Ripples

My email has been red hot today with women wanting to know more and more about walking. This is fantastic and has also brought me back in touch with past clients who I worked with many years ago but who still get my ezines etc.

The connections are still there and with the right spark, the ripples spead out and touch more and more people.

I've just read a story in the American press which illustrates that too.

In summer 2007, Debra Flinn walked 66 days for an intense 874 miles and slimmed down from a size 22 to a size 14. This year, her achievement is resulting in another walk entitled "From Desperate to Disney" and last Saturday, 32 people joined her on a 10-mile walk in Cape Coral. She hopes to inspire other women to lose the sort of weight she did and therefore "take back their lives."

Debra herself commented "It's amazing to see the ripple effect that can happen when you make a difference in your own life."

The "From Desperate to Disney" walk will start on Sunday, March 2, walking around 15 miles a day for 14 days. They will march into Walt Disney World on March 16 and enjoy two days at a Walt Disney World Resort.

Pink, pink and more pink

I promised a couple of photos of Ellie's den when I was blogging about it in January so here they are.

You can see what I mean about the pink!!! And as all her friends knew about this room, the birthday pressies were rather pink too.

I have been very impressed though, as not only did Ellie do a great deal of the painting, she now takes total responsibility for keeping it clean and tidy. Although the room is still the spare room, Ellie just loves her den, is the envy of many of her friends and at last this room is being used as something more than an ironing dumping ground.

It's concentrated our efforts on doing the ironing regularly and Ellie and I had such fun decorating it, so a win , win all round.

One thing really important to all of us, is that Ellie doesn't shut herself away regularly and so far she doesn't want to. I must admit though that when we have a clash of TV programmes, e.g when the rugby is on, that there is somewhere that she can do her own thing.

Also as she get's older it's not always appropriate for her to have all her friends in her bedroom or to take over the lounge - now we have a perfact solution.

So was it an expensive undertaking? A new blind from Ikea, a couple of pots of paint which can be used to update her bedroom in the summer and a little time from me. Pretty cost effective and if I'm good I get to use it too which is bliss when I can cosy down in the blankets and cushions with a mug of hot chocolate and a good chick flick!!

Glad to be alive

Two weeks since I blogged, so not doing too well on the intention for 2008 that says I will blog more regularly. I have let go of the need to blog every day because I feel I should - hurray but there's still some work to do on being more constant.

It's not that I forget, but I put it aside until later and later doesn't always come.

However, I wanted to share the sunshine with you and the fact that when walking regularly , you can't really get away from the weather. These last few days in my area have been blissful. Very cold to start and then developing into bright sunny and warm days, cooling down in the evening and often nature offers up stunning skies streaked with pink as the sun disappears. They are for me, real glad to be alive days and ground me as they make me realsie that it is all the simple and free things in life that are important as well as my husband, daughter and friends of course.

What kind of days are your glad to be alive days?

Here's a photo of the beautiful miniture daffodils in my window box, just the sight of them make me smile. In fact it's hard to be sad when faced with such happy flowers.

There seems to have been such little time without leaves and flowers this winter and I don't seem to have walked in the dark lots either. Now I'm looking forward to the bluebells as the carpets of them in Epping Forest as a sight worth seeing.