Happy New Year to all my fans and faithful blog readers!
I don’t usually deviate from what I have to say about exercise, but the following email that one of my daughters sent the rest of the family (sister, brother, children, nieces, nephews and me) about Christmas gift spending is family humor and love that I’d like to share. It was a surprise to me to be thanked for nurturing creativity in the family while I’m still alive, and it sort of erased the concern we had for one in our group who lost a job just before Christmas.
It’s a bit of a stretch to say that I believe in peoples’ creativity to find a way to get exercise every day on their own without spending a lot of money (you don’t even have to buy my videos if you don’t have the $$ – you can borrow them from the library). I believe it’s possible to explore your creative instincts and come up with the solutions to most situations.
We had the best Christmas ever, and the one who lost a job has come up with the most creative website I’ve ever seen. Check it out and you should be able to activate your own creativity: www.constructivedisorder.com
Here’s what started it all:
We have all been the recipients of some “special” gifts from Grandma Ann. Those gifts, although we have often made fun of them and wondered just how she reached that “that’s just the thing for”….moment, have been the source for many great mom stories not to mention good heartfelt Christmas morning laughs.
In an effort to expand on and continue a long standing Grandma Ann Christmas tradition, I urge you all to take a moment and in these bleak economic times, look around your house and experience a ‘Grandma Ann, -that would be just perfect for ____ moment’ and experience the joy of re-gifting.
For those of you who have enjoyed summers in the Grandma Ann Making Room, I would suggest you draw inspiration from the many hours she has spent nurturing your creativity and artistic vision and, as “make something out of nothing artists”-in-training, I would like to invite you to enter our first annual Madame Pointsetta competition. (Madam Pointsetta was a doll I made for a granddaughter one Christmas that she cherishes to this day – a masterpiece if I do say so myself.)
Rules of the competition:
Make a gift for someone without spending any money other than the cost of mailing the item to the recipient. Drawings, paintings, artwork of any kind are acceptable. Gifts will be posted on the internet on Christmas Day.
A special thanks to Grandma Ann for the real gift she has continued to give all of us – teaching us to make something out of nothing.
So you guessed it. Grandma Ann grew up in the Great Depression. And my very successful exercise system is what I created in 1950 and perfected over the years when I realized my toes were too long to dance on pointe.
