A few days ago, I wrote a post on how I allowed myself to sleep in over the weekend and I was so transformed by the experience of having the luxury of two extra hours of sleep that I created a video.

You can also read our original feature here: Slowing Down Life: 5 Tips to Sleeping in on Weekends

You can watch it below:

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There has been so much happening in my life since the beginning of the summer that with each passing week I felt that I was sleeping less and less and I would always feel exhausted by 10:30am.

It got to the point where I was literally dragging my body around and my energy level was so low I barely had enough to enjoy the simpler things in life.

This past weekend, I set everything in my life aside to be able to do something I’ve not done in a very (VERY) long time: sleep in.

Sleeping in on weekends for an extra hour or two on Saturday or Sunday mornings will do your body a world of good and will help recharge your batteries.

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Repeat after me: This year, I will not try to be Super Woman!

Last month, I talked about “How sleeping 4-5 hours per night almost did me in”. What I might not have revealed up to now is that while most of you were enjoyed the festive celebrities, I was stuck in bed and inside my home with a severe flu virus that nearly did me in. I cannot remember the last time I had been that sick.

Nursing my sick self back to a healthier me really got me thinking about the decisions I had made during 2007 and how they have gotten me to a point where I truly believed that working insane hours (morning, day and night) without any breaks would have no bearing on my health.

Photo by Spiralz

*** Embrace the NEW year ***

I’m such a channel-surfer. If it wasn’t for channel surfing, I’d never land on so many great stories on the telly because I only spend one or two hours per day with the television on (most of the time I’m doing something else while it’s on). Channel-surfing is my way of watching as much as possible in the shortest period of time.

When I do find something worth watching, I’ll stop and take note. That’s what happened when I landed on BBC World on a Sunday afternoon.

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November and December were particularly long and stressful months for me. I was busy with Beauty Match and with a few other projects I manage. I knew I was pushing myself a bit too much, but I kept telling myself: I’ll be okay.

So basically, I was really working overtime to introduce great new beauty products for the holiday season (you’ll notice how many we covered and researched in December). I also started writing for my Beauty Redefined Yahoo! Lifestyle blog and I also got a few additional offers to expand the Beauty Match content to a wider audience.

*** Beauty Match in London (U.K.)***

Ahhhhhh! North Americans are such slaves to their work. We work far too much and for far too many hours every single day. Our dreams and desire of a better life pushes us to cram in as much work as possible. Some of us even double up or triple up on the amount of work we can cram in a week by holding 2, 3 or 4 jobs. With all that work, you’d think that Canadians and Americans would actually take numerous weeks of vacation per year to recharge. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Europeans get far more vacation time than we do. It’s always such a shock to so many North Americans visiting Europe for the first time that shops would close for two to four weeks without batting an eyelash and without losing their clientele.