Artslim, weight, life, health management.

 
 
The Giveaway:

In conjunction with Mummified Times Five, I am giving away up to $1000 worth of Maimeri Classico oil paints!

Each prize pack includes 10 tubes of Maimeri Classico paints valued at $9.55 each…so with free postage, that’s a prize pack valued at over $100!! And we have 10 packs to give away!!

To enter, all you need to do is:

-comment on any post ON EACH of Kathy Shell’s blogs (listed in my blog side bar and below):

http://www.artslim.org/
http://www.cards-art.com/
http://www.kathy-shell.net/
http://www.doggiesblog.com/
http://www.gray-nomad.com/
http://www.bloggermuse.com/
http://www.functional-art.net/
http://www.postcards-art.com/
http://www.campfire-yarns.com/
http://www.fridgemagnetart.com/
- then go to the competition post at

http://mummifiedtimesfive.net/2010/02/01/spotlight-on-kathy-shell-giveaway/

and say why you would like to win a 10 pack of Maimeri Classico paints.

(Both steps are mandatory to be in the running to win this prize)

Giveaway finishes 15 Feb 2010

 This blog post has been illustrated by postcards from the art of Kathy Shell. These can be orderd through the artist's postcards-art web site or purchased 'direct from the artist', in her caravan awning studio
 
 
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Advance Notice.

$1,000 . value of Oil Paint to be given away FREE to my blog readers during

February 2010.

Not just any oil paint but,

 quality Italian Maimeri Classico 60ml tubes.

These paints are the artist’s daily bread and butter. Anyone – professional or amateur – who picks up a tube of Classico oil paints will find in it just what they need. They contain no waxes or thickeners, and pigment concentration is very high. Bright, lively colours with overall harmony in the palette, these paints from Italy are made with non-toxic, non-polluting pigments that improve light-fastness.

They are versatile paints, offering exceptional value for money, but you could own a set plus postage FREE.  Watch this blog and http://mummifiedtimesfive.net for further details and be the first to enter this FREE competition.

 

 
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Visual images speak louder than words.

"If you don't move, you get fat'.  That is a message I need to keep in my head and act upon. In this busy pre Christmas season it is all too easy to not make time for my exercise.  I love the motivating impact of this image. I found this on facebook.

Apparently this statute, and another of Lincoln grown portulant just sitting all these years in his chair at the Lincoln Monument for too long, was part of an advertising campaign by Advertising Agency: Scholz & Friends, Hamburg, Germany
 
 
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Our 2010, tour planning, is progressing well. As I am keen to maintain fitness while on tour, I am looking for locations to travel through and stay at where I can swim and walk and purchase fresh fruit and vegetables.  Holidays can be a great time to maintain and improve on fitness level.  I am making the 2010 tour a dog-friendly caravan park, review tour, so there will be lots of opportunities to walk Indigo, in the surrounding area. I will wear my pedometer and a dog carry sling and I will be striving to do my 10,000 steps a day and pop Indigo into the carry sling, when she becomes tired.  

The 2010 tour will be fantastic for all aspects of our well being, it has the emotional satisfaction of the eco therapy, the travel aspects that Reg and I love, together with creative fulfilment for me in my writing and painting work.

Reg, Indigo our poodle and I are going to review dog-friendly caravan parks and I am going to do some on location paint outs, in Victoria during summer early autumn 2010 and plan another tour of the beautiful Grampians region, staying at Grampians Gardens Tourist Park. Then we will tour into NSW reviewing dog friendly caravan parks and we will revisit two of our favourite areas, the Kiama Coast, staying at Seven Mile Beach Holiday Park  and South Ballina, staying at Ballina Beach Holiday Park  So watch out for some lovely coastal on location painting work and stories.

I will update this list as we plan it and add actual dates we will be in each location closer to the completion of our tour plans.  Email me, Kathy, if you have a dog friendly venue you would like me to review during this tour or if you would like to view art or book an art tutorial.

 
 
 
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Goal revaluation, action plan setting and to do list made and completed, it was a great day today J.

Reg is feeling a bit better on the antiinflamitories I bought from the chemist yesterday and I love my new easy care, short, but long enough to still look feminine, hair cut. 
Reg and I had a great day together, Reg taking it easy, here in the lounge room with the garden view.  I went and dug the clay bank on the far side of the road between the poplar trees and scooped some of the great leaf mould out of the road side gutters, and dug this and manure into the clay bank then planted peas and beans in the freshly prepared bed, watered then mulched the bed with straw.

Then our daughter Leanne came to visitJ, second time this week, great to see her and wonderful seeing Reg can’t get out easily for us to visit the family, ourselves, at the moment. 

After she left and Reg was resting, I popped out to gym and was so pleased that the weight resistance work continues to get easier. I skipped all the aerobic workout, not wanting to be away too long, not yet, not till Reg is feeling consistently a little better. 

There was a steady fresh rain shower once I got home, and I was delighted, this will get our new crop of veggies off to a great start.

I am feeling so much more positive today, my slump of the previous days is over,  though my couple of days of excessive eating beyond my calorie needs will take  more than a couple of days to wear off, though I never ever felt guilty J for eating according to my emotional desires for a change, as I rarely do emotionally eat these days. It’s just something I need to make sure does not become a habit if I am worried. If I felt it was a problem long term I would seek more assistance with this, there are some great books and programs to help people with emotional eating issues.

To make up for overeating for a few day, I don’t want to rush off into a low calorie diet nor take a slimming pill .  I am learning to strive to stay 'balanced', living healthy, no extremes of binging nor dieting, just healthy lifestyle which can include checking my calorie count to achieve healthy levels of weight loss, if I am overweight. I did recheck what would be the recommended calorie intake for my weight and height if I was aiming to lose between 1 kilo and 500 gram per week (a safe amount for most overweight people), using the charts at Spark People and I again filled in a food diary of what I have eaten today and noted I was within my calorie allowance with a little still to spare.

Where I went off the rails, on my over eating days was by snacking in the evening.  Knowing the evening was my ‘weak’ period, on my overeating days, I will make a fresh garden salad now and a low calorie jelly that I will have with a little low fat natural yogurt, which I love. :-), so I have bulky, but low calorie foods in the fridge if I feel  I want to snack tonight and I will drink a couple of extra glasses of water and cups of tea with skim milk added and find some very interesting work to do, to focus my mind on. 

I’ll also do some goal setting to get my head into focus so I can see that my current short term weight release goal is achievable by Christmas and take a look at those jeans I’m wanting to wear by Christmas, to increase my awareness of why I am not going to snack on high calorie foods this evening.

Observation: - Three days of evening emotional eating.

Corrections Tool: - Do what can be done to relieve the source of the stress. Make positive actions to continue to maintain healthy eating, quantity management and healthy physical activity.  Focus again on the goal and why I want it. Revaluate the action plan; make sure it is believable and achievable. Plan the ‘to do list’ and then do it. 


I have postponed my follow up post to yesterday's 'the pip' blog post, until tomorrow when I will post about how I use a skill I learned as an artist, to help overcome moments of indecision and generally know when it's OK to leave my to do list, undone, and take a rest.
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Tonight I relaxed with a rose from my garden a small canvas and my oil paints, and a bowl of home grown salad vegetables and a cup of tea, as my snack nibbles.  The art work isn’t finished and photographs badly due to light reflecting off the wet paint, but it was a great evening of creative expression and escapism :-),  Bedtime now. xxx
Follow up, the following morning.
After I had finished painting last night, I cleaned away all evidence that I had been painting, and cleaned myself up, then headed to bed.  Reg woke and asked me 'Why I was wearing an apron'.  I told him 'I had been painting'.   He said, 'That's good', and he did sound so genuinely pleased :-).  I think that his reading my blog has helped him get in touch with my need to be creative :-).
Today I will set up more of my painting area and this time I'll not be packing it away before I go to bed at night, my painting area, will remain permanently set up, and I plan to paint every day, now as well as write. 

Yesterday I proved I could fit in, carer duties, gardening, gym, home, writing, painting and lol, I even found time to blow wave my hair, walk the dog, and plan to eat well with consideration to my future well being, not just the instant gratification of now.
The painting is certainly no masterpiece, but the day, in review, was FANTASTIC.
 
 
A very positive beginning to October in our home :-).

Reg is feeling MUCH BETTER :-). YAY! JJJ

The anti inflammatory have reduced the pain and the antibiotics have kicked in and 'I have my wonderful man back'. :-).  I can tell you, :-), we are both of us, so very relieved.  I had not seen him that ill since the time decades ago when he had a bust appendix.

As for me. I am happy that I have fulfilled another goal. I finally after some difficulty dealing with an IT company, reclaimed my former domain name and now kathy-shell.com is back in my possession and will be my 'A creative life, blog' and on line art gifts store.

I created a short elevator blurb about my newest blog which is on the opening page of my www.kathy-shell.com  new web site.

A creative life’, blog.

Join the artist in her creative arts studio.

Grab a cuppa, relax, view art, buy unique gifts, take free art lessons and read creative blogs

I will still chat about my art and creativity in this blog but my re borne www.kathy-shell.com web site will have a higher focus on the creative arts just as I talk about my travels in this artslim.org blog while my www.gray-nomad.com blog focuses more intently on the travel and downsizing senior aspects of my life.  My other blog which I work in whenever my poodle Indigo, wags me to update it is Indigo’s dog blog, which concentrates on travelling Australia with a dog. So each of my blogs, overlaps in interest, to some extent, but will be unique in content so my readers can focus on the blog or blogs that carry the material they are most interested in.

I would love to receive your feedback on what subjects I blog about that most interest you.  I am currently doing a  31 days to become a better blogger, challenge.  and this has helped push me along to complete several goals I set myself to do in September.

 

My September 2009, creative goals were:-

1/ set up a private on line FREE counselling service for those who need motivation to set and achieve healthy weight loss goals, there is an open forum to chat on in all my blogs, but I also have private pass word protected areas where you are welcome to chat to me, if you feel I can be of any assistance.. This private chat area is accessed via the Loving yourself forum in this,  my art of healthy living and natural slimming, artslim.org, blog

Goal achieved, early September.

2/ Reclaim and have back on line, my www.kathy-shell.com domain name to get my name as an artist back ‘on line’ as an outlet for art tuition and my art sales.

Goal achieved on October 1st 2009

3/ Begin to share my time management, goal setting, action planning and to do list, essays.

Goal achieved to begin this ongoing task, by mid September 2009-10-02

4/ Begin to create FREE art tuition in my blogs, by mid September.

Goal achieved on 1st October 2009

I have illustrated this post with some of the photos from my fist free art lesson, on line, and you can read the full FREE art lesson on line, in my http://www.kathy-shell.com  web site.

If you would like to support my work in providing a FREE on line counselling service and or my FREE on line art tuition, a purchase of a unique ‘direct from the artist’, art print gift from my art cards, art postcards or art fridge magnets stores, would be most appreciated.

 
 
 
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Kathy Shell School of Painting

Kathy Shell can teach you how to paint, even if you have no drawing ability or prior painting skill, No talent required, it is your teacher who needs to have the talent, you simply need the desire to learn and make the commitment to enrol for quality art tuition. Kathy Shell will teach you step by easy step in private to very small group classes, in studio and on location.  You will learn to be able to paint anything you can see. All classes are small to allow for personalized tuition, everyone can advance at their own pace but everyone will start with the basics.  
I teach while on tour, thoughout winter, and my Northern Victoria, home studio sessions are not held during winter or during our short tour breaks.
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First block of ten weeks

Purchase the beginner painting kit for $200. And all materials are supplied for your first 10 lessons and you have a wooden easel box of paints and brushes to both use in class and to keep.  Working in oil paints, you will learn how to handle this forgiving medium and why it best suits the beginner and the professional artist. Concentrating on learning to identify tonal value, to be able to paint patterns of light and shade will empower you to eventually be able to paint anything you see.  You will start with very simple exercises but be painting advanced subjects by week ten. The second important part of the first group of ten lessons is to learn basic health and safety while working as an artist, and to understand how to achieve archival quality (lasting), art work. 
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Second block of ten weeks

Supply your own stretched canvas and painting equipment from now on.  Working from life, painting flowers, or on location landscape, explore more about oil painting, become expert at colour identification and mixing, composition, perspective, Classes include demonstrations, theory and hands on painting with constructive critique by your tutor.  
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Third block of ten weeks

Working from life, we begin developing the skill of portraiture, people, pets, from life and from photos mingled with on location landscape painting and painting of flowers.
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Fourth block of ten weeks

Introduction to drawing, watercolours, gouache, acrylics, and pastel or continue working in your chosen medium. 
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Health and safety. No dusty mediums, e.g. Pastels and no volatile chemicals, thinners, varnish or adhesives are allowed to be used in the studio. We request that you do not attend classes if you have a cold or flu.

Studio classes are conducted at Kathy Shell’s summer studio, Mooroopna, Victoria.

There are no classes during winter, your ten weeks may begin and end at differing times to other students, so if there is a vacancy, you may begin NOW.  Limited vacancies, waiting list may apply as class size is very small to allow for optimum tuition.
   
Phone 0417678501 in business hours or email through contact form

Begin NOW, Classes are PRIVATE
Fee 
$500. for 10 x three hour lessons not necessarily held in consecutive weeks, dates arranged at time of booking. or $50. per hour for casual booking private lesson.  Beginners Art materials Kit $200. covers all supplies for first ten weeks, includes timber easel box, paints, brushes, pallet knife, and canvas boards. 
Don't want to start at the beginning? Master class  $500.

Internet art classes with Kathy Shell Enquiries welcome. Email Kathy
International students accepted, learn art at home, via the artist’s private art tuition forum. $50. per private lesson, $10. per open group lesson.

For your home studio, discount classroom furniture 
My FREE, on line art lessons, have been delayed, due to a series of circumstances, they are still coming and will add to your on line or in studio experience and I intend to place them in my http://www.kathy-shell.com web site.
 
 
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My active week continues today, on a high after spring cleaning and changing the function and furniture arrangement in two rooms.

The office is now a walk in wardrobe room with a large sewing table and the iron and Elna press set up, mirrors, original art work and grandchildren’s photos mounted and storage on one side and under the table.

The kitchen has had a complete sanitising, everything in every cupboard and the cupboards themselves is sparkling clean and those little pesky field mice who made their home in the cupboards while we wintered in the north of Australia, won’t find our home as habitable in future. 

I dug out my CSIRO healthy heart cook book and I bought everything they suggested that I did not have, in the basic pantry supplies and everything they suggested for the week one menus.  I spent $600. on supplies and $150. on vegetable seedlings, seeds and cow manure so  would not have to continue to buy fresh herbs and some of the cut and come again type vegetables through summer and autumn. 

 
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It took me three days to complete the kitchen dining area set up and  pack the pantry shelves expertly, and  have never in my life had such fully stocked cupboards and I extended the range of foods and spices I cooked with.

The past three days while working in the kitchen I have been trying out the recipes in this book and preparing luscious sit down lunches, again, strait out of the CSIRO healthy heart program cook book. 

Breakfast for me today was a break from my normal rolled oats, and I followed the plan to the letter, weighing my portions.  40 grams of Uncle Toby’s healthy heart, breakfast cereal, it is one of the few breakfast cereals without iron added and suitable for people with hemochromatosis and I am using one of the new special formula, with plant steroids to help lower cholesterol, healthy heart, low fat milk.  I have not used this before; we usually use skim milk powder.  The CSIRO healthy heart program will cost a little more than my usual eating plan but if you keep doing the same thing, you cannot expect different results and at my last two checks this week, it appears my blood pressure has gone up and I’ve requested time to try to bring it down naturally using dietary changes, walking and swimming exercise and releasing more of my excess body fat.  I believe I can do thisJ.

 
Lunch today was 40 grams of roast beef for me, 60 grams for Reg, a delicious 8 vegetable mix salad, on third of an avocado as spread on a multi grain roll, very satisfying,  and tonight I am cooking 150 grams of gem fish for me 250 for Reg with low carbohydrate vegetables grilled skewers and serving them on a bed of salad with one glass of chilled chardonnay, mango, 100 grams of low fat, natural yogurt and 10 almonds as my snacks and two cups of express coffee, two cups of Dilmah tea, all with the low fat, heart health milk, and just checking over that, I will be taking two Blackmores calcium plus tablets (you can see our supplements,( used only when necessary),  in the pantry pictures) today to increase my calcium serves to four for the day. 

Now that is LIVING, not dieting, I feel so satisfied after my luscious lunch and as I have been very active all week I should have no problem coming in with a fat loss this week. J.
 
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That is the bare kitchen end, BEFORE we laid the new floating timber floors throughout the entire home.  The second picture is one I love to show, of Reg laying the floor in our dining area. 
I turned that little dark room at the end of the kitchen into a light, (using mirrors to enhance the natural light from the side windows), walk in wardrobe room and sewing ironing, plus storage centre.
My kitchen looks more homely now, with my personal possessions on the benches and the small dining area and recline chair, TV set so the cook can listen to the news as I prepare evening meal, all set up, opposite this view, and I've planted a pretty and functional, flowers and vegetable garden down the side, plus shade trees and climbing ornamental grape vine and ivory rose, all to be views through the windows.
 
 
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I’ll never forget the thrill Reg and I felt when we discovered we were to become parents for the first time just before Christmas in 1968 the same year we married in the May. 

Our joy was abruptly shaken when doctors told me when only a week pregnant that I could not carry her and I had to terminate for health reasons.  The baby was perfect, I wasn’t.  I refused. We both mother and baby, survived the pregnancy though towards August with Leanne due in early September, things were getting a little risky for both of us.   Our Doctor judged the early inducement perfectly, our beautiful daughter was born alive though severely jaundiced, and it did take a full week to wake her up then three months to get her to feed properly,  J, after that, she has been on the go, go. go J.

 

My beautiful daughter Leanne went from a sleepy baby, then hyperactive child to an accomplished, talented woman.  I don’t know how she keeps up with all she does, I’ll not even attempt to list her talents and skills and she is a mum herself now and doing a wonderful job at this. 

Leanne turned forty recently,  but can’t believe it is possible because after the special cream sponge, birthday cake, cake she was presented with at work to celebrate the special milestone, not helped by my sending here a package of  ‘Old fart’ lollies, she was asking about the best acne treatments. J as her skin reacted more like that of a teenager to the birthday indulgence but I know she loved the treats sent to mark her special day.

Well the pimples didn’t last long and Leanne is as beautiful as ever, and is currently rehearsing for a role in the musical ‘Dust’.

Happy fortieth birthday year to our beautiful talented, daughter, Leanne, from Reg and myself. xxx

 
 
 
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The art of slimming - the art of blogging, or does blogging make YOU slim?

You must admit mine is an unusual slimming blog as I talk about the art of living a lifestyle rather than an emphasis on calories in and out.   I talk about the art of striving for personal creative satisfaction as being not only compatible with the art of slimming but for myself as being essential to it.

So today I am actually just going to talk about the art of blogging or web site building, both highly satisfying for me and I know many of my friends are either expert at this and striving constantly to improve on their skills or are they may be just getting a web presence ‘off the ground’, I was sure this would be an topic that might interest them as well as me.I’ll share recent moves I have made to try to improve my blogs Here are some of the tips I am trying to follow.

1/ Know your topic and be unique. 

I try not to copy other successful formulas, I just try to be myself, create posts about things I feel like talking about and have some information I can share based on experience.  It’s so much easier to write in my 60’s than at any other stage of my life, if I hear a subject there is a memory I have associated with that that I usually would love to chat about, so my blog just flow in an unstrained way, just like talk.  For me that’s ‘my style’, unforced, not copied, about things I know and am interested in.  Anyone who loves to talk or write can do that, no special skills or formula.

2/ Two different lots of advise here, that conflict with each other. 
One being to proof read and edit, edit and edit before you publish and the other is to not wait until you are perfect before you have a web presence, because you never will be perfect.

I do proof read and edit, though my dyslexia is so bad, typos slip thorough, I am indebted to friends and readers who help me improve by pointing out these mistakes so I can correct them. If I waited until I have overcome dyslexia and was certain there would never be a typo in my work, I would never utter a word in print.  I personally would have never made some of the most important friends in my life if I had waited to be perfect before going to print.

3/ allow people to get to know you, discover your personality. 

For sure we need to protect private areas of our life but let the inner you, your personality shine through.  Think of the webs you read and enjoy, the authors voice has a personality and it matters not if they are aiming to climb a mountain, scrub oil off a path, or arrange flowers, there is an attitude to life that comes through in their posts that appeals to their readers and that’s why some bloggers and web sites can command huge readerships.  I greatly admire writers of wit and I would love to learn to use humour (I’m basically a serious subject writer), and I plan to strive to learn how I can ‘lighten’ my posts.  I am still learning to be a good blogger and it’s important to me, I have so much I want to share.

4/ Give your readers something for free. 

I know when I am too busy to read many blogs, being offered a chance to win a $50. Voucher can cause me to open a blog I might otherwise have ignored that day, so I have been experimenting for a week now with this idea of ‘what can I give my readers’.  My criteria was that it should not cost me money nor time other than the money and time I already spend to create the web sites and blogs I already own.  All web site owners could brain storm this one as what might work for my blogs and web sites will be different to what others might be able to do. 

My web site host had a forum option that is easy to use. I added this as my first step in being able to offer free services, for my readers.

Once you have an on line presence, you may want to be found by search engines.List your sites manually with search engines.  Your web host company is the first place to look for information about placing your web site in search engines. 

Tonight I am looking at web directories  there are many free places to list your web site, the more free placements you enter the more chance you have of raising your web site up to be shown by search engines. 

So far I have not paid for web site placement as my outer world journey that I share in my  ‘Gone Bush Blog’ in my gray-nomad web site is a hobby blog and this my personal journey is shared mostly by friend contacts.
 
One thing I know, I am ‘hooked on blogging’, I love it and I love sharing my inner world, and my outer world journeys through the medium of blogging. Blogging satisfies me emotionally more than food can.

What creative tools have you been able to harness to aid you in you in being or moving towards being naturally slim?

Is blogging slimming for you? J