No walking this week, but lots of excitement!

Its been a crazy, but exciting week since I last posted. I haven't managed to do any walking, but that does not mean I've given up, just that life is in the way for a bit.

Just a quick update on the excitement right now. I'll expand on it more in later posts. Two exciting events interrupted my walking routine.

The first event was a fun filled weekend with some female family members. One aunt, one sister, one daughter, five cousins, and one cousin's daughter, plus me, added up to ten crazy females gathered in one house a week ago today to set out for a crazy adventure the next day.

The second event was one I was not expecting to happen for almost another two months. I became a grandmother!

I'll share more about both these exciting events soon, but for now I just wanted to explain that my walking routine has been interrupted for a week, but that does not mean its over and done with. I'll be back at it again soon.

Posted with Blogsy

Walking - day 1 of week 2

Walked again today. Normal Dawson route. I remembered to start the timer for the walk but I forgot to stop it when we finished walking, so I'm not sure how long it took, but I think it was about 30 minutes.

I had a new walking partner today. Anna's been wanting to walk with me every since I started walking. Today I decided to take her. I told her it was a test to see if she could come again or not. I think she's decided not to come anymore. It was too long for her.

She started out fine and was very entertaining. Here's a sample of the entertainment she provided.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Summary of week 1 of walking and on to week two

Some tweets by friends and acquaintances about their running reignited my desire to run. Realizing I am far from being in shape to run I decided to start walking.

Day 1 - Wednesday, July 3

Starting slow. Walked 20 minutes. Main Street, 10th Avenue, Elmwood Crescent and cut across yard to join into Earle, 8th Avenue back to Main.

Day 2 - Thursday, July 4

Started with a 25 minute walk. Slight route change. Skipped Elmwood and went right to Earle. Went for a second walk in the night with Sarah. Passed by Earle and went right to Midland for the loop. Did it in 40 minutes for a total of 65 minutes walking on day 2.

Day 3 - Friday, July 5

Started the day with a 30 minute walk. Another slight route change. Skipped Earle and went to Dawson.

Day 4 - Saturday, July 6

Started the day again with a 30 minute walk, same route as yesterday.

Day 5 - Sunday, July 7

Didn't walk til late in the evening. Went with Sarah again and did the same Midland route we did last time in about the same time - 40 minutes.

Day 6 - Monday, July 8

Started the day again with the normal 30 minute walk on the Dawson loop.

Day 7 - Tuesday, July 9

Started the day again with the normal Dawson loop and cut a bit of time off. Did the route in 28 minutes 50 seconds.

And that was week 1. A great start!

Today was day one of week two. I didn't get a walk in until late this evening. Walked with Sarah again and did our normal Midland loop. I completely forgot to time the walk but I think it took about 40 minutes.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Trying out Blogsy

I've discovered what appears to be a great app for blogging using an iPad. I have struggled with blogging since my lap top died, over two years ago. I thought that I would easily pick it up again about a year ago when I got my iPad, but I discovered it wasn't as easy as I thought to blog from an iPad. I returned to lamenting the death of my laptop and gave up on blogging - until now.

Yesterday I decided to start blogging about my progress in walking, but I almost quit again before posting my first post! The app that I had downloaded a nice while ago is very frustrating to work with. I decided to go ahead and use it for my first post but to search for something better. That's when i came across Blogsy.

I spent the morning watching the How-to-Videos on their site and becoming more and more amazed. Blogsy appears to be a great app! This is the first of what I hope will be many blog posts that I will create using Blogsy.

Posted with Blogsy

Walking Again

A week ago today I decided to start walking again. I thought that tweeting about my decision and progress might help hold me accountable, so everyday I tweeted how long I walked. Then I got to thinking, that's a bit boring for tweets, and also sometimes I wanted to say more than what could be said in a tweet, so I started thinking about blogging my progress. So, here I am.

It's been a long time since I even visited my blog. My first thought when I logged in is that it is in desperate need of a makeover, but I have no idea how to go about doing a blog makeover from an iPad so that's not going to happen any time soon.  I almost let that stop me from blogging now, thinking I should do the makeover first but I seriously don't know when I'll be able to do a makeover and I didn't want to delay starting to blog, so here goes.

I recently became aware that some of my friends and acquaintances in my community, where I've been living now for almost two years, are runners. I don't know if they've been runners for years or if they just recently started. I learned about their running when some of them tweeted about it. That's what got me thinking about it again.

Back in January 2009 I actually started a blog, called Couch Potatoes to Road Runners http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/ , as a basis for a challenge between some family and friends. In the first post on that blog http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/2009/01/how-this-blog-came-about.html I shared that years before a friend had told me about a walk/run program that she enjoyed and I had tried it for a while and loved it, but didn't keep it up. I thought that getting some family and friends to join me in the challenge in 2009 might help me stick to it, but that didn't work either. In a post on May 11, 2009 http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/2009/05/faithful-in-training-but-not-in.html I shared how I was disappointed in the lack of participation of others and I wrote my last post on that blog May 31,2009. At that time I was still faithfully training and had worked my way up to being able to run for 25 minutes straight without feeling winded. I was pretty proud of that but I think the training petered out shortly after that. 

I did try to start to train to run again once or twice after that but then I finally just gave up. I even tried just walking, but I didn't stick to that either. 

Reading about others close to me running sparked my interest again. I am certainly in no shape to run right now and I seriously don't know if I will work up to that or not.  For now I am content with just walking.  We'll see what happens as time goes on.

NaBloPoMo November 2 - live anywhere

Friday, November 2, 2012
If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

We just moved into our new house in a new community just a little over a year ago and I honestly have no desire to live anywhere else. I finally feel settled.

NaBloPoMo - favorite quote

It's November 1st - the first day of NaNoWriMo and also the first day of NaBloPoMo for this month.  I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo for a while now but I completely forgot about NaBloPoMo until today.

I would really like to do NaNoWriMo but I really don't have the time or set up for it. I did make a start today but it just made me realize how truly impossible it is with my present situation. I may, however, continue to plod along.  We'll see.

Rediscovering NaBloPoMo today gave me some hope when I thought all hope was gone. It gave me a new goal to shoot for, one that I think is a little more doable. These will be far from perfect. There will likely be many spelling and grammar mistakes and much fluff with little substance.  I do this simply for me right now and it's important that I just do it without striving for perfection.  I'm hoping it will help me in many ways. So, here I start.

Thursday, November 1, 2012
Tell us your favourite quotation and why.

I think my favourite quotation is actually a Bible verse - "thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee", from Isaiah 26:3. This verse is my lifeline in every difficulty and struggle that comes my way. The faster I remember to stop and get my mind back on God and to trust Him, the faster I get back my peace back.

My First Book Launch

Well, it wasn't actually my book launch, as I have never written a book, but it was the first book launch that I ever attended. I'm hoping it won't be the last.

I was excited when my dad pointed out to me that one of the people that attended my church in my new community was none other than Newfoundland author, Nellie Strowbridge. I had read her books Catherine Snow and The Newfoundland Tongue and I took advantage of the first opportunity I got to let her know that I was a fan. I was thrilled to get to chat with her about her past books and ones she is working on.  I was really excited when I received an invitation from her publisher saying that she had requested I be sent an invitation to attend the launch of her new book, Maiden From the Sea.

I asked her permission to tape the launch and post it to my blog. She graciously agreed.  It's taken me a few days to get it ready to post.  I had taped it with my phone and needed to edit it before posting it. There were people coughing and moving about and chatting during parts of the taping and I wanted to get rid of that stuff.  I had never edited a video before and didn't have a video editing program and the only thing I had to work on was my phone.  I downloaded IMovie and googled help to learn how to use it and I finally got it done.

Here is the video I put together with clips from the book launch that I attended in Deer Lake May 19.

Yard Tour Part 2

Last post I took you on a tour of our front yard and one side of the house.  This time we'll tour the other side of the house and the backyard.  It really is not an exciting tour at all right now because there is nothing there yet but it will be fun to watch the yard change over the years.  This part of the tour takes place in two videos because I ran out of space on my phone on the first video.  The second video is a little frustrating for two reasons - the wind plays havoc with the sound at times and Anna interrupts often.  Oh well, this is simply for my benefit really so I'm not too worried about it.

Side Yard



Backyard

Come Tour My Yard

We moved into a new house on totally undeveloped property back in August of 2011.  I have some pictures somewhere of what it was like then.  I'll try to find those and post them later. We still haven't done much at all to the property, other than cut down the forest of tall grasses in the back yard.  We do want to develop it but it will not happen quickly.  I've been on a Dave Ramsey kick for a while now and Sheldon is playing along somewhat so it is my hope that we will only make improvements to the property as we can pay cash for it.  We've had a few "discussions" about that so we'll see what happens.

Anyway, I decided that I would like to do a kind of video documentary of what we do with the property over the years so I taped the first part of that today.  This video takes you on a tour of our front yard and along one side of the house. Not much to see there yet but here's what it looks like now.

Gardening With Anna Episode 3: May 7th Update on Plants

Chilly outside but things ares growing inside

Our egg cartons are full of growth!  I have to figure out how to get pictures from my phone on here.  We have been amazed to watch our onions and sweet peas grow.

I started measuring the growth of some of the bulbs because I was so shocked by it.  It's been growing about an inch every 24 hours.  So much fun to watch!  I think the Yellow Onion Bulbs are doing a little better than the Spanish Onion bulbs but they are both doing good.

Our sweet peas and green onions seeds took a while to catch up put the sweet peas are as tall as the onions now.  I need to thin out the green onion seed plants.  The seeds were so tiny we dropped loads in each compartment of the egg carton.  It's funny to see.

Hopefully I'll figure out how to get a picture up or else do another video to show the growth soon.  Fun times!

Our Visit to the Greenhouse and Garden Store

This is a totally unedited video of our visit to the Greenhouse and Garden Store in Little Rapids. Anna was doing great until she found a lady bug. Doing the video was her idea but then she lost all interest in the video when she found the lady bug. We will definitely be going back there again, probably a few times throughout the summer to see the development of the gardens.
 

Greenhouse and Garden Store in Little Rapids!

I am so excited!  I just discovered that I have gardening help close by! I have been combing the web for gardening info and I just discovered that there is a Greenhouse and Garden Store very close by!

Check out the Greenhouse and Garden Store website. The title on their opening page tells me this is the place for me - "A Green Haven for Amateurs and Pros".  I fit into the first category. I was hoping to find some workshops scheduled soon but there aren't any posted for this season yet, just some info about past workshop, which looked great.  There's also a note on that page about a newsletter so I signed up for that right away. I wish they had links to their past articles on their gardening tips page so I didn't have to wait for the first newsletter to start learning from them.

Also check out the Greenhouse and Garden Store Blog. The description here says that they have demonstration gardens that you can walk around in for ideas.  We will definitely be visiting there soon, and maybe we'll do a short video while we're there.

The Greenhouse and Garden Store Facebook page seems to be the place for up-to-date information so of course, I've like that too.

It appears the only thing that is missing is a Twitter account, but maybe I just haven't discovered that yet.

There just might be a nice garden in my yard yet!

Gardening with Anna Episode 1

Maybe a garden finally?

We moved to a new house in a new community at the end of last summer.  Our house came with much more land than our old house so I’m hoping to finally be able to have a real garden!
One thing though, there is absolutely no landscaping done to the land.  I’ve been trying to decide if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.  It’s a good thing in that it’s an open slate for us to do with as we please, but it’s a bad thing in that it needs so much work to do anything with it. 
I am, however, determined to do something with it. It will be a slow gradual process and I’m hoping to document the progress here on my blog, so hopefully there will be new life breathed into this dead blog.
I am a real green horn at this but I am determined to learn.  I recently discovered a site that I’m hoping will help me with that.  GrowVeg.com has lots of information about growing vegetables and also has a garden planning program that allows you to draw up a plan for your garden.  It seems like a really neat program.  I’ve signed up for the free trail and have started a garden plan.  I’ll share more about that in a future post.
I’d love to find a program like GrowVeg for flower and shrub gardening.  There are some flowers and trees included in the GrowVeg site but not enough to plan a nice flower garden. 
I’d also love to connect with other gardeners from my province and my specific community area so that I can learn from them.  They are the people that can be a real help because they know what works for here.
That’s what’s on my mind presently.

A Challenge for you for 2012 - Commit to spending more time reading the Bible in 2012

I'd like to challenge YOU to commit to spending more time reading the Bible in 2012.  


I presented the same challenge January the 1st 2011.  I also offered a side challenge to commit to reading the Bible through, not necessarily all the way through in 2011, but however long it took.  Did you take up either challenge?  If so, how did you fair in meeting your challenge?  Are you still working on that goal?  If you struggled or gave up, don't knock yourself out for it.  Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get to it again.  You don't have to start right from the beginning again if you don't want to.  Start where you left off and keep going from there.


Last year I shared that in the past my kids and I have used a chart, something like this one http://www.matthewweathers.com/year2006/images/Bible_Reading_Record.pdf to help us work towards the goal of reading the Bible through.  Print it out, fold it and tuck it into your Bible and mark of the chapters as you read them.  No requirement to read a certain amount or in a certain order, just mark of each chapter as you read it.  You'll be able to see at a glance if there is something you haven't read yet and need to make a special effort to read.  You'll feel so proud of yourself when you finally have all the chapters marked off, even if it does take you years to do it.  :)


If you have an Iphone, Ipad, or just about any other smart phone or tablet you can download an app to help you track your Bible reading.  My favorite app is the YouVersion Bible app.  You can access the Bible in a number of different versions and you can also access a number of different Bible reading plans.  I like to use the Whole Bible plans because they actually take you through the whole Bible.  When you choose a plan to follow you are given a portion of scripture to read each day and as you finish each portion and click to proceed to the next portion the app checks off the portions you have read.  You can easily go slower or faster than suggested by simply reading more or less.


If all you have is a computer or laptop, you can also use YouVersion at http://www.youversion.com/.


If you are interested in learning more about how to use the appor site, I'd be glad to help with any questions you might have.  If you'd like someone to challenge you or hold you accountable to keeping going, I'd be happy to pray for you and encourage you.  I would love to help you get into the Word of God.


Since doing the Bible in 90 Days Challenge the summer of 2010, Bible reading has become even more of a normal part of my life than it was before.  I had been reading small portions of the Bible most every day before that but doing the challenge helped me realize that I could actually fit in reading bigger portions of the Bible every day.  I became so used to doing that that I continued reading bigger portions of the Bible in 2011 and actually made my way all the way through the Bible 3 times in 2011.  I did most of my Bible reading on my Iphone using the YouVersion Bible app following Bible reading plans available in the app. I went through the Bible In 90 Days Plan first, but it took me a little more than 90 Days to complete it.  I then did the Chronological Reading Plan, which was set up to be done in a year but I read more than one days allotted reading each day and completed it in about 4 months.  Then I did the Historical Reading Plan and did the same thing.  I've started following the Life Journal Reading Plan for the beginning of this year.


I sure hope you will commit to spending more time reading your Bible in 2012.  It is something that will change your live forever.

Trying out an iPad

My sister is visiting and I'm trying out her iPad. I like it!

Teacher Tipster

Came across a really neat site today - TeacherTipster.com. Great ideas explained with videos and sometimes including printables.  Here are some of my favourite:

Parts of a Story Song Video - Parts of a Story Poster

The Clock Song -  Clock Song Poster - Set The Clock Sheet (to be kept in a sheet protector so that it can be written on and whipped clean to use again and again

Lots  more videos with fun tips on the TeacherTipster Videos page and lots of great fun printables on the TeacherTipster Printables pages

As the TeacherTipster is a grade one teacher and Anna is presently working on grade one goals I intend to make good use of this site.

Grey Hair and Hair Colouring

Why do people stress so much about the colour of their hair?

I am getting more and more grey hair, but I don't care.  I never did care, but I've cared even less since the day, many moons ago, when my first girl told me that she liked the sparkling hairs that I had.  I didn't have many at all at that point but I loved how she described them.  Then I found this verse Proverbs 16:31 "The silver-haired head is a crown of glory".  I intend to wear my crown proudly when I finally receive it.  :)

I have never died my hair, and I don't think I ever will.  My hair is quite dark, but I see more and more light hairs showing up all the time.  It does not cause me one bit of stress.  My hair always has been and always will be it's natural colour. I have never understood why anyone would want to change their hair colour.  I've always been of the opinion that God knows best in that department and I'm not going to mess with it.

So, while others may sit around and lament about the grey hairs showing up, or their roots showing through, I rest easy and take things as they come.