Turn Your Job into a Gym

Too busy to exercise?  Turn your Job into a Gym!  Here are some easy ideas:

1. Sit on a ball.

•  People with back problems swear by them, and the micro movements really add up.  A friend who is a masterful third grade teacher has a lot of kids in her class with problems focusing.  She put the whole class on balls (with the rule “butts on the ball, feet on the floor”) and she now has a quiet, focused, happy classroom.  Try it in your office!

2. Stand up!  Look everywhere for possibilities to stand rather than sit.

• On the phone?  Stand up.  Not only healthier and burns more calories, you’ll sound more enthusiastic to person on the other end of the line.  Why not?
• Meetings?  If they are less than 15 minutes – have everyone stay standing.  You’ll be more creative, and you’ll save time.  
• Longer meetings?  If they are one-on-one put on your walking shoes and meet while getting in a walk. A great way to build personal chemistry, too.
• Put a desk side table up on blocks so you can stand up and work on your computer.  You don’t have to spend a lot of money (although those adjustable hydraulic desks look amazing) just find something to elevate a second work surface.
• OK, if you really like this office gym idea, you have to get a slow moving treadmill with the desk installed.  

3. Walk around.

• You don’t have to be a top executive to manage by walking around.  Reduce your emails and just walk over and ask that question.  Find reasons to jump out of your chair.
• Use the stairs.  Start with one flight up and two down.  You’ll be amazed how quickly you’ll adapt.
• Use the parking lot or ramp as your personal treadmill.  Park far away from the door, or take a lap or two before you head home for the day.  
• Keep walking shoes in your desk and in your car.  Walk to your favorite lunch spot instead of driving.  Walk there and ride back with colleagues.  Have them order for you and you’ll be right on time!
• Stop halfway home to walk your favorite park, shopping mall, or high school track.  Squeeze in that time for yourself before you pick up the kids or get involved in the hub-bub of family life.

4. Bend, Stretch, and Muscle It!

• Stretch at your desk, especially those upper back muscles.  
• Get up and do a big stretch every hour at least.  This is the most important thing you can do to prevent clots.  Stretch those calves and hamstrings with yoga forward folds.  You’ll feel more awake with all that blood going to your head.  Be slow rising. We don’t want you getting dizzy. 
• Why not do a few knee push ups while you are at it?  If you don’t have a place where you can shut the door, can you find a spot just behind your desk?  And while you are down there, how about a few crunches?  Create a set and do it 3 times.  It should take only about 5 minutes and you’ll feel great.
• How about wall squats?  30 seconds whenever you use the washroom?
• If you have carpal tunnel tendencies, remember to stretch your hands!

A little bit here, a little bit there, pretty soon you’ll notice the difference.

Express Yourself Re-Sale Clothing Store: A training store for young high school students

By: Anne Kelly

Junonia likes to donate its past-season inventory to charities in our area.  One is Youth Express.  They train high school students in business skills, and provide them an amazing leadership experience.    The re-sale shop is called Express Yourself.  www.expressyourselfclothing.com.  It is located at 1154 Selby Avenue in Saint Paul, MN  55104. Be sure to visit when you are in town!

I spoke with two of their managers, Perquila and Stella and store intern, Hannah.  Perquila and Stella started out with the store as high school students and they are now in college.  I was so impressed with their savvy, maturity and vision for their business.  They really run the show, with backup from the organization for space, accounting and training.

Q:  What’s the best part of being on staff here?
It’s the clothes.  It is especially fun working with fashion design students from our area colleges and university.  They select clothes from the store and completely re-work them into new really unique fashions that we then sell at special trunk shows.
 
It’s also fun to working and learning, growing as a group and a store.  I have been here since the start.  Over the 2 ½ years I have been here, we have really improved in our people management skills.  When we started we just didn’t know!  We had ugly clothes-horrible!  We would put out whatever we could get.  None of that stuff would sell now.  Now we have the hang of it.

Q: What help did you have getting started?
Randy and Chris at Youth Express really helped us, but they also gave us a lot of latitude.  We got a grant from the Sundance foundation for youth entrepreneurship, and paint from the Valspar company.  We also got help from the local colleges who allow us to do clothing collection drives.

Q:  Who is your target customer?
She is not the girl still in HS and still in the Mall.  She is the young woman at college or in her 20’s who is on a budget and wants to reduce, reuse and recycle.  She wants a variety of things to choose from in her limited budget range.

Q:  What is your pricing strategy?
We keep prices reasonable.  We peg our prices to about 1/3 of what “Lola” at the Mall of America charges.  We buy clothing and give cash or store credit.  A typical buy would be in the range of $1-3 but sometimes to $5-6.  The highest retail price we have is around $20, unless we get a real Chanel wallet—that sold for $50!

Q:  What have you learned about managing people?
People are so different!  We work with each new intern very closely, to figure out how they work and to see what they do well.  Some people work great from a task list, others come up with their own ideas.  We want them to grow up to our level.  We have really improved as people and grown up by working here.

Q:  Hannah, what have you learned as a new intern?
I’ve learned how to work a till, all about spreadsheets, and how to take care of a customer.  Be friendly, but give them enough space.

Q:  What type of items sell best for you?
Fashion jeans always sell, but tops are probably our best category, if we have enough variety. Some shoes do well. In the winter, any riding boot flies out of here, and in the spring sparkly prom shoes are very popular.  

Q:  Where do you find most of your clothing?
We do clothing drives at the area colleges, when students need to clean out their closets.  It also spreads the word so they come and shop here.  That’s our best resource, but we also take donations, like from Junonia, and we buy used items from people.  We tell them to clean out the back of their closet and then to come shopping to fill in the front of their closet!  We also use social media to get the word out.

Q:  What’s next for the store?
We are working on a campaign to push the name Xpress Yourself.  We want all women, no matter what their size, age or whatever, to express loving themselves.  Our thought is, “If mirrors could speak what would they say? They would say ‘You Rock!’”  (The mirror in the store says “Hello Gorgeous!”)  We want women to be who they are and to dress to express that individuality.  We think the magazines for women are terrible.  They say you should look a certain way.  Why do you need to look that way?

Walk for the Animals!

Walk for the Animals!
By Anne Kelly

My sister Rose is an animal lover.  She always wanted to be a vet, but she is so allergic she became a doctor.  Oh, well!  So now she just takes lots of antihistamines so she can enjoy her dogs and her horse.  She says the best thing in life is to wake up with the thump, thump, thump of her huge mastiff/lab mix’s tail on the bed.

This is her favorite fund -raising event of the year, and I love it too.  It’s a fun and crazy day, filled with more dogs than you can image, all well-loved and mostly acquired through the animal humane societies. There were hundreds of people and their pets.  This event provides 75% of the funding for the year!

 There was everything!  Huge Danes and Wolfhounds, tiny Mini Poodles (really cute!), my lovely Beagle, Stella of course, Rose’s gentle giant Jack, and a friend’s equally gentle and huge German Shepherd mix.
 
The organizers really have it down!  We all park in remote lots and take the bus to the starting line.  It is funny to see those huge dogs sitting up on the bus seats.  I didn’t see any goats this year (my favorite) but there were birds and bunnies and even some pet rats. I only heard one or two short growls the whole day!

If you are looking for a walking companion, consider adopting a shelter pet.  These beautiful, well-behaved animals and their happy owners were an inspiration.

Women Have it Rough

Women Have it Rough.

by:  Cyndi

Everywhere we look we are bombarded by magazine covers and television programs that entice us by promising to show us how to get bodies like movie actresses or facial features like our favorite reality tv stars.  I know every woman alive has flipped through the pages of a magazine and said aloud or under her breath "I wish I had her nose (eyes, ears, cheekbones, thighs, knees, chin, etc, etc, etc...)".  

As women, it's our personal responsibility to show young girls what self love is.  It starts so early, and little girls are so impressionable.  Girls who see their mothers diet and complain about their own body their whole life become women who don't like themselves very much.  The mirror becomes a source of pain. 

Why can't we just love ourselves?  

As a nanny, I know I have to watch what I do.  The littlest elephants have the biggest ears.  When someone pulls out in front of me in traffic, I can't say ugly words because the little mouth in the backseat will say them right back to me.  And when I step in front of the mirror I don't dare say one negative thing in front of her.  We have a ritual every morning when I get her dressed.  I walk her over to the mirror and say "What do you think?". Her precious two year old eyes scan the mirror and she usually does a little twirl or dance and says "I look fantastic!". Then I spend a few minutes telling her how smart and beautiful and kind and caring she is.  I tell her that she has an adorable nose and pretty eyes and the cutest cheeks I've ever seen.  

I hope she grows up believing it.  And I hope that we as women can come together to empower little girls to see the beauty in their own faces, because what you see in the mirror is more important than what you see on any magazine cover. 

About Cyndi:

Born and raised in Alabama, Cyndi is a former truck driver turned nanny now living in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia.  

She blogs openly about self love, fitness, and her lifelong struggle healthy body image at www.runrollrepeat.wordpress.com . 

Write for Junonia!

Junonia invites plus size women from all walks of life, from all corners of the world, and with all kinds of interests and ways of living their lives to the fullest.  If you have a story to tell and would like to participate in the Junonia blog we invite blog submissions that meet the following criteria. 

Topics:  Themes that will inspire the plus size woman to live her life to the fullest.  Positive, motivational, funny, personal, heart-warming, uplifting, generous, kind, commonsense, realistic, surprising.  The kind of stories people will want to send to their friends. 

No-no’s:  Foul language, intolerance, judgmental language.

Nice to haves:  Photos for illustration that enhance the story.

Editorial Policy:  Junonia reserves the right to accept or publish at its discretion.  The author agrees to allow Junonia to edit the blog and post on its site.  Junonia will give credit to the blogger’s “home” blog if the author wishes.    Blogger may re-post the blog after Junonia’s publication on their Home blog with a credit to Junonia of as posted on Junonia http://blog.junonia.com

Compensation:  Guest Blogger will receive a discount code worth 50% off their next order, good for three months after the blog is posted.

Submit articles to:

Susan Noble

General Manager

susannoble@junonia.com

Small and Large Cell Cervical Cancer Sisters Unite

The following is a letter received by our President Anne, from a very strong woman and we at Junonia wanted to share it with you.

Dear Anne,

I had wrote you several months ago about donating outfits to a group of women, all diagnosed with the same rare cancer I had called “Small Cell Cervical Cancer” or other wise known as Neuroendocrine Cervical Cancer. We were going to Vegas to a cancer conference and most were meeting for the first time. Your company was very generous in your donation. I ended up with more girls bigger then I thought, due to gaining weight from treatment. Without hesitation, Susan and Tori were wonderful in helping me with this gift for my cancer sisters. All the ladies were very surprised and happy when they found out they were getting a new outfit. So I wanted to say thank you from the bottom of my heart. I have been very lucky and done very well. I will be 5 years since my prognosis and this trip was a very big deal to these ladies. Meeting women who understand what each one is going through is a tremendous gift.

Due to the rare nature of this cancer no research is done so we found a doctor at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas named Dr. Michael Frumovitz who is a Gynecologic Oncologist. He has joined forces with our small group and helped start a research fund at MD Anderson. Our goal is to start a national registry to collect data in hopes that some better treatment options will be developed to give women diagnosed with small and large cell cervical cancer a better outcome. Dr. F as I call him, flew all the way from Texas to meet us and let us know that even though we have not reached our $200,000 goal, we are ½ way there and our project will begin.

Giving these ladies a new outfit helped this weekend be one they will never forget. Enclosed you will find a picture taken at our dinner where 40 people attend from the USA, Canada, Norway, and Australia. In this picture are 19 of the cancer sisters and our beloved Dr. F So many thanks for the wonderful donation to our ladies.

Thank You Again

Melanie Cummings

Anne 5K Blog #4

I’m still running and walking – and this week I heard the word for it, wogging!   What I’m noticing is that I’ve got more bounce in my step.  So while I’m still running 100 steps then walking 50 then running 100, etc. – it’s just a little easier.  Not faster, not prettier, but easier.  On the alternate days, I’ve walked the full 5K distance a couple of times, and that felt easy.  It takes me about an hour.  My friend who is training has already run a full mile, so I’m a little jealous.  I need to convert that green monster to motivation!  So this week I’m going to increase the running sections in my wogging.  Using the 10% rule tonight my running steps should number 110 , then on Monday 110*10% = 121,  Wednesday 133, and Friday 146—well maybe I’ll round up to 150.