Posted in Festivities, Food, Stress-relief, tagged Christmas, fear, fun, goals, holiday, love my holiday, perspective, relax, stress-relief, Thanksgiving, wisdom on November 24, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
As I was making pumpkin pies with my daughter today I was telling her how important it is to mix the ingredients in the order that the recipe states. If you mix the milk in before the spices then it’s impossible to truly blend the spices into the mixture. The pies end up looking a little odd as the spices collect on the top of the pie, looking rather spotted.
You might wonder how I know about this great mystery of life.
Posted in Family & Friends, tagged choices, choose, Christmas, Easter, family, giving, holiday, love my holiday, obligation, perspective, respect, Thanksgiving, traditions on November 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I was wandering through StumblUpon and ran across this website http://bit.ly/dsy76u where they had the following note:
It is worth noting that the word family originally meant a band of slaves. Even after the word came to apply to people affiliated by blood and marriage, for many centuries the notion of family referred to authority relations rather than love ones. The sentimentalization of family life and female nurturing was historically and functionally linked to the emergence of competitive individualism and formal egalitarianism for men.
–Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were, pp. 43-44
At first I laughed and then I started to think about it. I know many people who feel like they are enslaved by their families, or who show up for family functions because an authority figure demands it.
Posted in Family & Friends, Festivities, Travel, tagged attitude, family, gratitude, holiday, perspective, relax, Thanksgiving on November 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, “thank you,” that would suffice. ~Meister Eckhart
And that is what Thanksgiving is all about, being grateful for all the blessings in our life and simply saying thank you. It’s easy to get caught up in the hassle of travel, the cleaning and the cooking. It’s easy to get stressed out and worried about “everything going right”. But the fact is that, at the end of the day, the food will have been eaten, the house will be messy and the guests will have come and gone.
Posted in Change it!, Stress-relief, tagged change, choices, choose, Christmas, communication, family, fear, holiday, relax, Thanksgiving on November 10, 2010 | 3 Comments »
When you think about Christmas, or any holiday for that matter, do you just duck your head in the sand and hope it will just pass you by? Many people do this, thinking they will wait until they can’t avoid it any longer and then they just drag themselves through the preparations and the celebrations, hoping they can survive until the bitter end.
The sad thing about this scenario is that the Christmas ostrich creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Posted in Change it!, Make a Difference, Traditions, tagged change, choose, Christmas, goals, holiday, stress-relief, Thanksgiving, traditions on November 5, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
I’m reading “Uglies” by Scott Westerfeld. It’s a story about a city where, at the age of 16, everyone is “made pretty”. They give them perfect eyes, wonderful bone structure, even new skin. They change everything about them so that everyone can be pretty.
I’m not very far into the book, but at this point there are two 15-year-old girls who are great friends but one is looking forward to becoming “pretty” and the other isn’t. She believes that more than your looks are changed in that special operation and that you lose your intelligence and true creativity as well. She wants to run away to a place where you get to choose, where you can be yourself and do what works best for you.
I see people live with this dilemma in their holidays all the time.
Posted in Change it!, Inspiration, Traditions, tagged change, choices, choose, Christmas, family, holiday, perspective, Thanksgiving, traditions on September 13, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I just finished reading How Starbucks Saved My Life by Michael Gates Gill. It’s a fascinating story of how one man’s life changed dramatically and how a job at Starbucks created even more unexpected changes in his life. While reading the book I discovered more about what makes Starbucks work and it’s the same thing that can make your holidays work too!
Posted in Change it!, Festivities, tagged 4th of July, Christmas, Easter, family, holiday, love, perspective, Thanksgiving on August 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
When holidays roll around we love to celebrate with others. Whether it’s Easter, Mothers’ Day, the 4th of July or the big ones of Thanksgiving & Christmas, we gather together with friends and family. Inevitably I hear about the family squabbles, the arguments and general tension these events can bring. As I talk to people, they tell me how they long for a peaceful gathering. Well, today I saw a sign the takes the bull by the horns and gives us specific direction for handling this situation:
