Fantastic Friday- Finding Fantastic Ways to Do Things

Fantastic Friday - it is fantastic to find a new way to shop and get your husband involved!

All my friends laugh at my shopping stories. I have told them many times about the time when I was married for only two years and my husband gave me a handful of money and told me to go shopping for new clothes. I cried like a baby. Why? I hate to shop! The only two things I have ever liked shopping for are yarn and books. I don't like to buy food. I do not like to buy clothes. I HATE shopping for clothes.  So when the people from www.eShakti.com contacted me recently about sampling something from their catalog, I was curious. The first page of the website said they offered ready to wear and custom clothes. The model was wearing a beautiful yellow dress, my favorite color, so I continued.

The site was full of beautiful dresses, tops, shirts, skirts and even accessories. I felt like a kid at a candy store as I looked at all the beautiful clothing, scarves, bags and accessories. It was fun to look at the merchandise on the computer. There was such a large and varied selection and the prices were truly amazing. It was nothing like the horrible experience I had in clothing stores. I was on my couch, with my computer on my lap looking at dozens upon dozens of beautiful items while sipping my coffee.
   






I have no sense of fashion, so I called my husband and asked him to help me find a dress and color that would look good on me. I noticed that many of the dresses came in a variety of colors that I could examine in detail by moving my mouse over the colors. It was kind of fun. We finally settled on a blue scalloped cotton dress. The neckline, sleeves, waist and hem, all have the same beautiful scallop cut. The dress was comfortable to wear and made me feel fantastic.

Once we narrowed our choices down to the dress I wanted, it was easy to order. All I had to do was click on the dress and options came up for me to choose from size 0 to size 26 and select the custom features I wanted. About ten or so days later, a beautiful dress arrived in the mail. There is a hassle free return policy, but when you can buy the dress you want and customize it in numerous ways, why would you ever need to return it.

My husband was excited because the eShakti.com site will allow him to sit at his desk and order dresses and accessories for me. He has my sizes and knows what he likes. So now, no matter how busy he is, he can order something fantastic for me. How many brownie points would your husband earn if he had packages of clothing and accessories showing up on the doorstep for you? I mean roses are nice, but a new purse and scarf last a lot longer. All in all, this was a wonderful experience for me and I am looking forward to shopping at eShakti.com for myself and to receiving "surprise" boxes from my husband.

Shopping via the internet can be a fun and easy experience. Try it yourself and see how you like it. So, the question for you this Fantastic Friday is how can you use internet shopping to make the shopping experience fantastic?



Disclosure
This shopping experience was compensated, but the opinions listed here are my own honest views. Janeane

Thrilling Thursday -Thinking Things Into Existence

Thrilling Thursday - it is thrilling to look at things realistically and know you can achieve what you want.

For the past several weeks, the Thursday blog posts have been about having SMART goals, that means we have goals that are:

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time Bound


This week's post is about making our goals realistic.  As usual, let's take a look at two different goals to make it easy to visualize the point.





1.     I want to exercise 5 hours per day at the gym,  work 9 am to 5 pm each day and still spend time with my husband and children at home each day and get to bed by 11 pm each night.


2.     I want to exercise for one hour each morning at home before going to work from 9 am to 5 pm so that I can spend time with my husband and children in the evenings and get to bed by 11 pm each night.


Goal number one is just crazy. It is not realistic that a person can meet that schedule for a sustained period. There are just not enough hours in the day to make this possible. Goal number two is realistic. In order to get in that one hour of working out each morning, the person just needs to get up a little earlier. With a little work, this can be done.

When making goals, you must look at what can actually be done. It is not realistic to  make a goal requiring you to spend $500 per week if you only earn $600 per week, because you still need money to live. When we dream, we can dream of impossible or hard to do things. When we are setting goals, we need to be realistic. When setting goals, we need to plan step by step, piece by piece the steps necessary to achieve the impossible. Flight was once impossible, but step by step, piece by piece, plan by plan, the Wright Brothers made it happen.

In fiction, we can dream and using hope alone make things real. Like in the story, the "The Velveteen Rabbit."




In the real world, we have to put in work to make things happen. We have to go out on a limb, to put the work in, to plan realistically.



Goal setting is not where we go to dream, goal setting is where we sit down and in a practical manner, plan to get something done, one step at a time. So we need to be serious about our thinking and our plans. Each piece of the plan must be something that is based in reality, not in a dream. When we are realistic in our planning we take into account all our resources: time, money, personnel, ability. When we are realistic we divide things into steps that can be accomplished one at a time. When our goals are realistic, we can have confidence in them and then we can make our dreams come true.

Next week we will talk about how to make sure our goals are time bound. So, the question or you this Thrilling Thursday is how are you setting up your goals so that they are realistic?

Wonderful Wednesday - Work Smarter with a Team

Wonderful Wednesday - it is wonderful to work with a team in order to get things done.

Everyone has heard the cliche, "Team work makes the dream work." I believe that saying is true. There are so many situations in life where you must compete as part of a team. When you are competing in a team sport, no matter how good your solo efforts may be, a team is needed to handle the challenge.  In any situation, a good team can make or break the mission.  With teamwork of any kind, it is important to have the best team possible and to select the best team leader possible.  When you have a team, you have others you can lean on, others you can depend on and who depend on you.

Bill Withers, "Lean on Me"


Sometimes we get to pick our teams and sometimes we have to work with what we've got. When you pick your own team, it is important to pick team members who are conscientious, loyal and trustworthy. Other important factors in selecting a team include intelligence, education and ability. Additionally, make sure your team members have spunk and are not easily punked or bullied by a challenge. When you are given a team and have to make that team work, it is important to take steps to judge the talent, abilities, intelligence and risk tolerance of the people who have become your team. You will need to act quickly match talent with the tasks to be done so that you can move forward and meet deadlines.

It is also important to have a good person in charge of your team. If you are a person who is capable of leading, have experience as a leader and can handle to burden of leadership, it is good for you to lead your team whenever possible. However, it must be notes that there are times when you should not lead the team, but should select someone else. If the team members have a strong preference for another person and would not respond positively to your leadership, you must select another leader. If you do not possess the ability, education or experience to effectively lead your team, the intelligent thing to do is select another person to handle the leadership duties.


A leader must be able to organize resources and people. In order to be successful, a leader must have strength of character that will enable her to stand up to criticism. Successful leaders are able to motivate and inspire those around them to follow leadership. When selecting a leader, it is not always necessary to select the most popular or the most powerful. However, selecting someone who can influence the most popular and the most power is a crucial step in finding the appropriate leader for your team .

I know some people reading this post and thinking, "Screw that, I don't want to be part of a team, I work better solo. Keep in mind that when you are supposed to be working with a team, like projects at work or being a member of a family.  Learning to work as part of a team is a crucial step in development, one that should not be ignored or taken lightly.

So the question this Wonderful Wednesday is what are you going to do to build a better team in your life?

Terrific Tuesday Taming the To Do List

Terrific Tuesday - it is terrific to be able to use technology to take control of the to do list.

We all have things to do. We have projects at home, work and school. We must remember things to do for oursleves. our spouses, our childen, our work mates and our friends.  Everyone has a different way of doing things. My husband for example has a pen and a bunch of little yellow legal pads. He writes everything down on one of his little pads and everyone in the house has been trained to stay away from them. I have a girl friend who has a beautiful paper day planner that she carries around and uses to plan her life. I am a gadget-aholic and like to use my technology. I also  break gadgets like you would not believe, so I have built some redundancy into my routine. I currently am using my Kindle Fire to manage my life.




                              

I keep my calendar on line with the Google Calendar application. This works for me because it syncs to many other commercial calendar programs. I carry my Kindle Fire with me in my purse everywhere I go.  I don't use it to read ( I have the Kinxle 3G for that) I use it as a kind of PDA on steroids. On the Fire, I currently have two calendar programs, Cozi Family Organizer and Calengoo. Both these programs sync with my Google online calendar. So anything I out into one will be on all three. 


I like the Cozi program because it automatically sends a report of the calendar for the week to my husband and teenie bopper each Sunday. This helps them coordinate their schedules with the rest of the family. It also is color coded so I know by color what family member has something going on. Cozi also has a built in journal for the family. One feature the teenie bopper likes is that she can go online and add items to the grocery list for when I go shopping. Cozi also has a recipe section and can add items to your grocery list.

 www,cozi.com

The Calengoo calendar is a calendar designed sync with the Google online calendar and it works wonderfully. Unlike Cozi, with Calengoo you can change appointments made on the Google calendar. Since all three of the calendars sync with one another, I mainly use Calengoo and let Cozi work in the background to give my family information. I keep both Cozi and Calengoo on my Fire so that if one program crashes or goes crazy, my back up is already in place. All these programs also work on a smart pjone or Android phone.

www.calengoo.com

So, now that I have the electronic planner, what do I do with it? First, I put all my appointments and to do tasks in the planner. This means if I want to plan a party six months from now, I put it in the calendar now while I am thinking about it. I need to go school shopping for my four children in the middle of August. I thought that in April, so I scheduled it in April.  I have post ideas I would like to write in my blog, so they go in the Calendar. I like to keep track of all kinds of information so I keep those notes in the calendar as well. It is easy to move appointments and to do items with an electronic calendar and still keep the calendar neat and easy to use.

The important thing to remember with techmological to do  list management is the same thing you need to remember with the old pen and paper method. You must look at the list at the beginning and end of each day to see what has been done and what must  be amended, moved or cancelled altogether. You must also keep the calendar, to do list, and notes complete and up to date so you can safely rely upon the record keeping method you are using.  The technolgy of eletronic management with internet sync is great because you don't have to go crazy or be unproductive if you lose your list.

So the question for you this terrific Tuesday is, how can you use your technology to manage your to do list more efficiently? 

Magnificent Monday - Add Something Magnificent to the World

Magnificent Monday - sometimes it is magnificent to add something special to someone else's life.

Source: tumblr.com via Janeane on Pinterest

I belong to a support group on Facebook made up of wonderful women who write blogs and are involved in a wide variety of social media networks. Recently one of the members started a procedure that reviewed each member's blog and offered constructive criticism. My blog went through this process and the new and improved site you see is in large part a result of the comments I received from my group members.

One of the group members,  Brandi Jeter of MamaKnowItAll, who blogs at www.mamaknowsitall.com, commented that a nice header that reflected my personality would be a great improvement. I do not know Brandi personally, only through our Facebook group. I agreed I needed a better header, but put the idea on hold because I did not have any good ideas for the change. Without me asking, Brandi stepped in, designed an amazing header, offered it to me and now it is part of my blog. Go back to the top of the page and check it out. It is AWESOME. Look on the left at the definition of Superwoman. Is that clever or what?  I think her improvements are such an amazing thing. My husband and daughter looked at her changes and agreed they were an incredible improvement to the blog.

Check out this song by Mary Mary that describes my feelings on the matter.


Mary Mary "The Biggest Greatest Thing"



I think we should all take the opportunity to do something incredibly kind for someone else without being asked. There are two rewards that result from you doing kindnesses for others. First, the person you are kind to has some sunshine added to her life. Secondly, you have sunshine added to your life. It feels good to do something good for another person. When the person you have done something kind for really likes what you did, it makes you feel really good. In addition, very often, the person you did something kind for wants to return the favor, wants to do something something kind for someone else.

It works that way for me. Whenever someone does something kind for me, I appreciate it. I know that no one owes me kindness and generosity, so I appreciate when the kindness and generosity comes my way. It always makes me go find someone to show unexpected kindness and generosity. Good things, good acts are as contagious as the common cold. So, get up, go out, do something kind for someone who is not expecting it from you.

So the question for you this Magnificent Monday is what magnificent thing can you add to someone else's world?

Draft 7/14/12 Sensational Saturday Celebrating Your Spouse

Sensational Saturday - a sensational spouse is something to celebrate.

I have had a wonderful husband for more than 22 years.  So this sensational Saturday, I want to celebrate my sensational husband. He is indeed, a mighty, mighty good man.

Salt N Peppa, featuring En Vogue "What a Man"



Good things are indeed hard to find and even harder to keep. So under that notion that we should shower our loved ones with flowers while they can smell them. Today I celebrate my husband and how happy I am to be his wife. My teenie bopper says all her friends think we are a cute couple, crazy and perfectly suited for one another. Several of her friends have parents who are divorced and she likes our stability. My twins say, "Go on a date and kiss." I am grateful to have a happy, loving, God filled marriage. Today I celebrate my husband and how happy I am to be his wife

If you have a spouse who is faithful, trustworthy, loving, kind and a good father to your  children. Take some time to celebrate him, praise him at the city gates and let the world know what a treasure you have found. Good spouses are hard to find and even harder to keep. But so worth the effort.  So in a move towards keeping my marriage spicy and strong, I am going to close this post with a grown folks' song that sets the mood

Al Green "Let's Stay Together"


So my question for this Sensational Saturday is how are you going to celebrate your spouse?

Serene Sunday - Getting Your Mind Ready for Things to Come

Serene Sunday - there is a serenity that can be found in getting your mind ready for the things to come.

Once in a while we have to do things that are hard. Once in a while we have to do things that are scary. Once in a while we have to do things that make us uncomfortable. It is always hard to do these things. We have to find a way to suck up the gumption to do the unpleasant thing. So what do you do?

When I have something unpleasant to do or am nervous about what is to come, I take the worst case/best case approach. By that I mean, I look at real close look at what is the worst thing that can result from the situation. Then I look at the best thing that can result from the situation. Once I do this, some of the fear is gone. I understand the best and worst that can result. I have visualized these things in my mind,  I have a clear picture of the entire situation. When I do this, I feel empowered. I gain strength and perspective. I am able to move upward and onward.

Source: google.com via Natalie on Pinterest

So the question for you this Serene Sunday is what do you do in order to get mentally prepared for the things to come?