News About Fireplaces

One of my fellow blog jolters, Sharon, has a blog called Your Elegant Bed & Bath. I have been wondering what to do about the huge, red brick monstrosity in my living room, better known as the fireplace. Her article about fireplaces gives me a few new things to think about for my fireplace facade.

But don’t stop reading the blog with this post, she has tons of great ideas for your home throughout her blog. I have it marked as one of my favorites and love to see what she comes up with each time. Check it out! 🙂

A Tribute to Grandfathers

A wonderful thing happened this morning. I visited the blog of a fellow blog jolter, Earl, and found this post about his grandfather.

I was totally touched by his account of time spent with his grandfather and memories of my own wonderful grandfather came rushing back. Memories of sitting on his porch in the porch swing at night to hear the tree frogs and crickets and the tree leaves rustling in the breeze. Those were the happiest times of my childhood and he was the most wonderful man I knew…and still is! Every man I’ve known since has had to live up to his example!! And that’s a tall order!!

I still miss him. But today, Earl’s blog brought memories of him back for a few minutes. Thanks, Earl!! 🙂

It’s Thursday, So it Must be Blog Jolting Day

This fellow jolter has a blog called Inside Motherhood. She recently posted about all those annoying spam “pass-it-on” emails we all hate to get. You know the ones. They tell us 100 new ways to use our Coca-Cola, reiterate the latest crazy urban legends as if they were real, tell us that we need to forward them to 10 people including the person who sent them or something bad could happen, tell of how Microsoft is going to pay us all big bucks…. The list is endless.

I personally don’t need to know another 50 ways to use my dryer sheets. I like using them in the dryer and that’s good enough for me. 🙂

Since we found out that there is no kid with a terminal illness who is collecting the world’s most business cards and that hypodermic needles are too big to fit in the change slot in vending machines (so it really is ok to stick your finger in to get the change) and all the other goofy things, these emails are just annoying.

And I’d like to add one more. The emails that have a file attachment with a powerpoint presentation of landscape photos, sappy one-liners and a music background. They fill up the inbox, usually are not worth the time to download, open and let them play and are just a little too suger-sweet for my palate. They go in the trash without being opened most of the time. If I want to see that sort of thing, I’ll rent a video. Besides, these things are great ways to transfer computer viruses.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to hear from my friends. Email is a great way to keep in touch even when in other countries. I enjoy the humorous quotes and jokes too (as long as they aren’t hurtful to someone.) But the rest are nothing more than a different type of spam to most of us.

Next time, just leave me off the list for those kinds of messages. I’d rather hear how you are doing.

Technorati tag: blogging

Fond Childhood Memories

I came across a wonderful blog written by Rebecca who lives in rural Ireland. Her blog is called An Irish Craftworkers Good Life. In it, she has a post about her children going blackberry picking. First of all, I love the great way she avoids the purple stains on their clothes…she has them wear purple to start with! Very clever!  😉

The post reminds me of summers on my grandfather’s farm as a kid. My grandmother would give my brother and me a large wash pan to fill and we’d set off blackberry picking. It’s hazardous duty, after all, they have thorns about a half an inch long!

After a while we’d come in the house, covered with purple stains, our arms scratched all over and big purple grins. After all, we HAD to taste test as we went along, right?

Then my grandmother would make us a fresh blackberry cobbler and we’d top it off with Grandpa’s homemade vanilla ice cream. To this day, blackberries bring a smile to my face and remind me of childhood. Thanks, Rebecca, for bringing back these lovely memories today!

Please Use Your Vote Only for Good!

A fellow Blog jolter, Kelly, publisher of Blended With Salt, recently wrote a post about “The Corporation”. Her words are so close to home for so many of us these days.

I personally know more than a few people who have lost jobs to outsourcing, mostly to India. I understand we have to compete in a world economy, but do we have to do it at the expense of our own way of life? Do we really think it’s better to give our coporate CEOs multi-seven-figure bonuses each year, while the average worker hopes to keep their job long enough to actually get to retire someday?

Companies are making people take “early retirement” long before they are old enough to collect their retirement benefits, and with the economy the way it is, they are forced to (a) lower their standard of living considerably, (b) take jobs at far lower pay and benefits then they had before, (making “(a)” a strong possibility as well) or (c) starting a business simply to survive. This is all due to the shift to “The Corporation” thinking…that the price of the stock is forever more important to companies than any measly person who works for it.

Is this really progress? Is this the way we want our economy to run? All I can say is that if we don’t like this, we had better all get out and vote to change the regime to one more “For the People.”

Your vote matters! Make it count!

You say you want to write a book?

Here’s a great post by Jill Koenig at GoalBlog.com about doing just that. Her point is that once the book is written, there’s still a ton of work to be done to market it to publishers, consumers, etc. As she puts it, writing a book is only 10% writing. Sounds daunting, I know, and I think that’s why most of the people I know that want to write a book never actually have started it. (Me included.)

I once heard someone ask the question: “How do you eat an elephant?” Answer:  “One bite at a time.”

Or for those more traditional: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step.” ~~ Confucious

Translation –> You have to take the first bite or the first step! In other words, sit down at the computer or paper and start writing! And once you complete the manuscript, don’t put it in a drawer and forget about it…start to market it!

Writing a book is a noble and worthy thing to do. Thank goodness there are many people that actually spend the time and effort to complete them and make them available to us. And those of us who have considered writing a book should think more seriously about doing it.

Thanks, Jill, for the inspiration and the motivations!

In fact, Jill is so motivational that I think I need to cut this post short and go start my book!  😉

Technorati tag: writing

Thankful Thursday

One of the fellow members of the Blogjolt group has a regular feature she blogs about each week. Her name is Jamie and her blog is http://blondemomblog.com/

Apparently, she has been posting a Thankful Thursday item for a while now and I truly love the idea! Here’s her latest one, so you can see what I mean.

Since the way to happiness and prosperity is to start with an attitude of thankfulness, I am going to blog today about the things for which I am thankful.  Here goes (stream-of-consciousness-style)

I am thankful for:

• a good paying “day job” that allows me to live a comfortable lifestyle
• the ability to make and keep the most wonderful friends ever!!  (you all know who you are!)
• that Cindy’s surgery came off ok and that she’s recovering very quickly
• that my son John is nearly finished with college (whew! — more $$$)
• that both of my kids and both of my granddaughters are healthy and doing fine
• the most adorable granddaughters anyone could ever have!!
• my health and the health of my friends
• that it’s finally starting to become fall. I hate the 100 degree weather of the summer!
• that I’ve had several very cool adventures lately and have a couple more coming up
• a fabulous and fun “hobby”…that of making and designing jewelry
• that I have discovered how fun it is to blog
• three completely cute and cuddly “kitty boys”
• new ideas every day
• an occasional martini
• as my grandfather would have put it: that I’m young enough to enjoy some things, but old enough to know better!  😉
• an update to that: that I know better, but enjoy some things anyway!  🙂
• that, for me anyway, 2006 has been a thousand times better than 2005!!!

I hope each of you take a few minutes to be thankful for the great things in your life today too!

“Simple” Path to Higher Self Esteem

About a year ago, a friend of mine asked me how one changes their outlook on life and themselves. He’s struggled with depression for years. It hasn’t stopped him from being a very successful and accomplished person, nor from being a good friend. However, he could be much happier if he could find the answer to his question.

At the time, and several times since then, I tried to explain the concept of monitoring one’s own thoughts…of being the “observer” and editing the negative thoughts to more positive ones. Somehow, he never believed it was that simple. Well, I never actually used the word “simple.” Because it’s not. To change one’s way of viewing life and oneself is a very tough thing to do after a lifetime of practicing thinking a certain way. But is it worth it? ABSOLUTELY!!!

I joined a group of women bloggers a few weeks ago and we post articles about each others’ blogs in order to help build all our traffic. The latest blogjolt recipient is Aurelia Williams. She’s a life coach, mother and wife. Her post about the way to higher self esteem really struck a chord with me, and reminded me of the conversations my friend and I had last year. She uses different words to say the same thing I was trying to communicate, but the message is still the same.

I hope my friend reads this post and then reads Aurelia’s post. Perhaps her words will make more sense than mine did. The message is the same, but the messenger is more experienced at teaching these skills.

Her site is loaded with wisdom. I invite everyone to check it out and see the posts that help them the most.

If Only….

A friend told me about a blog entitled, Who’s Yo Mama? While checking it out, I came across a post about the extreme need for people to fill jobs on Maui. Well, let me tell you, some days that just seems like too much of a Temptation! I think I should start packing and head to Hawaii!

So what’s to stop me? Well, my kids and grandkids are all on the mainland….all my friends too….and the jobs are probably all service-type jobs. I’m not scared of that, since I’ve worked those jobs before, but now I’m older and less physically resilient. Besides, paradise might not seem so fabulous if it was all the time. *sigh*

Ok, I guess it’s a good dream, but not in my future after all.  😉

Language learning at an early age

I just ran across a great blog for moms with new babies, called Rookie Moms. Just so no one gets the wrong idea, I have no announcements to make.  😉  However, since the site has ideas for activities that moms and babies can do in the first year of life, I browsed a bit. After all, my daughter has a three-month-old and a nearly-three-year-old. It never hurts to find new ideas that could help her out.

 One of the entries suggests that one play a radio station for the baby in a language different than is spoken in the home. I thought this was a wonderful idea because children learn so languages so easily at such a young age.

I also felt good about something I did when I was visiting my daughter and her family earlier this month. My oldest granddaughter, Gracie, and I woke up before anyone else one day and Gracie asked to watch cartoons. Since I don’t know the channel line-up for the Dallas area, I started flipping through the channels. When we came to a Spanish-language cartoon, Gracie was intrigued. Of course, we stopped there and began to watch the show together. My thinking was that as long as it has her interest, there’s nothing wrong with letting her enjoy it…and maybe even learn a few Spanish words in the process.

Now, I can’t claim that Gracie is now a bi-lingual child, or that she will even remember the day we watched the cartoon in Spanish, but I do feel that exposing her to another language is never a bad thing. If done now and then, it might even lead her to be more comfortable with learning to speak another language one of these days. Who knows?

This was just one of the fun suggestions that the two new moms make on their blog. I suggest that anyone with a new baby could find a couple of suggestions to help them out. Check it out.