Archives for category: Spiritual Sunday

Spiritual Sunday: Spring!

March 21, 10 //
0

~image by Dale Xeenko on Flickr~

Spring is finally here!

Bring a little of that nature, freshness and vitality with you wherever you go.  The Bright Side Project featured Stone & Honey (here) and Mani Designs (here) this week.  I thought these trinkets would be a nice way of remembering what’s going on outside even if your stuck inside.  Go enter to win one!

With the flowers beginning to bloom and little shoots of green popping up all over the place, I am reminded that this is the perfect season to start anew.  Brush off those New Years resolutions.  Give the house a good once over.  Or if your stuck in someone else’s house, due to unfortunate economic circumstances, grab some of those little blooms and keep them near to remind you that a fresh start or wonderful opportunity may be just around the corner.  Can’t wait to put together a set of these free affirmation cards (from Kind Over Matter in Collaboration with Spring) to help me start off on a positive note each day.

Or, I might pick up a longer read like The Power of Nice (reviewed by Melissa of Operation Nice here).  Anything that can bolster my half glass full attitude seems appropriate as nature and people show vibrance and resiliency all around me.

Happy Spring!

Spiritual Sunday: A Collection

March 14, 10 //
0

~image by Pink Sherbet on Flickr~

~image by macinate on Flickr~

~image by abby28xyz on Flickr~

~image by josh.liba on Flickr~

~image by pink sherbet on Flickr~

Once upon a time I lived in a basement rented to me by a couple who collected lions.  I’ve always liked collections.  I collected treasure trolls for a while when I was in middle school.  If you consider a collection stuff you tend to accumulate but not actually use, then I guess I collect cookbooks, really cute scrapbooking stuff (yep, I’m one of those people who HAS to have those cute stickers, and then I “save” them) and all the issues of the magazines I subscribe to that have arrived since my daughter was born.

Well, thanks to Dani of Positively Present (found via this post by Kind Over Matter) I now have a much more useful collection.  Dani has put together a list of 50+ Articles You Should Read Now.   Each article is “related to positivity and living a happier, more present life.”  Now that I’m trying to make time to read more, I’m really looking forward to diving into this list.  I’m sure it’ll enrich my mind and life a little better than the gory zombie manga I read during my daughters nap today, hehe.  :)  Gotta love zombies.

Spiritual Sunday: Need A Lift?

March 7, 10 //
0

~image by Nan Lawson Download it here at Feed Your Soul~

~image by Charlotte Speaks at Flickr~

~image by Laura Berger Download it here at Feed Your Soul~

~image by Caza No 7 at Flickr~

Hope that helped!  Have a refreshing Sunday and a fantastic week ahead!

Spiritual Sunday: Is Your World Shaking? Is Your Heart Breaking?

February 28, 10 //
0

I LOVE it so much when I see a musician perform and the sound is just as captivating (if not more) than the radio version. Be captivated and soothed for the week ahead by JJ Heller’s song, Your Hands. How great is it that she’s performing with her husband in this video?!   So great. Adds to the sincerity and atmosphere of the piece I think. Beautiful.

eta: The video I originally had with this post was of JJ performing live at KLOVE with her husband, but it’s been removed from YouTube. So here’s one, not live :( but still with the melody that I wanted you to here :)

Spiritual Sunday: Who I Want Her To Be

February 20, 10 //
2

~ Happy To Be Me – Painting by OhDearBarb (see her blog!)~

I found this image at Kind Over Matter with the post title “Be What You Wish Your Child To Be.”

This idea struck me for a couple of reasons.

For one, I thought back to when I first found out I was going to be a mom.  Once you get pregnant and get over the shock and surprise of the fact that you are indeed pregnant, it’s normal to automatically start thinking about what kind of childhood you want this child to have.  If yours kind of sucked (or was just awful!) and you think your parents did everything wrong, it’s easy to imagine you will do everything completely different.  If you had a great childhood you may try to think of ways to emulate what made your experiences so great.  If you’re like me, you start thinking (and researching)  everything to death.  So, I breasfed, cloth-diapered, made my own baby food…  all of the things I thought would give my geekygirl 2.0 the best start in life I had to give.  I’m noticing more and more though that the best I can give her is my best self.  If I’m having an off day, she will have an off day too with no acceptation.  A few times I would wonder what was going on with this little person.  Why the heck did she only pick the days when I was tired and everything else in the day had gone wrong to be onry (as my grandma used to say).  It’s because she picks up on what I’m feeling and acts on that.  So, I’m trying more and more not to let things get me down because I don’t want her to be down.

I took latin a couple of years in college and used to have this phrase in latin up in my room.  It said: bonitas non est pessimis esse meliorem.  It is not goodness to be better than the worst.  Sometimes it’s easy for me to justify myself by thinking “well, at least I don’t/am not ____”   When really I should probably be asking myself if I’m doing my best.  You can’t do better than that right?  For example, sometimes I just get caught up in the daily mental list of things I want to get done.  So I rush from store to store, from chore to chore and by the end of the day am just beat.  Instead of feeling great about all I got done, I look at my sleeping baby and wonder, how was HER day?  If I was gone tomorrow, how would she remember me?  As this mad woman rushing and scrubbing and cooking?  So, now when I feel myself getting caught up in my “to do” list, I try and remember to live too.  I make sure to sing with her in the car, dance with her before her nap and drop whatever I’m doing if she brings me a book.  Even though having a sparkly clean house, photo cards out to the grandparents for every occasion, and birthday gifts that arrive in their recipients mailboxes on time, all make me look good to the people who don’t live me day in and day out, it’s not really worth it if it takes away from the one little person who IS here with me all the time.

Realizing all this has really pushed me to make other changes too.  I’ve lost about 20 lbs in the last 6 months.  As you read in my thursday post, I’m trying to get back into playing music.  I’ve started drawing more, blogging more, baking more…  All things that I wouldn’t put on the “To Do” list on my fridge, but never the less things that I really do need to do because they make me happy.  Just like the stress, the happy seems to rub off on my girl too.  So, hopefully by being happy to be me (by trying everyday to just be my best self, not my best imitation of Martha Stewart haha) I can raise a girl who is happy with herself too.  Plus, it’s way funner to see my 20 month old “playing a song” on my ukulele or reaching up to dance to her favorite song with me, then it is to see her doing her best impersonation of mommy scrubbing the floor. : /

The other reason, the image was interesting to me was that today on This American Life they had:

Stories about parents setting accidental traps for their children, and sometimes for themselves…

Very interesting.

NPR has great weekend programming by the way!  I highly recommend Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me,  A Prairie Home Companion, This American Life, Speaking Of Faith, Sound Opinions (they had Rivers Cuomo on today YESSS!!!), and Car Talk (even if you’re like me and have no clue about cars, SO funny!).  Add them all to your podcast list and thank me later for the laughs ;)

Spiritual Sunday: Drop Some Keys

February 13, 10 //
1

edited image originally taken by Takacsi75

I can’t remember who actually tweeted this, unfortunately, but thanks to one of my great Twitter buddies I found this post by Chris Guillibeau.  It’s called The Small Man Builds Cages For Everyone.  To quote Chris:

Most of us spend a lot of time building cages for people. This is accomplished by striving to make people small, so that we small men can feel bigger. Cage-building is protecting yourself and your interests, making yourself look good, and discouraging good ideas because you weren’t the one to come up with them.

His post encourages us to spend more time “dropping keys” or helping others learn what we know.

What a wonderful idea.  I know that many of the blogs I enjoy, in fact most of my daily reads, are the ones where an incredibly talented person, or group of people, is not just showing me their latest fantastic creation, but also showing me how to make what they’ve made.  Bakerella, Pioneer Woman, Thrifty Decor Chick, Make It and Love It, Little Birdie Secrets… fantastic tutorials, recipes etc.  All “keys” dropped to help me make many parts of my daily life look and taste great.  There are so so many more I could mention.  Women and men taking time out of their lives to empower me and many others, by just sharing the tips and tricks they’ve learned and love.

Thanks to all the bloggers and tweeters I follow and have yet to follow for these wonderful keys!