Create Your Way to Sanity and beyond.

Nature is around us everytime we head out the door. How often do you stop and look? Do you really see what is there? When you don't see the beauty of the earth as it was given to us it is very difficult to see what damage we have done to our world.

I feel strongly in the theory that we first must identify what we need. Not want. Then we must use those things we need wisely. We can use something until it has found the end of its life - not until we're tired of the color. If we just can't stand the color anymore then pass it on so someone else can get the good use out of it. Try Freecycle. This network is in most communities nationwide. Pass it on, don't feel you need paid for everything. If you need something, see if someone else has that item in good usable condition but doesn't need it anymore. This all goes along with the topic of Re-use. This is much more important than recycle. Recycle also takes resources.

Summer Produce Is Abundent

Don’t you love the summer trip from the garden. The vine ripe tomatoes, fresh crisp green peppers, the cucumbers just big enough to add to that salad, and a few carrots and green onions on the side? The time to steal those new potatoes out from the edges of the hill before they come to full size because they are so delicious - especially mixed with a few fresh green peas and some cream sauce?
When we look back at the life when every family had a garden, worked it together all summer and “put up” the vegetables and fruit for winter we ate much more holsum food. You did not hear so much about cancer, hyperactive children, asthma, and all the other diseases that have become so common recently. Was it the fact we got in the outdoors and worked or played while Mom and Dad worked? Was it because we didn’t have additives put in all our food? Maybe it was because we got out and moved, ate heathy food and breathed fresh air. Even people who lived in town had their own little garden.
Sterile cubes that we call homes, food that comes in sealed packages, jars and frozen with extra preservatives really must be better for us. Why else would we live this life? Exercise in an enclosed gym with recirculated air that runs through filters must be better.
Nope! Just sit on my deck for an hour after a fresh garden salad and vegetables that come fresh from the garden. Watch the neighborhood children running up and down the channel to see what water creatures they can catch their last day before school starts. Can you really tell me being a executive workiing and living in a highrise is the better life?

The Lazy Days of Summer are Good for Relaxed Reading

I came across a great find earlier this week in my attic. A collection of Zane Grey books. The was my husbands favorite author as a kid. He read every Zane Grey book he could get his hands on. They are an easy read, about the west, and pretty much historically accurate. When he became an adult this author had such good memories for him he bought a set of the books to put on a shelf. We moved and forgot about them when we build the addition with all the nice bookshelves. It was a pleasant surprise to find these books in excellent condition - they had never been read!
Zane Grey was a very prolific writer with a rough background. He was born in Zaneville, Ohio but was not named after the town. It was named after one of his maternal ancestors. He was part of a large family but liked to escape to be by himself in books. As an adult he stayed with his love by writing. Most of his books are based on real people and places. He interviewed some of the most notorious people of the west, including outlaws. This is what we tell children yet today - Write about what you know. He is a prime example of this.

Evaluating Time Usage

Why is it so hard to have enough hours in a day? We inevetably have a list of things to do that far surpasses our time or energy to complete the list. Does everyone have that problem? I don’t think so.
I know people who go to a job, work 8 hours (or whatever they can get away with so it might be less), come home, have supper when they feel like it and sit in front of the TV or video game because they would have nothing else to do. Boy! My mind is always going 100 miles an hour coming up with things I should be, want be, or could be doing. I have so many ideas, want to be in so much social networking, accomplish so many projects I some times get bogged down and spin in circles.
Organization is key. To cover even 1/2 of the things that current projects need done you must be organized. I am now using a timer. I great site came into my life last summer, FlyLady, and helped me to view things a bit at a time. You can do just anything for only 15 minutes. That works for the projects you don’t like to do but that timer also works for keeping me on track. I start reading blog posts, sourcing product, or just shopping on the web and it is so easy to loose track of time. Some projects get the 15 minutes, some are set for 20 or 30 and I even set myself 60 minute blogs of time for work projects. The key is - when the timer goes off you move on. You know that timer is going to ring so you might be pushed to work just a bit faster, too.
I challenge you to try it. It doesn’t take a fancy timer. Just one that was used in the kitchen or a simple alarm on your phone might work to try out the theory. Get moving and get things done. Use that timer.