Category Creative Energy

Worry About Today’s Peace – Wise Words Wednesday

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Worry about today's peace

Peace. Each day we look, hope, and pray for peace in our lives.

What do we do right after we wish for peace? We worry about all the things that are disturbing our peace. There seems to be a plethora of disturbances in the peace at our home right now so I thought, “Worrying doesn’t take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace,” was a perfect quote for this Wise Words Wednesday.

As hubby and I have attempted to plan a small vacation, my mind has been consumed by worry over the trip. What is wrong with me? I am planning a vacation. Vacation is supposed to be a stress reducer, but I am letting worry over details I cannot control consume me. It is definitely taking away from today’s peace. I need a vacation from worry.

My children are in a healthy routine of sibling conflict. At this point in the summer, most siblings are in a constant state of “I’m telling Mom.” My children’s inability to get along has me worrying about my success as a parent. That worry prevents me from finding the humor in the boys calling each other a “Tootie McTootieson.” I just need to make peace with the fact that they are going to fight, no matter how many toys, TV channels, or games they have. Continue reading “Worry About Today’s Peace – Wise Words Wednesday” →

Passion isn’t Part Time

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LeBeautique Passion

Owning your dream business is never a part time endeavor (no matter how often it is open). Christina (LeBeau) Rogers and Kylie (LeBeau) Dickneite are the owners of LeBeautique in Westphalia, Missouri. While the shop is only open a few days a week, their passion for the boutique and their clients is anything but part time.

Recently, Kylie told me she had her dream job, “even if it’s only part time.” Anyone who speaks to these ladies knows their passion for the boutique is definitely full time. The sisters are always thinking about which customer would be perfect for the newest romper or what accessories they can find to go with the cute boots coming in this fall. Constantly on the search for items that will bring joy to their customers, Christina and Kylie make their shopping all about the future.

LeBeautique 3In March of 2016 the LeBeau sisters opened LeBeautique after their friend Carrie asked, “Why don’t you LeBeau girls do something with that space up there?” Carrie is the owner/operator of The Stone House Salon. The front two rooms of the Stone House had sat empty for some time. That space would soon become LeBeautique. Kylie and Christina has always enjoyed the sport of shopping and frequently aspired to open their own shop. Carrie’s prompt was their jumping off point. Continue reading “Passion isn’t Part Time” →

Stop Watering Those Weeds – July Positivity Challenge

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“Stop watering the weeds in your life and start watering the flowers.”

Weeding 2

 

Here is the metaphor for this Intentergy Positivity Challenge:

Flowers = good stuff in your life

Weeds = bad, ugly, life-sucking stuff in your life

This month we need to stop watering the weeds and provide for the flowers in our lives.

Pull out, remove, mow down, stomp out, and destroy the elements of your life that are stopping you from smelling the metaphorical roses and skipping through those figurative daisies.

Debt, negativity, self-doubt, waste, bad habits, tardiness, or lack of attention are all weedy subjects and have the ability to be lessened in our lives.

 png 1 To make your weeding worthwhile, you need to establish a measuring system.

png 1 Set goals.

If you plan to weed out excess spending, make a list of the items or services you don’t need. Establish a budget and determine what you will do to water your success. For example, if you save X amount of dollars, treat yourself to a milk shake or a ticket to the summer box office bargain movie.

When working up the roots of negativity and self-doubt, get ready to dig deep. Eliminating the source of depressing or downbeat influences can be harder than removing the tangible “weeds” in your life.

png 1 Need some tools for weeding out the negative? Try some of these positive practices.

  • Weeding 3Surround yourself with positive people. When you knowingly spend time with individuals who are negative, you allow their negativity to pop up in your thinking too. Go for the happy-go-lucky friends and positive energy will abound.
  • Rest up. Exhaustion is fertilizer for negativity. Take a cat nap here and there. Do what you can to get those 8 hours of healthy sleep a night. Having a happy sleeping space leads to happier mornings and healthier days.
  • Water your body and your positivity. Our bodies work better when they are hydrated. A hydrated body leads to healthier complexion, better digestion, and more efficient absorption of nutrients. Hydration aids in metabolism and provides necessary fluids for muscle function. If your muscles ain’t happy, ain’t no”body” happy.
  • Let the sun shine! Getting plenty of sunshine is integral to a sunny disposition. Vitamin D from the sun does so much for our body, including reducing depression and negative energy. (Don’t forget the sunscreen though. Nothing dims your shine like a sunburn.) 
  • Play DJ Positive. Roll the windows down and blast your favorite tunes. Dance in your kitchen to your favorite songs. Swing your kiddos around the livingroom jamming out to a fast and fun beat. Science has proven that music improves mood and heart rate. Create a positivity playlist and weed out those sad songs. Flowers aren’t the only ones who grow better when music plays.
  • Positive AttirePut on your positive pants. Wear gear that makes you feel good. When you are confident or comfortable in your appearance, there is less room for self-doubt to sprout. Look good and know it. In the words of the late, great Audrey Hepburn, “Happy girls are the prettiest.” (This goes for guys too but it makes you more handsome.)
  • Say “NO” to drama. Turn off the reality TV. Walk away from the ho-hum timeline posts and tweets. Weeding 1Nip the gossip root in the bud. Quit breaking your back to make someone happy who is never going to be happy. Drama is another negative nutrient that we don’t need.

Continue reading “Stop Watering Those Weeds – July Positivity Challenge” →

Focused Energy…Where Does It Go?

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Where Focus Goes

I would love to blame my inability to successfully focus on the phases of the moon, or my kids’ schedules, or the incurability of freckles but the reality is that I have failed to give myself focus and therefore my energy has gone spastic this summer, but I’m working on it.

png 1 Spastic energy results in ineffective effort.

png 1 Ineffective effort results in failure on epic levels.

What is wrong with me????

png 1 Nothing. Continue reading “Focused Energy…Where Does It Go?” →

Don’t Keep All Summer in a Day

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All Summer in a Day.jpg

Ray Bradbury’s short story “All Summer in a Day” takes place on Venus and at a school where the children eagerly await the one day that summer will occur. On Venus summer comes once every seven years for just a matter of hours. The rest of the time the weather is stormy, windy, and overcast. This day is especially important to young Margot. Margot’s family moved from Earth and are considering the costly and arduous process of returning to the third planet from the sun for fear of losing their daughter to heartbreak. Margot is small, pale, and all too lonely. ‘She was an old photograph dusted from an album, whitenedaway, and if she spoke at all her voice would be a ghost.” The school children tease and ostracize her for her homesickness and taunt her about the only artwork she creates, pictures of life back on Earth. (The other children have no memories of what life is like on Earth.)

As the time nears to go outside and enjoy the rare sunshine, plants, and warmth, the children think it funny to lock Margot in the closet. They do not intend to leave her there but forget the grief-stricken girl as soon as the first rays of sun appear. Continue reading “Don’t Keep All Summer in a Day” →

goodreads.com – My Newest Obsession

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Goodreads.com is a home for book reviews, book recommendations, book lists, book clubs, and author bios and I am now obsessed with it.

If you already enjoy Goodreads, you might find humor in my newness or appreciation for the joy the site has brought to me. Please comment about any features you like or dislike on Goodreads. I had read about Goodreads from a number of other bloggers’ sites, but until our local librarian recommended it to me recently, I had not given it much consideration.

I checked out the site on Thursday and Friday created my account. Now I can’t stop reading reviews, searching for books that I have read or want to read, and am so enthralled by the give-aways, book clubs, and Goodreads blog that I am having trouble concentrating on what I wanted to type here.

goodreads addiction 6There are  many features to this site that I find beneficial. I love how the genres are organized. The search options are everywhere. I can even automatically search for the books I get from Amazon.

Good Read Addiction 2One of the best features for me is the ability to make a “Book Shelf.” I created a Book Shelf for the book club I sponsor at my kids’ school. I was able to find all of the book on the Mark Twain Reading list and add them. This will allow me to rate and review the books as soon as I read them. I can refer students and parents to this list and the sharing grows from there. Now I just have to get my hands on all those books. 🙂

I had the local library’s website open in split screen yesterday so I could start requesting some of the books that intrigued me from the Goodreads site. There is a way to find your local libraries and their catalogs through Goodreads and request your books. (I may wear out that Request button.) I still have to set the library request feature up on my account; searching for books and authors has prevented me from dedicating enough time to it. 

Goodreads is on Twitter (of course) and I have really enjoyed the prompt posts they have published and found some very positive reviewers and followers in the Goodreads’ throngs. Continue reading “goodreads.com – My Newest Obsession” →

Slimy Sensation

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Slimey Sensation 1

All the cool kids are making slime (this according to my kids). Why do the “cool” things have to be disgusting?

So as to avoid social disgrace for my children, I decided we would make slime this summer. When searching my go-to source Pinterest, I found like 10,000 results (this may be an exaggeration) for “make slime.” That’s A LOT of slime.

After a failed attempt at purchasing the right contact solution, I purchased the correct

Slimey Sensation 2

These are the ingredients for the solution that worked.

solution and we were off to the slimy races.

Because I refused to put much more money into slime creation, Dollar Tree was my source for white glue. They have two bottles for $1.00. (I bought 4 bottles.)

For fear of failing again, I memorized the four-ingredient recipe and laid out our slime supplies. It took my kids longer to fight over what color slime each would make than it did to create the concoction. Slimey Sensation 4

Step 1: I let each child pour 1/2 bottle of glue into a bowl. (recipe called for a full bottle)

Step 2: Mix 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda into the glue. (My kids love leveling off the baking soda under the lid of the box.)

Step 3: Add and mix in desired food coloring (If you are me, this is where you add food coloring to your grocery list.) Continue reading “Slimy Sensation” →

Surviving a Stampede for Daisies

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Daisy stampede (3)1

Are daisies worth dying for? My children thought I was willing to risk my life for these precious wild flowers.

Saturday a storm was rolling in, winds were billowing, the cattle needed care. Hubby and I were going to drop off a mineral tub and do a quick check of the cows we had just moved to new pasture. The kiddos were in the back seat of the truck taking in every moment.

As we parked at the top of the pasture, I noticed a thick patch of daisies. We had friends coming over for a BBQ later that night and I thought some daisies in a vase would be nice. While hubby unloaded the mineral tub, I hopped out to pick a fist full of flowers. As I was picking, the cows start to make their way to us.

Coming closer the herd picked up speed. They could smell the grain on the back of the truck and were excited about the mineral bucket.

Where I crouched picking daisies, I could tell the cows weren’t coming near me. From where my children sat, I looked like a sitting duck for the stampede. Continue reading “Surviving a Stampede for Daisies” →

Student or Teacher???

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Student or Teacher

As the regular school year has come to a close I find myself sitting here reflecting on the school year and my career as an agricultural educator.  Throughout my 11 years as an educator, there have been many of lessons learned.  Some have been more easily learned than others and some have hit me like a eighteen wheeler running down the interstate.

Though not a new lesson to many of us, but probably one of the most important lessons, is the importance of building relationships.

I am blessed to have the opportunity to not only build positive relationships with myWade 1 students in the classroom but also through the FFA organization. I find many of my week nights, if not working with FFA career development events, following my students and their athletic teams.  Through my attendance at these activities I don’t only develop positive student relationships but develop relationships with their families also.What some overlook is that those relationships can often make or break many of our students and us as educators too.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with some of the greatest kids in the world.  Though there is a couple of experiences that stick out the most. One of those this spring a group of student and I traveled the state every weekend from mid February through the end of March traveling from one FFA contest to another.  Over 1,000 miles spent in a van, you get to know each other pretty well. They definitely expanded my knowledge of popular teen music, as the first stop we ever made was to buy an aux cord. During one of our practices one student’s statement really made me realize the importance of positive relationship building.  This student told me I was the closest thing to a dad she had ever had. She appreciated that I cared about every aspect of her life, just not the academics.  The role we take as teachers is continually evolving.  To some students we do become that parental role for others it may be a different. Continue reading “Student or Teacher???” →

On Quitting – Thoughtful Thursday

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Kelly Smith 2

Kelly’s portable “office” 

At my old office, I surrounded myself with framed quotes.  They helped motivate me and, I hope, inspired some of the people who came and went in the little non-profit I managed.

One of my favorite quotes was this, by William G.T. Shedd: “A ship is safe in harbor, but that is not what ships are for.”

I had to come to terms with my own “shipness” (it’s not a word, but I’m making it so) after the birth of my third child threw my work-life balance into an overwhelming tailspin.  After weeks of crying in the daycare parking lot and crunching household budget numbers, it was made clear that something would have to give.  That something?  The job I’d loved for a decade, the one I never imagined leaving,

I saw a job ad for an adjunct communications instructor at the area technical college.  I hadn’t applied for a job in more than ten years, but I enthusiastically submitted my name for the position. A part-time job would allow me to keep my professional life active and free up much-needed time for my three kids, including one with cerebral palsy who logs multiple doctor’s appointments each month.

While I waited, I continued to struggle in my full-time career.  Even though I was stressed to the breaking point, I still didn’t know if I was ready to leave.

The day I finally hit a wall at work and came home devastated was the day I received a phone call about interviewing for the part-time teaching position.  The relief and excitement I felt was the answer I’d been waiting for.

As soon as the interview was scheduled, I gave my notice at work.  I didn’t even wait until I had the job, because I was that secure in the decision.  I knew I could no longer “make it work” (said in my most exaggerated Tim Gunn voice). Continue reading “On Quitting – Thoughtful Thursday” →