Last week, I started a 4 week challenge, to eat healthily, take exercise and do things I usually put off. So how has week 2 of my Springtime challenge gone? You can read about Week 1 here
Day 8 – Sunday 22nd April
After my husband’s sterling effort on the Saturday, I helped complete the power washing of our patio. Like children, we fought over who got to play with the hose, while the other got the less fun job of brushing all the muck away. Turn and turn about! It was about 4 hours work, and we ended up very cold and wet. The shower when we finished was just perfect! My hair needed several rinses to get all the grit out of it. However to make sure our fox doesn’t come back, we’ll not bother with any planters this year, which will be very bare, but better than animal droppings and discarded food.
Even better, we had a surprise visit from some friends with their 3 year old daughter. I had fun doing some baking with her (cheese scones) , and she even persuaded my husband down onto the floor to play dominoes and help her with a jigsaw.
The day finished well with dinner at a friend’s, and lots of good conversation.
Good: Lots of exercise, despite only 4,580 steps, with 4 hours of manual work, I earned the effort badge!
Bad: Nothing really, a happy and productive day
Day 9 – Monday 23rd April
Monday is Club day – I go to a lapidary club where I cut and polish stones, make silver jewellery and do enamelling. I usually take a friend with me. I enjoy it, it is peaceful and the others at the session are easy to get on with, and there’s always plenty of chat. It is relaxation. However it is sedentary, so the step count isn’t great. I was absolutely shattered after all the power washing yesterday, so I didn’t go for a walk.
Good: I finished a couple of pieces, I had been working on for a while. See the picture below, I had made this ages ago, and it just needed a polish and a chain…Time to start something else.
Bad: 5722 steps, and no walk.
Day 10 – Tuesday 24th April
I went for a lovely walk across the fields near our house. I finished last week’s blog, and started this one. I also did some reading about ‘pillar content’ and ‘cornerstone content’. I am part of a couple of blogger communities and one of my fellow bloggers was saying that they have done a major revamp of their site, relating all the content to several pillars. This is something I have wanted to do for a while, where my pillars would be money, travel, lifestyle and metalwork. However the wordpress theme I am using doesnt support them, so I suspect I will have to find a new wordpress layout, or go and talk to my friendly Bairwells for a bit of ad-hoc website support. I also prepared for my Spanish class by reading 4 chapters of a novel. I had to resort to the dictionary a few times, but it was reasonably easy to read – I felt so good about it.
Good: 11,327 steps thanks to the lovely long walk.
Bad: Sitting too long at my PC, even though some of it was educational!
Day 11 – Wednesday 25th April
Not content with cleaning the patio, my husband decided we might as well do the drive as well, so out came the power washer again! In the evening, I restrung a friend’s bracelet for her. A simple job, but sometimes it is nice to do some beading again.
Good: 8890 – despite not making the 10k steps again, I had plenty of exercise – several hours of power washing, not to mention 1 hour’s Pilates as well. My body certainly needed the stretching after hours of hosing and brushing.
Bad: A couple of biscuits was the worst thing I did! In the scheme of things – pretty good.
Day 12 – Thursday 26th April
More power washing, the drive is bigger than the patio at 90 sq m. It was also a lot dirtier! However, it is finished now. It still needs sealing, but we need a couple of dry days for that. . I did look a funny sight, all covered in dirty spray from the jet wash. We were having to rinse our clothes to get the sand off, before we could put them in the washing machine.
Thursday is also my Spanish class. Almost without realising it, we are all steadily making progress. I’ll need to take time for a Spanish holiday to practice, not to mention a few days sunshine would be lovely.
Language learning is obviously ‘in’. I took this picture of an Edinburgh bus – it is advertising Gaelic classes, my daughter-in-law tells me – what a good idea. The Scottish government has done a lot to strengthen Gaelic, particularly up north, where even the road signs are bi-lingual.
Good: 10,529 steps. I got off the bus early both going there and on the way home, which added some steps.
Bad: Nothing really
Day 13 – Friday 27th April
My one hour Spanish conversation lesson went well. I fitted in a hair-cut on the way there. I also gave in and went grocery shopping. For the last few days, we have been running out of things, but we have said, oh well, we’ll just have x, and then we don’t need to go to the shops. Essentially following our own advice – Save money, postpone shopping! However we needed fresh fruit and veg. But I was good, I only bought what was on the list.
When I came back, we made our favourite salad – rice salad. Basically brown rice with all sorts of vegetables cut up very small (cucumber, tomatoes, 3 different peppers (capsicums), apple, celery etc). It is not only healthy, it is delicious and refreshing! By the time the rice is boiled, all the veg have been chopped, and as it lasts several days in the fridge. It enables me to avoid bread.
Good: 11,962 steps, albeit some of them were round the supermarket. No TV tonight, I went upstairs and pottered around instead, rather than watch the TV….
Bad: I sneaked some chocolate – delicious!
Day 14 – Saturday 28th April
Today, I had agreed to show a young artist how to polish a beautiful agate. It is always nice to pass on knowledge. He had found the stone on Musselburgh beach, so I must go for a walk along that beach some day soon. He tells me that he has also found some lovely carnelians. I love those stones, they are such a lovely colour. It is only a few miles away from where I live, so easy to get to. For some reason I don’t go to that part of town very often. In the evening, just before dinner, we put the sealant on the patio, it took less than an hour. The drive is getting done tomorrow. We misjudged how much sealant we needed. Two cans just managed to do the patio, so 3 slightly bigger cans will need to be bought in the morning.
Good: 8328 steps. While I didn’t make my walking target, my morning was spent teaching someone lapidary skills, so I was doing a lot of standing.
Bad: Collapsed in front of the TV, ate some potato chips and had a couple of glasses of wine
Look at the lovely clean patio, catching the last of the evening sun! A bit empty without the flower planters though – hey ho. Here’s hoping that by next year the fox will have gone somewhere else.
Week 2 – Summary
I’ve done pretty well in keeping up the walking, and if I haven’t been walking, I’ve certainly taken some other form of exercise. On those days I didn’t make my daily 10k steps, I did something else instead. I am feeling better for it. My phone tells me I did 58,594 steps, about 20k less than last week, but still pretty respectable. An average of 8k each day. I’ve also been pretty good about eating well. I have made and eaten salads every day.
While I have still had a couple of glasses of wine and a few snacks through the week, less than before, so slowly my habits are changing, but still work in progress. I am trying to find time to read rather than watch the TV. It is so easy to just sit down and collapse.
As for doing things I have been putting off – cleaning the driveway and patio, definitely count. I also took some time and cleared out some stuff from the garage – again long overdue – lots more to do. A friend has her house up for sale, and she tells me that all she has done for weeks is clear, clear and then clear again! They are downsizing – so it is time to be brutal. We are lucky, we have loads of large built in cupboards, so I can go to Costco with impunity and load up… We will use it all over the next few months.
Plans for next week
- Finish the driveway, the patio looks so good, I hope the driveway will too.
- Continue clearing the garage
- Research how to change the layout of my website
- Try out a new enamelling technique, using coloured pencils
- No silly games on the iPad – a killer for productivity, if ever there was one! Instead, choose an inspiring book, and start reading it
- Try and finish my post on our recent trip to the Hebrides. Loads of lovely photographs
If you would like to pin this, just click the image below. (The background is from my recent trip to the Hebrides, that post What a lovely colour the sea was.)
