New Home on the Web!

Beginning tomorrow, February 1st, my new blog is going live. I will still talk about community building, but I'm going to merge all of interests into this one location.

So, starting tomorrow, come to Living From Scratch for all of my adventures!
Thanks for reading and following!

~Ann~

A Blessed Winter Solstice

A Winters Solstice Dream

Curated By: MichiganMud

ArtFire.com

Handmade Jewelry

Weeks 6, 7 and 8

Well, as you can see, I missed a couple weeks of posts. I humbly ask forgiveness and understanding. Let's review the tips for the last couple weeks (which you saw if you're my friend on Facebook).

Week 6: Pick up litter. That one is pretty self-explanatory, I think. If you see trash, pick it up. A clean neighborhood is one to be proud of.

Week 7: I posted this one on Bill of Rights Day. Read, understand and protect the first ten amendments for every person. Yes, even the ones who don't agree with you.

Week 8: Pause...In many of the world's religions the coming of winter and the impending return of the sun (at least here in the northern hemisphere) is a time of pause, reflection and celebration. Take time to stop, breathe deeply and relax.

I am going to be taking my own scheduled pause. I am going to take the next two weeks and spend time with my family and friends. I am also going to do my own relaxing and breathing. I hope to do a few picture and/or video posts during that time. I will be back in the new year with more tips for strengthening your community.

Have a wonderful winter holiday, whichever you choose to celebrate. If your chosen holiday has already passed, I do hope it was full of wonder and magic.

Thanks to http://decktheholidays.blogspot.com/2010_09_24_archive.html for the picture.

Reflections...

Here is a comment from one of my Facebook friends:

"Since moving to Iowa, we live these 'tips & values' every day. It's interesting to read these & think we used to have to work to make them happen. I love that I wave &/or talk to everyone I meet on our downtown square, whether I know them or not. I appreciate when something about us is in the newspaper, I open my mailbox & find a pile of the clippings from the elderly in town that thought to clip it for us to keep. I value when our neighbor is making a home improvement or changing a tire in his driveway, that we are always there to assist. It's so wonderful."

Week 5: A Pause for Reflection

This week, I think we should stop and reflect on what we have done so far. Have you met your neighbors? Did you share an item or a talent? Did you find something to be thankful for?

I'm happy so far. The project is making me more aware of what I could be doing to strengthen my community and I often make different choices now. For instance, last night the family went to our community tree-lighting ceremony. In the past I would not have even considered it, but we had a good time and I'm glad we went. I'm sure there are opportunities that I'm missing and I need to keep my eyes open for those.

I would love to hear about how the project is affecting you at this point. Leave a comment, or, if you'd like, write a few paragraphs and become my first guest blogger!

Week 4: Be Thankful

Being thankful is sort of a theme this week, right? At least in the United States, that is. But I bet many of us forget to be thankful the other 51 weeks of the year. It's very easy to get caught up in all of the things that we don't have or that have gone wrong in our lives, but everyone always has something they can be thankful for. I'm not naive, I know times are tough for a lot of people in the world. Even in the toughest of times, though, there is something for you to be thankful for. Take a moment and consider your life. Are you healthy? Do you have a roof over your head? Do you have a great family? Do you have at least one wonderful friend? Do you have a job you love? Do you have a hobby you love? If you answered yes to even just one of those questions, then you have something to be thankful for every day of the year.

Personally, I am extremely thankful for my wonderful family and amazing friends, and so, keeping them in mind, this will be my only blog post this week. I'll be back after the holiday, but for this week I plan on giving the gift of time to my family and friends and being thankful for every second of it.

Image: giving thanks courtesy of TheAlieness GiselaGiardino

The Gift of Time

This doesn't seem fun to me...

Here in the States, Thanksgiving is almost upon us and will quickly be followed by "Black Friday". For those of you not familiar with the term, Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving and "officially" opens the Christmas shopping season. It's referred to as Black Friday because, for many retailers, this is the day that determines whether they will end the year in the red or the black. My husband read a statistic last night that 49% of households will send at least one person shopping on Friday (as a scientist, I hate that I don't have a citation for that...). Some stores will open at 3 or 4am. I saw a sign on a store in my local mall that they would be opening at midnight after Thanksgiving for my shopping needs. These stores will offer insanely low prices to lure the hoards out in the wee hours of the night for TV's, GPS units, and other doo-hickies. Every year there are reports of injuries as people are trampled by their fellow shoppers. Last year, at least one store employee was killed, you heard that right, KILLED when the shoppers he was trying to let in the store trampled him. Feeling that holiday spirit yet?

Now, this is not a rant against technology, shopping or doo-hickies (although, I think the vast majority of us could all do with a little less of those things). I'm not advocating for a complete change of lifestyle. After all, I enjoy shopping and even my doo-hickies, although I try to make my doo-hickies multi-tasking and useful and not just entertaining (I'm not perfect, I have a Nintendo DS and a laptop that I spend too much non-working time on). What I am doing is asking you all to stop for a second...are you stopped? Great. Now that you have a second, ask yourself why you're thinking about running out the door to snap up those deals. Are they for gifts? For yourself? Have you answered? Great, then stick with me here.

If you answered that you're going to run out and buy gifts, analyze that for a second. Are these things that people asked you for? Do you know for sure that Uncle Bob wants a fancy-schmancy GPS? Has he mentioned it? If not, you have no way of knowing if it will ever get taken out of its box. If it doesn't, no matter how cheaply you bought it, you wasted money. Perhaps more importantly, you wasted time. Was Uncle Bob part of your Thanksgiving celebrations? Is he still around waiting for you to come home from buying the fancy-schmancy GPS that he couldn't care less about having? What if, instead of running out to the store while it was still dark, you had stayed home, slept in and shared a leisurely breakfast with Uncle Bob? Would he appreciate the gift of your time more than the gift of a gadget?

Now, if you said that you were heading out to find things for yourself at a great price, then the analysis is a little different. Is the gadget you're getting something that you truly need? For instance, has your washer been on its last legs for months and now you can get one at an unbeatable price? Then perhaps the trip is worth your time. However, if you're running out to get the latest gadget that you've never even touched before, ask yourself, is this deal really better than one I could get during a normal sale that takes place after the sun comes up? How long will you spend cleaning and maintaining this gadget. Are you giving up your time, not only to shop for the item, but also to keep it functioning optimally? And, lastly, would you have enjoyed sleeping in and having a lovely breakfast with Uncle Bob?

I know that there are many people out there who love their "things".  I know there are many people out there who mourn a loss of connection with their fellow man. I humbly suggest that we can use the holidays to reconnect with our fellow man and save the shopping for another day. All the same gadgets will be available after Black Friday and most of them will be the same price. Unless you're out to get the one big item that a store puts on sale, you're not going to save that much. And that's the point, you give up your time to go for the one big thing and then are tricked into thinking you're actually saving time by buying everything else while you're there. This one year, give the gift of time to yourself and your family. Play games with the little ones. Do a jigsaw puzzle with grandma. Talk to Uncle Bob. I guarantee that at no point in your life will you regret spending more time with those you love. I also guarantee that at no point in their life will your loved ones wish you had run out to buy them one more thing, rather than giving them the gift of your time.