Book Tuesday

Today's book is called the Success Principles by Jack Canfield. Most of you would be familiar with his Chicken Soup for the soul series of books that are everywhere! This book is about the things he used in his own life to be a success with those and other things.
I found this very interesting and I made a "short" list of the points I want to rememeber, and that I feel are the base of the book.

1. Take 100% responsibility for what happens to you and your life. It is no one elses "fault". You cant blame your parents, society, your job or your relationship for how you feel. We live in a free choice world, and if something is not working - change it! YOU are the only one who can. " You either create or allow everything that happens to you". This is number 1 principle and all the others are based on this - EVERYTHING starts with you.

2.Be clear why you're here. Are you here to make people feel better, bring joy to peoples lives, heal the sick, help the unfortunate, raise good kids, - What?

3.Decide what you want. He has a good exercise that you list 30 things you want - to do, to be, to have. 30 of each. What do you want to do? What do you want to be? What do you want to have? Just start listing and near the end, the real things will show up.

4. Believe its possible. To get all you want. We get what we EXPECT. Expect more.

Other points were to set goals in writing and be specific - not just lose weight, but I will lose 5 pounds by June 15th and to do that I will..... and take the steps one at a time.

Visualize- thoughts become real and act as if.

ACTION- its all fine and dandy to write things down and think things, but you have to move! Do 5 things every day toward your goals and exceed your own expectations.


Some points to ponder and an interesting read.

Busy, busy!

Yesterday and today and in fact all week, I have been sorting things out and getting ready for a yard sale. It's tomorrow! I did the flyers and ads last week, and today I priced and laid out tables. I cant do it all cause it looks like rain today. So it is all ready to go and I guess I get up early! It's supposed to be nice tomorrow.

The thing I forgot about was....BLACKFLIES!

Now anyone in the woods should know about these little pests. They are crazy up here swarming around your head and biting everywhere all day long! UHHH! Today was a little colder, and had a breeze so I managed to get some stuff done - but I keep running back into the house - like right now. My Mom has none, and she only lives 2 hours south of me. Hopefully they will only last for a couple weeks and then they die down and mosquitos come! We said we wanted summer right?





This is an old pic of my porch before I sorted - Do ya think I NEED a yard sale? Nah.....
It will be nice to get my porch back and my hammock! I will take some pics tomorrow and let you know how it went.

Mother's Day Giveaway!

Another Giveaway! ( I am part of the Cottage Charm giveaway - posts below) and I found another one today. 5 minutes for Mom is giving away up to ten things for Mothers Day including a ipod nano!! Other great prizes as well. Just click on the side banner to be connected.


PS. This is actually a flower at my house!! One of the bulbs I planted last fall. I actually have some flowers here! (As you can guess, I'm not really much of a gardener, I like flowers - they just don't like me.)

Artwords - Eyes

This week was Eyes and the first thing I thought of was this photo I took of my daughter's eye. This wasn't enhanced or changed in any way - that's the color of her eyes!!

Book Tuesday

This weeks book is Decorative Boxes by Juliet Bawden. The first half of the book is history on all kinds of boxes...
metal, glass, wood, painted and so on.





The second half of the book is about how to make some of these boxes yourself. This box of "chocolates" is all fabric.



Some neat ideas and projects.
Sorry for not the best pictures - these pages were very glossy.

Please make sure to check out my giveaway below!!

Cottage Charm Giveaway!

One Women's Cottage Life she is hosting a Cottage Charm Give away day on May 25th. She is hoping to have a blogwide giveaway day. Here is mine!!


This is from my previous post and I thought this would be a good present! Details are below but it is a pack of vintage and new paper items for the homemaker or the woman or artist in your life.



I will also do a personalized tag for the winner, and following beachyscapecodcupboard example, I am going to wait and see who wins and add some more extras just for them! This pic is just an example of papers - I will make the papers just for the winner too!

Just comment on this post and I will pick the winner on Sat the 26th!

If you would like to participate in a giveaway of your own, just click on the banner.





There are a bunch of other blogs that are linked there that are all doing giveaways. Isn't Karma grand?

Announcement!

I opened up my ETSY shop! It's called fromthepines (of course!). I had been thinking on it for a while, and I just decided to DO IT! I only have one item for sale right now, but I have some more ideas floating around my head.




This item is called "The Vintage Homemakers Paper Pack".
It has many papers, mostly vintage that have to do with the homemaker.

Such as: Recipe
Craft
Fashion
Reading
Music
Games and more!
There is also a piece of old lace and ribbon and a piece of fabric or doily.





Also included are some new items, such as pretty wallpaper and napkin, inspiration page, new craft sheet and a copy of a great old photo!

Each bag comes with a custom tag with a vintage button and can be personalized with calligraphy for free.




I also will try to cater to colors and themes anyone wants. For a full listing of the items, please go to the shop. This is just a sample - there are over 25 different things! All of these papers could be used in collage and your own art as well - it doesn't have to stay in this form.

But what a great idea for the women in your life! Truly one of a kind.

Renovations - the shed continued

So the next thing we had to do was fix the "bunkie". The main part was ok but there is a storage surrounding the outside of it that I plan to use for my studio, and its roof needed replacing, even some of the rafters! This is a pic from the back before. We had to move these trees and we changed the flat roof that was the problem to new slanted rafters.



This is from the front and you can see the sky when the old roof came off. This opening used to be a window and it turned into a door - works great!



Some of the old roof - just a little moss!



New rafters being put in.



The view from the back with the rafters in.




Then it was all plywooded and shingled. I can't seem to find the pic of the finished shingled one but it was all done in green shingles.

And all this was done in a weekend! Does he work fast or what?

Artwords-Botanical

This weeks word is Botanical. I have tons of photographs of plants, but I think I like this one the best!

Book Tuesday

This weeks book is one of my own - The business of Bliss - How to profit from doing what you Love. This is by the editors of Victoria magazine and just like the mag, the pictures are wonderful.
It is in 2 parts - Inspiration and Dollars and Sense. It shows many examples of women in business and what they do and great pics. There is also some great business advice to anyone wanting to start a business.

Here are some pages...





Great inspiration and to make you dream!