5:30 PM and it's Halloween!

Oh my, made it just in time!

The house was decorated by 4 PM:

Window pumpkin in place...

... front garden pumpkin well positioned and decorated ...

... front door spider and rat enhanced ...

... sweets in place ...

... and then some cooking got in the way and I had to rush to get myself into shape.

Told you before: If there were witches I would love to be one, and Maud's Attic my favourite little boutique for accessories in Ipswich had this beautiful spider necklace which I didn't really need. But since I am scared of spiders and one has to face one's fears it was only natural to buy it. And who would be able to resist this cute little spider that sits in its web, minding its own business but on demand is all too willing to jump off and just hang on its silvery thread.

I am so in love with that thing now that at least those spiders don't bother me anymore at all. We will still have to see about the live, fast and unpredictably moving ones, though.

Well, then eventually I had got hold of a hat. For a witch the hat is an essential piece of equipment, I reckon, and when I saw this one I fell in love. It's nothing special, but I never had one before, it doesn't go floppy whatever you do to it and it somewhat suits me, don't you think?



And then it eventually got dark and I could snap my pumpkins lit. It's the moment of truth that will reveal whether or not they are scary at all.

... and then the 'Trick and Treaters' came!


Happy Halloween, Dears!

Ideas, ideas, ideas!

How wonderful I am getting in full swing again! I think I will have to add a couple of more blogs to ILP.

I for example just like the idea of collecting nice and funny pictures. We used to have a picture of the week at the old IL, but to find something on a weekly basis was not working really well. With the new blog structure however we don't depend on regular updates anymore and I could start collecting pics again.

Then I think we should have a 'Health and Beauty' blog and a more general gallery... I just can't stop myself, can I?

However, life is rather good. The very odd back pain, seems to reside... one doesn't know really... that's the odd thing about it. It comes and goes as it pleases and now seems to have turned almost every muscle into being a bit tense. I think it is some flu bug causing this; I heard others complaining about weird aches, too. Guess it's a matter of sitting it out.

This morning I had a first light gym session, mood lifted by a photoshoot with Matt Fidler one of my official supporters for the Bodybuilding challenge. We wanted to do this since summer and eventually we had this first shoot to experiment a bit and get ideas for further projects. So soon I will have a few new pix to share!

Then there is the office cake party in the afternoon; the office is decorated with the pumpkins since last night and I am keen to see if they liked it. Well and at night I will go out with my dear friend Imola who did her exam and is now a happy bunny. We need to celebrate and catch up on things.

After this rather busy day I am hoping to work a bit more on ILP during the weekend. If you feel that I missed a subject let me know!

Have a lovely weekend,
Rika

Hallowing - after carving pic

... and this is the result of my work.

Sprayed with 3-in-1 oil to prevent oxygen making them rot too fast, they are now sitting in my spare fridge waiting to be called to their duty. Hope they will make it until Friday for the office cake party and maybe even until Sunday.

Sweet dreams now, catch you later,

Love
Rika
xx

Halloween is upon us

Did I already tell you that I LOVE Halloween? Ah, if there were witches, I would want to be one! Although I would still prefer to be born in this era rather then a few hundred years ago. And I love the pumkin carving. I know that this has nothing to do with witchcraft, but that doesn't mean that I cannot love it. I love it so much that one year I even made a movie of it:

I might however gone a bit overboard this year. I am planning to do two very big ones and about three small ones. With the big ones I was in a dilemma again, because I couldn't decide which one was nicer and the small ones I got sponsored... what could I do?

So it is 3:45 PM now and I am sitting here with a cappuccino. Once that is finished I will take a 'before' picture of the two, the other ones are still in the office and will get delivered tonight, just to show you the task ahead.

Herewith done:
... and now please excuse me: Have some carving to do!

Sumatra, Sport and a bit of Suffering

This all of a sudden has become a rather good ILP week. Since I am not doing regular updates on Wednesdays anymore my rhythm has changed quite a bit. Sometimes I am a bit stunned how coincidences compliment each other. The freeing up of my Wednesdays happened just in time to accommodate the changes in my day job. Now I have a main meeting on Wednesdays for which I need the time to prepare on Mondays and Tuesdays. So now my writing days have become work days while the last half of the week becomes IL time. One has to be careful though, to not get distracted by running errands or general fuzziness.

Well this week started in good shape, skipped walking on Monday but had a good workout on Tuesday, meeting on Wednesday went all well, and on Thursday I attended another MySecretKitchen food tasting party. It was lovely to catch up with Lyna the friend who was the consultant at my own party back in May, and to meet with the neighbours.

... and then I had a weird night. Friday morning I woke up with a sore back which then got better throughout the day. Thus I had another great workout that evening, no pain, feeling great, went to bed and woke in the middle of the night as if a bulldozer had hit my right rib cage. I had to skip my leg training on Saturday morning... grrr, especially leg training! I like my Saturday morning sessions; they are efficient and they usually inspire me to update the blog... sigh!

Well, and then it turned out that the pain got less when sitting nice and upright... like at a computer! Well, one has to take what is given and so I eventually started to fill the travel blog with my Sumatra diary. And because Michelle Desilets from Orangutan Land Trust started the whole thing with a tweet, I had to go circles and added the respective articles on the charity blog and the story blog as well.

Now the only blog that hasn't been touched yet is 'Nutrition', but so far I am rather happy with the new style. Updates are done so easily... well, and I even got some comments :o))

Have a great week and don't forget to once in a while to remember your dreams

Love

Things are falling into place!

Yep! We have a front page. Eventually I managed to bring a page together, merging all the blogs which constitute Incredible Ladies Project.

Additionally we all of a sudden have something like a mini-powerwalking club on Sunday morning. It is amazing: Since several years I tried to bring people together, and except of one friend nobody was very keen. So we two persistently went for our 1 hour round every Sunday morning, 8AM, meeting at her house. Now, today another lady joined, and a for next Sunday a fourth friend is considering to join. Cross fingers for good weather! If you live in Ipswich UK (our tour is located at the East side of town) and want to join: Get in touch and I let you know details.

The next thing for me to do is to fill the blogs a bit more. Charities, Food, and Travel are still empty, but I will get there, and then I have to focus on my training again, something which will feed the 'Bloody Hell...' blog a bit more.

It's good to be back!
Wishing you a brilliant week,

Love

Wifi-Blogger-Me and the Town

Hello Dears,

I cannot believe how great life can be if one only just DOES. I always felt that one never can lose even if things aren't looking good, as long as one is willing to put in some effort and learn from it.

Well, IL and my writing had reached a bit of a brick wall, but as Randy Pausch, a splendid professor of Carnegie Mellon University, once said:'Brick walls are there to show you how badly you want something'. It turned out that I wanted my IL and my writing very badly. So many thoughts I wanted to share and nowhere to put them. FB is all nice and fine, but what to do with the things needing elaboration? I am a hoarder, and one of the things I apparently like to hoard is thoughts.

I however found it difficult to sit at home with a system not allowing for easy feedback - Didn't I preach myself: 'If you want people to do something you have to make it easy for them'? And I felt trapped spending so much time on a desk while not being able to explore things in the meantime. How was I to be inspired into writing?

Guess where I am now? After yesterday's trial from my armchair I now took the trial into a wonderful coffee place: Salthouse Harbour hotel Ipswich. It's my favourite for the atmosphere, the view and the great coffee after all. I had planned for a town afternoon off to meet a friend there at 6PM, however estimated that I might have to wait a bit and hence better take the netbook with me to at least be able to write in MS-Word. As predicted I was an hour early, ordered my cappuccino, switched the netbook on, and had wifi access for free. I couldn't believe it! So now I am sitting here like in an office, can find my links on the internet and typing directly into blogger.

Loving it!

The only hiccup is that I cannot show you the view. I don't have the cable for the iPhone with me... one really can tell that I am still a newbie in this 'flexible life' thing.

So that is it really! I am a happy bunny. I can write while actually experiencing life and stay in touch with ILP. I even just found the spell check in this editor.

Life is good!
Love

Posting Remotely

Yippieh! This is brilliant!

For the past almost four years I have been locked away in my IL headquarters and writing using my desktop computer. I needed my software to create the pages and to be able to upload. Now I am sitting in my comfy armchair in front of the telly - watching something I have seen before - with my little netbook and use this as a trial.

Imagine: In the future I can post directly from London, Germany... wherever I am, as long as I have internet connection.

Wonderful!

So now ILP headquarters is the world and hopefully that makes it a bit more interesting and appealing!



Love

42 = 101010

Happy 42-day everybody whether you are a fan of the 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy' or not - one must make hay when the sun shines.

So enjoy the miracles around you and travel safely!


Love

Official Start of the Incredible Ladies Project

As of today Incredible Ladies Project will be my new thing! I have been using the term here and there before, but a few things needed sorting before making it official.

Incredible Ladies Project is now a collection of blogs whith this one being the diary part of it. The various blogs will only vaguely mirror the sections of the original IL site and I will build blogs as we go along... hence the term 'project' in the name.

The most important thing to to find out before official lauch, was how to save the content so that I can rebuild the blog should it get lost. Today I figured it out and here we are.

The blogs we have so far are:

• Rika's Column
• Bloody Hell... What did I do now?
• Anaconda and other IL

and of course the original site

• IL - Sleeping Beauty

is still online to look up recipes and other stuff until I will have it re-posted in one of the new blogs.

The next task will be to build an overview page showing all the blogs with short descriptions to easily choose from. I might need a bit of time for this, though. I so much would like to see if I can do something at least a little bit fancy.

I am hoping that this concept will make things more lively, that you can subscribe to only the parts you are actually interested in and not having to read through the rest of it, and I am hoping that you might be dropping the one or the other comment.

If you would like me to post an article on something: I am happy to test my writing skills on your challenge. This blog is the best place to leave me notes of this kind.

And now I am wishing you a wonderful rest of the weekend, hoping that you will like the idea that ILs are back!

Love