Dear Abby, - Not Fair!

Dear Abby,

    I’m fifty-one years old & wondering what’s become of my life. I am always tired & feel paunchy and well…old. My teenagers hate me & my husband doesn’t pull his weight around the house. I don’t want to work anymore (I really want to win the lottery – but I always forget to play). I drive to work and see people walking on the nearby track & wonder how is it they don’t have jobs or need to grocery shop or run errands all day long for their families – not fair! I see smoke coming out of chimneys & just know that there’s someone enjoying their morning coffee or tea next to a wonderful fire. It’s not even the weekend – so not fair! When did all this happen & what can I do? – Signed, Disgruntled.

Dear Disgruntled,

This is so common (practically epidemic from what I hear) among your age group. First realize you are not alone in this. Those ‘lucky’ people you see walking or having a Monday morning fire have already figured some things out. Most importantly, the way your life plays out is the direct result of your thoughts & beliefs.

So please:

~ Take time for yourself no matter how busy you are. You are the most important person in your family’s life & you need to be happy & healthy in order for any harmony to occur. Remember the airline’s directions when those oxygen masks come down – the adult’s breath first so they can properly take care of the kids & elderly.

~ Feel gratitude for things in your life already in place. Write three different gratitudes down each day in a journal & start to feel your attitude changing. Such as, today I am grateful for my GWA friends, for the smell of my hyacinth bulbs that I forced making my house smell amazing, the smell of a fire going outside that someone else is having today.

~ Start to daydream! Think of small, medium & large ‘bucket list’ items you’d like for yourself. These can only come from you & your imagination & can never become real until you imagine them. “We’re never given a dream without the power to make it come true.” ~Richard Bach

~ Take some risks. We all start out as risk-takers as children & then begin more & more to play it safe. “Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear) and risk (for growth). Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.” ~Abraham Maslow

Finally Digruntled, begin to read some wonderful books to help you with this process. I can’t recommend enough the books below.

* Thanks to Sarah Ban Breathnach (Simple Abundance, Romancing the Ordinary) & M K Mueller (8 to Great) for their wonderful self-help words of wisdom.

Girls Weekend Away (GWA) 2013

    For me (and four of my friends) it’s that time again for the tradition of the Girls Weekend Away (GWA). As of today, my first GWA blog was one of the most read blogs so far! This gets me thinking that I have struck a chord with my readers. Something that my friends & I have always known, we need time away filled with laughs, (junk) food, beverages, shopping, movie watching, venting & just plain fun! There may be some Oscar night festivities. (Yes, we will still be away – we try to add an extra day whenever possible.) I can’t say I have ever watched the Oscars with a group of girlfriends before! Through forty plus years that we have been friends there have been times, especially the college years, that we were less in contact than we would have liked. (No texting, e-mail, skype back then – lol) We are so fortunate that we still live in close proximity to each other & can ‘get away’ regularly. As far as weekends away with friends, it is so much better than just a night out. You really have some time to decompress personally, reconnect with each other & just plain old enjoy yourself in a way that only works that way with friends. It’s good for the mind, body (yes we take lots of walks – no winter sports anymore though!) and soul. Plan your trip soon!

Planning Your Container Gardens - Proven Winners

    During these cold, windy, wintry months, I say it is a respite to start planning your gardens. I especially love planning my container planters. Each its own unique challenge. Below is a link to the Proven Winners (PW) website to request a free 36 page Gardener’s Idea Book. There are also e-mails that you can sign up for to get more ideas. This will get each of us started & our creative juices flowing! A lecturer one garden club meeting I attended a couple of years ago, was a container garden specialist. He swore by Proven Winners brand plants, shrubs & mostly in his case, annuals. He needed plants he could walk away from so the homeowner would be able to take over the maintenance. He always feels confident with PWs. (I do realize every plant we purchase this season won’t be a PW.) The reason I like their ideas book is because it always contains the trendiest color combinations & newest plants. Very inspirational for container ideas - especially when these can prove to be the most challenging for the gardener. Read, be inspired & enjoy! Spring is right around the corner!!

www.provenwinners.com/create

or call 1-877-865-5818.

Great Backyard Bird Count 2013

    You are invited to participate in the 2013 Great Backyard Bird Count! (GBBC) Coordinated every year by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology & The Audubon Society; the help of all dedicated backyard birders is needed. The dates this year are Friday, February 15^th thru Monday, February 18^th. The link is listed below for all the info you will need. It is as simple as observing your backyard aviary activity for just fifteen minutes. You can do this one day or all 4 days. The site allows you to enter your zip code & it will connect you to a list of birds you may see in your area during February. You print out the list & start counting. The site provides advice & a page to enter your results. I participated last year & it was fun to do & easy too. Recording your results on their site was also very simple. It felt very rewarding. My sister participated also & it was nice to compare results. This is also a wonderful activity to enjoy with your kids. The site provides all types of helpful info to get you started. Last year over 17.4 million birds were counted & 623 species! The Northern Cardinal was the most common bird counted (pictured at left). Please join in the fun & get to know your backyard friends.

http://www.birdsource.org/gbbc

    Make sure to check out my last post on a great camera deal at Target on a Canon Powershot. Just in case you need to snap some photos of these wonderful birds!

Great Canon SX150 Camera Deal!

   I had to share this amazing camera deal coming up this week at Target stores & online Target (see link below). I have been in the market for a new camera since the teenage tester decided to take my camera & hers on her semester abroad in Scotland. It's the camera I take all those great garden shots with. So this camera on sale Sunday, February 10^th and online now is my camera but the newer model. It is so easy to use! It is not a point and shoot that goes in your pocket but it is the perfect size for everything else. It's the Canon SX150 reg. $199.99. It is an amazing easy-to-use camera with image stabilizers, optical zoom 12x, 14.1 MP, 3” screen and 720p HD video. The sale is for $99.00 (half price) with a $30.00 Target gift card! Again it starts tomorrow, Sunday, w/ the gift card at the stores & online but is on sale online already. So if you are in the market for a great camera for any upcoming events this is an awesome deal. It gets excellent reviews from camerafolk, not just from novices like me! It takes AA batteries which I actually like & they have the best deals on these at your Costco, Sam’s Club box type stores. I believe I bought 40 for $11.99! I hope this works out for my readers. I know many have cameras with their phones, but using a real camera lends an artistic eye to the process. (There is a manual setting too). Taking photos of your garden & as my friend just said her garden & horses, puts you in a relaxed in-the-moment place that is very peaceful & beautiful. As you can see by my photos at left, it becomes truly a wonderful bonus to have these after all your hard work. You become an artist in your own tranquil setting. Enjoy!

   

http://www.target.com/s?searchTerm=canon+sx150&category=0%7CAll%7Cmatchallpartial%7Call+categories    

Feed the Birds, Not the Squirrels!

   What a great time of year to have a plethora of birds at your feeders. Very little color to look at besides the cardinals, nuthatches, woodpeckers & the like! A recent photo and text from my sister recently reminded me just how hard it can be to feed just the birds. She sent a photo of her lovely bird ‘food court’, properly baffled of course, with a squirrel happily eating away. The caption contained a mild expletive. Say no more…

    So how do you feed the birds only? Well, in my humble opinion, it doesn’t come cheaply. My ‘food court’ (pictured at left) has been wonderful. I have had it so many years & it still looks new. I found out quickly that the cylinder baffle (which is what my sister has) is not enough. So I quickly added the cone shaped baffle. This has worked beautifully. Placement is still important, 8 feet from any roofs or trees for them to leap from & at least 5 feet from the ground (with baffles) I also have two feeders whose ports close when the weight of the squirrel is on them. My favorite, pictured at left, is the Squirrel Buster plus from Brome Bird Care. Again not cheap but when you consider the cost of seed & stress & aggravation (& possibly therapist time!), sooo worth it! See link below. I received mine as a gift, great idea for the bird lover in your life.

http://bromebirdcare.com/products/plus/

     For your ‘food court’ types visit your local bird specialty stores. The quality is excellent. If you want to just get started then simply buy a suet feeder & some suet cakes & mount to a tree or hang from a shepherd’s hook. The squirrels will get to it from time to time but the initial cost would be under $10.00 for the most part. They also sell hot & spicy suet cakes that squirrels hate but birds don’t mind.

   Whichever route you choose, just enjoy every entertaining moment!

This is Wonderful!

     Back in December I wrote a blog about about the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. Today I am offering up a new challenge to you.

    Sarah Ban Breathnach in Romancing The Ordinary challenges us to open our eyes, perk up our ears & we will suddenly find wondrous things in the most surprising places. Replacing indifference with wonder may be a challenge, but it’s time we reintroduced ourselves to wonderment. For me today, that snow squall this morning was a pain in the ass initially (because I had to drive somewhere), but I eventually took a deep breath & though this is wonderful (and beautiful). The sense of wonder is a birthright but somehow as we become adults it seems to become extinguished leading to boredom in our everyday lives. Lily Tomlin believes that if we want to be happy we need to exercise our “awe-aerobics”. SBB asks us to add to our gratitude journals five reasons each day to say “This is wonderful”. If we are having a difficult time with this, then we need to look for the new, strange, astonishing, mysterious & unexpected. SBB suggests to approach each day as if it were an exhilarating adventure instead of another chain in a life sentence without parole. This may all take some practice, an attitude adjustment even. But so worth the effort. May our wonders never cease!