Feng Shui Workshop

I was telling one of the ladies at work about the awesome work I have been doing to my home (thanks to Terri Perrin at Fine Art of Intention Feng Shui) and not too long after this discussion, Terri was into the branch – I introduced her to the lady at work and lo and behold, last night I attended a Feng Shui workshop at her home!

I’m was very much looking forward to this event – there weren’t as many people there as I thought there might, and of those there, some of whom know all about Feng Shui, others for whom this was an introduction.  The energy was great (as were the treats!) and we all had a good time.

I came away with some new information and a renewed sense that Feng Shui isn’t just a “one shot deal” of changes – it’s an ongoing practice in my home AND my life.

The session was great because it incorporated a lot of explanation – and in fact, when leaving with a friend, she commented to me that she was really pleased that Terri was so free with information.  The sharing of information – the changes that can be made, and the resulting feeling of those changes, was really the whole focus of the evening.

What sorts of additional things did I pick up? There were a few bigger items that resonated with me last night as well as a number of small “tweaks” I can make here and there…

Some *more* decluttering (nope, not done yet after all!) this time, find a way to finally remove the electronics I purchased over in the UK.  An advert will go up on Kijiji, Craigslist and on something called Used Courtenay / Comox.  Hopefully I’ll be able to locate someone moving to the UK who can take these items with them.

There’s some yard work that desperately needs to be attended to – Terri told us last night that, when divided up, our yards are symbolised as Front = past; middle = present; and back = future.  Since I have no middle yard, and my front yard is mostly fine, I really need to focus on clean-up and planning out my back yard’s space.  With the flooding in December, I’ve not given it any thought at all, and so my hope is that, this weekend, I’ll be able to sit down and focus some thought on what I can do with it and then, start to take action.  More soon on this project.

Last up is an interesting thing I can do to draw things to me.  Essentially, with a (new) red pen, write out all of the things (by hand on some fancy paper) I want to draw into my life.  Place this list in a silver box and then place the silver box in the “helpful people” section of my house.  For me, the helpful l people section of my mail floor is in the foyer and upstairs it is in my office.  Since I spend more time in my home office than in my foyer, I’ll place the box up here.

And so, with this in mind, I’m going to finish this post off here, walk my dog and then start taking action on the next phase of my Feng Shui education.

With love across the waters,

Sugar Hangover

Last night's Feng Shui workshop was fun & provided me with new "Feng Shui Food for Thought" - which I will write about later today... but for now, I'm suffering with a small sugar hangover.  I overindulged a little in the treats last night - nothing TOO terrible, but still, a little too much sugar for one sitting and today I'm feeling a little ooky from it.

Today's plan?  10 - 11 KM walk with Miss Jasmine and then after my shower, some housecleaning, a little bit of yard-work (a-la the workshop last night) and some computer work. Have a wonderful day!  

With love across the waters,

Fifty Kilometers

On Saturday afternoon I sent my “Live Right Now” check in to my mum – it was a pretty good week (if I do say so myself) and I had a recap of how I had done and then I went on to set a few goals for myself…

• I was down two more pounds
• I Walked 7 out of 7 days this past week for a total of 48.77 Km (hours total) & burned off 2976 calories (1 pound = 3000 calories) (damn – still under 3000!!)
• I had one “blow it” meal this week but didn’t actually enjoy it as much as I thought I would.  Hm.
• Continued with the vegetable goal
• Made my own granola – from scratch
• Made my own naan from scratch

So the goals I set for this week (the one currently in play) were to:

• walk every single day for at least 1 hour (about 6Km) & aim for breaking the 50 KM mark
• to do 10+ Km walks
• have one “blow it” meal only
• continue with veggies at every dinner & start including them for my snack at lunch for work (I didn’t succeed so well every day the previous week with this one)
• keep on going with the no Tim Horton’s coffee
• bake my own bread & maybe tackle something like meat loaf (which I have also never made)

Today is Thursday – and including today’s walk I’m most definitely on track to break my 50 KM goal.  What about the other things? I have done one of the 10+ KM walks (actually, it was over 11 KM) and will be doing the other one tomorrow. I had a “blow it” meal on Tuesday night – and yes, the dessert was awesome.  I didn’t count on tonight – a Feng Shui workshop at which there will be many nibblies of all kinds – but as long as I keep my meals under control I should be pretty good for sticking to a VERY SMALL portion of some sort of dessert. I baked a pan of gingerbread and just finished icing it...

Veggies are still a little bit of work to incorporate into snacks – I prefer fruit and yogurt to be honest, but am trying to have at least a half cup of extra veggies as part of a snack.

I baked bread – and tomorrow night I’m going to cook a pork roast and all of the trimmings – something I haven’t cooked before.  I’m not certain exactly *how* I will be preparing the pork roast – but I’ll be able to make that decision tomorrow!

I’m still succeeding where Tim Horton’s is concerned (no stops there this week) and I’m adding extra water to every day for drinking.

So all in all, I’m feeling pretty good about how this week has been coming along!

With love across the waters,

Bread Making – Part II – That Really WASN’T So Hard!

OK – last night I spoke with my mum again & this time, and with her encouragement (and some research) I decided that I actually COULD bake bread, using the “No Knead” recipe and my Pyrex casserole dish.

So… I started the dough last night.  The cool part of using this particular recipe is that it required almost no effort and absolutely zero kneading.  My kind of effort!  The dough is simple – flour, salt, yeast & water.  Yes, really, that’s all!   You stir it up until it’s just mixed and then you cover it and literally ignore it for about 20 hours.

This morning I took a look at the bowl and holy SMOKES – it did something cool overnight!  The dough – yes, it was really dough after all of that sitting – it even smelled yeasty like bread dough should!

 Jasmine and I headed out for today’s walk – 11 KM – and arrived home a couple of hours later.  Still not time to touch the bread dough – so I had my shower & then some lunch and then took herself off in the car to get some groceries.

Home again, and still not time to touch the dough, I made up a pot of spaghetti sauce – some for dinner tonight, the rest to freeze for making more spaghetti as well as lasagna. 

FINALLY… time to touch the dough.

Hm.  First I had to turn it out onto a “lightly floured” board.  First question to myself was what is lightly floured? It turns out that lightly floured was actually a little more flour than I had on the board – but that’s OK, I just added more.  I was to fold it a couple of times and then let it sit and rest for 15 minutes.

Resting done, the next step was another 2 hours of rising time, this time after coating the outside with flour or cornmeal.  I couldn’t find my cornmeal and so this time I used wheat germ – can’t hurt, right? Oven AND Pyrex container heated to a toasty 450*F, the dough gets “flipped” into the container so that the seam is pointing up.  Lid back on, into the hot hot oven it went for 30 minutes.  Then the lid came off and it baked for another 20 minutes until it was lovely and golden brown.

It’s now cooling on a rack in the kitchen and I’m VERY excited to see how tasty it is!  I think I’ll be having home made bread with my spaghetti dinner tonight!!

With love across the waters,