essential claire

Brian Wins Big Brother 8 Using The Secret of Cosmic Ordering

I am sooo excited about this.  Too excited to write much now and the show's still on. Yes, yes, I know. Big Brother 8 is my guilty little secret, particularly this year - because the wonderful and wholly deserving Brian read Cosmic Ordering and put his faith in it and asked the Universe for 3 things:

• To get a new job
• To meet a nice girl
• To get into the Big Brother house.

He wrote it down.  He said this a couple of days ago in wonderment to one of the twins. He said they'd all come true. And I'll bet that what he didn't share at that point was the fact that he also asked to win. How cool would that be? What an amazingly abundant and beautiful Universe we are! Thanks you Universe - so very, very much.

Listen - I have to keep watching now, but I'll come back and explain more later. :o) 

What's Up On Planet Claire?

Haven't blogged for ages... where is the time going? I've been feeling very up and down lately and I'm wondering how much of that has to do with having sugar in my diet again or is it just that I am becoming more sensitive to energetic frequencies. I realise that "what I think about and thank about, I bring about." and I'm actually pretty good at policing my thoughts.  But lately, the vibe has seemed bigger than me, universal. I checked out the latest energy alert from Karen Bishop of WhatsUpOnPlanetEarth.com and all made sense. 

Breakthrough, emergence, rebirth are the themes I'm getting now and I'm manifesting left, right and centre and moving forwards again.  Anyway - just wanted to share these pics with you...

These 3 were taken one Sunday evening about 6 weeks ago on Llantwit beach. It had just stopped raining and the light was extraordinary. Stunning. I'm thinking about creating some blank cards with them.

This was the view (of Cardiff Bay) from the sofa and balcony at dawn a couple of weeks back. Once again - amazing light and colours - truly beautiful.

Life is beautiful. So grateful for the abundance in mine. Very happy. It's all good.

Scurvy Elephants in the Garden?

Headed over to the Mouse and Trowel Awards voting area today to vote for my new friend Heather Gorringe's company Wiggly Wigglers. (That's Heather left, winning another award.)

Her team are up for Best Gardening Podcast - and so, so deserve it. Check it out here.  Actually, Heather is a total Scurvy Elephant - must tell her to join our society...

and I came across another one too... the Renegade Gardener, Don Engebretson, an award-winning Minnesota garden writer and designer - you absolutely must read his story...

Are you a Scurvy Elephant? Join us here and let us share your Scurvy Story with the world.

Spring Bliss

The weather has been glorious these last few days - spring is well and truly here. At this point of the year in London, I would have been getting down... thoughts of a sweltering, stifling, uncomfortable summer ahead. Now I'm here where there's cleaner air and loads of space, the joy of spring and anticipation of a wonderful summer is intoxicating.

On Thursday, I knocked off work early and headed up to Southerndown with J for an impromptu picnic. It was stunning... deeply relaxing... bliss. I've never posted a movie in here before - no idea if it will work - let's hope so... ...ah - ok so no can do... I wonder how easy it is to use YouTube to host it and link to it here... there's a little Easter adventure...

Ain't life wonderful?

Got sent one of those emails today... where you are supposed to send it to however many friends and something good will happen to you. At the risk of sounding like a kill joy (or a grumpy old woman), I'm really not into those things - I dislike them intensely. They are like junk mail from people you know and respect - weird. But, I got one today and I opened it (I like to give the senders the benefit of the doubt) and I'm so glad I did. Maybe its because I'm in love (yes... again) but it really spoke to me. So rather than send it to my friends as instructed, I thought I'd share it with the entire world... enjoy!

Inspirational places online round up

Spent some (long overdue) time today browsing blogs and communities I'd like to connect with and thought I'd share a few of my finds with you...

First up - if you haven't already discovered the Wiggly Wigglers podcast, then you are in for such a treat... http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/. I met Heather (MD of Wiggly Wigglers) at the Corporate Podcasting Summit earlier this week. She is a top bird and I'm going to interview for my podcast v. soon.

Then two I came across for the first time today...

http://www.bean-sprouts.blogspot.com/ - one family's search for the goodlife

http://www.optimistlab.com/ - experiment with joy

And I was doing some admin over at another blogsite I look after (www.ScurvyElephants.com) when I came across another social networking site which I've barely had time to visit since I signed up - Zaadz.com/ - let's change the world.

Wellbeing Weekend

Had my good friend Beryl Whiting to stay last weekend. She brought her eLybra Bio Resonance machine with her and ran it on me for a couple of sessions.  Besides being an eLybra practitioner, Beryl is also a highly skilled coach and by the Saturday afternoon I'd gone out and bought a rebounder and a Swiss ball with those stretchy pull things attached.  You see, slthough there's a residents' gym and pool in this development, I've not really been using it. Despite knowing only too well the benefits of regular exercise, even that short walk across the development and past the builders, was proving demotivational. With the rebounder, I don't have to leave my flat and I can do it to my favourite music!

We didn't walk as much as we'd planned owing to the cold -  and some great movies we wanted to watch together... Down The Rabbit Hole, The Secret (about my 5th time) and Brokeback Mountain (are Heath Ledger and Jonny Wilkinson long lost brothers? - see pic above)

We treated ourselves to ate delicious and nutritious home-cooked food and laughed a lot at our obsession with it!  Here's a quick rundown of the weekend's menus... lentil and veg curry with brown rice, carrot, chickpea, lime and ginger salad with halloumi, green leaves and oatcakes, roasted tomato, pepper and butter bean soup with rye bread, roasted root veg and tofu with peas and carrots and breakfasts of fresh fruit (blueberries, raspberries, apple, mango and pineapple) with various seeds and natural yoghurt.)

For me, that was a perfect 'wellbeing' weekend. What's your idea of a perfect weekend as far as your wellbeing goes?

Beauty and the Beach (geddit?)

Had my parents come over for a few days this last weekend. On the Saturday, we spent most of the day walking around the wooded valleys, beaches and cliffs of Nash Point and Monknash.  The tide was right out at Monknash revealing some amazing rock structures and I was determined to find a fossil. As the tide started to turn and we headed back an unusual pattern on one flat rock caught my eye, we washed the sand off to reveal this...

That's my Dad's size 10 foot there so you can get an idea of just how big it was. 

Minutes later, something else caught my eye - I found a lump of quartz or something like it jarred between 2 sections of the natural rock 'pavementing'.

I am absolutely loving being so connected with nature. 

I heard something today about a 'church' in the woods near Hereford for tree huggers.  As you have probably worked out by now - I have been known to hug the odd tree and it's also true that I sleep with a rock I picked up from Ogmore beach a few miles round the coast from where we found this fossily thing, so maybe I'll have to check this woodland church thing out. So if you know anything about it, do spill the beans!

Abundance for Women

So the end of January - a funny time for many people. Remember all those good intentions and promises we made to ourselves as we entered 2007 - or perhaps you'd rather not!  Every year, it occurs to me that my new year doesn't really start 'til February. January always seems for me to be a preview, or a recovery period after the upheaval of the festive period. February is when it all really starts moving, and yet, popular media would have us forget our dreams and aspirations if we haven't got them licked by the end of January! How crazy is that?!

Anyway, I had an email today from WellBeing Coach Julie Fisher telling me about what sounds like an incredible powerful event... the Abundance for Women TeleSummit - it's all about women breathing life and energy into each other's dreams. 

What better time for this empowering course? The ad copy says "Treat yourself to an amazing and life-changing inner growth opportunity." But I reckon it should say "Invest in yourself, honour yourself, stop holding back on yourself and once and for all, sign up for the future you promise yourself. You absolutely are worth it!"

There are some great speakers lined up and for just $199 for the full 6 seminars, this seems like great value to me. Discover more about the Abundance for Women TeleSummit here.

28 Days Later

wow... it's the 28th of January 2007 and its taken me this long to get around to posting on this blog...

To recap... I left London on 18th December to start a new life in Cardiff. My phone line installation was booked for 14th December... in the event, it didn't happen until the 16th JANUARY!! Anyway, I'm back online and my new life is proving to be everything I'd hoped for...

I've already made some new friends and am managing to get out into the beautiful countryside at least once a week. I'm going to post some pics over the coming weeks, but for now here are 2 views from my window: (click on the images to enlarge)

This first one was taken from the living room end of my balcony just before Christmas - it was a glorious day and this view never ceases to soothe and inspire me. 

This second one was taken a few days ago from the office end of my balcony - it was early evening and the setting sun (out of view) was casting the most surreal light on the St Davids Spa building in the centre of the shot.