The Road to Forty: Falling in Love with Fitness All Over Again!

Image of workout gear on the laminate wooden floor of a basement office, including dumbbells, resistance bands, a YETI Rambler water bottle, Salomon Speedcross 4 running shoes, and exercise clothes.

I stepped away from creating content for a while, feeling like I didn’t have the time to be creative and express what was on my mind with everything going on in every other part of my life.

A sudden influx of Treasury Board submissions without the right amount of staff to support them. Growing kids who needed us to help them with the struggles going on in their lives. No matter which way I looked, it felt like something was fighting for my attention, and I had no idea how I was going to get out from under it all.

But after coming into 2023, determined to learn from the things that made my 2022 so difficult, I started seeing things changing for the better. My new work attitude helped me get things done, trusting my staff to handle their portfolios instead of getting involved in every little decision. And it didn’t hurt that I finally started using OneNote to keep everything organised, using the sections for each portfolio to not only track updates on the work, but also request more info from the leads whenever I needed them. Taming my full-time job played a big role in dealing with part of my 2022 that I hadn’t beaten yet—the problems with my health.

Who Knew How Much of a Difference Water Could Make???

As of November 2022, I started drinking three litres of water a day, pretty much every day, and putting most other liquids behind me. And then in December, when I cut most refined sugar and salty foods out of my diet as well, it’s been taking me down an entirely new path in my life 😊

I got the news a couple of days before Christmas—that with a blood pressure of 136/89, I was getting dangerously close to hypertension and needed to start watching how much sodium I was taking in with my diet. And with my blood glucose starting to veer into the pre-diabetes range, I needed to watch what sugar I was taking in, too.

Funny enough, I’d already been making some strides by this point—in November, I’d made the switch to drinking water from the soft drinks and beer I’d frequently consume before, trying to hit three litres a day to build some healthier habits into my life.

And some of the effects were pretty immediate! I shaved twelve pounds off my peak pandemic weight, and some of my older clothes were starting to fit again. I wouldn’t cramp up after vigorous physical activity, which I’d been attributing to age instead of hydration. Grogginess seemed to be a thing of the past when I woke up and didn’t miss my other drinks after a while. In fact, I tried having a beer the other day in a moment of frustration, and despite it being on the lighter side at 4.8% alcohol, my head started feeling a little light after only a few sips, so it didn’t quite feel like it’s currently the thing for me.

But despite those efforts, that doctor’s visit showed that hydration was just the start of my journey. There was much more I still needed to do!

The first steps of my fitness journey! come check it out! “The Road to Forty: Falling in Love with Fitness All Over Again!”

Don’t Let Type 2 Diabetes Slow You Down!

This content was sponsored by two of Canada’s leading pharmaceutical research-based companies, but opinions are my own.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us aren’t as healthy as we used to be. We’re working from home more often, juggling even more responsibility than usual, and developing unhealthy habits just to get by. But when you have a family history of type 2 diabetes, there’s a lot you need to be aware of to make sure you’re taking care of yourself. The great news is, there are two tools out there that hope to make type 2 diabetes management a little easier—My Heart Matters and Cart2Table. Let me tell you all about them!

Type 2 diabetes doesn’t happen overnight — it’s important that you look for the warning signs!

Here in the Palmer family, we have an annual tradition of taking a family portrait to help freeze our moments in time because as parents, we know that while the days can be long, the years go by quickly, and our kids will have their own lives before we know it. Usually, our photos come out amazingly—with a photographer who’s from a mixed family herself, she understands how different skin tones need different lighting and finds the balance that complements us all. But this was 2021, and we were in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic—a pandemic where I gained more than a little weight.

Continue reading “Don’t Let Type 2 Diabetes Slow You Down!”

The Black Canadian Creator Directory: What’s Next?

The Black Canadian Creator Directory was only the beginning—let's find out what happens next!

A little while back, Kaya Marriott, Sherley Joseph and I put the Black Canadian Creator Directory out into the world, and we were blown away by everyone’s reaction to it!

The Black Canadian Creator Directory is brought to you by Casey Palmer of Casey Palmer, Canadian Dad, Kaya Marriott of Comfy Girl with Curls, and Sherley Joseph of The Chonilla Network and Black Canadian Creators.

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Black Canadians have spent far too many Black History Months feeling like we existed in the shadows of our southern cousins, not afforded an identity of our own or even the belief that we really exist. We have a very different situation up here, making up 3.5% of the Canadian population in 2016 as opposed to the 12.4% of the United States that Black people made up in 2020. That’s a whole 41.1 million Black Americans compared to a mere 1.2 million people Black Canadians up here in the Great White North, but that’s still 1.2 million stories of lives that while similar enough to the tale of the “African-American”, had plenty that made them uniquely Canadian.

Tales of thinly-veiled racism in a country praised for its diversity. Stories of a people from more than two hundred ethnic backgrounds, too often oversimplified and distilled to the colour of our skin instead of everything else that makes up who we are! We’re up here—some of us for hundreds of years now—and it’s long past time that our country starts understanding the richness and diversity that our Black community has. And while I might have started with individual stories when I launched Tales from the 2.9, I eventually realised that there was only so much we could accomplish individually—there was so much more we could tell when you brought us all together.

Read more about the path we took to the Black Canadian Creator Directory, and what comes next now that it’s out! “The Black Canadian Creator Directory: What’s Next?”

Bluehive Bamboo Wireless Chargers | Available NOW at Canadian Tire!

Disclaimer: I was compensated for this review of Bluehive Bamboo Wireless Chargers, but all opinions remained my own.

With working from home becoming a much bigger part of the picture for so many of us thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to make the most of our spaces since we’re in them so often.

Wireless Charging | What IS It?

Wireless charging, for those of you unfamiliar with it, is exactly what it sounds like—charging your mobile device without needing to plug your device in to do it. It’s not quite as space-age as it sounds—you still need to lay your device on some sort of surface to make the charging happen, but those surfaces have started looking a lot more stylish than they used to!

Enter: The Bluehive Bamboo Wireless Chargers, from Your Friends at Canadian Tire!

Inspired by the possibilities when you bring the natural and technological worlds together, Canadian Tire explores properly introducing wireless charging into the home with their Bluehive brand, which keeps people connected on the go with innovative and stylish mobile electronic accessories!

  1. The Bluehive Bamboo Wireless Charging Pad ($39.99), which is a single bamboo pad to put a device on for charging,
  2. The Bluehive 10W Wireless Charge Pad with Arch LED Light ($59.99), which adds an adjustable light over the charging area,
  3. And, the Bluehive Foldable 10W Wireless Charge Pad with LED Lamp ($89.99), which has a foldable lamp, a USB port for charging your older technology, and adjustable colour temperature to meet the mood of your space!
Continue reading to learn more about the Bluehive Bamboo Wireless Charger Series from Canadian Tire! “Bluehive Bamboo Wireless Chargers | Available NOW at Canadian Tire!”

Pickering Museum Village

The Pickering Museum Village—an open-air museum located just outside of Toronto in Pickering, Ontario—offers a glimpse into the history of the Pickering area with an engaging family program that’ll both educate and entertain!

As parents, what we’ve learned about parenting in a pandemic is that you’re constantly looking for activities to make the days interesting and put the cries of boredom at bay. But with the pandemic bringing so much of our children’s programming to a halt for sixteen months and running, we’re all hungry for options that let us explore life beyond our homes and our neighbourhoods.

And so, enter the Pickering Museum Village and its creative methods of delivering its programming in a world whose rules are so different.

Continue Reading about the Pickering Museum Village and what it has to offer your family! “Pickering Museum Village”
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