Doodling Fun

Finding a hobby is always rewarding.  For many, hobbies are discovered during their youth as an outlet for energy or creativity.  But what happens when we grow up?  If you’re like me, you’ve found you’ve lost some of your hobbies due to time and monetary demands.

Well, this weekend i rekindled with one: drawing.  I was writing a story and it made me think of how cute the character would be when sketched.  So I went out, grabbed a sketch book, and returned home to start doodling.  And what fun it was!  Rewarding, imaginative, invigorating.  I highly recommend reconnecting with an old hobby-flame if the spark has maybe run a bit cold.  It’s good for the soul, and you may just find yourself smiling a little more, too.

A Movie Pick Me Up

It’s official.  If you’re having a down-and-out kind of day, the best way to pick yourself back up and feel good about the world again is to watch Rudy.

That is all.

Prepping for 2020

Happy New Year everyone!  A few things learned to help you prepare for a spectacular 2020:

• Sign all paperwork the long way - 2020 - and not the short way - 20 - because "20" is too easy to forge into another year like 2017, 2018, etc.

• Take inventory of what house work / improvements you need done for the year and the estimated cost.  Keeping your house in order, just like a car, helps keep its longevity so it works for you.  Skimping on repairs and maintenance only hurts you in the long run.  Find out how much you'll need for the work you know you'll need to do and start working to put it away.

• Have a pet?  Have a pet fund.  Just like kids, your pets need vet checkups, toys, outings, and other mental stimulation activities to keep them happy and healthy.  Be sure you have a fund set aside to do just that.

• Pick 1-2 health goals so you stick to it.  Instead of specifics like "work out exactly 45 min 3x a week" keep it broader to "work out multiple times a week," or "go on a diet" to "eat foods that are good for me" or "eat whole foods."  It'll allow for life flexibility and for you to be able to positively praise yourself for staying 'on goal' instead of berating yourself later for "not sticking to it".

• Plan for pauses in life.  I read somewhere once (can't remember where now) that to help maintain life balance and sanity, this family started implementing the "1 a ____" rule.  1 hour a day just for yourself, 1 day a week to do something just for you, 1 weekend a month with no plans (tell everyone you're already "busy" and just "do you" instead), 1 week a quarter with no plays (maybe a vacation or staycation).  It helps bring about needed pauses to life and recenter yourself.  We've been doing it for years now, and it absolutely works.  For those weeks when you start to feel overwhelmed you can say "just two more weeks until I have absolutely nothing to do for the weekend".

Happy 2020!

Christmas Movie Month

It’s officially that time of year, and if you’re like my husband and me, then you love a good holiday tradition.  One of ours is watching one holiday movie a night starting Dec 1 and going through Christmas.  So far, we have made it work, and we are looking forward to a little White Christmas tonight (because let’s be honest, who doesn’t love that movie!?)

What we love about this tradition is it allows us to watch a unique movie each day and not be at the whim and mercy of the Freeform movie repeats.

Movies we have seen so far:
Muppets Christmas Carol
Santa Clause 1, 2, and 3
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (animated and live action)
A Garfield Christmas
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Home Alone 1 and 2
Elf
Polar Express
The Holiday
Love Actually
Christmas with the Kranks
National Lampoons Christmas Vacation
I’ll Be Home for Christmas
How To Train Your Dragon Christmas (Snoggletog)
Klaus
Four Christmases
A Mickey’s Christmas

Other possibly less common Christmas movies:
Die Hard (yes that is a Christmas movie!)
Harry Potter series (especially the first one because of all the Magic)

Ones I know are popular but I don’t like:
Jingle All the Way
A Christmas Story (though it’s on in the background all Christmas Day)
Any other “A Christmas Carol”
A Richie Rich Christmas
Nightmare Before Christmas
It’s a Wonderful Life

So here is a cheer to all your holiday traditions, including the ones that help make the whole month magical.  Happy Holidays to you and your families!

Stuffing to Quiche Transformation

If you’re like me, then it may be that you actually and genuinely enjoy leftovers...and as they were eaten originally.  So you can imagine how happy I was to have Thanksgiving leftovers!  After putting in all that work to make the meal and all the desserts, it’s nice to be rewarded with days and nights where you have food already prepped and don’t have to cook.

Unfortunately, this year I didn’t much care for the stuffing mix I made.  It was a pre-made / boxed stuffing (and I know at this point some of you are cringing!  Eek! You don’t make your own stuffing!?  Alas, I do not.). And because I didn’t much like the stuffing, when I realized we had a bundle leftover, I wondered what on earth I would do with it so it wouldn’t go to waste.

Enter Holiday Baking shows.

One of the contestants on the Holiday Baking Championship used box cake mix for a pastry crust.  This morning I turned to my stuffing and thought...Quiche crust! Voila!  So I added some melted butter, made the quiche filling, and 45-60 minutes later we had food, reimagined and delicious!

What I used:

Crust
2 cups leftover stuffing
2-3 tbsp butter, melted
(Mix together and push into bottom of pie pan.  If you have more stuffing about 3 cups would give a decent side crust too)

Filling
10 eggs, beaten tans then poured into pie shell.
Whatever else you want.  I put grated cheese directly on the pie crust and poured the eggs overtop, but feel free to get creative!  Just know if you’re going to add in any meat it needs to be pre-cooked.

Bake @ 350 for 45-60 min til the center is cooked.

Enjoy! And happy holidays!

We're BACK!!

Welcome Back!  After a three year hiatus I am pleased to announce that the blog is back, and I cannot wait to connect with you all again!

What brought the blog back?  It's a thank you to both EWF (Executive Women's Forum) and my internal compass finding my "north" again.  In October of 2019, I had the unique privilege of speaking to the incredible women who came to the annual EWF conference about Personal Accountability and the Success MED-thod (using Marketing, Education, and Delivery to drive success).  The session went well, and I have appreciated all the feedback I have received, so a big THANK YOU to all who have reached out to me since the session with their kind words.

More than that, though, the entire experience (the networking, the connecting with people and discussing lives and families and dreams) really reminded me of all the wonderful stories you all have shared with me about the blog posts or my books and how they have spoken to you.  It reminded me that, when you find something you're both passionate about and talented in, you should really just dive even deeper into it to share more of your talents.

So, with that, I am back!  Stay tuned for more blog posts, shared stories, and inspiration.  This blog is here to serve and connect you with amazing things in life. 

It's great to be back!

Reading for Fun - November

Hey all!

So sorry this has taken me so long to post!  My husband and I had the distinct pleasure of spending 2 weeks in Europe in November, and then when we got home I found that the rest of the month had passed me up and I had failed to post anything!

So we are fixing that now!

November was spent in limbo for a while.  With leaving for Europe on the 3rd, I didn't know what I was going to make as my 'daily do' while on vacation, so I just waited.  When we arrived in Amsterdam we walked 17,000+ steps our first full day there.  As a result, my husband and I were so sore that I spent a good 30 minutes stretching! (I was able to convince him to do about 2 minutes worth, but it was better than nothing!).  That lead me to believe that that was how I would spend my month - stretching!  It obviously made sense!  We were walking the whole time we were in Europe, so why not?

And then we got on our river cruise and our room was a tiny little cruise ship room.  I could touch my toes and stretch my calves, but that was about it.  Time for plan B...but what was it?

Then I remembered I downloaded the book Discovery of Witches.  Someone had recommended it, saying it was like a hybrid of Harry Potter and Twilight, and very long. So, I started reading.  Overall, I would give the series about an 7.5-8/10: not amazing, but interesting enough for me to want to finish.  Plus, she writes her trilogy in a way where the book's ending is like the dropping of the curtain at a theater show at intermission...it's a pause, but it's not done!!

So, 560+ pages into book one and I found myself done, but not satisfied.  What to do?  Read book 2!  I continued in this fashion and suddenly I had finished the whole trilogy in 18 days!

Apparently, November was all about reading for enjoyment.  Now, December will be about Reading for Self-Improvement.

PS - any book recommendations are welcome!

Be More Feminine - Day 24

Failing.  So much.  Ugh!

Today I took action to finally clean up my nails, remove the old and chipping nail polish, and just put a clear coat on them to tidy them up.  However, this comes after a day of falling into all the old and bad habits.  A WHOLE DAY!  Guys, it was bad.  I was biting and picking and pulling and fiddling all day.  My nail polish was all chipped and two of my nails were back down to their shortest possible length - i.e. nubs.

My husband even caught me doing it and chided me for it.  In fact, he kept berating for the fact that I was ruining something I'd "spent perfectly good money on," and he had a point!  And I was happy and thankful that he brought my attention to it (like 20 times that day, granted), but he did.  However, the fact that he had to call me out on it bummed me out more! I've been so good this month and there I went throwing it all away in one day.  Actually it was more like minutes really.  It only takes a few seconds to ruin your nails, and I was mindlessly pulling at them all day.

The leftover remnants of yesterday's bad habits rolled into today.  I didn't pick or bite at my nails, but the hang nails started.  If you ever wonder why you get hang nails or frayed skin around your cuticles, it's because you pick at them and break their natural and neutral state.

Must. Get. Better.  Duly noted.

Be More Feminine - Day 19

What a great week!  Tuesday (the 18th) was my husband and my three year anniversary!  Woohoo!!  What a great feeling!

To celebrate, we decided to book reservations at Piccolo Sogno, and we decided to do it on a Monday, the 17th.  I have the pleasure of working from home on Mondays and I felt not only less guilty as a pet parent (having to crate my dog for a few hours at dinner only instead of all day and then another few hours for dinner) but also excited because Monday nights are far easier nights to get a reservation than Friday or Saturday.  And sure enough, they had a spot!

Well, on the 15th a friend and I had treated ourselves to mani/pedis, and my nails were (and still are, 4 days later!) on point!  Then, I made sure to give myself plenty of time to do my hair and makeup on Monday so they would look like perfection.  In addition, it was a beautiful 80 degrees so I could wear cute shoes, leggings, and a dressed up tunic for dinner.  Man, by the time 5:30 rolled around and it was time for me to head out to meet him for dinner, I looked so classy.

And then I stepped outside!  Apparently the Chicago wind doesn't disappoint because it was extremely gusty.  What did that mean?  All the effort put into my hair was semi for naught.

What did that teach me?  Perfection is an illusion.  Put in the effort to make yourself feel special and important, confident and secure, and the beauty will follow.  But if you're working completely on making sure your exterior is infallible, well, you'll never be satisfied.

And so I went to dinner, hair windblown and all.  And you know what? My husband still looked at me with doting eyes and said I looked so beautiful.  ...what a good man.  ;-)

Be More Feminine - Day 7

Yesterday my boss noticed my nails were done.  And then today I noticed my nail polish was chipping.  These are things to which I never paid attention before, because, quite frankly, I never had my nails done.  On the flip side, however, I am picking at my nails far less than before, though the habit isn't waning.  I'm simply noticing and making myself quit more often.  :)

On a different note, tomorrow I get my hair cut.  To be honest, I'm terrified.  Having not had much luck in that department in the past, I'm quite nervous.  There is a part of me, though, that is excited.  Change.  Change is good.  Change pushes you.  Change grows you.  And luckily, in this department, it can always grow back!

Be More Feminine - Day 5

So this month is all about me more "femme", as the French say.  I want to find a way to be prouder of my femininity and appearance.  I believe that I haven't looked haggard or disheveled, but I do believe I can be more polished and chic.  As a result, I want to take the month to work on that.

Here is what this month is NOT:

• Harping on my weight
• Believing that I am not beauty
• Believing that I am not worthy
• Having everything perfect
• Dressing "to the 9s" everyday

Instead, here are the things I decided to focus on:

• Stop picking/biting my nails
• Have them polished at all times, or (as polish chips) shaped and well groomed
• Put effort into my hair so it's not "just in a ponytail" which has become my new staple on work days
• Choosing clothing that is truly an outfit / goes together, not just whatever is closest or looks 'just ok'.  
• Wear jewelry that creates a "finish" to the look.

So far we are on day 6.  I had told my husband that this month includes getting a haircut and he asked if I was going to change it up or keep it the same.  I said I wanted to change it up, maybe go short, like, chin length, and he responded with a resounding, "Oh thank God!" which I took as the OK to try something very different.  That is coming on the 8th, so I'll keep you posted!  (It will also require me to put more actual effort into my hair since I can't pull it back in a pony!!)

I've also now painted my nails twice and my toes once.  The first go around took a while to trim everything and clean up the cuticles, but I will admit that looking at them over the last 6 days has brought me a giddy sense of delight.  Having my nails done when I was younger was always a treat, so seeing them done now brings me emotionally back to that teenage 'nod' to a job well done or a special time to celebrate.  That's pretty cool.

I've also have always been sure to leave the house with at least eyeliner, lipstick, and gloss on.  Admittedly, that also has made me feel more polished and refined.  All in all, I think this is going to be a "bon" month!!

French Day 25 - Feeling Proud

Today I watched Muzzy - an old, language program produced by BBC back I don't even know when. I used to watch it in grade school when I had my Spanish "classes" - the once a week post-school sessions to teach Spanish basics.  And it was then that I fell in love with it!

So when I became and was a teacher, I used it every year to help my Spanish 1 students get introduced to the language and later in the year feel proud in all they had accomplished, as it was a sort of benchmark for them to see and understand the progress that they'd made.

And you know what?  It worked for me today too!  I watched parts 1 & 2 today in French with French subtitles, and I was so excited!  Partly because I know Spanish and partly as a thanks to the work I've been doing so far!  I could follow nearly everything!  Yes I learned a thing or two (like the spelling for "how many," which up to this point I had only heard and tried to ascertain the spelling on my own), but my 20 minutes of French study today left me full of pride and excitement!  I might not be able to carry on a full conversation with a true Frenchmen, but I'm on my way!  And that's a great feeling!

French Day 22 - Progress!

OMG where have I been this month?!  Sick.  That's where I've been.  I'm so sorry all, but I was heavily out with what must have been the flu for a good 8 days.  I didn't do French study during those days, but I am working on catching up!

I'm on Rosetta Stone Lesson 1, Unit 1, #4 and Coffee Break French's Level 1 lesson 23!  I'm super proud of myself.  I can do the following:

• Tell you my name, where I'm from, who my husband is, and ask about you
• Count (always helpful!)
• Explain the weather
• Order at a restaurant/cafe
• Explain some issues with my hotel room
• Use all the pronouns
• Semi confidently conjugate (positive and negative):  I have, I would like, s/he has, I love, I understand, he's drinking/eating, s/he's wearing, etc.

....I just can't spell anything!!!

So - I think I can get through a BASICO BASICO conversation/a day in France.

Je voudrais comprender (more) fracais!

French Day 2

Well, we have moved from Spanish to French!  The new Spanish teaching material is successfully uploaded to Teachers Pay Teachers (visit me!!! Stephanie Caprini Inc) and the new month has started.  This month, we are learning French!!!

The reason?  (1) I just love the language.  That and Italian. I would also like to learn Italian.  (2) The reason I chose French instead of Italian is that my husband and I are heading to Europe in 2 months and we will be stopping in Germany, France, and Switzerland.  Therefore, French it is!!

Lucky for me, I started about 6 months ago using the podcast called Coffee Break French.  I used Coffee Break Spanish when I was teaching and found it incredibly useful.  Therefore, it was the logical choice when deciding what program to use to teach myself French.  I got through about 10 "courses" (they're 15 minute classes, so totally doable).  Now, this month I am focused on spending my 20-minutes a day learning French, so I will be picking back up where I left off (and, if we're being honest, probably revisiting a few courses that I need to refresh my memory on).  However, I'm also a very visual learner, so I am taking some of these days to go through learning the spelling of the words I have already learned.

So, saunte to vous, and abientot!

Spanish Material Day 23 - So Not Interested

Blaaaaaaaaah.  Oh my Goooooooood.  I don't waaaaaannaaaaaa.

I might sound like a nine year-old complaining about broccoli or doing the dishes, but that's how my thirty-one year-old self feels.  Like a nine year old.  Facing chores.  Or broccoli.  Waaaaaaaaah.

I came home from work today, plopped myself on the couch between my husband and my doggie, and sat.  We went through our days; we contemplated dinner; we settled for protein bars, cheesy almond crackers, sparking water, and whatever remnants of a movie were playing on TV; and we were accepting the coming evening with inevitability.

And then he went to do his evening video gaming with his friends.  I was left on the couch with a sleeping doggie and Facebook.  As I scrolled, watching videos of people who inspire others to overcome obstacles, taking quizzes of 'which color best represents me', and watching the photos of others scroll up...up...up and away, I suddenly stopped on a photo of a quote.  I like quotes, so they tend to catch my eye, but generally I glance at them and move on.  However, this one said, "Don't work for a company for 8 hours, then go home and not work on your goals.  You're not tired.  You're uninspired."  I read it and tilted my head up and down in agreement, thinking "yeah, that's about right," and then scrolled right passed it.

And continued with my day.

Then twenty to thirty minutes later I started feeling restless.  I wasn't anxious or in need of moving around, I was sitting uncomfortably in my lie.  I was that uninspired person.  I had a goal for this month, and that was to create more Spanish teaching material.  And I wasn't doing shit today.  No excuse!  So I sighed really loudly, threw a personal, mental temper-tantrum, and opened a new Word document to get started.

And I got started.  And I finished a whole new quick 40-point quiz.  And it was a constant battle of the wills to get it done.  Not one of my better days, but I can say that at least I did it.

And you know what?????  I even went on to turn off the TV and work on my book, the sequel to Living with B, for an hour and a half.  WOOT!  Here's to motivation and goals, even if the transition from inert to movement is painful.