Check out this beautiful review from Suz Lipman author of Fed Up With Frenzy and creator of Slow Family Online…
You will get a lot of ideas from Slow Family Living, both big-picture and everyday, that will make you pause and reflect, and will help you lead a more connected and joyful family life…read more
If you follow me at all on any social media, you’ve most likely heard by now, my book is coming out soon! (!!!!!!) And I’m pretty darn excited. Longer than the gestation of a human being, this book has been in the works for many months. And now, with less than one month to go, the countdown has officially begun.
So, for the next 3 weeks, from today until the release date on March 5th, Slow Family Living has paired up with Brain,Child Magazine and we are offering some fabulous prizes. If you pre-order a copy of my book, Slow Family Living; 75 ways to slow down, connect and create more joy, from any source at all, (or if you’ve already pre-ordered it) be it Austin’s own BookPeople, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Powell’s or the bookstore of your liking, you’ll be entered into a drawing to receive one of five free one-year subscription to Brain, Child Magazine.
Simply send me an email to Slowfamilybook at G Mail with the subject: I PRE-ORDERED and I’ll put your name in for a chance to win.
Okay?
Either way you win with a great read!
It was in 2007 that I joined forces with Carrie Contey, PhD to form Slow Family Living. It came out of our work together – writing, dreaming, doing classes and workshops, 
scheming and dreaming some more. Since then Carrie and I have worked together on different projects together sharing ideas and stages, and also worked on our own individual projects – books, classes, workshops, and more.
In the past 2 years I’ve been writing and readying my book, Slow Family Living; 75 ways to slow down, connect and create more joy. In those same 2 years, Carrie’s work has been the creation of a year long project called Evolve. It is about parenting, partnering, personhood and prosperity. It is about making the life and connection you have with yourself, your kids and your partner the very best life it can be. It is babysteps delivered all year long, which are super easy to take, towards more joy and more connection and more understanding of why you are you.
I have been lucky to be involved in her program for the past two years and to see it from the inside out. It is the perfect blend of science and emotion and practical information and it is amazing. I’m not usually a salesperson but truly, it has changed my life.
So if you want to be a calmer parent and have a better understanding of yourself giving you more emotional resilience, if you want to feel better, communicate easier, have more connection with your kids, more intimacy with your partner, more abundance in your life and in general find more joy, balance and be the best you you can possibly be, you should click here.
There are relatively few game changers we experience in our life. For me, Evolve has definitely been one of them.
Oh! And if you sign up for her program before midnight on Sunday night (1/20/13), you’ll get a free copy of my book delivered to your door immediately upon its release on March 5th! Making you possibly the very first person on your block to have a copy in your hands.
Gretchen Rubin started a year-long Happiness Project a few years back based solely on the idea of being happier everyday. As simple as that. She wanted to be happier and express more happiness and she wanted to share what she learned along the way. She wrote a book about it called of course, The Happiness Project, that is changing the world one simple happy act at a time.
As she conducted the year-long project that became The Happiness Project, Gretchen realized that her home, in all its aspects, was the most crucial element influencing her happiness.This year her new book came out, Happier at Home, about creating more happiness in the home and finding ways to make it all feel better; from the mundane to the major. Her idea being that we’re in it, we have to do it, why not do it happily?
On October 24th Gretchen will be speaking at the Texas Conference for Women, an all day conference of ideas, inspirations, networking, motivation and moving forward as women, in the home and business world. Our own Carrie Contey, PhD will be speaking with Gretchen in a breakout session and I look forward to the amazing ideas that will come out of those two brilliant minds sharing the same stage! Along with the host of other incredible discussions which will be had that day.
Next week Gretchen will be hosting a free teleclass around the ideas shared in her new book. Sign up is easy and if you’ve never done a teleclass before I am here to tell you they are a great way to go! Just dial in and listen as you move about your life doing whatever needs doing. Or, if you’re lucky, you can even listen while curled up somewhere still and quiet with just your headphones as company.
As a kid one of my favorite things to do was to pour over various Make and Do books which were so prevalent in those days. They were full of crafts and recipes and games and ideas for filling up the days with fun and creativity.
As an adult, those books are still some of my favorites and I have a wide collection of various tomes from the 50s, 60s and 70s that I have picked up over the years at thrift stores and book sales. I pick them off the shelves at various times of year and leave them scattered about the house just waiting for some passerby (read: one of my four children or me) to pick one up, peruse its pages and get inspired. In these books there is truly something for everyone.
I have often wondered why there wasn’t a modern day equivalent to these books. Books that are timeless in their content and ageless in their target market.
And then Suz Lipman of Slow Family Online sent me a copy of her new book; Fed Up With Frenzy; Slow Down. Reconnect. It’s easier than you think.
It is a beautiful Make and Do book for families with a focus on slowing down and finding family connection within the tasks and activities.
It is full of thoughtful suggestions for living family life, games and crafts and garden activities. It has ideas for rituals and kitchen projects and family celebrations. And if you leave it out on the table in your house I guarantee someone will get inspired to create something magical that will surely spur your family onto feeling more joy and more connection.
I received my copy shortly before our big family road trip and tucked it in my travel bag. A few hundred miles in I pulled it out and went right to the Travel Games section. It is full of games to play in the car – some I remembered from my own youth, and others that were new to me or offered a twist I never thought of. For the rest of the trip, each time we needed inspiration we pulled out the book in search of what to do next. We took turns flipping through the pages finding ideas for things to do or just reading along for future plans and projects.
Now home I’m excited to dive into some of the kitchen projects with my kids – crafts and fun science projects. We’ll leave this one out on the table for months I’m sure and turn to it each time we need simple inspiration or ideas for things to do together or just a good read on a lazy afternoon.
This is the book of Make and Do but it is so much more than that. It will give you ideas for things to do with your kids. Ways to add more beauty to your home and your yard and the community at large. It will remind you that the road to connection is paved with simple things – things all within our grasp. You should totally get a copy and display it prominently so that each time your seeking ways to reconnect, you’ll find it here in these pages.
Thanks to the author I’ve got one copy to giveaway which I’ll be doing next Wednesday on my site. Leave a comment here and tell me what was the last project or activity your family did together or what one you’ve got planned for the near future.
CONGRATULATIONS RACHEL!!! Send me your address and I’ll get this in the mail to you pronto!
We are back at home after a (mostly) delightful road trip and visits with kith and kin up and down the east coast. After putting over 50o0 miles on our van we returned home tired but happy to be back in our own beds with our own stuff. Woo-hoo!
And then just one day in, just post suitcase emptying, the cries began from one who shall remain nameless, ”what are we gonna do…”
Then I remembered the books I was sent by my publisher to give away to a lucky winner! The first one so beautifully and simply named, The Book of Doing; everyday activities to unlock your creativity and joy by Allison Arden.
Allison didn’t start out to write a book, rather she set out to unleash her own creativity which she feared had become dormant in all the mindless running around that filled her days. She wanted to reignite that childhood feeling of making and doing and did so by approaching all her tasks with an air of creativity. Says Allison, “The Book of Doing will open your eyes and mind to the energizing possibilities that you may have once taken for granted.”
It is delightfully whimsical in its layout – with simple and fun line drawings and light-hearted fonts – the kind of layout that makes me want to just browse it’s pages with a sketchbook by my side for jotting down and drawing my inspirations. And this book is FILLED with them for little kids, grown ups and families too.
From very simple things like making a list of people you love and things you love to do and then encouraging you to fit them into your schedule to learning code to mailing some random object just for the fun of it, this book will provide endless ideas and motivations for doing. And it not only gives you suggestions and projects, it also encourages you to come up with fun ideas of your own with simple prompts and an inspiring list of the “laws of doing”. It is the kind of book that every family and couple and individual should have prominently placed on their table during these dog days of summer.
This book is filled with love and joy and creativity and it is, frankly, the kind of book I wished I’d written myself. But since I didn’t, I’m sure glad that Allison Arden did because truly, a book like this can only improve the joy factor wherever it goes. Just a few minutes spent perusing its pages by both child and adult alike and all cries of “what am I gonna do??” by both kids and adults alike will be banished forever from your kingdom.
As a kid, when we would cry bored, my mom would say, “Write a letter, read a book. Read a book, write a letter.” When my kids whine that there’s nothing to do I tell them, “Boredom is the key to your next big idea.” Or, when I’m feeling particularly snarky I say, “Bored people are boring.”
To win this copy of The Book of Doing, tell me something your own parents would say when you whined that there was nothing to do. Or something you’ve said to your own children when they voice their own concerns over the lack of activities.
Then I’ll pick a lucky winner on Wednesday August 8th so you can have your very own copy in these waning days of summer.
Well, in a way it is. As of May 31st Brain,Child Magazine has decided to shut down its print publication. August will be the last issue. 13 years after their first issue. I remember the first time I found that magazine – just about a year into my own parenting journey. I felt like I had found gold! Beautiful images and real stories from the trenches. At the beginning my own parenting journey was full of dogma, ideas that my way was the right way. I even submitted a story about preschool and how my way to do it was the right way. I now realize my ego was blinding me to the fact that there is more than one way to educate a child, raise a family, and tend to your own parenting. This realization was due in part to their wide range of stories presented.
I loved that magazine for so many reasons. I loved the amazing writing that filled its pages and the debates that took place so eloquently put as to make me definitely see both sides of the coin. I loved the book reviews and news from the world of parenting issues. I loved the dogma free tone that showed me aspects of parenting that I never thought about. The stories in there made me mad, sad, sentimental, empathetic, laugh and empowered. I loved the way I could dive into each new issue and totally abandon my children for a few hours of delicious reading time. I always joked that it was the one parenting magazine that made me a bad parent for the way it would make me ignore everyone in my house!
And I loved having Slow Family in its pages issue after issue.
The magazine will continue online. don’t know if I’ll read it there or not but if you’re an online reading kind of person, I hope you do.
I’m sorry to see Brain Child go. To all of the amazing people there I say congratulations for an amazing job well done. And my condolences too for having to come to this decision.
It’s a sad day for the print world. And a sad day for new moms who won’t know the thrill of curling up with an issue behind a closed door while your children call to you from another room.
Mother’s day is coming. The day to celebrate, appreciate, laude and commemorate. As it approaches I think, oh, it’s a gift shop holiday, who cares. I remember my own mom implying sort of the same thing except for the year my mom, who never swore, said to us kids as we were simultaneously handing her cards and fighting over the last something or another, “Oh mother’s day, schmothers day, it’s all bullshit.”
Do you dismiss mother’s day as just another hallmark holiday? But then when the day arrives think things like, “hey, how come you didn’t do anything for me???” As kids it’s hard to know what to do. Make a card of course, but then what? Make a fuss? Leave mom alone? Celebrate her all day? Or just give her space to not mother for a few hours?
My friend and inspiration, Carrie Contey has written up a great little post on just how to avoid falling in this trap. How to figure out what we want and how to make it happen without requiring those around us to interpret our thought process. As she so eloquently puts it - stating what you want = getting what you need. Done and done!
However you choose to spend it, whether your kids are big or small, near or far, I hope you take a little time to celebrate and honor your own self. I plan on starting the day with a few appreciations of my own, state my time for a little time alone in the morning, and then after that, I’m just gonna go with the flow. Outside. Where the flow is sometimes a little easier to get into.
If you’ve been here awhile, you know how I love the magazine Brain,Child - touted as the magazine for thinking moms and filled with incredible essays and feature articles and debates and reviews and words that will make you cry, sigh, rage and empathize. Without a big agenda. And without any dogma.
I’ve been lucky to know some of the incredible writers that have graced their pages and it is the one magazine that I subscribe to that I read, without fail, from cover to cover. And though much of the material makes me a better mom in the sense that it gets me thinking about certain issues, it actually makes me ignore my kids because it’s that good. Sorry kids.
In honor of Mother’s Day, Brain,Child is offering a special Slow Family Living discount on one and two year subscriptions – for both new subscriptions and old. If you haven’t read it before, treat yourself (or treat the mother of your children or your mom or your friend) and if you have read it before, well, you know how good it can be so get on it! And re-up your subscription at this special Slow Family rate.
As free as the wind blows, as free as the grass grows, I want to be free! At least for a few days, wouldn’t it be fun to have your whole family be free from screens?
Do you know about the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood? They do a lot of good work lobbying to get commercials and marketing and advertising out of children’s lives and out of public schools. They bring a lot to light for families and for organizations in regards to just how much advertising is thrust at our children, at our families, from birth on. Check out their website to see just how much good work they do.
This month they are also organizing the annual SCREEN FREE WEEK from April 30th-May 6th. It’s a great way for families and children to break away from the screens for a week and see just how big a part screens play in our lives. Everyone on their own screen - watching, texting, reading, exploring and zoning out on the screen be it phone, computer, tv, game station or other. It’s sort of relentless. It’s not that screen usage is bad, au contraire! But the numbers show that the average child spends 7.5 hours per day on a screen. That’s a lot of time staring at electronics. And a lot of time not engaging with the world and with each other.
In our house during school days we do a couple hours everyday screen free – from 5-7 there’s no surfing, texting, emailing, viewing. It’s not always easy. But it feels pretty good. And 2 hours feels totally doable.
Can you do it? Do you dare? Can your family be screen free? Can you turn it all off (excluding work of course which still must get done!) Can you spend that time doing something else? Here’s some ideas to get you going…
Take a week and slow it down. Connect with each other and with nature and with your imagination. See what you come up with. And if you’ve got some screen free ideas of your own, let me know.
