June 6 2019

My Top Tip for Raising Smart Kids

One day when our tv and internet were out, I had an interesting conversation with the cable guy, and no, his name was not Larry.

He noticed all the books and bookshelves in our house and saw the kids’ tassels on the mantle. He says you must have really smart kids. Well, yeah! I wouldn’t have it any other way. My mom-side kicked in and I began telling him about how important it is to read to your kids and let them see you reading for pleasure. Newspapers, magazines, books, cereal boxes, comic books, it really doesn’t matter. As long as you choose to read and they see you enjoy it, they will imitate you.

There was a time when I didn’t think kid #2 was going to be a reader and it kinda freaked me out. She seemed a little distracted when we were reading a book to her and was more into drawing and artsy stuff, even as a preschooler. We just kept reading with her and to her and eventually, she was lured to the bright side with the rest of us. Now the entire family reads voraciously. Or at least we all did while we were living under the same roof. To be fair the kids are grown-up adults and rarely pay attention to us old folks anymore, so I really have no idea what they do in their free time now. Some things are probably better not known.

But seriously, it made all the difference in the kids’ success in school. Readers are succeeders!

Readers are succeeders! Click To Tweet

Reading is the top tip I could share with you to help you raise smarter kids. I’m sure there are a ton of boring statistics to back me up here. Fortunately for you, I will not take the time and effort to dig them up and spit them out for you here. I trust you know how to Google and are fully capable of finding the info on your own.

It is never too late, save yourself and get busy, start reading today! If you think you don’t like reading, you just haven’t found the right books yet. Keep looking! Ask friends who have similar likes and dislikes what THEY like to read. Ask the local librarian for recommendations. I bet Google and Siri could even recommend books for you.

 

No excuses! Find a book or something that interests you and start reading!

Category: Family, Parenting, Reading | Comments Off on My Top Tip for Raising Smart Kids
August 23 2018

Loved (Five Minute Friday)

I did something this weekend with Hubby that we absolutely LOVED. We signed up a couple of months ago to attend a 3-day intensive workshop to learn more about investing the way Warren Buffet does. It was serious, it was 3 long days of feeling like we were back in school. We drove 9 hours to get to the Atlanta area. We spent much of the drive listening to episodes of the Invested Podcast that I had saved to my phone. We had read the books written by Phil Town and his daughter, Danielle Town. We already believed in their way of investing but we needed more to actually put it into action. When I was looking for more info on the websites I stumbled onto the link to apply for the scholarship and decided to go for it. I applied to an event a couple of months out and Hubby and I got busy preparing to attend and learn even more. We began turning after dinner hours into Turquoise Table learning time. We would sit and read or researching companies and sharing what we found with each other. I can honestly say we have never been so focused on the same things for so long. During the workshop, we wrote out promises to ourselves and the team collected and laminated them so they would last while we carried them with us into the future. We met so many people. It turned out that there were two gals from the same area we call home sitting just a couple of people away from us at this workshop. We call that a God Wink (affiliate link). The brakes were acting crazy shortly before we got to Atlanta, but we nursed them and they got us home safely. It was a great weekend! One of the best we’ve had in a very long time. We loved learning so much and gaining so much hope for our future and the ability to actually have enough to retire someday. We actually loved spending our weekend this way and both agreed we would love to go back and someday become coaches to others.

If you think you might want to learn more about investing in stocks or options, you should apply for a scholarship to attend one of Phil Town’s Rule #1 Transformational Investing Workshops.

If you want to grab this book, please use the affiliate link provided here.

This post is part of the weekly Five Minute Friday link-up!
The prompt this week is: Loved
The assignment: Write for five minutes on the word of the week. This is meant to be a free write, which means: no editing, no over-thinking, no worrying about perfect grammar or punctuation. Just write.

Category: Five Minute Friday, Goals, Learning, Travel | 1 Comment on Loved (Five Minute Friday)
December 11 2016

NaNoWriMo Lessons

November has come and gone and I seemed to have let posting blog entries go by the wayside way back in mid-September. The reason is because for all of October and part of September I start to focus on reading writing craft books and not reading fiction. I also start trying to plot the novel I will write in November. 
This year marks my fourth attempt at NaNoWriMo and also my fourth year of winning the challenge to write 50,000 words in the 30 days that make up November. I knew I could make it to the goal if I applied myself, but this year I had hope to also write enough words to actually complete the novel. Needless to say that didn’t happen. Due to some extra responsibilities at work, I was working longer hours and had trouble getting out of work early enough to get to some of the write-ins we had in the Indianapolis Region. I was careful to make sure I didn’t get too far behind because I know from past experience how difficult it can be to come back from being way behind on my word count. The problem with writing enough to finish the book was mostly a plotting problem. I still feel like I am not good at the whole plotting and story arc thing. So what I thought I had extremely well planned before November started ended up a little off course about a week into the month. Now before you say that I am the author and I should have just written myself back on track with what I had outlined, just know that I felt like what I was writing was better than what I had planned. Now it may or may not have really been better, but I felt like it was at least good enough to con sider going off track, err off outline worth while.
So I was looking at my bar graph after the win was recorded and thinking about how even though I felt like I was behind a good deal of the month, I wasn’t very far behind at any point and this was really the most consistent year I have ever had during NaNo. 
So at this point I would like to post here for all the world to see, the four years of bar graphs. See those below. As I looked at the graphs I decided it might be kind of cool to compare the four years and see what we can learn from them.

Year    Won    Word Count
2013    27th    50,155
2014    29th    50,063
2015    27th    56,505
2016    27th    53,568

Notable Things about Each Year:
2013 – Behind until day 23 with almost no words until day 4.
2014 – Behind until day 28, basically no words until day 9. First time writing fiction.
2015 – On track until days 6-15, a little behind and then caught after day 15.
2016 – Ahead days 4-7 and 12-15 behind days 8-11 and 19-24.

Advice to First Time NaNoWriMo Participants:
~ Spend some time planning or reading craft books. You can obviously do this any time of the year, but I usually try to cram this info into my brain in September and October. 
~ Get your word count (1,667 words) every day if possible.
~ Get ahead and stay there. Whenever possible, write more than the daily goal and bank those words for the tough days when you get sick, the words aren’t flowing or you just are too tired to write.
Get to know your characters and their back story before November.    You can write back story or character sketches before November if you like, but these words do not count toward word count goals in November.  
~ Try not to schedule any appointments, dates, errands, etc. In November, instead opt for October or December instead.
~Go on the NaNoWriMo.org website and declare your novel, choose your home region, check the calendar for your region and go to as many local writing events as you can fit in. It has been our experience in the Indianapolis area that those who participate usually stick to the goal and do the work required to win. You get to know other writers this way and can help hold each other accountable and motivate each other to write.
~ Writing Sprints! Whether you are at home alone or in a group. Set a timer for a designated amount of time (try 10, 15, 20 or 25 minutes) start the timer and focus only on writing as much as you can until the timer goes off. If in a group, compare word counts during the sprint, cheer the achievements. If alone track your word counts. Get to know what you are capable of writing in a given amount of time. Try to beat your own best score. When the timer goes off get up, go use the restroom if needed, grab a drink or snack, move around chat amongst yourselves if in a group, read your favorite lines from that sprint if you like. Give yourself a 5 or 10 minute break then do another sprint. Before you know it you will have written your daily goal.

New things I tried this year and really liked:
~ #1k30min Set the timer for 30 minutes and try to write 1,000 words. You have to write so fast, the inner editor doesn’t stand a chance!
~ When I can’t go to a live write-in near me, I find a virtual one on YouTube. There are some on the NaNoWriMo channel, @NaNoWordSprints or #NaNoWordSprints on Twitter, the WordNerds (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSKHG1eUF7vnL1kieYiVasA) have virtual write-ins every Sunday evening during their live chat so check their channel, also Tamara Woods has some on her channel, PenPaperPad (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCUt-YGmeMSHZfXQQe4XF0g) also has some, I really enjoyed writing with her, probably because she isn’t a giggly high school or college girl. There are most likely many others too. Search on YouTube for “Virtual Write In” or “NaNoWriMo Virtual Write in” and give some a try.

After watching the WordNerds YouTube videos and live streams for a couple of years, I find myself wondering if I can find a group of writers willing to give Google Hangouts a try and doing our own virtual write ins. This would be great for when one of our local members relocates to a different state or when the weather is bad and prevents you from going to a live write-in isn’t an option. What do you think? I have also wondered about doing a crafting club this way where everyone knits or crochets on camera.

Category: Learning, NaNoWriMo, Writing | 1 Comment on NaNoWriMo Lessons
December 11 2016

​Bullet Journal Adventures 

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This year, at the end of September, I discovered a cool thing called a Bullet Journal.  I was intrigued by all of the colorful photos on Pintrest, FaceBook and Instagram and was seeing people mention it more and more often. I got tired of seeing it mentioned and not really knowing what it was, so I figured if all these people were hyped up about it, I should at least see what it was all about. I have really never kept a journal except when we travel as a family on vacations, then I would try to journal about where we went and what we did during our trip. I eventually quit even doing that because I felt like I couldn’t keep up with it and didn’t want to write it after the fact because that really wasn’t the point of the whole thing and I knew I would forget a lot of the things I wanted to record in the travel journal. In other words, my perfectionist reared its ugly head and told me I shouldn’t bother because I wasn’t doing it right/perfect.

So enter the Bullet Journal which would be a place to house everything. It is more than a planner and allows more freedom than any traditional day planner or calendar system I have ever found.  It looked as though it would also allow me to be as colorful and creative as I wanted to be. I could try a spread and if it wasn’t the right one for me I could move on and try a different one next time. I read many articles about using the bullet journal system for all aspects of your life.

Ryder Carroll, who designed the Bullet Journal, called it “The analog system for the digital age”. If you are interested in learning more about using a Bullet Journal, go to http://bulletjournal.com/. On his website, he gives the very bare-bones basic version of a bullet journal.

If you want to learn other really cool ways to use the bullet journal you may want to check out:
~My Pintrest page for Bullet Journaling
https://www.pinterest.com/KarenBeidelman/bullet-journaling/
~Saving a Life With a List
http://bulletjournal.com/saving-a-life-with-a-list/
~Kara of Boho Berry
http://bohoberry.com
~Dee of Decade Thirty
http://www.decadethirty.com/
~Jessica of Pretty Prints and Paper
http://www.prettyprintsandpaper.com/
~Look into the following monthly challenge tags on FaceBook:
#RockYourHandwriting
#PlanWithMeChallenge
So, you are probably wondering how I have been using a bullet journal to get myself organized and are wanting to know how I personally find it helpful. Well, I’m glad you asked. I have been using a Leuchtturm1917 Hardcover Medium Notebook – Ruled – Lime Green Color as my first actual bullet journal (BuJo). I wish it were a dot grid, but it was one I had on my shelf for years and was too paralyzed by perfectionism to actually write in because I might write sloppy or misspell a word and you can’t tear the pages out, you know? But I decided to jump in and didn’t want to wait for the perfect journal (Leuchtturm1917 Notebook (A5) Hardcover, Dotted, Purple) so I was excited to finally have an acceptable use for the Leuchtturm1917 Hardcover A5 Notebook – Ruled – Lime Green Color that was gifted to me years ago, but was as yet untouched.I went through most of October trying spreads I thought would work for me and then decided to see if we also had any of the black and white marbled Composition Notebook in the school supplies cabinet. We did, so I set one of those up for my Writing Bullet Journal. This was just in time for November and NaNoWriMo. I thought the black and white too boring and uninspiring, so I colored the front and then Covered the front with strips of packing tape to keep it looking pretty and so it wouldn’t possibly get wet and bleed off all over things. I used it for a few days and realized the back didn’t feel as smooth and nice as the front so one day I colored and taped the back as well. The bright colors make me smile and want to use the writing bullet journal.I also found an old steno notebook half-used around work that we were going to throw away, so I took all the used pages out and decided to use it to practice a few weekly or daily layouts in and to make lists in before messing up the green BuJo. Yes, that perfectionism is still a thing, but I am getting over it slowly. I am using a bunch of Sharpie brand markers and some Bic MarkIt brand markers too that my daughter had and noticed they bleed through the pages, but I decided I didn’t mind not using the backs of the pages all the time so I found out that I just put a catalog under the page I am working on with these markers to keep the markers from ruining more than just the back of the page I am currently working on. I tried my hand at lettering and did some of the prompts from the challenges I listed above. I am actually embracing the use of cursive writing a bit again after being told in high school to print my essays instead of writing them in cursive (yes, youngsters, this was the age before computers were much of a thing). I have found it isn’t too bad if I take my time and focus on what I am writing, letter by letter. I doubt I will ever convert back to writing much in cursive but it is kind of cool to practice it once in a while.

The spreads I find most helpful at this time are:
~ When Did I Last…(replace batteries, flip mattress, clean outside dryer vent, etc.)
~ Word Tracker (to track my word counts on a monthly basis)
~ Weekly/Daily (mine is sort of a combination right now)
~ Waiting On (to track online orders and know they all come in)
~ Holiday Gifts to Buy

I am just on my second week of doing the daily/weekly thing. Mine are kind of just daily entries, but I lay them out a week at a time. After the first week which I set up for Sunday through Saturday on two pages, I decided that I wanted the entire weekend together, so this week I did eight days on one page beginning and ending with Sunday so that beginning next week, I can start my weeks on Monday and end them on Sunday. I also started last week adding meal planning using small post-it strips that can be moved if needed and when the week is over they can be put onto the meal ideas page to be reused another week. I find that I don’t need to migrate a task if it doesn’t get done on the day it was listed as long as it gets done before I turn the page. If it doesn’t then I look at each task and either migrate it to the next week or decide not to worry about getting it done at all.

It will take me some time to figure out exactly how the BuJo will be most useful to me. I plan to keep working on my chore list and designating each entry as daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. I plan to keep building my master meals list so menu planning with hopefully get easier as I go along. I haven’t figured out yet if I want to use my BuJo for a grocery list or not, there are plenty of apps for that on the phone. I had thought to make a grocery list page with an outlined spot to hold a large lined piece of post-it note most likely in a bright neon color, but am not sure I will want to put out and take a sticky not e with me.

It is still a work in progress, but already I can feel myself taking back control of my life where once it tended to spiral out of control. I find working in my BuJo is a good way to de-stress at the end of the day. I find myself looking for ways to add color to my life via my BuJo. I’d love to know if you use a bullet journal, so please email me or leave a comment on the Contact Us page. What are your favorite pages to include? Would you find it helpful to see photos of my Bullet Journals Spreads or My Writer’s Bullet Journal?

Disclosure: If you purchase anything from links in this post, I may receive some kind of affiliate commission.
 ​However, I only ever mention products I love and would recommend whether I was being compensated or not.
Category: Bullet Journal, Learning, Organizing, Planning, Writing | 1 Comment on ​Bullet Journal Adventures