All By Myself...

Stuff of Life Keepin' it real! Keepin' it jazzy! Keepin' it positive! Oh wait... I said keepin' it real... hmm... maybe positive isn't so "real". Gotta tell you, I've been feeling blue. I do not know how long this feeling is going to last. It just seems like everything is tainted with the same brush of cynicism and despair. What's with that? I'm not going to go into it any further than that. Suffice it to say I am not feeling like my usual self. Been wondering how bad it would be for me to buy a ticket to somewhere far away and just disappear for a week (or two!) sort of like Ashley Judd's character in the Ya Ya Sisterhood. Probably not a good idea! Also relating to Izzy from Grey's Anatomy. Not that I'm seeing a lost lover on a regular basis, just that she also seems so removed from the real life everyone around her is living. So if I'm not blogging much these days, that's why. Not that anyone cares since my readership is a big two people (hi mam. hi Melissa) Anyways... Signing off for a while...

Inspiration Times Two

Okay, I have to post these to my blog after seeing them at zenhabits. I had seen the Randy Pausch one before, but the Stanford speech is really good too. Check them both out if you haven't already seen them. The first is about an hour long. The second is 15 minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo&eurl=http://zenhabits.net/2008/08/top-5-most-inspirational-videos-on-youtube/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&eurl=http://zenhabits.net/2008/08/top-5-most-inspirational-videos-on-youtube/ Not sure how to embed the actual video here so you'll have to click the links and head over to Youtube to watch.

Habit Forming

Stuff of Life As a semi-follow-up to the last post on unresolutions, I thought I'd post about my new favourite life change site zenhabits.net There is so much there about simplifying life, I wish I could do it all. But I'm going to start with one challenge, and that is to form a new habit. Leo, the guy who writes the blog (and also has a book out by the way, check Amazon) says not to set a bunch of new years resolutions but rather to work towards forming a habit because a habit lasts longer. 9 Rules to Form a Habit How to succeed in THE POWER OF LESS Challenge 1. Only one habit. While you might have 3-5 habits you want to form, youʼll decrease your effectiveness if you try to do more than one at a time. Choose just ONE habit to focus on for one month. You can do the other habits in subsequent months.

The habit I am going to form is... jeepers, when I sit here frozen, mulling over what to fill in that blank, I actually have a hard time choosing. So I'm choosing not the thing I think will make me happiest (exercise 10 minutes daily so I can fit into non-maternity pants), but the thing that I know will change many things in a sort of domino effect, and that is this: My habit is to write in a prayer journal for 10 minutes a day.

2. Start small. Just commit to 10 minutes a day. This might sound too easy, but you will almost guarantee success if you do this. You can increase later. I've been inspired like this before, and thought to myself "10 minutes is such a minor change... I'm going for the half hour change!" and inevitably, I've failed every time. So I've learned, that maybe baby steps really are best. 3. Commit publicly. Join the forum on thepowerofless.com, introduce yourself, and post the habit youʼll be forming. Also tell as many people as possible -- friends, family, coworkers -- and post on your blog, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or other service.

I'm not joining the forum, because that's one more daily internet distraction I just don't need. But I'm committing publicly here (okay so "public" really means to my sister and mother, who, I'm pretty sure are my only readers) and I'll update my status on facebook too.

4. Write your plan. Write out exactly what habit youʼll be forming, when you start, what time during the day youʼll be doing it, rewards you might give yourself, how youʼll overcome any potential obstacles. Write it down to succeed!

I'm going to write in a prayer journal for 10 minutes a day. Starting today, when the kids go down for naps and quiet time, the first thing I'll do, before anything else, is sit down in my comfy chair with a cup of tea and a nice pen and fresh journal page and just write. I won't edit my thoughts, or debate over wording. I'll just write my prayer to God, whatever is on my mind. I could follow A.C.T.S (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication) format, but I probably won't. It'll just be me telling God what's going on, how I need help, and opening myself up to His voice in my life.

5. Find a trigger. Find something you already do consistently every day -- wake up, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, shower, arrive at work, have lunch, have dinner, anything -- and tie your new habit to this trigger. Do it every day RIGHT AFTER this trigger. My trigger is nap time/quiet time! If, for some odd reason, these don't occur on a certain day, I'll do it when the kids go to bed at night. But let's be honest... I live for nap time and I don't sway from THAT routine too often! 6. Be consistent. Do not miss a day. Try to get a streak going -- 30 straight days! If you miss a day, keep going, but the more consistent you are, the more likely the habit will stick. Aiming for 30 days! 7. Report progress. Every day, report your progress on the Challenge forumʼs daily thread. I'll report back here daily. 8. Motivate. Give yourself rewards each week. In fact, give yourself a reward each of the first few days, and then weekly after that.

Gotta be honest, I like rewards... I don't treat myself too often. So, for the first week, each day after I write in my prayer journal, I will treat myself to... um... chocolate. Okay, I know this really defeats my other secret goal that I would magically become a size 10, but I can't think of anything that is smallish and something I would look forward to. But to make it better, I'm not going to oink out on a whole chocolate bar. I'll get 7 nice individual chocolates from Purdy's or Laura Secord's or Bernard Callbeaut. Today I might not have time to pick up so I'll satisfy myself by breaking off part of my chocolate M from Christmas. It's not high quality, but hey, chocolate is chocolate!

9. Be positive. Keep a positive attitude throughout the entire challenge to be successful. If you find yourself thinking negative thoughts, squash them like a bug! And replace them with positive thoughts. It really works.

This might be the hardest of all. Struggling with the whole negative self perception these days, but I'll give it a try.

The other suggestion along with the habit formation is to use the habitmantra:

I MAKE A SOLEMN OATH TO MYSELF - I WILL NOT MISS A DAY OF COMPLETING MY NEW HABIT. THIS SMALL TIME I WILL SPEND ON THE NEW HABIT IS A TINY PRICE TO PAY FOR SUCCESS.

I'm not so into mantras, but I will write this verse and post it on my fridge (which I visit frequently during the day) as a reminder and encouragement and mini-prayer:

Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry for help come to you. Psalm 102:1.

New Years UnResolutions

Stuff of Life I’ve read a bunch of blogs today and it seems like most everyone has set some type of resolution for themselves. Things like lose weight, exercise, do more crafting, read, memorize scripture etc… For some reason I just have not gotten into the whole resolution idea this year. In the past I’ve successfully read the bible front to back, and read my bible daily as resolutions. This year? I don’t know. I guess I’m either not motivated, or already so convinced I’ll fail that I don’t want to resolve to do anything! But if I did resolve to do something, I’d probably have a list something like this: 1) Pray daily and keep a prayer journal. I love journaling, but rarely maintain the habit for any longer than a month at a time! 2) Read my bible and work on memorizing scripture (still working on that psalm from oh-so-long-ago!) 3) Engage my children in something new and interesting each day. Even if it’s just a little something, some days I feel like my kids just did the same-old-same-old! I know repetitive play is important, but a fun craft, or cooking activity or even new song makes the day a little less ordinary! 4) Take care of myself. This includes little things like making sure I get dressed and brush my hair before, say, eleven in the morning (!!!), eating foods that are not grain or dairy based (i.e. fruits and veggies!), exercising even once in a while and doing things that other people do for themselves but which I somehow feel I don’t deserve (like getting a hair cut, or buying clothes so I can finally stop wearing maternity clothes!) 5) Limit my on-line time. Actually this really should be a goal of mine. I am addicted to facebook and checking on other people’s blogs and following random links into the vast universe of the world wide web! Seriously a waste of time and energy. I would be so much better off just doing something rather than watching what other people are doing! 6) Try not to get library fines. I am not going to tell you how big my fines are. Suffice it to say they are big. Really big! 7) Hang out with my husband more often. You’d think that the fact that we share a house and 3 children would naturally lead to spending time together, but surprisingly this is not so. When the kids are conscious we’re both engaged in a sort of zone-defence parenting, and when they’re sleeping this last year we’ve both been fully engaed in creating lecture materials for Jim’s lectures in bio, micro, and chem. Whee. No, seriously. Whee. I’ll stop at 7 before I start really looking at how much I’d like to change in my life, and get truly depressed! Well, if you have a resolution, I hope you succeed! As for me, my resolutions are usually set in the morning, forgotten by mid-day, remembered in the evening, and sometimes scrambled to achieve in the evening or held over for another day! Cheers!

Stuff of Life I just went back and re-read one of my blogs which had left off with a bit of a "cliff hanger." I mentioned our trip to the West Edmonton Mall waterpark, and my MRI experience! I thought maybe I'd fill you in on the details today. First, the MRI. I decided to participate in a University of Alberta study on post-partum depression and glucose levels in certain areas of the brain (at least I think it was glucose... it was related anyways). At the time I was nearly 8 months post-partum, and I was still dealing with some of the aftereffects of giving birth in terms of finding balance emotionally and what-not. As well, I figure it's important to help where you can with research. especially if it may lead to quality of life improvements for others. The good thing about the study was that childcare was provided! I seriously would not have participated if it wasn't... if I arrange childcare myself, trust me, I am NOT using to participate in medical research! So the nurse in the office took the kiddies and played with them in a little room full of toys, and took them for a walk and even bought them french fries! They were quite happy with the whole experience. As for myself, I answered a LOT of questions about myself, my history, my family, my medical history (surgeries, etc...). I have to tell you right now that that sort of interview process reeeealy makes me look crazy on paper! The question about have you ever seen visions or heard voices in your head - my answer was "yes." Now tell me that doesn't make you think I'm just a wee bit unbalanced! Of course I had to explain that it was during a prayer experience many years ago and it wasn't so much an audible voice as a sort of understandable wordless presence... okay, I just realized that no matter how I explain it, I'm gonna look weird on paper! Oh well. That's me. It's who I am! I've been in an MRI machine before for my knee, but this was completely different because they were doing a brain scan, so as well as being inserted in a very narrow tube, I also had this visor-like thing around my head. Quite claustrophobia inducing really! They had attached a mirror to the visor so that you could see out the end of the tube to the clock on the wall, but that's about it! As well the clock appeared not only upside down, but backwards as well so tellin time was quite a brain teaser! I decided to close my eyes for as long as I could so that my anxiety about a small semi-enclosed space would decrease... what you can't see can't hurt you, right? So after 15 minutes I opened my eyes, checked the time, and closed them again. Ten minutes passed... check the clock... close my eyes... five minutes... check... five... check... I should tell you that the MRI machine is REALLY LOUD! I had earplugs in (yuck they gross me out) and those ear protectors like you see air traffic controllers on the runway wearing. But it was still a lot of banging and clicking and thumping. The magnets in the machine are really strong and basically what they do is polarize all the atoms (molecules?) in your body by spinning them with the magnets, then they "release" the molecules and take pictures while the molecules reorient themselves. Some molecules reorient slower than others so that's how they can take pictures and tell one kind of molecule (e.g. glucose) from another (e.g. protein). It doesn't hurt... in fact you can't feel anything. So there I am in the machine and I'm hearing: boom... click... kang kang kang... buh-boom... tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat... brrrrrrrrrrr... king... king... boom... And so forth. And I'm waiting for time to pass thinking this will definitely be worth the $150 bonus they give for participating (which I'm using to treat myself to scrapbooking supplies and which, by the way, they haven't sent me yet, so I'll have to e-mail and remind them). And the last time I looked at the clock there was 25 minutes left. The next thing I know there's a bright light and I'm being extracted from the machine. I had fallen asleep. That's like falling asleep next to a jackhammer! Well, it just goes to show how tired a mother of 3 can get! REALLY TIRED! Well, I intended to share about WEM, but I'm going to go take a bath gefore wrapping Christmas presents! Scrapbook Idea of the Day Another Layout for you... this time without pictures! Yes. I am the great unfinisher! Used the Symphony (I think that's the title) paper pack and some chipoard letters which i covered with the paper (see detail above). I also ran a pice of the solid paper through an embossing/diecutting machine then sanded the embossed areas to bring out the pattern (see bottom right of the left page. All in all it turned out okay. I really like the papers, but have to find pictures to match!

Boom-Di-Ada!

Scrapbook Idea of the Day

The girl is on a roll! Yesterday's More to Adore layout followed by today's Boom-di-ada Level 2 Paper Packet! I must say that Boom-di-ada is one of my favourite papers, and my sister also loves it! Something about the colours that makes me cheerful! I also had the Stickease to go with this packet (I don't always get the stickease, but the ones with this set were fun) which I pop dotted (see detail above) in two places. I love the simplicity of this layout.

In general I have to say I like simplicity over busyness. It's a trend you'll see in my layouts. Not big on more than two, maybe three patterns on a layout, and usually these must be grounded by a significant area of solid or very subtle patterns.

This time I at least got the journalling done, but sorry, no title yet. I know, it's a problem I have. I'm a great starter, but not such a great finisher. This may be why our laundry sometimes gets folded, but rarely gets put away!

Hey! She really DOES scrapook!

Scrapbooking Idea of the Day

Well, it's been a loooong time, but I finally recorded some of my layouts, and thought I'd post one today! The supplies are all Close to My Heart from the More to Adore Level 2 Paper Packet, as well as a little brown ribbon (chocolate, I think, maybe cocoa).

I know, I know, I didn't do journalling or add the title, but, hey, it's a start! Also, I used my playful flourishes stamp set on the bottom right page to jazz up the simple blush pattern.

Done and Done.

Stuff of Life The items I've done are in bold! 1. Started your own blog 2. Slept under the stars 3. Played in a band 4. Visited Hawaii 5. Watched a meteor shower 6. Given more than you can afford to charity 7. Been to Disneyland 8. Climbed a mountain (Mt Robson!) 9. Held a praying mantis 10. Sang a solo 11. Bungee jumped 12. Visited Paris 13. Watched a lightning storm at sea 14. Taught yourself an art from scratch 15. Adopted a child 16. Had food poisoning 17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty 18. Grown your own vegetables 19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France (See #12) 20. Slept on an overnight train (See #91) 21. Had a pillow fight 22. Hitch hiked (technically my mother hitchhiked but I went along too!) 23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill (Don't tell!) 24. Built a snow fort 25. Held a lamb 26. Gone skinny dipping 27. Run a marathon 28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice 29. Seen a total eclipse 30. Watched a sunrise or sunset 31. Hit a home run 32. Been on a cruise 33. Seen Niagara Falls in person 34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (Netherlands and Turin, AB...) 35. Seen an Amish community 36. Taught yourself a new language 37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied (When teaching and single!) 38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person 39. Gone rock climbing 40. Seen Michelangelo's David 41. Sung karaoke (Rock Band counts, right?) 42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt 43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant 44. Visited Africa 45. Walked on a beach by moonlight 46. Been transported in an ambulance 47. Had your portrait painted 48. Gone deep sea fishing 49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person 50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris (See #12) 51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling 52. Kissed in the rain 53. Played in the mud 54. Gone to a drive-in theater 55. Been in a movie 56. Visited the Great Wall of China 57. Started a business (Close to My Heart!) 58. Taken a martial arts class 59. Visited Russia 60. Served at a soup kitchen 61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies (Not by choice) 62. Gone whale watching 63. Got flowers for no reason 64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma 65. Gone sky diving 66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp 67. Bounced a check 68. Flown in a helicopter 69. Saved a favorite childhood toy 70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial 71. Eaten caviar 72. Pieced a quilt (I think I'm working on my eleventh now...) 73. Stood in Times Square 74. Toured the Everglades 75. Been fired from a job 76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London 77. Broken a bone 78. Been on a speeding motorcycle (Thanks Papa!) 79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person 80. Published a book 81. Visited the Vatican 82. Bought a brand new car 83. Walked in Jerusalem 84. Had your picture in the newspaper 85. Read the entire Bible 86. Visited the White House 87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating 88. Had chicken pox 89. Saved someone's life 90. Sat on a jury 91. Met someone famous 92. Joined a book club 93. Lost a loved one 94. Had a baby 95. Seen the Alamo in person 96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake 97. Been involved in a law suit 98. Owned a cell phone (During my year as a substitute teacher) 99. Been stung by a bee 100. Read an entire book in one day

Confessions of a Control Freak

Stuff of Life I'm not going to do an update. Suffice it to say things have been going. Not necessarily going well, just going. Our feet are still technically under us. Barely. At the end of this week, hopefully things will start to shift. But I had to blog and share my excitement about a new project, or rather an old project in a new form. Check it out in full at the FLYlady blog (google for the link... I'm lazy). It's a whole system of keeping organized and staying on top of things that I think I might love. I'm going to try it anyways. The first part of the "Control Book" starts with "My Bedtime Routine". Seriously could be the most important part of the day because how you go to sleep can change how you wake up. On the routine she has 1) Shine sink (kitchen that is, because isn't it so great waking up to a clean sink without grubby dishes?) 2) lay out clothes (a great idea for me since I spend all sorts of time finding my clothes and the kids at the same time and am usually frustrated by the process in the morning especially when we have to go somewhere!) 3) Brush teeth (good idea!) and finally GO TO BED AT A DECENT TIME! So, other than that last one, I am starting this tonight. Okay actually I don't currently have enough clean clothes to get me out of the house, but I'll put together something reasonable for in the house tomorrow while I catch up on laundry. The sink? I plan to take all the dishes out of it, stack them on the counter, clean it and leave it. Yes, that's right, tonight I'm relocating the problem but according to her, that's okay (Stack them on the floor if you have to, she writes!) And brush teeth? That's a given. And I look forward to my Cinnamon Rush toothpaste every night! Gotta Go Be Organized!

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