saves the day!) The theme for our cake is all terribly hush-hush so (for once) my lips are sealed! Though I can tell you that it involves around two hours of painstaking work, copious amounts of neon coloured icing and therefore copious amounts of cleaning up…  😉

So without further ado, I shall FLY off and get my MR finished and get this show on the road! 😉

Have a fantastic Feel-Good Friday! 🙂

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Asthma..argh? Week One

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Hello, my name’s Diane. I’m 42 years old. I have asthma. You didn’t know that? Well, join the club, because I didn’t either until two weeks ago! 😉

I’ve never been the sporty type but started NEWO exercising about a year and a half ago. Really ‘grown-up’ exercising. Strength training and running on a regular basis. Loved the extra energy and the whole Jedi mindtrick benefits that only exercise can give you. Not to mention the snowball effects of being able to fit more into my day, eating better, sleeping better…just like the Flylady programme, you get the picture!  🙂

But when I was out running with my sweetie friends V, H and C, at the beginning of the year I felt that I wasn’t improving. In fact, the runs were getting more and more difficult. Even going up and down the stairs with the laundry basket at home had me out of breath. My nose was running constantly – must be pollen, right? My DS10 has birch, grass and cat allergies – so maybe I have the same? So one AP Wednesday (Wednesdays are ‘anti-procrastination’ days here in Flylady land) I decided to pick up the phone and ask the doctor for a referral to the allergy doc. I’ve been buying anti-histamines over the counter but it seems nonsense to be taking them when I don’t know exactly what I’m allergic to…

The allergy doctor tests me and it turns up a blank. Huh? Nothing at all? But what about that one there, number 12 – I’ve got a big red mark on my arm? Um, that would be the ‘control’ substance, tee-hee!

Anyway, the doc wants me back in for more extensive testing the next day. So I cycle down to the clinic (five minutes away), walk up the (one) flight of stairs and sit in the waiting room. Gosh, is it so hot today? I’m trying not to pant. For goodness sake, I weigh 52 kilos (114 lbs) and I ran 3k in the park this morning – I’m in great shape! He must have missed something!

Today I have lung tests. A basic Peak Flow first. I blow as hard as I can. Blech – feel a bit faint!

Then he makes me sit with a peg on my nose and breathe in substance ‘A’. When that’s over, I get to sit for a couple of minutes while he types on his computer. I start coughing – more a tickle than a cough. Wow, what was that stuff? Suddenly I’m aware that I’m sitting completely quiet. I can’t hear myself. At. All. I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. It’s such a weird sensation that I have to share my thoughts with the doctor. If it wasn’t so clichéd, I’d say I had a ‘deep sense of inner peace’! [feel free to do your own ‘OM!’ yoga chant here…] I breathe into the Peak Flow machine again. Which starts me coughing a little, but even I can see that the needle on the machine jumped way higher than before.

Time to put the peg back on my nose and breathe in substance ‘B’ for two minutes. And sit for another two minutes. The doctor types away on his computer. Ugh, this is ‘orrible! Feel like I’m having some kind of attack. My heart is pounding in my little birdie breast. Breathe into the Peak Flow machine again. The needle jumps. A pathetic little jump. And I’m feeling dreadful! What on earth was in that bottle?

The doctor explains. The first substance was pure histamine. Which opened up my lungs and helped me to breathe and feel ‘normal’ again. The second substance took the histamine out of my body and took me right back to how I felt when I turned up at the allergy clinic. Took me back to how I’ve felt as long as I can remember. Mindblowing isn’t the word…

The tests have spoken, there’s no doubt, I have asthma. And I was elated – it was fantastic to find out that I wasn’t imagining things, I’m not ‘getting old’ or ‘out of shape’, there is something wrong. And – fingers crossed – it can be fixed! A brown inhaler morning and evening, a blue inhaler for a quick puff before I run, cycle or start my Flylady WHB…

Join me again next Monday to see what happens next?

Have a marvelous Monday! 🙂

Feel Good Friday – The Flylady BBR

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Last night I faithfully did my BBR. I used to only do it Monday to Friday, thinking I could take the weekends ‘off’. Ha, big mistake! Lesson learned! 😉

BBR – to the uninitiated – is Flylady‘s Before Bed Routine. A little checklist which sets you up for a good ‘tomorrow’. Here’s mine:

  • check the diary to see what’s going on tomorrow

  • make sure kids have schoolbags/sports bags/library books etc ready

  • lay out clothes/accessories

  • set the table for breakfast

  • get to bed at a decent hour 😉

When I checked my diary last night, I realised I needed to set my alarm clock (actually my iPhone) 15 minutes earlier than usual.

First on the agenda this morning was an art exhibition in DD8’s class. From the (somewhat ungodly) hour of 7.30am to 8am! DD’s class have been studying the French impressionist painter, Claude Monet, in their Art and Danish classes. This morning the parents were invited to see what they’ve been up to, enjoy a cup of coffee and look at the masterpieces. This is DD8’s painting of the bridge at Giverny. Isn’t it good? 🙂

Quickly back home to unload the dishwasher and collect DS10 who had an appointment at 8.30am with the school orthodontist (who lives in the same swanky building as the school dentist). DS10 isn’t getting a brace until next year, so today was just a quick check-up. Here’s DD8 in the orthodontist chair (there are 8 state-of-the-art dentist chairs lined up in a row, divided by screens…children on a conveyer belt!) because – yep, she’s getting a brace too… 😉

Moving swiftly on…and back home again. Just time to change into my pink running jacket and shoes and meet my sweetie friend V at 9am for our NEWO interval run in the park. A short 3k run today. We finished just as the rain started dripping down from a heavy, summer sky. Which is a bit annoying as it’s nearly the month of June and I’ve only had my sandals on twice. TWICE!! But at least with all this rain the park looks fantastic and everything is blooming lovely…

Anyway, it’s just gone 10 am, so I’d better get cracking and finish the Flylady MR. Morning Routine. But that, as they say, is another story… 😉

Hope you have a fabulous Friday! 🙂

Scaredy Cat Challenge – Freeze! Part Two

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As I announced last week, my latest Scaredy Cat Challenge is to get my freezer under control. Truth to tell, at the moment I’m using three different freezers – yikes! On Monday morning (as soon as the schoolrun was done and before my NEWO run), I set my Flylady timer for 15 minutes.

I started this challenge by going through our big old freezer, drawer by drawer, and taking an inventory. Luckily most of the stuff was already in the correct drawer (meat, vegetables, freezer meals, bread, icecream/pastry) and I only had a small bag of stuff to chuck. Mostly bread – why do so many half loaves end up in the freezer food cemetery? 😉

On Tuesday morning I emptied the contents of the tiny fridge freezer into the big one. Added the items to my master list and chucked out some old bags of frozen fruit. And no, I’m not going to even think about the ‘best before’ dates on those bags – progress not perfection! That little freezer is now empty. But, um, might need defrosting…

On Wednesday morning I felt more challenged. It was time to decant the contents of our new kitchen freezer into the basement one. I think I felt overwhelmed because everything had just been pushed in – I hadn’t made any kind of system for the drawers in there. This is how it looked last Sunday…

But I took a deep breath, set my timer for only 5 minutes (five minutes wasn’t going to kill me, right?) and stuffed a couple of shelves’ worth into a plastic bag. Took the bag down to the big old freezer and worked as fast as I could. Each item was either a) put into the correct drawer and added to master list or b) put in the rubbish bin. Just three more 5 minute sessions and it was empty – yippee!

Well, perhaps not completely empty. I decided to leave the snaps bottles in there 😉

Did you see mymenu plan this week? I’ve only used meat etc that I already had in my (abundantly stocked)freezer. No more food is going back in there until further notice!

And what happens next with this particular Scaredy Cat Challenge? You’ll just have to wait until next Sunday for the next ex-ice-ting installment! 😉

Don’t forget to check out all the other fantastic challenges my virtual friends have embarked on…weightloss, decorating, sewing, exercise, anti-procrastination. You name it, we can do it. Holding hands and being scared. Together! 🙂

Would you like to do great things too? Add yourself with the MckLinky below.

Have a simply super Sunday! 🙂

Those crazy Danes – Winter Bathing

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Woke up to dark skies this Stor Bededag (Danish Big Prayer Day, it’s explained in Wednesday’s post, Big Prayer Time). The skies opened on the dot at 9am when I met V and H in the park for a short (3k) NEWOinterval run. When we finished running (and stood there, literally, dripping wet) we polished our little halos with gusto…’Go Us’ for getting up and exercising in this dreich weather when the rest of our families were cosy at home and still in bed! 😉

DH and I took the kids down to the beach for a quick walk before lunch (before the rain started…again) and DH did his Dad ‘thing’ and taught DS10 and DD8 how to throw stones into the sea…

Now I don’t know if you can see this properly but, if you look at the middle of the bathing jetty in the next photo, there’s a tiny figure in blue.

That would be a lady in a blue dressing gown/housecoat. About to peel it off (wearing nothing underneath, brrr!) and take a quick dip into Øresund (The Sound).

Completely nuts. And yet, the sight of people arriving by bike or on foot in a bathrobe, ready to spring into the c-cold water, is completely normal around these parts… Those crazy Danes call it vinter badning (winter bathing) but afficionados do it all year long. Come rain, come shine, come ice on the sea which they have to break! Tee hee, and here was little old me thinking I had been such a health freak this morning 😉

Hope you have a fabulous Friday with lots of exercise. Just add water! 🙂

Tee-hee Tuesday! :)

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If you’ve come here looking for Crafty Tuesday (which has been a weekly post on the blog since September last year) then please don’t worry – it hasn’t completely disappeared! (By the way, did you see last Tuesday’s craft post? It was a round-up of everything I’ve done. So if you’re itching to do a craft right now, you can find it right here.)

The Danish spring weather has brought out that ‘need to move furniture around’ feeling in me and, since DH (and, let’s be honest, men in general) don’t appreciate that kind of thing, I thought I would move the furniture around in here, my own little blog world 🙂 From now on crafts and recipes will appear on Saturdays. Which makes more sense to me, because that’s when the kids and I have more time to do those things. Maybe you too?

But what about Tuesdays, I hear you cry? Well, I’m thinking along the lines of ‘Tee-hee Tuesday’. Because after a whirlwind start to my week with a long interval NEWO run and a Flylady WHB (weekly clean) on Mondays, I tend to come down with a bit of a bump on Tuesdays. And just like the Incredible Hulk, you won’t like me when I’m angry! 😉

Victor Borge (the famous Danish entertainer) summed it up so well:

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”

So I’m going to share the things that make me smile and laugh. And especially tee-hee! 😉

For starters, here are three DVDs that make me laugh out loud. Perhaps I’ve mentioned them before? 😉 They are my ‘go to’ DVDs for a quick smile fix.

Hope you have a teriff ‘tee-hee’ Tuesday! 🙂

    Scaredy Cat Challenge – The Flylady is coming! :)

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    Dearest Flylady

    Fantastic news that you and the Flycrew are visiting Copenhagen as part of your ‘Moving in May‘ virtual tour. I can’t wait for you all to get here! Thanks to three years of Flylady routines and decluttering, my house is all ready for you and the crew. Though the basement is still a work in progress…not perfection! 😉

    My Scaredy Cat Challenge for the next few weeks is going to be whipping our garden into shape. Because when you come over we’ll hopefully be sitting outside, enjoying the Danish spring, my very favourite season. Funnily enough, Missus Smarty Pants says that’s the seasonal colours I look best in… I know Leslie loves scarves and shoes, so a shopping day in Copenhagen is definitely on the cards while you’re here 🙂

    Just like my house, I’m going to get our garden ready 15 minutes at a time. I started off the Scaredy Cat Challenge this morning by mowing the lawn – it’s the ‘shiny sink’ of my garden. It’s quite a tough job (takes three 15 minute sessions) but I make it into a NEWO workout (I even wear my heart rate monitor) so it doesn’t seem like so much of a chore.

    Talking of NEWO exercise, I’m looking forward to taking Jonathan on an interval run down to the beach at the end of our street. Has he seen the North sea before? It’s so beautiful at 9am in the morning…

    But back to my garden… I found some bags of potting earth at the back of the garage (during a declutter session), so I’m going to plant lots of pansies and bulbs, so there’ll be lots of colour when you get here.

    See the French balcony doors at the top of the house? That’s the guestbedroom, where you’ll be staying…

    Our guest bedroom is always ‘company ready’. There are towels in the cupboard – just help yourself. There’s also a hairdryer and straightening irons in there for the Dinner Diva, Leanne. I heard she had problems with those on her visit to Ireland… Normally when we have guests I make Parmesan Chicken (from her ‘Saving Dinner‘ book) but I’ll make some traditional Danish dishes for her to try 🙂

    Anyway, my work on the garden has started and I’m doing it the Flylady way. So now it’s time for the most important thing you’ve taught me – maybe the hardest habit of all – 15 minutes of pamper time!

    See you all next month! Can’t wait!

    Love

    Diane, Denmark

    PS: Tell Nikki that I’m taking her to The Tivoli Gardens, Denmark’s famous attraction. We’ll do all the rides (she likes rollercoasters, right?) and finish the evening with a rock concert! 🙂

    Scaredy Cat Challenge – Can you smell carrots?

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    My latest Scaredy Cat Challenge was to get on my bike and cycle to the next town. Go on, you can laugh if you like – it’s a round trip of about 10k (6.2 miles)! But as I haven’t regularly ridden a bike since I was about eight years old (and have owned a car for 21 years, half of my life) then you might understand where I’m coming from. Some people have a fear of driving, I have a fear of cycling 😉

    Thursday was a beautiful day – it really felt like spring had come to Denmark. With all the snow we’ve had this winter, I didn’t dare believe that spring was actually a certainty rather than a possibility. I ran 3k in the park with the girls first thing in the morning and decided to strike while the iron was hot. Filled up my purple NEWO water bottle, put on my cycle helmet and started my heart rate monitor…

    I can’t claim it was plain sailing or that I made good speed. It was extremely windy. Made me sympathise with Jacob Haugaard, a Danish comedian who was famously elected to Parliament in 1994 with his manifesto for ‘more tailwinds on Danish cyclepaths’… Not to mention ‘standardisation of hoover bags’, ‘longer green lights at crossroads’ and ‘young men for single mothers’ 😉

    But I kept Jonathan Roche’s (founder of the NEWO system) words in my head. (Jonathan is truly inspirational. You can listen to the archives of his internet radio show here.) One of his favourite lines is “When climbing a mountain, don’t look up at the summit. Just make for the next shelter”. Or in my case, just cycle to the next lampost. And, bien sûr, when I reached the next lampost, I found out that I could make it to the next one, and the next one… Lo and behold, I got to my destination with stopping once! 😉

    And my destination? My favourite little shop in the next town. The Pink Flamingo. Where they feed my ‘addiction’. Scarves. I had promised myself (yet another) new one if I faced my fears and passed this particular challenge. Because one of the fun things about these Scaredy Cat Challenges is deciding on a lovely big carrot to dangle before my little red nose 🙂 Here’s my ‘carrot’. Turquoise – one of my favourite colours and the ‘hot’ colour for summer 2010.

    If you want to see what else The Pink Flamingo has to offer, lookie hereat a previous blogpost. And if you’re lucky enough to live near to Hellerup, then go and see for yourself!

    Is there something you’d like to try but fear has been holding you back? Learning a language, decluttering your dungeon, trying a new hair colour? If you have a blog and want to hold hands with me on a Scaredy Cat Challenge, then what are you waiting for? Sign up with the MckLinky below 🙂

    Hope you have a super Sunday – with plenty of tailwind! 😉

    Scaredy Cat Challenge – 28 February 2010 (On your marks!)

    Last week I wrote that I was (in the words of ‘NEWO’ Jonathan Roche) going to ‘crank up’ my weekly running distance in preparation for this year’s 10k race. (Last year I took up running – yes, me, the non-sporty girl – and ran a 5k for the very first time.)

    My running buddies (two female friends, H and V) and I run two or three times a week and our usual distance is 2.5 to 3.5k… Or so I thought! Because when I checked the RunKeeper application on my telephone (it uses GPS to work out actual distance run, speed etc) I found out that it was actually over 3k – woo hoo! On Monday, when we ran a new route that we thought was a shortcut, we actually ran 3.5k! On Tuesday I ran our newest training route and it measured…4k! Double woo hoo! 😉 So, surprise, surprise, we have actually been running longer distances than we thought…

    On a side note, my sweetie friend Krista in Nova Scotia (she of The Moistest Brownie Ever fame) sent out a siren call on http://www.twitter.com/ for help getting started with exercising. She was interested in trying the NEWO approach to exercise. It’s very much like the Flylady‘s system of using babysteps – ditching the ‘all or nothing’ mentality. So we are now doing the 6 minute NEWO strength exercises ‘together’ on http://www.twitter.com/ ! 😉 Which is great for me because, as I’ve usually already done some strength exercises earlier in the day, I’m getting some extra workouts in… 🙂

    Remember…if you’d like to join in the Scaredy Cat Challenge, sign up below! Candace is about to do a ‘reveal’ on her challenge – can’t wait!

    Have a fabulous ‘the-days-are-finally-getting-longer’ Sunday! 🙂

    Scaredy Cat Challenge – 24 January 2010

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    I’ve started a ‘Scaredy Cat Challenge’ for myself – following the advice of Jonathan Roche (see my previous post I’m in Stitches!). He talked about it in connection with exercising, but it can be applied to anything really. So for the duration of 2010, I’m going to do things I’ve been putting off. I’m not procrastinating about tasks in the Flylady sense of “I haven’t got the time to do that right now”. It’s more things I would like to do but “I’m too scared, I don’t know how” sense. If you get my drift… 😉

    Last Saturday I started sewing an apron from a pattern. You can see how I got on here.

    And what can I report today – one week on? The apron is finished – yippee! 🙂 And très nice it is too…here’s DD7 modelling it. Though it’s all mine! 😉

    And here’s the other side. You’ll remember it’s reversible 😉

    The pesky bias strips which I had – of course – been putting off, turned out to be very easy to do. I set my Flylady timer and whaddayouknow…it took less than the magic 15 minutes! The only tricky thing turned out to be sewing on the neck straps (I chose in the end to do them by machine, life is too short for handstitching). The problem was that the front and back of the apron (it’s reversible, you’ll remember…) didn’t quite match up. Well, nobody’s perfect – right? And it’s only me who knows. And you lot.

    Anyway, it’s finished, it’s blinking lovely, and now I’m ready to tackle other patterns and sewing techniques. Gathers?? Go home!

    So what is my next ‘Scaredy Cat Challenge’ for myself? Well, I had a twitter conversation with Missus Smarty Pants the other night and I was pampering my feet and painting my toenails. She always paints hers in light colours, I always do mine dark (today they are purple, Gosh #99 Isabel). Because I like to cover them up. I really should have my feet done by a chiropodist (various imperfections, not just my toenails) but…I hate people touching my feet, I’m so ticklish! 🙂

    Oh yes, I’ve been for manicures and pedicures before. But the pedicure part was half-heaven and half-nightmare. So I’ve decided to get these tooties looking lovely for the onslaught of spring and summer. 2010 will be the year! So that’s my next Scaredy Cat Challenge. To take the plunge, make an appointment (or two) and get it over and done with (and definitely grumble about the expense). Who knows, maybe I’ll even enjoy it? [simpers]

    Have a simply super Sunday! 🙂

    Scaredy Cat Challenge

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    If you read last Sunday’s post (I’m in stitches!), you’ll know that I’m trying to follow Jonathan Roche’s wise words and jumping in with both feet whenever I feel scared about doing something.

    My first challenge of the year is to make an apron using a sewing pattern that came with two pages of instructions. I know, I know, hardly life-threatening stuff, but it certainly stopped me in my tracks! 😉

    Needless to say, this week has flown past with lightening speed and late yesterday afternoon (Saturday) I still hadn’t started… With today’s blogpost looming (oh the shame!) I decided to go for it. Set my Flylady timer for 15 minutes and started cutting out the paper pattern pieces. Then read the instructions from start to finish. Go me! 🙂 Another 15 minutes on the timer and I had cut out all the pieces of material. Okay, so maybe I skipped the part of cutting out the bias strips – but, honestly, by this time I had blood on my teeth and was itching to get sewing!

    The first ‘deer in headlights’ moment came when I had to do gathers in the bodice. Yes, you read that right. Bodice. This is a very swanky apron. Never done gathers before….aarrrgh! But I just followed the instructions, (checked the instructions 50 times) and voilà – who’s a clever girl then? 😉

    Then (lucky me) I got extra practice in doing gathers because this pinny is reversible. That means two sides. Which is, of course, extremely practical when you’re cooking but makes this whole sewing project take double the time…

    Sunday morning arrives and I’m now feeling rather cocky about this whole sewing thing. Hey, maybe I can make some nice summer tops? I’ve got some simple patterns that I bought 3 years ago…where did I put them? Reality check: I need to finish this blinking apron first! 😉 So time to stop daydreaming and get back to some serious one-on-one time with my Janome machine. Thank you DH for going to work today and special thanks to the Wii and Nintendo DS for babysitting 🙂

    The pinny is now beginning to look like one. And a very nice one too, even if I say it myself. I’m already at instruction number 5 out of 7 – hooray! But I’m beginning to get that ‘pit in bottom of stomach’ feeling again about those pesky bias strips… Oh well, time to put the kettle on, listen to Jonathan’s voice and jump in again.

    Another update next Sunday. Have a good one! 🙂

    PS: If you’d like to join me in the Scaredy Cat Challenge, leave me a comment. As I said last week, we can hold hands and be scared together 😉

    Baby it’s cold outside

    I did my first run of the year this morning. Temperature was -1c (31f). Don’t know what the windchill was but I can tell you that I did try and keep my mouth closed as much as possible, to stop the back of my throat burning! 😉

    I usually run with friends. Twice a week with my darling buddies, V and H. Come rain or shine. Here they are…back in December when the weather was just a bit soggy 🙂

    Except extreme snow, like we had last week. But when there’s too much snow or ice on the ground to be able to run safely we still head for the park – we just get all bundled up and go for a brisk walk instead.

    After the schoolrun this morning, I felt I needed to get out and run. Haven’t run since before the family arrived at Christmas. Now, here’s the thing. I usually start Mondays with a WHB (Flylady’s fast weekly house clean) but knew that a run would actually be a good way of pampering myself. And, no, I am not a masochist! 😉 Needed to clear my head and shake off that lazy leftover holiday feeling.

    So I got my running gear on (ski underwear underneath), running shoes, gloves, hat, iPhone, folding earphones (thank you DH for that wonderful Christmas present!) and buff (thank you DD7 for letting me borrow it). Drank some water, ate a banana. And headed out the door.

    When I’m running solo, I use the http://www.c25kapp.com/ for iPhone. It’s a really nice little application (inexpensive too), which takes you from the ‘couch’ to running a ‘5k’ in 8 weeks. You can add your own personal playlist of music. Which is a kicker for me, because that’s the only reason I go out running alone – to hear loud music! 🙂

    You could actually use it for other types of interval workouts as well. No need to run if you don’t want to!

    I just pick a session at random and let the voice guide me. To give you an example…

    Week 5, Day 1.

    • Warm Up, walk quickly (5 mins)
    • Run (5 mins)
    • Walk (3 mins)
    • Run (5 mins)
    • Walk (3 mins)
    • Run (5 mins)
    • Cooldown, walk (5 mins)

    You can get voice alerts when you have 2, then 1 minutes left to run (I’m using that to do a sprint for the last minute). And when you’re halfway through the workout (means you can just head out the door, turn around at ‘halftime’ and run back home!). And when you’re starting the last running session (nice to know you’re almost done!).

    And Jonathan (NEWO) Roche was right. Again! [see yesterday’s post I’m in stitches!]. The person who started and finished the workout were two very different people… 😉 If you’re lacking motivation, go listen to him. You can listen here.

    Have a fantastic Monday! 🙂

    I’m in stitches! – 10 January 2010

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    Right. I had to come up with a new blog idea for my Sunday posts as Christmas is o.v.e.r! 😉

    I sat down at my sewing machine today to do a couple of minor jobs. And immediately felt ‘guilty’ because I saw a sewing pattern sitting there…unused. It’s a pattern for an apron – and a very jaunty one at that. I can’t physically prepare any food in the kitchen without putting on my pinny (honest truth), so I thought I deserved at least to have a chic one. This one fits the bill perfectly. But I have to make it myself! 🙂

    I’ve been putting it off for weeks. I clearly remember getting the pattern in the post all the way from the U S of A at the beginning of December and mentioning in the BlogTalk chat for Missus Smarty Pants show that I was hoping to make one for a Christmas present… Oopsie! Too scared to start it. What if I cut it out wrong? It’s going to take so long. Maybe I should buy some new material because there’s nothing in the two boxes of stuff that I already have that is ‘right’ 🙂 The measurements are in ‘American’ – yards and inches – eek! I don’t have the time. I don’t actually know how to sew ‘properly’. Etc, etc, etc. And then Jonathan (NEWO) Roche’s voice popped into my head. Like it does on many occasions. That is, when it can get a word in edgeways from the Flylady‘s voice! 😉

    “When have you ever accomplished something great without being scared?” [or words to that effect] Wise words. The words that got me started with running. So I’m going to jump in with both feet and get sewing. Using a pattern. And the blog will be my Witness (one of the many reasons I love writing it). Bet you can’t wait til next Sunday?!

    If you’d like to jump in with me and start something you’ve been putting off – whether it be sewing, learning a language, starting to exercise – leave a comment and let me know. Because can hold hands and be scared together! 😉

    Have a fantastically fearless Sunday! 🙂

    High Five Meme

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    My nice (and very blog-savvy) friend Pippa at http://www.amothersramblings.com/ has ‘tagged’ me with a ‘High Five Meme”. Thank you, Pippa! 🙂 Pippa’s name will be very familiar to regular readers…we were Christmas planning partners-in-crime! Aside being an excellent blogger, she is also a great tweeter. I only surround myself with positive people and she is definitely right-up-there in that category. You can find her on twitter at www.twitter.com/pippad or by following @pippad  🙂

    I’m still very new (read: naive) at this blogging lark. Just keeping my head down and working on posting every day (which I have – hooray!) since I started on 1 August 2009. Don’t know the first thing about headers, HTML or how to add ‘buttons’. I’m just enjoying the writing process, using my blog as a Happy File and a diary, a way to keep me focused on Flylady routines and force myself to take time for crafts. So I’m not quite au fait with tags etc, etc but – as usual – I digress! 🙂

    I’m about to list my five highlights of the old year. Which has caused a lot of hard thought because I honestly have so many of them. No kidding.

    But before that, here are the five people I, in turn, would like to ‘tag’ – and hope that they will share their highlights. I present to you my lovely…. Twisters …twitter sisters!

    And here are my personal highlights of 2009 out of all those worthy nominees:

    • I’ve run two 5k races this year. Nobody saw that coming. I truly feel like a NEWO rockstar. Me, the person who isn’t sporty. At. All.
    • This is going to sound really daft but, just before Christmas, I got the chance to speak LIVE to my twisters Candace (@C_Joy), Lynn (@lynnnein) and Monika (@flybabymoni). It was 1.30 pm Copenhagen time and 6.30 am for them. We sang a song Candace had written for the Flylady on my radio programme. A magical 15 minutes for me and, yes, I even had a ‘Mum tear’! 😉 It was my best Christmas present.

    • Christmas – you probably realise from all the blog posts that I can’t get enough of Christmas planning, but this year the journey AND the destination were fantastic. If you don’t believe me, go back and read any of my posts from 20 to 31 December.  
    • The Stranglers concert, last January. A perfect evening, felt like I was 16 again. Goosebumps at their pre-stage anthem (“Meninblack”) and they played my favourites “Tank” and “5 minutes”. I could still sing all the words, even that funny bit at the end of “Nuclear Device” – go me! It also made my Top 10 Gigs post. And I got the set list 😉

    • Writing the blog. Which has taken me very much by surprise. It’s opened up a whole new world for me and – strangely enough – has given me my old spark back. Go figure!

    Now go and have a happy Friday! 🙂

    Resolution Time Again

    OK, not going to dilly dally about, going to make this short and sweet. Resolutions for 2010? Did pretty well with those for 2009:

    • bake more bread (done, done and done!)
    • eat the fruit in the fruit bowl instead of letting it be decorative for a week then letting it rot (did VERY well in that department but always room for improvement, n’est-ce pas?)
    • run (ha!) 5k (ran TWO, count ’em, 5k races and improved time from 36 to 30.5 minutes. Which is pretty funny, sitting here now, to be even mentioning the times, because this time last year I wasn’t even exercising and the thought of me running was an in-joke amongst friends) Jonathan Roche of NEWO fame is my hero.

    That’s me in purple 😉

    Anyways, moving swiftly on to 2010:

    • going to organise even more outings and nights out with friends (did quite well in 2009 and my friends/girlfriends were more than delighted to be dragged out occasionally to rock concerts, cinemas, theatres, restaurants etc and, even though we are all tired, a change is as always good as a rest)
    • run (ha ha!) 10k (there, I said it and wrote it, no turning back for this very competitive, though definitely not athletic, person) Jonathan Roche (with the Flylady firmly in tow) is yet again responsible
    • going to banish paperclutter once and for all (have done marvelously in most respects thanks to the Flylady, but paper is the final frontier and, as the new Flylady motto says, my timer is my friend in 2010)

    Good luck to us all! 😉