This month the theme at Creative Everyday is Bliss.  I think it is a great theme and one that I would love to explore for awhile.  I have always believed that I could count on finding my bliss at the ocean.  Last week we spent an extremely quiet and restful week at the beach.  We stayed right on the ocean and the weather was great.  It was truly a blissful week.  But much to my surprise when I got home I experienced another kind of bliss.  I am not sure why but it felt really great to be home.  So I have decided that feeling blissful can happen in different places for different reasons.  It's good to know that although the ocean will always  have a special place in my heart  that home is where I can find my true bliss. 

It's Sunday again and time to think about living a healthy life. I think is so important for all of us to know who we are, what we love to do and then to find the time to do it.  When I was working I loved my job and I immersed myself in it.  But now that I am retired I realize that I gave so much time to my job I left very little time for myself.  And having time for yourself, time to learn more about yourself and what you are passionate about, is very important.  When I was consulting, one workshop I presented was all about looking at how you allocate your time.  So many of the woman were amazed at how little time they gave to themself.  We used a simple circle graph that was divided into 24 hours.  Each person divided the day into different categories such as work, children, self care, hobbies, husband, extended family, classes, etc. (whatever was important to them) and colored the hours they spent on each category a different color.  It is amazing what a visual can tell you.  One woman realized she was giving 12 hours a day to her job although she was being paid for 8. She told me she couldn't do that to her family or herself anymore.  She cut back the extra hours each day and she said it made a huge difference in her life.  Two other women, who had  previously been thinking about changing jobs, did when they saw in black and white how many hours they were spending doing something that was not making them happy.  And almost everyone realized that they were not spending any time on themselves and their passions. It is important to have time for yourself.  It is important to have time to do what you love.  Hopefully, by creating this simple chart you can see how you are spending your days and then find ways to adjust what you are doing so that you will have time for yourself.  Give it a try and let me know what happens.  Have a great, healthy week!!

It is Friday and time to take part in Jamie Ridler's Happy Book Friday.  There are lots of things that make me happy each day but I think there were two things that I feel most excited about.  Gina from Here and Now nominated me for a blog award.  This is the first time this has happened and it was so much fun to receive.  None of my friends or family blog so they get a kind of blank look when I talk about blogging but it  is something that I love to do.  I get a chance to write, to meet new people, and learn so much about them and their world through their blogs.  So Gina, thank you so much for the honor. 
Next, I was really happy about the picture above.  As you know my goal is to take at least one picture a week that I can put on my blog.  The one above is certainly not perfect but I can see a huge improvement since last week and that is what I am looking for.  I have really enjoyed taking pictures this week and so my goal will be to continue to take pictures and to find at least one picture that I can share with you each week.  Have a wonderful week full of special moments.

Wow, another good question from Jamie Ridler.  I really took my time thinking about this question and I hope I am able to answer it correctly.  At this particular moment, I am very, very grateful for all that I have and my deepest wish is that I will continue to appreciate where I am in my life right now.  Of course there are always things that I would love to see and do, people I would love to meet and new clothes I would love to buy.  But since I have been participating in Jamie's Happy Book Friday where you write about the things that make you happy during the week I have really been concentrating on the simple things in life that make me happy.  So  my wish this week is to continue to have the wisdom to be grateful for all that I do have and to appreciate and enjoy the simplest moments each day.  I want to remember what it felt like to be little and to jump for joy just because!!!

It is the weekend and time to reflect upon living a healthy life.  We've talked about eating right and walking but this week I have been thinking about how important it is to live in the moment.  So often we think of the past or worry about the future and forget to enjoy the present moment.  This week I had some extra time and I started to think about where I could go, what I could do or who I could call and then I reminded myself to slow down and take a breath.  At the same time I did that I looked out the window and really saw the flowers I had planted earlier in the spring.  They were beautiful and I really hadn't taken the time to enjoy them.  So often we rush through the day forgetting to take a breath, or forgetting to look around us and see all that we have accomplished.  I am not a gardener but I wanted to have beautiful flowers this year.  So I took the time to buy some plants, actually plant them, water them and pull the weeds and now  the flower  boxes are really starting to bloom.  Since I reminded myself to appreciate the flowers, I have looked at them everyday and enjoyed the beauty they bring to the back deck.  So this week remember to eat right and excercise more but also remember to take time to appreciate and enjoy each and every moment.  I would love to hear about a special moment where you stopped, took a breath, and really appreciated and enjoyed something very special that you might have easily overlooked.

I had a relatively quiet  week but it was still filled with special moments in time  that I just had to watch and listen for.  I am trying to be better at not only remembering the "big" moments of happiness but capturing those small quick moments that so often are missed.  The most special moment was having lunch with my son on Mother's Day.  I really enjoyed having the time with him. 
I also had fun playing with my camera.  My goal is to take enough pictures each week that I will be able to find at least one and hopefully more that I can put on my blog.  I am also hoping that I will be able to see progress in my skills
.  I really enjoyed sharing my art journal with my art class this week.  We have an incredibly supportive teacher and she was looking through my book and began to share it with everyone.  I was surprised and pleased withs the responses, questions, and comments I got.  I have lots of watercolors, some collages, and some writing in my journal and it is what I love to create right now.  It doesn't have to look perfect it just has to feel right to me and when it does that makes me very happy.  I hope everyone has a wonderful happy creative week.

Jamie Ridler asked today, "What would you like to experience?"  I read the question and then went downstairs to get a cup of coffee and think.  I didn't want to answer this too quickly because what I answer I want to make happen.  So after thinking about what I am doing now and what I want to do next,  I have two answers.  I want to take an on-line course about art or photography.  I also would love to go to an artist's retreat.  I am hoping to learn a lot, have lots of fun, and meet new people who are interested in some of the things that I am interested in.  So I would love for you to wish with me as well as give me some suggestions of classes that you have taken or retreats that you have attended and would highly recommend.

When I think of healthy living I always think of pretty things and I am not sure why.  Being healthy to me is eating whole foods, walking in beautiful places, taking a yoga class and living as calmly as possible.  I keep thinking if I do all of these things and surround myself with natural beauty, life will be wonderful.  But then reality sets in and wash needs to be done and floors need to be swept and I realize I need to live a healthy lifestyle no matter what so that I can be ready for the good and the bad, the fast and the slow, the simple and the complex and all that life throws at me.

The title of today's blog is Healthy Living - Knowledge is Power which is true in all aspects of life.  When I was losing weight I read everything I could about food, exercise, calories, etc.  I read the nutrition information on everything I bought and had a food journal.  It really helped.  Once I stopped focusing on what I was eating and how much I was eating it became harder to lose the weight I needed to lose.  So my goal for this week is to become reacquainted with all the facts that I used to spout like an encyclopedia.  I need to know how many calories I am eating each day and stay within the numbers that work for me.  I also need to keep a food journal.  One idea that I read was to write down what you were going to eat before you ate it not after.  That way you would know how many calories or carbs or how much protein you were about to eat before you actually ate it.  Remember knowledge is power so this simple idea may help you to make a healthier food choice.  This makes sense to me so I am going to bring the food journal back out and write in it before I eat each day.

As I said last week, Todd a good friend and trainer, will give us a tip each week.  This week he reminded me that I need to cut 3,500 calories to lose one pound.  That is 500 calories a day if I want to lose one pound a week.  This can be done by eating less, exercising more, or a combination of both.  I think I am going to cut 250 calories a day from food and burn 250 calories by exercising a little harder.  I do exercise but to be honest I don't break much of a sweat. 

Lis from Dandelion Seeds and Dreams left a message on my blog on Wednesday.  She wrote that she often asks herself, "Will this give me energy or take energy away from me?"  Sometimes this is the pause she needs to make a healthier choice.

Do you have a trick that you use to help you make healthier choices about what you eat?  Do you have a goal that you are going to set to live a healthier life?  I would love to hear what you are doing.  I really think the more we share and the more we support each other the more we will accomplish.  Have a wonderful and healthy week.!  Hope to hear from you soon.

Happiness this week was a great motorcyle ride.  I told my husband I would love to go for a ride so Thursday afternoon when I got home he told me to hurry, to grab a jacket and let's go!  He was ready to ride.  Greg loves to plan surprises so he had planned a really beautiful ride through the mountains and farmlands.  We saw all kinds of animals and one beautiful colt running with her mother.  As we got to a town that I recognized I asked him where we were going for dinner.  I knew if we turned left we would be heading toward an incredibly charming old restaurant where people really dressed for dinner.  He pointed right and although I was a little disappointed I was also a little relieved since I was dressed for riding not dinner in a nice restaurant.  But of course we turned left and we headed toward the beautiful restaurant.  As we got off the bike I tried to fix my hair which was a little hard to do.    I decided for once not to say anything but to enjoy the moment.  We had a great dinner, noone stared at my helmet hair and we had fun riding back home.  I not only had a wonderful ride this week but I learned three important lessons. (1)  It's fun to be spontaneous  (2) noone really cares what you look like and (3) if they do, so what!!  So happiness for me this week was a wonderful motorcycle ride with my husband who is feeling so much better.  Life is good.

Today Jamie Ridler at Jamie Ridler Studios asked, "What rules do you wish to make or break?"  I want to break any rules that hold me back from creating the life I want to lead.  I want to create new rules that say, "Yes" to the things I want to do. So today I want to take just a moment to share an idea I have for my blog.  Each Sunday I want to devote some time to writing about a way to live a healthier life.  Living a healthy lifestyle is something I want to do and something that I know a lot of other people are concerned about as well.  I hope that after reading my post  others will join in with comments about what works for them.  I know when I was losing my weight years ago it really helped to have support.  I don't know of a more supportive group of people than those who blog so I thought this idea may help all of us.  Last Sunday I wrote about walking and got three wonderful comments.  I asked my trainer if he would give us a tip each week and he said he would be glad to help.  So each Sunday I will write a short piece about living a healthy life and hopefully you will join me with ideas, suggestions, or comments.  So I just broke a rule - the one that says you can't do that.  Yes, I can. I can write, I can share, and I can create something new.  Sounds like fun. Please join me in creating and sharing "rules" for living a healthy life that work for you.