Free Advice Friday

It is my turn ladies…looking for some free advice this Friday!

What do you do with failure?

Does it harden your resolve?

Do you try again?

Do you blame others? Do you blame yourself?

Do you move on?

Do you change courses?

Does it paralyze you? Or does it light a fire for you?

I find myself not failing, but not really succeeding either, in an overall sense. I see changes that need to be made. I see things that need improved, but I find myself unable to make the changes, unable to find a place to start and feel like “This is possible”.

 I may just be on the verge of becoming a hoarder, or worse…Maybe I am just not a perfectly clean house kind of girl, but it feels so good when the house is that kind of clean. And maybe I am just not a blog everyday and run an Etsy shop kind of girl, but if feels so good when it is happening. And maybe I am just not meant to be wife, mother and student. And maybe I am just not as organized and together as everyone thinks I am…maybe I am just not who I always thought I was…but where does this leave me? What of everything on my plate does God want for me and from me? And what if what He wants for me isn’t even on my plate, yet? Then what do it do with all of “this”?

Okay…well, ladies…any advice…

I think I might go start throwing things away!

Happy Friday!

Free Advice Friday

No man is an island….

For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction…

Money talks…

How many ways can it be said? Everything we do has an impact on something else, someone else.

Daily there are stories about the sad state of our world, a new toy that crosses the line, a celebrity who has done something sleazy, a group supporting something outlandish.  It is always followed by pages of comments, shared hundreds or thousands of times, and then….nothing… nothing changes. The same people who complained give in and buy their kids the toy or go to the sleazy celebrity’s next new movie or donate to a “good cause” even though it supports something the donor doesn’t believe in.

How often do we not follow through? How often do we say something and then it stops right there at the end of the statement?

I know I am guilty.

We said no princesses…not that we don’t like Disney, but we want our daughter to grow up knowing more than being a princess. We want her to know she is special and worthy of being treated with respect because of who she is, and we wanted her to grow up with some sense of what being a woman is really all about. She has a few princess things – a story book or two, an Ariel doll, but I feel like that is not bad for 4 ½ years! Not that we are opposed to girly, because believe you me, she is one girly-girl!

We have a whole list of actors, actresses and singers that we don’t watch or listen to because of their politics, who they donate to, and things like that. Is it a drag? Sometimes, especially when it feels like we are the only ones not seeing a certain movie or listening to a certain album, but it feels good to take a stand.

I am always good about it? No…

Sometimes I just choose to not look into something, having a gut feeling that it probably is not in line with our politics or our values…but when it counts (it should always count, right?) I try to stick to my guns…sadly those are the times when my one movie ticket or my one abstaining from liking something on Facebook are such a small drop in the bucket that it does matter…except to me.

All this to say…there is nothing in today’s world that is not political – and by that I don’t mean strictly government politics…

No man is an island….

For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction…

Money talks…

And that is my “free” advice this Friday.

That's right the Things I Am Made Of shop picture is
an apple picking picture!

I need to start taking notes. I had all sorts of things to say this week and now my mind is empty.

It might be that I finished my first college class in ten years last night, leaving my brain a mushy mess. 

It might be that I am SOOO excited to go apple picking tomorrow and the anticipation of seeing great 804 friends, having lunch at the Tip Top and the upside down apple pie that my amazing husband is going to bake when we get home has me delirious.

No matter what it is, it is Friday and life is G-O-O-D…Good!

But here is where the advice part of Free Advice Friday comes in: How about sharing your favorite apple recipes…because if you have met my husband you know we will come home with AT LEAST 15 pounds of apples!

Now go enjoy this ever improving weather! Happy Friday!

My free advice this Friday....take it or leave it....

Sometimes I have something I have to say…no matter how unpopular or how up on my soapbox…I have to get this off my chest – but I am giving myself twenty minutes to write it or I could go on for days…Ready….

It is October, and hence Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Every shop I go into wants to know if I want to do this or that to support Susan G. Komen.

My answer is NO, and I won’t feel badly about it.

I fully support research and survivors and those currently battling with breast cancer, but I do not support Susan G. Komen, or the American Cancer Society…it is strictly political.

Susan G. Komen gives funds to Planned Parenthood, and I can’t get behind that – even with their letter that says two Catholic ethicists find that supporting Susan G. Komen doesn’t support abortion.  I will not give to a group that says it is better to give money to Planned Parenthood than to set up other services, to find other ways.  Planned Parenthood does harm, period. They provide abortion services, they undermine the family, they put furthering their agenda over the safety, health and well-being of young girls and women on a daily basis.

My issue with Planned Parenthood is so much greater than the fact that they provide abortions – it is the how and why and where. I could write books about it, but instead I want to tell you what I think the pro-life side is doing wrong…

My husband is a law student. Many of his fellow students are in school for the purposes of fighting pro-abortion laws.  I think abortion is bad, I think it is wrong and I believe it hurts women, children, families and the very fiber of our country…but laws change and making abortion illegal today doesn’t make any guarantee for tomorrow.

Pro-lifers have to win hearts and minds…they have to change women’s (girls’) lives.  Not hypothetically, or logically, but actually – actually change hearts and minds and lives!

I know several women who have had abortions, I have heard strangers talk about their experiences, and never once has anybody made a convincing argument that the choice she made was truly a choice. Not one woman has ever convinced me that she felt as if she had other options.

 Pro-lifers need to change that – today, no matter what the laws regarding abortion are.  We need to raise children to value their bodies and their sexuality. We need to provide safe living environments. We need to teach them what healthy relationships look like. We need to raise daughters to feel safe and secure telling their parents or partners they are pregnant. And we need to embrace those who haven’t been given those things.

No woman who is desperate enough to enter an abortion clinic needs someone in her face with a picture of a mutilated baby…she needs someone to hold her hand, to show her Christ’s love and compassion, to walk with her daily in a time that even for the strongest, healthiest, most supported women is trying.

If pro-lifers would embrace the idea of making all the other choices truly choices for women, we could take the power of groups like Planned Parenthood away…if we offered the other services that Planned Parenthood offered with the great media spin they offered it with, we could change the tide without changing the law.

Am I in the position to go down and stand outside the abortion clinic and bring a mother home who feels she has no other choice than to have an abortion? No, but if you can…..

If my math is right and better than 75% of this country is Christian and there were 1.21 million abortions last year that means that there should be roughly 185 people to help prevent every one abortion, to embrace with Christ's love and compassion every mother who feels so desperate, so alone, so whatever it is that has brought her to face the choice of abortion.

That I could be a part of... Could you?  

Life is a beautiful choice...now let’s make it a choice…truly, not just words…Let us work together to help every woman and child and family have better outcomes.  Let’s  make Planned Parenthood irrelevant. Let’s make women’s health not about politics or laws, but about women. Let’s make it okay to support Susan G. Komen.

And that is my free advice this Friday…

Free Advice Friday

It’s a rainy Friday morning. I have a to do list a MILE long and a book on my kindle calling my name. 

Motivation, where are you!!!

Taking that Accounting Mid-Term last weekend has me feeling like we are on the downhill side of this semester….BUT….we are NOT!

Finishing a set of these postcards to go out as
 Girl's Night Out Invites
and posting a set on ETSY are on my to do list!

I find myself in one of those unproductive frenzies…so much to do and yet I keep adding things to the list and projects to the stack. I go to make a to do list of the top priority things and I get waylaid adding every detail of every project I have for the next two months.

Now, I am down to brass tacks on at least 4 or 5 things and well…I need to get focused, but of course that involves getting the house in order.

Am I a procrastinator?

How do you get motivated? Focused?

HELP, friends, HELP….

Don’t you just love Free Advice Fridays!

Friday. Your Opinion, Please...

Last night as I was getting into bed at 12:45 (so was that this morning?) I had the TV on and it was infomercials on nearly every channel (all 8 channels we get with the antenna).  Each commercial insisted that whatever their product was was absolutely necessary and whatever the product addressed was the most important part of our lives.

How many things are like that? Everything?

The time I spend on-line or interacting with any sort of media, I leave feeling overwhelmed and exhausted.

I feel the world shouting that I am supposed to worry (and buy products for) my health, my skin, my heart, my mind, my eyes, my digestive tract, my future, my kids, my kids’ health, my kids’ skin, my kids’ hearts, my kids minds, my kids’ eyes, my kids’ digestive tract, my kids’ future, my kids’ social standing, my husband, my husband’s health, my husband’s skin, my husband’s heart, my husband’s mind, my husband’s eyes, my husband’s digestive tract, my husband’s future, what we eat, what we wear, how, when and where we exercise, what we drive, where we live, how it looks, what we buy, where it is made, what it is made with, what vitamins we take, what medicines we take, what we clean with, what we breath, what we drink, how we move, how we think, what we read, our financial well being, our well being, our spiritual well being, our physical well being, our mental well being....and the list goes on .

All of that is just the basics, before you add any silly keeping up with Joneses! (Thankfully, we are the Joneses, so there is no really keeping up to do. Ha!)

I end up feeling like I just can’t care enough or know enough about any of it to make a real difference in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, I try to feed our family well, limit TV, promote physical activity, watch our money (or lack there of), think ahead, be prepared…

Then there are all the other things like School and Etsy, that though I am involved in both very part-time there is definitely an expectation of full time devotion to each of them.

So for this Free Advice Friday, I want to know:

Who has time for all of this?

How do you sort all of this out?

What have you chosen for your priorities? And how did you make those choices?

How far do you take it? How involved do you get?

What do you just not worry about?

Thanks for sharing…

Free Advice Friday

So ladies, what is weighing on your hearts and minds today?

This morning I went to get Grace up at about 7:20 and she rather cheerily said, “Mommy, is it my first day of school?”  “No,” I said, “Not until Monday!” “Then I am going back to sleep!”

All this from the little girl who has been bright eyed and bushy tailed by quarter after six all summer!

With the impending start of school, I know Grace will be fine, I know my husband will be fine (he has been itching to be back since, oh, the last day of his internship!), but me I am not so sure about.

 My sweet baby boy will enjoy the quite of the house with everyone else occupied…and he is liable to get some extra mom time when I give up and quit trying to get it all done.

I logged into Blackboard to see if my course is posted. Indeed, it was. I have never been so scared by a syllabus! I am only taking one class these eight weeks, but between the text book – whose pages look like the internet on crack- and the syllabus with two 56 page problem sets a week I can already feel myself checking out.

That is NOT a good place to start, now is it?

We have finished the whole summer’s end To Do List, which is a good feeling, but I still have many projects on my plate and school LOOMING on the horizon. I find myself at a loss. I can’t seem to pin down where to start or what to do.  There is so much to tackle and a feeling that I will never accomplish it all…or even enough of it…

Where do you start? How do you overcome those feeling? Or avoid them in the first place?

Ladies, please do tell!