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Celebrant, Vlady Peters, Redcliffe, Qld.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Monday, December 23, 2019
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Plan a wedding day like no other. Create a wedding ceremony that uses words that speak to you. Invite your friends to a wedding reception they won't want to leave. Go off to a honeymoon from which you'll return ready to celebrate some more.
1,000+ Answers to your Wedding Question - Smashwords
Celebrating Love's Special Moments - Smashwords
You can be a Successful Officiant -Smashwords
How to be a Profitable Celebrant: Practical Tips on Running a Profitable Celebrancy Business - Smashwords
Wedding Your Way - Smashwords
Honeymoon! A Sizzle or a Fizzls - Smashwords
Wedding Words:
Perfect Words for Your Wedding Ceremony - Smashwords
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Saturday, December 21, 2019
Live Healthier - and Sexier
Probably
Christmas is the wrong time of the year to be talking about food in a sensible way. Because
wherever you may be, the Christmas fare will include some foods that are far
from healthy. Or if they start off as being healthy in their natural state, by
the time they’re cooked – possibly in litres of oil – they are neither healthy
nor recognisable.
But,
if despite the Christmas dinner to come, you’d like to know which foods are
really healthy, here are some:
As
far as meat is concerned, fish
is seen as low in calories, high in protein, and full of vitamins and
minerals.
Then there’s the eggs
which are so full of protein and essential nutriments, that some experts have
named them nature’s multivitamin.
And how about the humble
potato? Apparently it contains a little bit of almost every nutriment you need - and are incredibly filling. (Often spoiled in being cooked to death in a vat of oil)
If
by now you’re thinking ‘give me a break! How about something that I’ll actually
enjoy eating. Well,
there’s always the dark chocolate. It is high in minerals and antioxidants,
believed to provide many health benefits.
Back
to the real food. There’s
the beetroot. Beloved by the Australians – and many Europeans – but leaving
a lot of other countries cold, they are considered one of the healthiest foods
on earth, filled with folate, magnesium and vitamin C.
Another runner
for the healthiest food on earth – and a totally of a different colour – is, I’m sure you’ve guessed it, spinach. You might have laughed when you saw Popeye do
his amazing deeds after consuming a tin of spinach, but in actual fact spinach
is packed with energy and vitamins.
But
do you know what else is so great about these six foods? They’re not only good
for your health, they are also good for you love life. Cross my heart. In my
research for ‘Cool Food for Hot Lovers’ I’ve identified around 100 foods that
help the lover in action. And the above are just a few of them.
Compliment of http://1.bp.blogspot.com/
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Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
How about some porridge
Just finished reading Agatha Christie’s Crime Collection. In the book she mentions Scotland Yard, and it made me
wonder, how does Scotland Yard make its home in London. When you think about it, it’s just as bizarre as having New Zealand Yard
in Canberra. Or Canada Yard in Washington. How did it happen?
It probably began back in the days when Scotland had its royalty just as England did.
And presumably, from time to time Scottish royalty met up with English royalty in London for various talks etc. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the
Scots – heroic both in fiction and the real world – wouldn’t have claimed the
right to a little bit of home by naming the place where they stayed, Scotland
Yard.
After all, these are the people that more than four
hundred years after they first came into existence, still comfortably wear
their tartan kilts.
These are the people who also make no apology for the
food they eat. England can have its kippers for breakfast. France can have its croissant. Other
countries might have their bacon and egg. But the Scotsman
eats his oats and flourishes.
And
why not? According to one
article
‘Oats are a slow-release carbohydrate, keeping you
feeling fuller between meals as they stabilize blood sugar levels. Oats are
also part of a heart-healthy diet—research shows they are useful for lowering
cholesterol. So you can always be assured no matter which oats you choose you
will be having a hearty, healthy breakfast which will see you through the
morning and keep you full until lunchtime.’
It was Johnson – that all-knowing Englishman – who defined oats in his dictionary, ‘eaten by
people in Scotland, but fit only for horses in England’.
Scotsman's reply to this is, ‘That's why England
has such good horses, and Scotland has such fine men!
In researching for my book, ‘Cool Food for Hot Lovers’, I
found that there’s evidence
that the term ‘sow your wild oats’ has roots in health science, and that oats
may be among the most potent and least expensive edible libido enhancers.
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Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Water, water everwhere....
In
July 16th, 2019 News.com
I read
‘looming
risk of running out of drinking water, as the ongoing drought continues to wreak havoc for tens
of thousands of Australians in dry communities.
…..(possibly
leading to) carting water in trucks for hundreds of kilometres on dirt roads is
going to provide drinking water to locals.
…..Extreme
water restrictions are in place…. Council has also conducted a leak audit of
its pipe system to ensure every precious drop is maintained.’
We’re
living in the 21st century, and what we can expect is crops failing
through lack of water, animals dying through lack of water, restrictions on the
use of water? And all this because?
Not
because we don’t have rain. Australia's average rainfall is 472mm (18.5 inches)
annually. But because the powers that be let the rain fall where it will when
it rains, and shrugs its shoulders when it doesn’t.
I
seem to remember that back in
Egyptian times – more than a thousand years before Christ the Pharaohs had
enough foresight to build silos for storing grain in anticipation of bad
seasons to come.
But
thousands of years on, the powers that be have placed the matter of droughts
and floods in the too hard to handle basket, happy to cry tears of
commiserations with the rest of the population but with no suggestion that it
will ever get better.
Apparently dam's are no longer fashionable. So now it's a case of floods when it rains, and draughts when it doesn't.
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Monday, November 18, 2019
Become a Celebrant - and a Successful Business Person
What sort of characteristic do you need to have to be a celebrant and a successful business person?
Here are some characteristics that I've thought of. Perhaps you can add to the list.
1. Initiative
Business people who succeed take personal
responsibility for what happens. Action is the key. Whatever you plan to do,
you do it in a timely fashion. Any promises you make to yourself or to your
clients are kept because you enjoy the challenge of getting things done. You
know the importance of promoting yourself as a business person and are active
in doing just that.
2. Persistence
No one has ever succeeded without
persistence. By focusing on exactly what you want to achieve as a celebrant you
will be able to overcome the inevitable challenges that will come your way. You
have the self-confidence in not only being ready to undertake a task, but to
keep at it until it’s finished.
3. Planning
Essential requirement is that you know
exactly the outcome you want in planning every step of the way. This includes
making a detailed list of your immediate and long-term goals, and tackling them
in an orderly fashion. Knowing where you want to go, and putting in place
realistic initiatives which will take you there, is a necessary requirement.
4. Flexibility
Change is inevitable in every aspect of
life. It is inevitable in your business. Accept it and use it to your
advantage. While having a plan for your business so that you know where you’re
going and how you’re going to get there, continue to watch what’s happening
around you, and revise your own methods and ideas so that you don’t get left
behind.
5. Clear, creative and
analytical thinking
You need to be an ideas person, aware of
trends and fashions, working towards being the first, rather than the last to
adopt new ways of celebrating various ceremonies. While as a celebrant you are
a people person, as a business person you need to be logical and rational, and
perhaps even a bit pragmatic. Feelings and sentimental thinking need to take
second place to running your business as a financial success.
6. Communication skills
Celebrancy requires the skill of getting
along with people. You need to enjoy working with your clients, networking with
people in your industry, gaining their goodwill and support. Competence in
human relations, including the ability to get along with others is imperative.
Creating relationships with all the people you come in contact includes the
ability to mix easily with people, be a person easy to get to know, and be a
real asset in social situations. Ability to talk easily, and enjoying talking,
is a real asset.
7. Able to describe the
services you provide
Unlike tangible goods which customers can
see, and hold and touch, your services are very much in the perception of the
client. It is you who must be able to communicate the benefits and advantages
of your services to the client. No matter how good, or even how much better you
are than other celebrants, in order to sell your services to a client you must
need to communicate this fact to her.
In effect, you are the product you’re
selling. You must be able to communicate your differences from other celebrants. Your enthusiasm and passion for what you’re doing. The experience
and the training which makes you the professional you are. The qualities that
make you and your services unique.
6. Confident
Since you are the product you’re selling,
you need to be confident by knowing what you are about. You can only convince
others by knowing and believing in your professionalism and your ability to
provide quality service.
7. Reliable
Your clients, like everyone else, have
experienced the frustration of calls that are never returned, the promised
information that never arrives, the waste of time waiting for service people
who might arrive today or tomorrow, or hopefully by the end of the week. As a
successful business person, you never promise what you can’t deliver and you
always try to deliver more than you promise.
8. Self-motivation
You need to believe in what you’re doing, in
the way you’re doing it, and in your ability to achieve what you’ve set out to
achieve. As a self-employed person it is not enough for you to merely have
goals which you want to achieve. You must be able to motivate yourself to do
whatever it takes to actively promote these goals. Planning is not enough. You
need to be committed to what you’ve set out to do.
9. Business like
You might love dealing with people, but you
must never lose sight of the fact that you’re running a business and not a charitable
institution. Be financially responsible by charging fees that repay the time
and money that you put into running your celebrancy business.
Initially, almost all people starting a new
business are just a little embarrassed about asking for their fee, and worrying
about the fee being too high. Unless you get over it very quickly, you won’t be
running a business for too long.
10. Robust health
Look after your health. Celebrancy is about
being on time and on the ball. Since stresses are inevitable, make sure you
don’t succumb by taking care of yourself physically, mentally and emotionally.
Make some rules about how you want to run your business and what time off you
would like to have. Some celebrants choose not to perform ceremonies on public
or religious holidays because they prefer to spend that time with their family
and friends. Decide on your priorities so that you won’t feel that you are
wholly controlled by your business.
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Monday, November 11, 2019
Here It comes. There it goes.
It
seems to me that powers that be take years to acknowledge a problem, and then
even more years to tackle it, and then, after the committee takes over, the
result is not quite what was expected.
Take
the train from Redcliffe to Brisbane for instance. I
think it might have been on the books for about 130 years. And when it
eventually arrived in 2016 no one was happy. The people of Redcliffe had
imagined a quick trip over the bridge which would take minutes to reach the
Brisbane inner city suburbs where people from Redcliffe travel to work. The
powers that be made in an inland trip instead. Useless to many Redcliffe
residents who work in Brisbane and still an hour trip to get to the inner city.
To
connect with the train you need a bus. However, as soon as the train came to
Redcliffe some bus services were cut or minimised. So at times, if you are
totally dependent on public transport– and one would think that would be the
idea – you find no connecting buses either to the train station or from the
train station.
Powers
that be are disappointed at the lukewarm response to their train.
Apparently they expected a flood of passengers as soon as the train arrived.
Recently
I was catching a 694 bus. It’s only one of the buses whose services have been
shortened since the arrival of the train. On this Friday morning it was
supposed to arrive at 10:35 in Sutton Street, Redcliffe. A bus did go past
around that time but it had an ‘Out of Service’ sign so, needless to say, the
three of us waiting there didn’t bother to wave at it. However, fifteen, twenty
minutes later the gentleman beside me mused as to whether the bus driver had
forgotten to change the sign – as apparently sometimes does happen – and the
“Out of Service’ bus was actually our 694 bus. Because our 10:35 694 bus never
did arrive. We waited the half hour for the next one.
Most
of us agree that good public transport is invaluable. It would be cheap –
unlike parking in the city where you work. It would be convenient. It would
help the environment.
But
it should be predictable and all embracing. What is the use of a train when you
still have to take your car to get to the station because the bus that you
could have taken has been cut?
And
what is the use of a bus service where the bus may – or may not - arrive when
it’s expected.
Compliments of Harper-hanesvoort.com
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