Friday fun!

So, it's Friday, and you get to work thinking....hmmmm, ya know, it has been a great week and I really appreciate what my team has done and I want to do something special for them. And perhaps you did the Friday is Pie Day and you want to shake it up a bit. Maybe everyone has been taking this just a tad bit too seriously lately and just need a little pick-me-up.

So, wander back to the days of yore, back in the days when you had not a care, or mortgage payment, in the world. The days of elementary school and create a "milk and cookie break" or "recess" for your staff.

This isn't so hard or complicated to pull together. Run to the local store and pick up a gallon of milk (chocolate preferred) and some cookies and surprise your staff this afternoon with a little break. Make sure you grab a pack of small cups, and some napkins!

Now, who can resist a milk and cookie break!

To add a little fun, grab some scraps of paper, have everyone write what their favorite kind of cookie is on it but leaving their name off, then throw them all into a hat. Have each team member write everyones name down on a piece of paper (or provide them with one) and then as the paper pieces with the cookie varieties are drawn out, read the type of cookie and have staff assign it to who they think wrote it and loves that kind of cookie. The team member who has the most correct, gets another cookie or some other type of a prize. Perhaps you choose their favorite cookie for your next milk and cookie break.

Do you have any idea what kind of cookies your team likes? Well after this, you would have a good idea, and maybe just learn a little something about your team in the process. Or find a new favorite cookie yourself.

Take time to relate to your team today in some type of fun and meaningful way!

Welcome to the white...um Pink House...

So, unless you have been living under a rock or just so fed up with Politics that you have completely tuned it out, you have heard or seen McCain's add claiming Obama is a "celebrity" but questioning if he is ready to lead. In doing so, he compares Barack to Paris Hilton.

Enter the beauty of the internet.....wide-spread retaliation without the cost of a major media buy.

Now, Paris could have been completely insulted, welcomed that anger into her life and her home, gave it a room and let if fester. Instead, she took a different approach. She was able to laugh at the situation and not take herself so seriously that she was able to star in her very own "commercial." She pokes fun of the "old white-haired dude" and her dumb blond persona.

So what can we learn from this? Well, first of all, we need to look at and be able to laugh at ourselves. Second, when someone has done something that angers or upsets up, we have a choice; react or respond. A reaction from Paris might have been an angry statement in defense of herself and her persona, or an attack on McCain and his campaign. Instead, she acted by responding, laughing it off and entertaining us in the process.

It reminds me of the Jimmy Kimmel/Ben Affleck R-rated video exchange. If you haven't seen them, do a little search on YouTube, but be warned, mature content.

So, next time someone insults you, I don't recommend making a video in a bikini in front of your pool, unless you can pull it off as well as Paris, but think about how you could diffuse the situation, and perhaps respond with humor and wit rather than with anger and arrows.

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

Waiting? Seize the day!

Most recently I have been contemplating waiting. This morning as I awoke, I looked to the window and to what did my wondering eyes should appear, (no not reindeer) but the sun rising and one of the most dense fogs I have seen in quite some time. And fog to a photographer can be a dream. The softness it brings, depth and an ethereal quality to an image. I grab my camera, scribble a note to my girls, and jump in the car and off I go, in an effort to capture a favorite tree as the sun beams down through the dewy boughs. I head for a tree that I have been lucky enough to capture a year or so ago that spoke to me, you can view some of them on a cafepress site that I put together in order to share them http://www.cafepress.com/brendalevos/5569842 the calendar showing the best selection of images http://www.cafepress.com/brendalevos.266326990 of the morning.

Actually when shooting that very morning, I had been very focused on the river, and the fog and capturing its beauty. As I had felt that I had captured some images that I was happy with and as the sun was beginning to usher the fog from existence, I turn to head toward home and the image I saw would continue to be one of my all time favorites, that of the sun beaming through the boughs in the fog. And while I do love the images I was fortunate enough to capture, being there, in that moment as I was doing what I thought was my goal for the morning, I turned and was faced with something much more beautiful that I could have imagined. So I seized the opportunity and clicked off a number of shots which I will forever treasure.

As I arrive and position myself in a similar location, I notice that it is a bit earlier in the season, and the trees are perhaps providing too much foliage for the sun to stream through as it had in the years earlier. So I wait. Perhaps it will still be as wonderful. And I wait. As the sun rises, it just isn't the same, and the same feel isn't there, and maybe it never will be. It reminds me of a poem:

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite. 
Or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil
or a better break
or a string of pearls
or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls
or another chance. 
Everyone is just waiting

Are you waiting? What are you waiting for?

I have recently decided to make an effort to live from a position of abundance rather than from scarcity. As I open my pantry, I ask myself, what is this representing in my life? I had shelves and shelves of food. One devoted solely to "special" food. Things that I picked up at Tastefully Simple parties in the past. Things that I was saving for a "special" moment, event, party, time. And in all honesty, my "saving" them, was only in reality allowing them to perish, expire, and become worthless. 

Purging my cupboards of some of the extraneous things I had been needlessly hanging on to. Deep in the recesses, I discovered a box, one that I hadn't seen in quite some time. I had been saving it. It was a packaged dinner not in need of refrigeration, sweet and sour chicken....chicken included! And then it had dawned on me, I last recollect seeing that box, as I relocated it into its current destination as we moved from the lake to our current abode. Let's just place that somewhere in the very early 1990's. I couldn't even bear to open the box, its next relocation was as it dismounted my hands in horror, and stuck a landing deep amongst its companions of the last decade or so that it had resided in my kitchen, straight into the garbage.

Something saved.....something wasted. While I do believe in saving things, I have most recently come to cherish being present in the moment. What could be more "special" than my family and this very moment? Why are they not "special" enough for the "Chocolate Ugly Cake Mix" or the "Savory Wheat Beer Bread?" Why isn't Monday night "special" enough? Why isn't your artistic talent "special" enough be make a career of it? Why isn't today the day you open your eyes to how quickly life passes, how quickly a decade can slip though fingers waiting for a "special" day? Why isn't today the day you tell someone you love them, staff you appreciate them, the postman you are grateful for the service he provides?

Seize the day! Start a project, do something for someone, do something for yourself. Live!

Don't be the chicken rotting in the cupboard!

P.S. The poem, its author, Dr. Seuss. ....tanslates.... even something small and somewhat childish, can be profound. What is the poem you are living this day saying about you? What are you waiting for?