October 24 is Take Back Your Time Day. Take Back Your Time Day is a movement toward social change. The sponsors offer ideas so passionate and ground-breakting  that it made even me take a step back and second look. That’s a good thing. Sometime we have to step way out of our comfort zone to actually move to even a slightly new perspective. Take a look at some of their posters to shake up your thinking about time, free time, and non-work time.

What will you be doing with your time this weekend?

This initiative is promoted by The Simplicity Forum.

Studies of the brain show that laughter releases endorphins. In turn endorphins elevate your mood. And finally an elevated mood increases your effectiveness on many levels. For example, you look forward to working with other people because you have an optimistic mindset. You looking forward to working with them impacts their attitude toward working with you and the partnership, team, and even customer/provider relationship goes better. Cooperation is easier when this mindset pervades. Coming to agreements through a shared vision and compromise is easier and more effective when one’s mood is positive.

So, make yourself laugh every day to improve your effectiveness.

Find the humor in situations such as grocery shopping – loft the loaf of bread to your shopping ass’t (whether your kids or sister)… everyone will get a lift. Find humor on the internet as in this 34 second video from YouTube: 

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(Tip: limit yourself to just 1 or 2 YouTube Video- laughter is addictive and soon you won’t be working with anyone if all you’re doing is watching videos!)

Make faces in the mirror with your kids. You’ll build your relationship there, too!

Comment with what you do to laugh so we can all have better and more effective days!

Have you started getting the holiday catalogs of your favorite companies? Are you also getting the holiday catalogs of all their favorite related businesses? Most of us are. And, the number of trees they represent, the hours you could spend perusing them, and the duplication is remarkable. Most people tell me they'd visit with family, get a spa treatment, go for a walk, enjoy their pet more, and languish in a good book if they just had more time. Ignoring catalogs so you can do your favorite thing with your time is an easy way to claim hours each week from now until Christmas. Ah, exercise. That's the other thing readers would like to do more especially to counter the calorie fests that we're invited to attend.

This weekend begin a collection routine for those catalogs – not so you can shop but so you can stop them during the slow and relaxing month of January. Simply put a brown paper grocery bag near the door you enter the house most of the time. Rather than bring the catalogs in, simply drop them in the bag on the way in the house. Don't forget to engage whoever retrieves the mail most days in this new routine.

If the bag is full in a couple of weeks… put it aside, thank goodness that your catalog contribution to landfills will soon diminish, and start another. Check back here in January for steps to stop catalogs… and enter your favorite way in the comment section below for those that want to get started soon!

Taking a couple of nephews
/home.asp?loc=300austin”>bowling last month cost nearly $100 (they serve dinner at the alley and play the best party music I ever heard at a bowling alley). With the stock market on a roller-coaster everyone is looking for ways to fill free time without breaking the bank. Bowling at 300 is not the way to do that.

Instead, have some family fun, connect with your kids (or some borrowed kids), and do it on the cheap! This weekend plan to play the Wii with the kids, pull out Jenga, or learn how to play little-known and highly entertaining Farkle dice game.

Invite some friends over and turn this good, clean, and often raucous game-playing into a regular event.

For a lively and long lasting activity this weekend, plant a window box – indoors.
Fresh herbs are the most common way to dress a window and have fresh flavors to add to meal preparation. It’s fun to watch small plants, or seeds, flourish and ultimately provide a harvest. The supplies you need are easily purchased at a hardware store or garden center. Here in the Northeast plants are dirt cheap since the growing season is just about complete. The other supplies you need are inexpensive too. Consider reusing or repurposing a bucket, pot, or other container for an interesting option. Beyond that you need some potting soil and that’s it, you’re ready to plant.

Easy-to-grow herbs include basil, parsley, oregano, and mint. The mint might grow wild so I recommend putting it in its own container.

If you’re not used to tending plants, remember to water your new decoration – and occasionally add some fertilizer. (I managed to kill some healthy azaleas by over fertilizing a few years ago – let me (not you) be the one making the mistake by killing with kindness – literally.

This weekend take a vacation at home. Go visit a site, destination, or other special place that you would usually wait to see until you have visitors from out of town. And, think of the places that people for other states or countries travel to that is close you – those are places I’m talking about.

This weekend we are going to see fireworks at nearby Longwood Gardens. Some of the friends we’re taking live in our town and haven’t been to Longwood in the last decade or more. Yet, when we’re there we hear as many foreign language speakers as we do English speakers. That  means that people from around the world make Longwood Gardens their destination and make the effort to travel to it. It’s a big deal. And, it’s a 20 minute drive for us.

Shelly always waits for her sister to visit to go to her favorite restaurant, Teca. Her boyfriend could give her a great surprise by taking her there this weekend (or make the reservation this weekend and plan for a few weeks down the road!) What a great way to delight someone!

What little vacation can you take close to home this weekend?

During a week at a beach house we broke out a couple of games that we hadn’t played in years. Cribbage, putting a puzzle together, and speed Uno filled the time and allowed us to create some good and loud memories. We laughed. We ‘trash talked’ the other players. We played for prizes.

There’s a good reason so many games have become classics – they’re fun, playing them distracts and entertains the players, many games can be enjoyed by a broad range of ages, and they’re fun (I know I said that already… you might have forgotten how fun they are…)

This weekend pull out a game that you have shelved for years, persuade some of your friends to ‘play along’, and enjoy making new memories together.

The sound of water is soothing to almost anyone. This weekend seek the water and enjoy the calming and rejuvenating effects. Here are ways to hear the gurgling of moving water, to enjoy cool water running over your feet, and to enjoy the weightlessness of full immersion. Enjoy one or two and schedule a more involved outing for the near future…

• Go to a stream or brook nearby. Wear water shoes, crocs or sandals and walk right up the middle – or the side where the water reaches to the middle of your calf if it’s deep. If you get inspired to sit and let the water surround you… go for it!
• Go fishing!
• Sleep on a friend’s boat. Someone you know may have a boat docked at a marina within an hour or two drive. If there is a little breeze or movement the sound of the water lapping on the side of the boat is what we’re after.
• Buy a small water feature for inside your home. Fountains can be found at home stores like Bed Bath & Beyond or hardware stores like Home Depot & Lowe’s.
• Install a medium or large water feature in your garden. This will be strenuous at first and give years of the most appealing background sounds. It will probably attract peeper frogs and other ‘wildlife’. Be sure it’s moving water or the mosquitoes will breed in the still water.
• Take a bath! Most tubs are rarely used – enjoy yours with some bubbles and lavender scent.
• Sit on a porch during a rain shower.
• Borrow or rent some inner tubes and float on a river, creek, lake, pond or in the waves.

What’s your favorite way to enjoy the sound of water? Leave a comment to let us know!

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R & R (rest & rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday at 5:00 entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Your productivity is rooted in your energy being high. Your energy being high is rooted in recreation!

Do you have 2, 4, or 7 boxes of pasta in the pantry?
Do you shop at Sam’s Warehouse, Costco or BJs and buy things in bulk?
What’s in the freezer? Pounds of meat? Bags of shrimp? Containers of leftovers? Packages of frozen veggies?

How long could you prepare meals using the stuff in your cupboards, freezer and pantry? If it’s more than a week take the challenge – eat out of your pantry until you’re just about empty.

Here are the guidelines:

1. You start a menu with something that you have on hand. Let’s say it’s a can of chick peas, potatoes, rice, onions, frozen green beans, chutney, bananas that are starting to turn brown and frozen chicken breast.
2. You decide to make a dish or menu using those items. Let’s say chicken curry with the items above.
3. Put the extra ingredients you need to make the dish on your shopping list. Let’s say you need diced tomatoes to finish the ingredient list.
4. You purchase that item when you grocery shop for perishables like milk and fresh fruit.
5. You make the curry and use all those things out of your stores. And, let’s say you savor every bite!

Go to the top and start at 1. Again with another pantry item.

Repeat until the cupboards, freezer, and other extras are almost gone.

For fun mark your calendar with the date you start this project. Mark it again when you’re doing a replenish the staples shop which you don’t do until you think, "I feel like Old Mother Hubbard with Bare Shelves."

The benefits of doing this:

• You’ll use ingredients before they go bad or expire saving guilt & money
• You’ll be creative and resourceful – be proud of yourself
• You’ll be eating well! – enough said
• You might lose weight – depends on what type of recipes you choose, doesn’t it!?

I’ve been doing this for 8 weeks so far. I think I have 4 weeks more to finish using most of these extras.

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R & R (rest & rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday at 5:00 entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Your productivity is rooted in your energy being high. Your energy being high is rooted in recreation!

Summer is blazing here in eastern Pennsylvania. Kids are playing outside, trees are done blossoming and offer wonderful shade, and it stays dark late. These are elements calling you to build a tree house (or fort if you prefer) with your kids.

Tree houses offer kids of every age a place to retreat and be themselves. Tree forts fuel the imagination whether of battles like the knights of old or mystery solvers like the Hardy boys. It’s a place to read the Hardy Boys books or Little House series of books. Tree houses are simply cool (or is it sick?)!

A tree house could be built simply as a platform with railings for safety, or complete with windows and a roof. Consider buying some of your supplies inexpensively at the stores associated with Habitat for Humanity ReStores. http://www.habitat.org/env/restores.aspx

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R & R (rest and rejuvenation) are the intentions behind the Friday @ Five entries. Often these are inexpensive and low key because you recharging your batteries can be more easily achieved without running around and doing, doing, doing. Many Friday @ Five entries are geared to do with your family or friends.