Category Archives: Community

Having a FABULOUS Day!

Good afternoon!

I am having such a FABULOUS day, that it made me feel froggy enough to want to share how my day has been going since I decided to start a revolution in my life!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Here is something I texted to myself after having completed the first portion of my walk this morning:

WOW! I feel AMAZING!! I just spent the last 1/2 hour walking from my old High School all the way to one of my first places of employment, downtown – and all I can say is WHOO! HOO! My sweetie was very surprised I made it down to him so quickly!! We are now at one of the local Starbuck’s where he is playing on his computer and I am thoroughly enjoying a nice large glass of ice water!! I am not sure what to do now, but I am having the hardest time holding still now. Who would have thought that the act of expending energy, would actually give you energy? What a good day!”

After sending this to myself, I tried really hard to hold still and readย  a little, and I just couldn’t do it – hold still that is. So, I decided to walk a little bit further. I ended up spending the next hour or so walking everywhere I could think of just taking pictures like a maniac! It was soooo much fun!! I finally had to have my sweetie come pick me up because my camera battery had died, and my back up was dead too! So, here I am now at home, at least for a few hours before we go out to dinner with a girlfriend of mine this evening! I can’t wait!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Hereโ€™s to having a FABULOUS day!!

ย โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€

 

 

Chunky Dunker’s Night!

Good evening!!

I know, I’m late, late, late!!!

Chunky Dunkerโ€™s night is a casual, but fun group for people from all walks of life to get together online to support one another in their health and fitness goals, whether it be to lose a few pounds, or to do one situp; I am very happy to welcome you here every Wednesday evening, where we โ€œmeetโ€ in the comments section to catch up, share hints, tips, and ideas and to just encourage each other as we go through our health &ย  fitness path together!!

I have had an alright kind of week health-wise, but I still managed to gain .8 pounds. Oh bother!!! Very Eeyore of me, I know!! But, I just had an EXTREMELY healthy, and yummy dinner that my sweetie cooked for us, thank you, Love!!! Now I am eating a sweet treat of a dumb-dumb, you know those little suckers that have all different kinds of flavors? Those are a big hit at my place with the kiddos!

I am sorry this post is so short, but I am running late this evening and I want to make sure that I am able to get into the chat room and start chatting!!!

See you there!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€

Flood Warning!

Good evening!

It has been a really busy here, in my little hometown. We have been dealing with the first day of a very heavy rainstorm, and man has it been a doozy! It is expected to rain throughout the next week, and even though it has only rained hard one day, there has been flooding all over town already. The newscasters are calling this a 40 year event, it happens so rarely. Matter of fact, the street I live on is really flooded – so much so that it is closed, and most of it has been evacuated – SCARY!! My sweetie helped our neighbors fill sandbags, and thankfully our condo is safe for now, we are on a little bit higher ground than most of the other homeowners in our area, so I think we will be alright.

While at the office today, I, along with two of my co-workers, decided to go for a little walk to see what kind of flooding was happening. We knew that the creek that runs along side the hospital had crested, and was flooding the main back street into the hospital, so we wanted to see it for ourselves.

I am not sure exactly how to describe this picture, but normally there is at least a 10-15ย  foot drop here, some grass, and a very light creek that runs under the hospital. Obviously, not today!

This is a picture of where the creek that runs alongside the back of the hospital. It normally runs within the two rows of trees pictured here. I have worked at the hospital for over 11 years, and I have NEVER seen the creek get this high before.

Here is the same overflowing creek, but this is the park that sits alongside the creek. What you can’t see is that this water is so high that all of the picnic tables are completely submerged, and off to the right, which is not shown in the picture, there is a building that is about 1/4 submerged. Sad! This is usually the place we take our walking breaks! It is usually so peaceful here.

Here is half of the stairway that leads down to this park. The other half is underwater!

Here is the creek right behind my little building at the hospital.

It is crazy fast, and sounds beautifully loud. It would be fun to be able to go kayaking in the middle of my workday here!! LOL!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

I feel bad for all of these trees. There is so much debris being carried in the swift moving creek, that I am sure that these poor trees are just getting battered!!

It is kind of hard to see here, but this is a large trunk of a broken tree that has been brought downstream and is just banging into this bridge. Eventually so much water was coming over the bridge walls, that the police ended up cordoning off this section and closed the street down.

It is amazing how voluminous one rain storm can make all of these creeks around here. I am hoping that the water will slowly start to recede now that we have had a few hours of clear skies, but I hear we have a second rainstorm hitting tomorrow. EEK!! AND, working at the hospital, they have activated a disaster code, so all of staff are working 12 hour shifts, 24/7 this weekend. It is going to be a LOOOOOONG week until next weekend. I pray that I get to have at least one day off this week, I am most definitely going to need a break!!

Anyway, I will keep you posted on how things are going. My prayers go out to all of the families whose homes are truly affected with all of this flooding, and I thank God that he has kept my family and my hairy four-leggedย  girls safe!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€

Chunky Dunker’s Night!

Good evening!

It is that time of week again, Chunky Dunker’s night!! A casual, but fun group for people from all walks of life to get together online to support one another in their health and fitness goals, whether it be to lose a few pounds, or to do one situp; I am very happy to welcome you here every Wednesday evening, where we โ€œmeetโ€ in the comments section to catch up, share hints, tips, and ideas and to just encourage each other as we go through our health &ย  fitness path together!!

I don’t really have too much to report this evening! This is officially my second weigh-in day since on Weight Watchers online. I have to admit I didn’t lose any weight this week, but I didn’t gain any either, so I am going to call it a good week!! I did have quite the splurge on Monday evening, going to a Chinese restaurant, and then making a beeline to Cold Stone Creamery. UGH!! It was yummy, and I would probably do it again, if I had the points for it, which I did! Dinner, I didn’t do so hot choice-wise, but instead of having my own ice cream at Cold Stone, my sweetie and I shared one, so it could have been much MUCH worse!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Anyway, I got my camera back from the repair service place!! YEAH!! It took a couple of weeks to get back and I have just been going crazy waiting for it to get here! I am happy to report that it seems to be in working order, and I will be back to taking a ton of pictures of anything and everything starting tomorrow morning, I have even warned my co-workers!! MWA-HA-HAAAAAA!!! I have noticed that my blog posts have been looking a little sad without their pictures, so I will be fixing that SOON!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Oh, and a slight explanation about tonight’s pic. This is how I look right now, as I post this evening. I am in my jammies, and ready for bed. I know I look tired in this pic, and that is because I AM!!! I have been keeping myself pretty busy!!!ย  I just love talking to all of you for as long as possible, but being someone who habitually goes to bed early, I thought tonight I would just beย  little proactive, and get all my ablutions done BEFORE I get online to to chat this evening!!! So, my apologies if my pic scared anyone!! LOL!! ๐Ÿ˜‰ Now you know what my sweetie gets to look forward to every night!!! I love you, Babe!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Anyway, I look forward to seeing you all in the comments section!!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€

Chunky Dunker’s Night!

Good evening!

Welcome to another exciting night of Chunky Dunker’s night!!! A club for people from all walks of life to get together online to support one another in their health and fitness goals, whether it be to lose a few pounds, or to do one situp; I am very happy to welcome you here every Wednesday evening, where we โ€œmeetโ€ in the comments section to catch up, share hints, tips, and ideas and to just encourage each other as we go through our health &ย  fitness path together!!

Tonight, I thought I would talk about Making Progress!

Today I have been on Weight Watchers for one week, and in that time I have lost 3.8 pounds – YEAH!!! I’ll take it!!!

I am not exactly sure HOW I lost that much weight, I really didn’t do so well tracking, but maybe it was because it was in the back of my mind that I really could get healthy if a I make smart choices!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

I haven’t done much in the way of exercising much more than normal either. I have a knee that I really tweaked going up the stairs to my office the other day, so I am going to get back into the pool and start working it out!! I also have a belly dancing, and a plus size Pilates DVD that I want to get into the habit of using when the weather is not cooperating outside! Once the days get a little longer, I will be able to start doing my daily walks outside again – that will be good!!!

Also, because of the book I am reading, Living the Savvy Life, I have really become inspired to try and eat at home more often, which means getting creative in the kitchen! I know how to cook, pretty well (if I may say so), but generally I don’t enjoy it! Too many years of HAVING to cook, makes cooking not so much fun now. That is, EXCEPT when I GET TO cook!! That somehow feels different. Especially when it is just for my sweetie and I. I generally look forward to those cooking nights!!

This evening, I assembled a healthy dinner this evening of a chicken strip, covered in lots of fresh spinach, a couple of sprays of Ranch vinagrette, all wrapped up in a large whole wheat tortilla. It was incredibly satisfying!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰ Tomorrow evening, I will be making us something very Olive Garden-ey, but WAAAAAY healthier!! I can’t wait, it should be fun!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Well, I seem to really be going on-and-on here this evening, so without further ado, I will meet you in the comments section of tonight’s post so we can all chat!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€


Getting Things Done!

Good evening!

This evening, I am working on getting my day’s to-do list done so that I can spend some additional time reading for bed this evening! I am reading two really great books at once. One book is called Living the Savvy Life, and the other book is called, The Sorceress, (book 3 of the Secrets of the Immortal Nicolas Flamel Series) !! ๐Ÿ˜‰

I don’t have anything deep or profound this evening. I am just focusing on creating balance in my life for just this evening. Baby steps, baby steps!! Do a chore, do something you want to do, do something fun, do something you want to do. It is slow going, but it seems to be working!!

Jason is in the kitchen making dinner. He is grilling some barbecue chicken (one of my FAVORITES!!), and making some steamed broccoli, and steamed rice. We are going to eat well this evening! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Talking about eating well, tomorrow is my very first Weight Watcher weigh in day, and I have to confess I am a little bit nervous!! I have been writing down what I eat, but not really tracking my points well. That is one of the hard things about not being able to go on the internet while at work to track my points. WW does have an app available, but unfortunately not for Blackberry – dang phone.

Which segues me nicely into the fact that my sweetie is trying to talk me into getting a new phone. I am a creature of habit, and I have grown accustomed to having my Blackberry, so I am not sure how I feel about a new phone. However, it would be really nice to have one that takes pictures, and doesn’t click when you are texting someone!! So we will see, I have been eying the new Samsung phone that is out, and an i-phone might be kind of cool, but I would have to change carriers to get an i-phone!! Hmmmm…decisions, decisions!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Anyway, I have got a few more chores this evening that need my attention, including hopping on over to my Fly Tribeโ€™s Blog site, to check out some more of the artists who are currently participating in our blog hop!! It has been fun seeing everyone’s blogs, and getting to know all of the fun people that I have been “Flying” with!! I hope you take the time to go check them all out!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

So, I am going to call it a night for now!!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€

My Word for 2012, Freedom!

Good evening!

I have been giving this a lot of thought for the past few days, what should my word for 2012 be?ย  Even now, as I sit here with my sweetie and two four-legged girls, I was struggling to decide what word would I love to sum up my life for this new year. I turned to me sweetie, and out of sheer desperation, I whined to him

“If I had one word that I would want to describe 2012, what would it be???”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Freedom”.

My jaw practically dropped onto the floor. DUH!!! That is such a PERFECT WORD for me, and my 2012!!

Freedom in my life is something that I have been really struggling with!!

Freedom from fear!

Freedom from debt!

Freedom from clutter!

Freedom from indecision!

Freedom from my own perceived limitations!

Freedom from negativity!

This is the year that I want to get out of my own way, and live the creative life that I know that God must have put me on this earth to live.

There is a quote from one of my favorite movies that keeps running through my head. It is from the movie Answer Man:

Kris Lucas: Why can’t I do the things I want to do? There’s so much I know I’m capable of that I never actually do. Why is that?
Arben Faber: The trick is to realize that you’re always doing what you want to do… always. Nobody’s making you do anything. Once you get that, you see that you’re free and that life is really just a series of choices. Nothing happens to you. You choose.

This is something that I need to remember, freedom is a choice, that I either take advantage of or miserably neglect. I am already free!!

What a perfect word for me…Thank you, my love, You still know me so well!!!

FREEDOM!!! I am so excited to see what this new year brings!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

I hope you will take the time to check out my Fly Tribeโ€™s Blog and visit my friendโ€™s sites. Iโ€™d like you to meet them, and see what their words for the year are. Maybe you will be moved to adopt one for yourself!

To access these blogs, either click on the red words above, or the โ€œWord Hopโ€ logo on the right side bar. Either will take you directly to the blog where you will find links to their posts! Enjoy!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

โ€œIf you want to have a different life, live differently!โ€

Chunky Dunker’s Night!

Good evening!

Welcome back to Chunky Dunker’s Club! A club for people from all walks of life to get together online to support one another in their health and fitness goals, whether it be to lose a few pounds, or to do one situp; I am very happy to welcome you here every Wednesday evening, where we “meet” in the comments section to catch up, share hints, tips, and ideas and to just encourage each other as we go through our health &ย  fitness path together!!

Tonight, I thought I would talk about Not Giving Up!

I may have talked about this before, but I feel that now more than ever, I have kind of given up on my fitness goals. I have let them and regular life overwhelm me to the point of not caring! A friend reminded me today, that God put us here to support each other, and when she told me that I realized, that I wasn’t on this journey alone.

That is pretty powerful!

Maybe that is for you too!

This week I want you to recommit to your goals and to reach out to one friend that you trust and tell them what you have recommitted to. They do not have to hold you accountable, but just reaching out to someone, telling them what you are going for helps solidify the fact within yourself.

That you are gonna do it.

Little by little.

Step by step!

I am here for you!!!

We are in this TOGETHER!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

So, tonight I start my journey over. Having had a bad day of eating not-so-good-for-me-foods, having no idea how much I weigh this evening, but knowing that NOW is exactly the PERFECT time for change.

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

“If you want to have a different life, live differently!”

Ta-Dat-Dat-Daaah!!

Good evening!

Tonight is my 365th post in a row!! YEAH!!!! I had set a goal for myself that I would blog every day for one year, and I am very happy to announce that I HAVE MET THIS GOAL!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

You know, I have learned a lot about myself and of life while blogging this past year, and I thought I would share some of those things that I have learned with you!

  1. If you don’t live your life, you don’t have a life!
  2. Experiences are waaaay more important than material things!
  3. It is ok to ask for help!
  4. Even when you think you are all alone, there is someone out there who is willing to lend you some encouragement!
  5. Even the scariest goals can be accomplished if you are determined enough to make the needed sacrifices!
  6. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if you want to do something you should, just doing it feels great!
  7. There is a whole world of people, ideas, and places right outside the door of my little world!
  8. I only know what I know, and I still have a LOT left to learn!
  9. There is a whole community of creative people who are willing to cheer you on!
  10. No matter what you are going through, there is always someone who is going through the same thing themselves!
  11. Kindness and sincerity is always a fan pleaser!
  12. Taking a leap of faith may be scary, but landing further than you expected is always worth it!
  13. You can always do one more thing!
  14. Taking time to do nothing is medicine for the soul!
  15. So is laughter!
  16. You attract to you what you send out!
  17. Even after 17 years my sweetie can still dazzle me!
  18. It is ok to pick and choose your family!
  19. You can’t please everyone at all times!
  20. Learning to say no is so difficult, but once you say it once, it becomes a lifesaver!
  21. Children grow so quickly, but are great at keeping you feeling young!
  22. There isn’t such a thing as being too sparkly!
  23. Sexy doesn’t just come in one size!
  24. You are never too old to begin again!
  25. You really only do get one life!
  26. Just because the corporation owns your job doesn’t mean you don’t still own your career!
  27. It is therapeutic to often let your inner child out to play!
  28. It is ok to have a bad day every once in a while, you are human after all!
  29. People are more precious than gold!
  30. It is ok to listen to my intuition, she knows what she is talking about!!

I hope you have enjoyed following my blog for the past year!! By no means do I plan on stopping now, but I may not be quite so hard on myself if I don’t blog EVERY SINGLE DAY!! I will continue to share my stories with you to hopefully provide encouragement to someone to try something new, or to let someone else know that they are not alone, or to even just share something inspiring!!ย  Thank you so much to those of you who stop by every day to see what is going on, those who comments and offer words of encouragement! I hope that I have given to you even a small slice of what you have given to me, I appreciate you!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

In the next coming weeks I have some ideas to give my blog a fresh new take that I have been toying with, and I hope that as I start to implement some of these ideas that you will continue to give me your honest feedback, and encouragement! I always look forward to hearing from you! ๐Ÿ™‚ I am so very excited to see what this next year brings!!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)

Hangin’ at the Manse!

Good evening!

I have had a pretty good day today!!

  • Had a yummy brunch with my sweetie!
  • Got all of the laundry done in the house – which if you would have seen our massive pile of dirty clothes, you would have realized what an AMAZING accomplishment that was!! ๐Ÿ˜‰
  • Helped my sweetie pain on a Victorian doll house for a little while! (He has been contracted to refinish one for one of his clients!)
  • I have read a little in a romance novel I have been reading!
  • I have watched one too many episodes of tele off of our Netflix!
  • Had a GIANORMOUS, but extremely delicious dinner with my sweetie!
  • and am now sitting in my living room enjoying my family, while the Christmas lights are on, my sweetie is writing, and I am getting ready to spend a little too much time on Pinterest!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Talking of Pinterest, is anyone else as completely addicted as I am???? Oh-em-gee!!! I can open it up and start rifling through pics, and before I realize it 2 hours have passed!! I am sooooo ENAMORED!!! It’s all good though! I have always loved collecting photographs of all things inspiring – I have about 15,000 different pics on my computer – I know, a little obsessive, right?? But I have been collecting photographs online for about 5 years, so n average of 3000 pics a year – I can handle that!! Maybe I just need to be a photographer so that I can start collecting some of my own inspiring shots!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰

Talking about photography, I am getting ready to sign up for an online photography class. It is not your typical, technical type class, but more about how to take more artistic and expressive pics using whatever kind of camera you may have available. Right now I have a normal point and click, but someday soon I hope to have a real big-girl-camera, with lenses and everything.ย  WOULDN’T THAT BE AWESOME????? Oh man, that idea just jazzes me SO MUCH!!! ๐Ÿ˜‰ I can’t wait!!! Anyway, the class is given by Darrah Parker, and if you click on her name it will take you to a page telling about her class. I can’t wait!!

Anyway, I just noticed the time, and realized it is later than I thought it was (it is about 8:45 her, and I am an early to bed kinda gal!!), so I am going to skee-daddle to get ready for bed!!

Have a FABULOUS evening! :-)