Counting the days to Christmas and step-counting my way to fitness and yesterday I walked 11,865 steps which is nicely over my target figure of 10,000 so that's good. In fact, its rather amazing really.
Today I've only notched up 5,092 which is also good, if somewhat less. Yesterday I was gardening and then shopping which made it very easy to make all those steps. And tomorrow I'm gardening, then Christmas tree dressing for Adderbury's Christmas Tree Festival this weekend beginning Friday thru' to Sunday. Then tomorrow evening we have our WI Social evening with our Christmas meal at a local hotel all of which should amount to a good number of steps.
Housework does not count towards a step-count but I do consider it to be a work-out, buffing the furniture, swabbing down worktops, bathrooms, kitchens, Hoovering etc. All good work which can make you very hot indeed - hence a good work-out!
Which is just as well with all that lovely festive food we're all looking forward to, anticipating even, and that's fine which is why we've given up eating bread and cakes. Talking cakes, I've not made a Christmas cake for years now or indeed even a Christmas pudding, which is a real shame. But, well if you make them you've got to eat them of course and, when the mixture's good and the marzipan is thick and the icing soft around a lovely rich, dark fruit cake, how can you possibly resist.
My Grandmother used to tell stories of her mother's Christmas cake sliced and cut up into finger-sized pieces to make it last longer. As she had many brothers and sisters, I imagine this seemed to be a good idea to my Great Grandmother.
Making ready for Christmas now also involves dressing our WI Christmas tree for St. Mary's Church Christmas Tree Festival and we did this together yesterday afternoon and here's a first picture of our beautiful tree garlanded with baubles, Christmas boxes, paper chains and my Christmas star all decorated in green, violet and white which are the WI colours we've used since our very beginnings in 1915. The colours represent the thoughts and aspirations of the suffragettes, some of whom were active in our beginnings and they stand for - green for give - violet for votes - white for women - Give Votes for Women.
Our Christmas boxes are presents and denote our "presence" in all of our lives, and mostly only vaguely known to a great many contemporary folk. The baubles hold dates of individual Resolutions actioned for to bring about a change for good while the attached labels promote a picture from that campaign. The paper chain carries our slogan - Inspiring Women. My Star is patterned on both sides to convey the thought - "there's more to the WI than meets the eye" and its fixings are slightly off-centre to enforce that idea of much more than "just Jam and Jerusalem" from the war-time efforts of jam making and usage of a huge glut of wild and domestic fruit, with government donated sugar, to help feed our food depleted nation and the singing of Jerusalem which became our rallying and campaign song in about 1918. We still sing Jerusalem at important meetings while others sing it every time they meet.
It's quite amazing the kick one gets out of singing Jerusalem.
Must dash and Toodle Loo ...
Daisy xxx
