Just saying...

I love meaningful quotes and phrases; I always have.  I can remember hours spent in my room with my best friend, Linda, making giant sized collages from phrases and quotes and pictures.  I had three or four of them on my bedroom walls, each one different but each one reflective of how I was feeling at the time.  I don't remember taking them down when I left home for college and knowing my parents they probably stayed right where I had put them until it came time to sell the house and move on.  Oh how I would love to have those now just to remember and reflect, perhaps even to contemplate what had been going on in my life during those days.  

It should come as no surprise to anyone that knew me then that I have found a new way to make collages and post words, colors, and pictures that I like or that move me.  I don't have poster board collages on the walls in my house but I have computer collections saved on multiple "boards" on an internet site called Pinterest.  I have created 23 different boards on Pinterest ranging from "Explaining and defining me" and "Words that speak to me" to "Things that make me smile", and "Yummy Goodness."  I have become addicted and creative and reflective and I love it.  I need to add a new board and called it "Pinterest things I have made" to give all of this time I am spending making my boards some value.  Neighbors and friends benefited from "Christmas ideas" as I baked up treats I had saved on a board.. My Grandchildren will enjoy the cardboard airplane directions I have saved on my "For Grandchildren" board and then there are the Valentine's day items I am collecting and saving just in case I want to make something special, just saying...

Here are just a few of my favorite images saved on Pinterest:

New Beginings!

Happy New Year!  I know, I know I am a bit late but I have been busy.  If you are someone like me who works out at the gym on a regular basis I did not have to tell you it is a new year.  There is absolutely no mistaking it.  The treadmill you have used every morning at 7 AM for months now has someone you haven't seen before on it and there are no available treadmills.  Your spot in the fitness class is also occupied by an unfamiliar face and the room is packed!  Welcome to the New Year!!  The second part of this New Year's crowd that you know for sure if you have been faithfully working out is this; by Valentine's day most of these new faces will have disappeared and you will once again gain residency on "your treadmill".  Resolutions to get fit fail and the population gets heavier.  Next year and the next year it repeats.

I was once one of those newbies at the gym taking up someone elses treadmill but there is a difference.  I didn't make a resolution to get fit or even to lose weight.  I set a GOAL!  I believe there is a difference.  A resolution is a wish or a desire while a goal is specific and measurable.  A goal has a deadline!  So I got on someone's treadmill and I walked and each day I came back and walked some more and I joined Weight Watchers and I followed the program and set a goal to lose five pounds, and I did.  Then I set another goal to lose five pounds and I did.  And then yet another five pounds and each time I set a new goal I shared it with my husband and I reached it.  Sometimes losing five pounds took a week but most times it took a month.  Once in a while it took much longer than that but I NEVER took my eyes off my goal.  I became fitter and fitter walking on that treadmill and eventually began a step class, then weight lifting and watched as I transformed my body, slowly, but successfully.  I walked a half marathon (13.1 miles) and then another.  Eventually I lost more than fifty percent of my body weight and was able to stand in front of my friends in Weight Watchers and earn my Lifetime membership.

New Beginnings the first morning I walked into the gym and got on the treadmill and again as I reached my weight goal with Weight Watchers and became a Lifetime member.  New beginnings when I became a Weight Watchers leader and lead my first group meeting.  Scary, exhilarating, so worth the journey!

Weight Watchers has begun a new advertising campaign and I am so proud of it.  Have you seen it?  Jennifer Hudson before and after her weight loss transformation with giant red letters spelling out the word BELIEVE.  That is the most powerful word I know!  In order to be successful at whatever you start you must believe in yourself.  I had to learn to believe I was worth the effort.  I had to learn to believe.