Today I helped Kristina start a project of making some of Brian’s long sleeve shirts into short sleeve and I made a lot of progress on the personal progress folders. I am now ready to sew twenty. I hope to finish this first batch this week.
Category: News (Page 3 of 29)
When Allyson was called to be the Young Women president in her ward in Perth she asked me what advice I’d give her. I thought for a minute and told her to love all of the young women unconditionally, to look for their strengths and the good things they do and then tell their parents about all the good qualities. Parent’s love to hear about the good things their children do in a world where so many are so quick to judge and criticize. I had so much fun last night with the primary girls. They we so darling and very polite. I loved having them here. I decided to write notes to each of their mothers to thank them for sharing their darling daughter’s with me.
It isn’t any secret that I love making cupcakes. Not so much the baking of them, the the filling, frosting and sprinkling of them. You can find evidence of this on my other blog, Vanilla Carrots. I decided that for one of my daily intentional acts of kindness I would invite the activity day girls from our primary over to decorate cupcakes with me. What I didn’t know when I extended the invitation was that there are 18 girls, all between the ages of 8 and 12. There were almost eighteen girls who came. I had baked well over 125 cupcakes and made oodles of frosting. I demonstrated three cupcakes and then they got busy. I am always amazed at the talent such young girls have for decorating cupcakes, they were so incredibly creative. We had a lot of fun. Here are some photos of the finished product.
Sometimes when I am folding laundry or ironing I like to watch television or a movie. Today I was disappointed that PBS didn’t have the last night’s episode of Downton Abbey up yet. Then I noticed the TED channel on Roku and decided to look for Kelly McGonigal talk to watch. She was recommended to me last month. I just watched her talk about rethinking the effect of stress on our bodies. She said that we have commonly believed that stress can shorten our life. She suggested that is the belief that stress can shorten our life is  what will shorten it. If we look at stress as our body’s efforts to prepare us to face a challenge it will strengthen us.
Near the end of her talk she said that caring for others can delete the negative affects of stress on our health. Caring creates resilience. How we think and choose to act can transform the effects of stress. Our actions determine what stress does to us. By looking at stress in a positive way it allows us to say, “I can trust myself to face life’s challenges.”
This was a very interesting idea. I especially like the idea that, “Caring creates Resilience.” This goes well with The Birthday Project. Doing things for others takes the focus off of me and the challenges in my life.
We have a new YW president in our ward and today I am going to take her a note of encouragement and one of my personal progress holders.
Today is the half -way point in my project. I really need to get moving here! 30 days left of deliberate acts of kindness.
I bought two Sonic gift cards so I am sending the other one to another busy mom so she can take her kids for a treat sometime.
I know young mother who is doing all that she can to live a good life and raise her funny, crazy children to be good humans. She loves Sonic so today I mailed her a Sonic gift card.
Today I decided to write a letter of gratitude to someone who influenced my life greatly. I had planned to send this on my birthday, but it seems I was prompted to write and send it today.
When I was fourteen Ardeth Kapp spoke at my ward’s New Beginnings program and said something that changed my life’s focus. She said, “You should pray everyday that you will be worthy to go to the temple.” For a girl who had the crazy idea that just because her parents hadn’t been to the temple that she wouldn’t be allowed to go, this was a revelation. So that night I began to pray for that every time I prayed. I did go to the temple and so have all of my children. That one sentence influenced generations and I decided to thank Sister Kapp. I have written the letter to her in my head a million times. Tonight, it has be written, stamped and is ready to mail.
Wow! Life gets in the way! I hope to get back to these days. I am doing doing good things just not different and out of the ordinary.
Wow! It is so easy to get caught up in spending time with family, cooking and cleaning. Â I am spending time serving and doing good, but nothing that I don’t ordinarily do so I don’t want to count it. Can I count staying up until 12:30am washing towels so my son’s family would have clean towels the next day? Not something I do everyday…not something I had to do…something I deliberately chose to do. Yes, I’ll count it!