Dwell on These Things

Blissing about the December issue of Bliss Notes

It's up in archives here! (And yes, the toque is back on the bird)

Blissing about Wii workouts

 
I hate working out. I'm trying to learn to love it since it makes such a huge difference to my health and outlook on life, but I don't know if I'll ever bounce out of bed wanting to hit the gym. I have a neighbour who adores fitness. She is always out running or doing something active and is training to be a personal trainer. I keep trying to figure out what makes her that way and hoping some of it rubs off on me but so far, no dice.

I'm trying variety to keep me motivated.

My latest gimmick was to buy the Your Shape fitness game for the Wii and so I figured I'd offer my review. I was somewhat skeptical as the thought of having my video image work along side former Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy did not seem like my idea of a good time, but the promise of a controller-free workout appealed since that's why I eventually gave up on Wii Active.

It's really fun.

The camera thingy works well. The only set up that works in my house has me in front of a big window, which is verboten, but the camera picks up my movements just fine. You have to wear yoga clothes, though, and it helps if you've shrunk them all in the dryer. One day, I worked out in slightly baggier pants and the camera could not pick up my movements well at all.

The game is a bit of a task master and it takes a few workouts to figure it out. It was constantly reminding me to "Watch those arms. Arms. Watch those arms" even though I swore I was doing the exercises correctly. It was only when my arms were fully extended and muscles totally engaged that it gave me the blue square of approval. The 45 minute workout felt like a workout. My shoulders pay for it the following day!

I thought that Jenny McCarthy would be annoying but the avatar and voice are pretty motivating. I think that they dial down her figure as well since her avatar and my image on the camera don't seem the miles apart I imagine they would be in real life.

I imagine that this will be a gimmick and that 6 months from now I'll be doing something else, but anything to keep me moving is good. It makes the whole 'learning to love what's good for me' thing a little bit easier.

(Oh, and I bought the game with my very own money. I'm getting bupkus from Wii. Just so you know this is unbiased as it gets!)

Blissing about New Moon

We saw New Moon over the weekend. It still had a Beachcomber vibe to it. Hopefully the profits of this one will justify a slightly larger budget. We need a big budget for book number 4!

Still, it was fun. Edward was all shiny. The Volturi scene was good. And Taylor Lautner should get some sort of Oscar for greatest physical transformation from film to film. Holy smokes!

There was one line in the movie that really stuck out for us. It is when Charlie is telling Bella to spend more time with Jacob and he says, "sometimes, you gotta learn to love what's good for you."

That's the place we are right now -- learning to love what's good for us. Sleep, exercise, good food, focusing on the positive, making time for friends. After months of ignoring such things because of the metaphorical spanner in the works, we realize their importance.

And if the universe wants to throw a hottie hottie werewolf into the mix, well, we could learn to love that too...

We're back

After a two month hiatus, we are back. The boxes are unpacked and we are ready to get back into the game. We are still not sure if The Secret works but we know that we were significantly worse off by slacking off on the things that make us happy. So, we are back to blissing again to see if that improves our lot in life (if writing about pretty things can make our dog's terrible head cold go away, for example, we're all for it.)

So, first item up: we have to give a shout out the The Bay's new management. We love their new ads. Nothing says romaticized Canadian winter like this:

This dashboard app is very cool.

Blissing about Fair Isle Sweaters

We're up to our neck in packing boxes and have little time to bliss about anything non-moving related but had to take a quick sweater break. We love a good Fair Isle sweater and was happy to see two adorable offerings.

This sweet dog cardigan is available from LL Bean and we shoudl have snapped one up when we ordered our kids' snowsuits (alas, now they are sold out in our size...)

 

We saw this cute LAMB version at the loca Winners. Too cute!

 

August's Bliss Notes

This week, we sent out, Givers of Strawberries, our August issue of Bliss Notes. Enjoy!

Bliss at the Speedpark

Today, we went on the much-dreaded annual shopping trip for school shoes. Les enfants are not born shoppers and we try to purchase as much online for them as possible (we've pretty much cleared out the Lands End overstock sale to get snowsuits and tights and other basics for a song). But shoes and haircuts require the children to put in an appearance. And sadly, the shoe places are not as bribe-friendly as the haircut places so it can be a bit of a trial.

(Heavy artillery enters, stage left.)

We decided to hit Vaughan Mills. With the promise of a rented double-decker firetruck stroller-thingy and a trip to Bass Pro Mills to look at the party barges, we figured we could sneak in a trip to Geox. 

The shoes were purchased incident-free (my son decided he had to have light up shoes and I began to fret as I was not aware they made light up shoes but they had one last pair IN HIS SIZE! Oh the universe was smiling on us today, my friends.) 

We celebrated with lunch in the food court and a trip to the NASCAR speed park.

The kids wanted to play games so we bought them some tokens. Once they figured out that the tickets won at the games could be traded in for prizes, they began playing with intensity. We were a little concerned that the larger prizes required thousands and, in many cases, tens of thousands of tickets and our five dollar token spend had yielded about thirty tickets. We started to work on setting realistic expectations ("those stuffed animals take a lot more tickets than we have but we might be able to get one of those cool rubber Madonna fan circa-1984 bracelets!") when a man and his older kids, tired of waiting in the line to cash in his tickets handed us all of theirs. Suddenly we had over 800 tickets and the nice lady behind the counter said that the kids could each have a kite even though we did not have quite enough points because they were really excited about the kites and that kind of joy is contagious.

We then paid if forward by giving our ununsed ride tickets (the rides proved to be a little scary) to a family coming into the place.

Bliss at the Speedpark. Who knew?

Bliss in Today's Parent

We are thrilled that our article Five Ways to Get Happy: The Beginner's Guide to a Life of Bliss appears in the September issue of Today's Parent magazine. We wrote this article at a time when it was hardest for us to write about happiness, yet most important for us to write about the subject. We thank the universe (and the good people at Today's Parent!) not only for the publishing opportunity but for the healing opportunity as well.

 

 

Blissing about Bikes

I have never enjoyed bike riding. In fact, up until a few weeks ago, I believe that the last time I had been on a bike was in grade 6 when I ran into a pedestrian. In my defence, I had just moved from a banana-seated cruiser bike to a racing handled ten speed and I was not used to hand brakes.

No one was hurt but still -- not blissful.

But now my daughter has developed a passion for bike riding: it is the one activity she longs to do every day. And so I decided it was time to join her.

And off to the bike shop I went. I wanted something with thick wheels and easy to use gears. And it had to be pretty, like the bikes in the J. Crew catalogue.

Enter the Trek Navigator in Ice Blue. I'm not sure how many gears it has but gosh is it pretty and easy to ride. I am able to keep up with my five year old and I can even imagine the day when I might take it for a spin on my own just for the fun of it.

Biking can be blissful. Who knew?