Scents and sweat

It's a playing with food day here today ! We have decided to skip the traditional tree and so forth in our decorating this year in favor of lights, pointsettas and things that make the house smell good. Today we are making cinnamon cut out ornaments. Simple to do, smell fantastic and just a good thing. To make them, I combine 1/2 cup of applesauce ( any kind) with 1/2 cup combined powdered spices. Traditionally it is groung cinnamon, but I have found a combination of cinnamon, cloves, allspice and ginger to simply smell better. You mix the ingredients to form a playdough consistency dough , roll out flat, cut with metal cookie cutters, poke in a hole for a string or ribbon if desired and let dry of a day or two. When dry, string and hang on the tree, on garlands or simply place in a pretty container and set on a counter.

Meanwhile, we are having fun trying to adapt workouts so that they do not involve any stomping, jumping or anything that will disturb our downstairs neighbors ( or aggrivate my knees). You would be surprized what kind of a sweat you can work up doing these ! Son is totally on board with this and is understanding how the muscles in the body work ( all those anatomy lessons are paying off) and he is coming up with some really good suggestions. It is making me think about someday creating a cardio workout that can be done by people who are wheelchair bound and such. It's easy to do cardio when you have no physical limitations, but when those enter in almost any cardio workout becomes an impossibility. Yet, people who are wheelchair bound have just as much need for these. It has to be possible. it simply requires thinking outside the box, and so far there are just to many box prisoners out there IMHO.