Apply daily and watch the world become more beautiful every day!!
Lots of Love
Beardogxx
Wednesday 25 January 2012
Beauty Tips
Dearest readers,
Apply daily and watch the world become more beautiful every day!!
Lots of Love
Beardogxx
Apply daily and watch the world become more beautiful every day!!
Lots of Love
Beardogxx
Tuesday 24 January 2012
Being Grateful for the here and now, for what is and what isn't.
It can be easy to be dissatisfied with what we have...mostly because we are too busy looking at what every one else has got and some how they always seem to have 'more' and better stuff.
Its an illusion. They haven't got more and better stuff...its fool's gold.
Is it? Some lives just look better lived. Families for instance. I am always extremely envious of families and family life.....why? Because my family life has never been conventional...'normal'. I suspect that my normal would be someone else's conventional, but that is wishful thinking on my part.
Worst still relationship envy......you know...the man who seems to be perfect in every way, the pair that seem so sympatico, so 'in-love', so bloody annoyingly happy. Your wasteland of a relationship seems parched in comparison of any happiness, not even a droplet, a trickle. Don't be PatHEtiC....your relationship is fine...remember yesterday when he made you a cup of tea without you having to ask......take the plank out of your eye...have a real look...let reality in.
Happy with your lot? Grateful?......ha! Caught you being envious...wishing for...hoping that....mind off in the future and not in the here and now. Stop what iffing...its a curse of too much information, the world wide web, the tacky Hello type magazines, the pimp my ride, location, location, location, grand design world of envy.
Least we forget, we are alive and well and have enough to eat, we have families, conventional or otherwise. We have friends, absent or present, relationships: good and not so grand, we have beds and homes and places to go and so many things that we fail to be grateful for.....
Its an illusion. They haven't got more and better stuff...its fool's gold.
Is it? Some lives just look better lived. Families for instance. I am always extremely envious of families and family life.....why? Because my family life has never been conventional...'normal'. I suspect that my normal would be someone else's conventional, but that is wishful thinking on my part.
Worst still relationship envy......you know...the man who seems to be perfect in every way, the pair that seem so sympatico, so 'in-love', so bloody annoyingly happy. Your wasteland of a relationship seems parched in comparison of any happiness, not even a droplet, a trickle. Don't be PatHEtiC....your relationship is fine...remember yesterday when he made you a cup of tea without you having to ask......take the plank out of your eye...have a real look...let reality in.
Happy with your lot? Grateful?......ha! Caught you being envious...wishing for...hoping that....mind off in the future and not in the here and now. Stop what iffing...its a curse of too much information, the world wide web, the tacky Hello type magazines, the pimp my ride, location, location, location, grand design world of envy.
Least we forget, we are alive and well and have enough to eat, we have families, conventional or otherwise. We have friends, absent or present, relationships: good and not so grand, we have beds and homes and places to go and so many things that we fail to be grateful for.....
Sunday 15 January 2012
The Simple Living Pledge
Happy Monday,
I have decided to try to live a simple life this year and beyond hopefully.
If you want to take the pledge too, go to http//blog.kanelstrand.com
I have decided to try to live a simple life this year and beyond hopefully.
So What is Simple Living?
- Identifying what is most important for you and eliminating everything else.
- Freeing up time for doing what inspires you and being with the people you love.
- Decluttering your mind, your everyday life and your virtual life.
- Single-tasking and learning to diminish stress.
- Striving to live frugally by wanting less and buying only what is necessary.
- Slowing down and being actively present in the moment.
- Living a healthy life, including cleaning your home and your body, eating, exercising and thinking.
- Striving to be green and sustainable as much as your surroundings allow.
- Enjoying the simple pleasures of life.
- Simplifying your goals, tasks and expectations.
If you want to take the pledge too, go to http//blog.kanelstrand.com
Friday 13 January 2012
Mid Life
a) Aged between 40 and 55?
b) Acutely conscious that life hasn't panned out for you quite the way you thought it would when you were 18?
c) Obsessed by your childhood, especially your inability to remember it?
d) Alienated by technology?
e) Scared of cancer?
f) Even more scared of death?
g) Planning your retirement even though you know it will be a wasteland of impoverished misery?
h) Nervous of all the young people in your office?
i) A lot happier when you've had a couple of glasses of wine?
j) Okay, half a bottle? Well maybe a few .....
k) Getting divorced?
l) Consoling friends who are getting divorced? (Yeah its tough...you'll get over it...have a drink!)
m) Worrying about what all those drugs you took when you were younger are going to do to you?
n) Stuck with a tattoo you hate?
o) Tired. Just really really tired?
p) And depressed?
q) And angry. Christ, where does that anger come from. Why did no one prepare you for it?
r) 'Growing out' of all your clothes?
s) Turning into your parents?
t) Thinking about moving to the country?
u) Puzzled because you seem, somewhere along the line, to have lost all the friends you actually liked and acquired a load of new ones you barely know?
If you have answered 'yes' to more than half of these questions, then you are officially middle aged, experiencing 'mid life'.
Great news, retirement is round the corner and you have earned the right to sit back and feel just a tiny bit smug and ever so, ever so knackered!!
Welcome to my world...
love Beardog xx
Thanks to The Midlife Manual by John O'Connell & Jessica Cargill Thompson.
b) Acutely conscious that life hasn't panned out for you quite the way you thought it would when you were 18?
c) Obsessed by your childhood, especially your inability to remember it?
d) Alienated by technology?
e) Scared of cancer?
f) Even more scared of death?
g) Planning your retirement even though you know it will be a wasteland of impoverished misery?
h) Nervous of all the young people in your office?
i) A lot happier when you've had a couple of glasses of wine?
j) Okay, half a bottle? Well maybe a few .....
k) Getting divorced?
l) Consoling friends who are getting divorced? (Yeah its tough...you'll get over it...have a drink!)
m) Worrying about what all those drugs you took when you were younger are going to do to you?
n) Stuck with a tattoo you hate?
o) Tired. Just really really tired?
p) And depressed?
q) And angry. Christ, where does that anger come from. Why did no one prepare you for it?
r) 'Growing out' of all your clothes?
s) Turning into your parents?
t) Thinking about moving to the country?
u) Puzzled because you seem, somewhere along the line, to have lost all the friends you actually liked and acquired a load of new ones you barely know?
If you have answered 'yes' to more than half of these questions, then you are officially middle aged, experiencing 'mid life'.
Great news, retirement is round the corner and you have earned the right to sit back and feel just a tiny bit smug and ever so, ever so knackered!!
Welcome to my world...
love Beardog xx
Thanks to The Midlife Manual by John O'Connell & Jessica Cargill Thompson.
Tuesday 10 January 2012
Working from Home
In an effort to save cash, the organisation I work for decided to close down our offices and make all staff work from home. Sounds wonderful doesn't it, being at home all the time and avoiding the stressful commute to work every day. In the summer you can be working in the garden, in the winter working from your bed!!
The negatives are: It can be lonely. And it can be frustrating especially if you're not that organised and your office is so small you can barely swing a hamster.
However it does give me an excuse to revamp my home office. I have my eye on a desk like this:
Or one like this:
My office currently looks like this:
And not like this:
I WISH!!
I'm too ashamed to show you the glory hole that is my office. Maybe one day I'll give you a peek when I tidy it up.
Although I do have a plan; hubby is off to California in a week or so for 3 weeks so I will do a make over on his office, which is much scruffier than mine, and that's saying something!!
I have something like this in mind, only much smaller:
Minus the flowers of course!!
And some good storage in my office for crafts etc:
Love Beardog xx
The negatives are: It can be lonely. And it can be frustrating especially if you're not that organised and your office is so small you can barely swing a hamster.
However it does give me an excuse to revamp my home office. I have my eye on a desk like this:
Or one like this:
My office currently looks like this:
And not like this:
I WISH!!
I'm too ashamed to show you the glory hole that is my office. Maybe one day I'll give you a peek when I tidy it up.
Although I do have a plan; hubby is off to California in a week or so for 3 weeks so I will do a make over on his office, which is much scruffier than mine, and that's saying something!!
I have something like this in mind, only much smaller:
Minus the flowers of course!!
And some good storage in my office for crafts etc:
Love Beardog xx
Monday 9 January 2012
Food and diet
I love food. Love eating. Adore cooking. Three things that will end in my finding myself with a huge big fat body if I'm not very careful. Well I'm not giving up eating food I love for anyone or making the food I love. Hence my love affair with exercise. This way I can eat stuff I enjoy without guilt.
I make jam and I like eating it!
I bake cakes and I eat them too:
I can make a batch of cookies in a blink of an eye:
I am happy to eat salads and other delicious healthy foods too, I guess I just like eating. Much of food is in how it looks , this is certainly half of the attraction.
Don't let the word diet interfere with enjoying food, I know I don't.
Good eating people,
Lots of love xxx
I make jam and I like eating it!
I bake cakes and I eat them too:
I can make a batch of cookies in a blink of an eye:
I am happy to eat salads and other delicious healthy foods too, I guess I just like eating. Much of food is in how it looks , this is certainly half of the attraction.
Don't let the word diet interfere with enjoying food, I know I don't.
Good eating people,
Lots of love xxx
Sunday 8 January 2012
Exercising: the new religion
I am on a mission to be fit and fine by fifty. Although I seem to recall a similar mission for my forties but hey what's a decade between friends. However I have always been fit, always been a runner or done some sort of exercise, but not as consistently as I should. Subsequently I have spent time being fat(ish) (not including pregnancies, that is legit fatness!) being uncomfortable and feeling unhappy with the way I look. But I have my mojo back. And this time it is different!! Honest Indian! This time it isn't a mission about being size 10, (although it may be a very welcome side effect) and its not even about competition either (after all I am only competing with myself).
It is however all about staying alive. Its about staying alive and staying alive WELL, it is about reversing the effects of ageing on my body.
IT IS NOT about wrinkles or grey hair or nasal hair because they won't kill me but being unable to move fluidly and bend with suppleness and walk with a bounce in my step and be super energetic are things that once absent can lead to decrepitude, slowing down, coming to a stand still and death. I want to be the super fit old person the one who does not grunt and groan when they stand up or shuffle instead of walk or who is crippled with aching joints and bad knees, but who thinks nothing of going for a run and dashing about having adventures.
The other alternative to 'appear' young is of course plastic surgery. Wrong for so many reasons that I won't go into just now.
I could afford plastic surgery if I wanted it desperately enough and saved up, but I don't want it because it just makes people look fake and it takes NO effort just cash. In the end you need the effort to stay alive because money isn't oxygen and there are a lot of dead rich people in the grave yard. (Yes I know there are lots of dead poor people too ). But all the research indicates that exercising and keeping fit, using muscles and eating well can contribute to a healthy old age. I don't mean I am trying to avoid EVER dying, after all who wants to live forever, but I don't want to spend my retirement unable to enjoy myself and moaning and groaning....boring!!!
It seems to me only natural to want to feel good and to want to get out and about and do fun stuff, there is sooooo much FUN stuff to do!!!
Check out this website ( one of hundreds) for information, instruction, hints and tips on getting healthy and fit: http://www.muscleandfitnesshers.com and this for information on ageing well : http://www.livescience.com
and ageing interestingly: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/nigelfarndale/6257885/How-to-grow-old-gracefully-and-interestingly.html
Get out there and just do it!!!
Otherwise:
Love you all.....now go exercise!!!
One last tip that works for me:
xxx
It is however all about staying alive. Its about staying alive and staying alive WELL, it is about reversing the effects of ageing on my body.
IT IS NOT about wrinkles or grey hair or nasal hair because they won't kill me but being unable to move fluidly and bend with suppleness and walk with a bounce in my step and be super energetic are things that once absent can lead to decrepitude, slowing down, coming to a stand still and death. I want to be the super fit old person the one who does not grunt and groan when they stand up or shuffle instead of walk or who is crippled with aching joints and bad knees, but who thinks nothing of going for a run and dashing about having adventures.
The other alternative to 'appear' young is of course plastic surgery. Wrong for so many reasons that I won't go into just now.
I could afford plastic surgery if I wanted it desperately enough and saved up, but I don't want it because it just makes people look fake and it takes NO effort just cash. In the end you need the effort to stay alive because money isn't oxygen and there are a lot of dead rich people in the grave yard. (Yes I know there are lots of dead poor people too ). But all the research indicates that exercising and keeping fit, using muscles and eating well can contribute to a healthy old age. I don't mean I am trying to avoid EVER dying, after all who wants to live forever, but I don't want to spend my retirement unable to enjoy myself and moaning and groaning....boring!!!
It seems to me only natural to want to feel good and to want to get out and about and do fun stuff, there is sooooo much FUN stuff to do!!!
Check out this website ( one of hundreds) for information, instruction, hints and tips on getting healthy and fit: http://www.muscleandfitnesshers.com and this for information on ageing well : http://www.livescience.com
and ageing interestingly: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/nigelfarndale/6257885/How-to-grow-old-gracefully-and-interestingly.html
Get out there and just do it!!!
Otherwise:
Love you all.....now go exercise!!!
One last tip that works for me:
xxx
Saturday 7 January 2012
Clocks
I love clocks. Strangely I don't wear a watch though, but I do like clocks.
I like big clocks. The sort you find in uber trendy homes based on the design of those huge train station clocks. This one is perfect in the kitchen isn't it? I love the simplicity of it and how it is so perfectly colour coordinated.
Clocks on the mantelpiece are classic. These are lovely clocks, although you normally only have the one. I don't have one above my fireplace either because I haven't found the perfect clock yet.
But these are my favourite of all clocks and one day I hope to have one:
until next 'time'....
Love Beardog xx
Wednesday 4 January 2012
Running and Laughing
I have never felt so happy as I was this morning running into the wind and laughing like a loon. When you body is fit and strong enough to make running feel joyful, there is nothing better.
On my way to fitness and long life.
Tuesday 3 January 2012
Year 2012
It is 2012, it is raining and very windy, I am out walking the dog. Christmas feels like a blip in a sea of ordinary day to day stuff. I'm back where I started but with more cleaning to do and a ton of mince pies no one wants to eat. I am thinking about spring and my garden. It has been so mild over the past few months that all the bulbs in the garden are already showing their tender green tips. There is no big freeze or snow storms predicted by the weathermen but it can and does snow even as late as March/April, so we will see. But I have great plans for the garden, all of which of course involve money. So it will be slow and hopefully the better for the lack of haste.
By February, the new year feeling will have gone, no doubt. Time will fly by. But I have decided that this year, I will have put in place the seeds for a new way of life.
For now I will visualise my improving garden and consider my new life adventures and finalise my plans to make it all happen.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
By February, the new year feeling will have gone, no doubt. Time will fly by. But I have decided that this year, I will have put in place the seeds for a new way of life.
For now I will visualise my improving garden and consider my new life adventures and finalise my plans to make it all happen.
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