Category: holiday ideas
Top 10 or 20 Christmas List
Christmas List
- Peace of mind
- Meaningful connection
- Conversation with a stranger that makes them feel good about themselves
- Children’s laughter
- Another step towards enlightenment
- Financial stability leading towards independence
- Passion and intimacy
- New creative projects
- Better sleep
- More learning
- New frienships
- Another bunny
- A new flute
- A wooden rennaissance recorder
- Art supplies
- Someplace that feels like home
- Someone that feels like home
- More NLP and hypnosis skills and practice
- Help with the business part of my business
- Love
Christmas Foods from Around the World
Are any of you making or having foods from your culture for the holidays? I think it is fun to try new foods from around the world.
I was thinking of trying to make some simple recipes for my kids to try, by getting recipe ideas from my followers.
I do not have normal cooking facilities so they would need to be able to be achieved with a large toaster oven, and an electric skillet.
My grandmother on my father’s side was from Poland….or at least her parents were. I think that her older siblings were born in Poland and she and the younger ones were born in the United States.
There is a cookie recipe that was passed down to me and I will share it with you before Christmas. I think I will have to ask my father to send it to me again.
The other thing I remember my grandmother makinig is kilbasa. We always had two platters of kilbasa.
One plate had hot kilbasa, with a bowl of mustard next to it. The other plate had cold kilbasa, with a bowl of white vinegar to dip it in.
I grew up with the cold kilbasa and white vinegar. My father loved it. I did not like it as a little kid but it grew on me over time.
So what special foods or recipes are you planning to have for the holidays ? If you want to share a recipe on your blog you can put a link in the comments.
Blessings,
Annie💕💙💜🌷🌹❤
Reducing Holiday Stress
Much of the stress during the holiday season is due to expectations. If you can question the expectations in your head, then you can help yourself deal with the anxiety.
The first thing to realize is that all of the expectations that you have for yourself were not originally your own. You can make a list of the things that you expect yourself to be able to do and then question each one.
Take them one at a time and ask yourself if the expectation is reasonable. Then question the expectation as to whether it was your own picture of how the holidays “should” be or if it was programmed into you by someone else.
Some things were programmed into us by our parents from when we were very young. This does not mean that you have to keep it. For example, if you were taught that you have to make dinner and have all the relatives at your house for dinner …ask yourself if that was your desire or of that was someone else’s desire.
On the other hand, maybe you were taught that you have to travel out of state to have dinner with your mother in law on Christmas. Maybe you have faithfully done this every year for 15 years now.
There is not rule that says you have to do the same thing every year just because you are “expected” to do it this way. You should get a turn to do something you actually want to do.
What is the point of the holidays if you get extreme anxiety preparing for them, no one realizes just how much you sacrificed and then you are relieved when the whole thing is over.
It can be like a torturous chore that has thankless results. Even the people that have expectations of how you are going to so things, will not really appreciate it.
Holidays are about peace , happiness, connection and showing others that you care about them. So find the ways that you can show your loved ones that you care….without causing yourself depression and anxiety.
You may come from a family that always buys gifts for each other, but you are a craft lover and would much more enjoy making the gifts yourself. Or maybe your family expects home made gifts but it would be easier with your time constraints, to order them on Amazon.
Other people are not living your day to day life and they do not know how hard things are for you. The chores of the holiday season can be way too much, on top of your already hectic schedule.
You can tell people that you are making a few changes this year. Think about what you always do and see what things you do not want to do that way. Think of creative ideas to do things differently this year.
People may fuss at you. That is true. But you have to weigh dealing with someone else being upset, against all the anxiety you will go through …just for them to complain anyway….
Children Should Have Magical Holidays
Who are You Spending Thanksgiving With
This is where we can let each other know who we are spending time with today, either out of choice or under duress.
If you are spending the holidays alone. that is okay. You do not have to feel alone. Check in with us here and let us know what you are doing. Netflix can be better company than a lot of people I know.
I live with 13 other people in the house that is owned by the parents of my ex husband. His parents live here and he also lives here on a different floor than the kids and I live on.
I am on the top floor which is kind of like an attic with slanted places in the ceiling and closets that are for elves. I have a shower but it does not work so I use the one that is one floor below me.
My two daughters are usually with me on the holidays and today I was missing the older one. My 18 year old daughter went to help at a soup kitchen to serve food. That is great that she has compassion and I was pleasantly surprised to find out she was doing that.
The 12 year old actually did very well at dinner. The anxiety she had been anticipating and talking about in therapy seems to have been more worrying ahead of time than it actually was. Or maybe the therapy was helpful in her dealing with the relatives today.
She is still downstairs but I made a run for it after dinner. I probably should have stayed to help clean up but there are always twists and turns to their conversation and I end up on the losing end of things, so I bailed as soon as possible.
My ex husband is probably in his room now. He and I are thinking of taking our daughters to the movies later on today. but it might have to be tomorrow due to the older daughter being out.
My ex brother in law took my older daughter to the soup kitchen so he was not here for dinner. My guess is that he strategically arranged to avoid his parents and made a great excuse by taking her to the charity thing.
His wife was here with the kids. The two of them live in the lowest floor of the house , which is actually one of the nicest areas of the house. They have 6 children, including the little baby who I enjoyed holding just before I came up here.
One of their daughters, my niece who is 15, wanted to escape the room and grabbed me to go look at something with her. I helped her to make a break for it by going along with her needing to show me something. We left quickly to go see it and then we never went back.
So I was able to get her out right after we ate. She is a very cool kid and very introverted. With the extra guests at dinner (4 adults and 1 child) there were way too many people for any self respecting introvert to want to be in the same room with for too long.
So now I am up in my attic talking to all of you. The food at dinner was surprisingly bad. And the conversation was wildly inappropriate by my standards for holiday dinner conversation.
The guests are friends from church of my ex in laws. It was bad when the conversation turned to what kinds of gross things are on our drinking water. It got worse when the man started theorizing about drug addicts going to the bathroom and the city recycling the same water the drug addicts pee and poop their drugs into and then we drink it.
Then it got worse when for some god awful reason they started talking about women and childbirth. I do not want to hear about cervix dilation and what not at the dinner table.
So I was trying to eat the food while listening about how I have to drink the water that people pee in and then pass their drugs and any hormones they are taking into. I realize that this is all crazy but it still is annoying at dinner.
So now you see why my niece and I made a run for it. ..I was not being rude.
SO how is your day going??????
Share Your Thanksgiving with Gentlekindness Blog
Welcome to Our Little Get Together
Good Morning.This is a scheduled post because I wanted something up before I woke up. Many of you are awake in the morning before I am. I have a late night insomniac kind of schedule , but I wanted to get things started.
I would love it if you want to let me know what you have planned for today, whether it means you are staying home to watch Netflix alone or if you are going to be dealing with lots of people.
You can leave your plans in the comments section or you can write a post and put the link here. We can all connect in and out throughout the day. If anyone is having a particularly difficult time then you can connect with us here.
This is where we begin. I will check your comments when I wake up. Good morning to all. Happy Thanksgiving Day or Happy GentleKindness Blog Meet up Day, whichever makes you feel good.
Talk to you soon,
Annie ❤
Do You Have Barbara Millicent Roberts Under Your Christmas Tree?
Who is Barbara Millicent Roberts? You have known her for years but you probably don’t know her by her full name. Nor did you know she had a last name at all.
Barbara is one of those people who go by one name. You know…like Cher …or Madonna….or “Formerly Known as Prince.”
Barbara Millicent Roberts was born in 1959, but she looks like she is in her 20’s. She used to have feet that always pointed like she was wearing high heals but now she is sometimes seen with her feet flat, which people were beginning to wonder if she could physically do.
Barbara goes by the nick name Barbie.
image from Pinterest
Barbie has been a household name since the late 1950’s and has not been forgotten. Barbie often takes on the last name of “Doll.”
In 1992, a Barbie doll was sold every two minutes around the globe.
Source – The Intentions Behind the Creation of Barbie by Briana Piche
Barbie Doll was born in 1959, as we know, and she has an extensive wardrobe, including the outfits and uniforms for the many jobs she has help. Barbie began as a fashion model and then as rumors have it, went back to school several times to achieve advanced degrees.
image from Pinterest
She has been seen with her head in the clouds as a stewardess and also as a night club singer. She has worked both as a teacher and as an officer of the law, pulling over drunk drivers.
image from Pinterest
You can see a variety of Barbie’s outfits at THIS link on Flickr.
The first Barbie doll was thought up by Elliot Handler of the Mattel Toy Company, with the initial suggestion by his wife Ruth. Mrs. Handler thought of the idea that children would play with an adult aged doll. Prior to Barbie most girls played with baby dolls and practiced being mommies.
There was a German doll called Bild Lilli that was an adult female doll. Ruth Handler saw this doll during one of the trips her husband and she took to Germany.
The Lilli doll was based on a popular character appearing in a comic strip drawn by Reinhard Beuthin for the newspaper Die Bild-Zeitung. Lilli was a blonde bombshell, a working girl who knew what she wanted and was not above using men to get it. The Lilli doll was first sold in Germany in 1955, and although it was initially sold to adults, it became popular with children who enjoyed dressing her up in outfits that were available separately.
source – Wikipedia
They used this doll to help with their idea of how the Barbie doll should look, but came up with their own unique design.
The Bild Lilli doll had her own comic strip where she was a sexy doll of a woman. Excuse the pun.
In the comics, Lilli was witty, irreverent… and sexually uninhibited. One strip, summarized by Lord, shows Lilli covering her naked body with a newspaper and explaining to a friend…
source – Time Magazine
Bild Lilli was a comic strip in a newspaper printed in Hamburg Germany. The comic was for adults and began in 1952, and appeared in the newspaper called Bild-Zeitung.
One particular comic strip had the following tale of Bild Lilli meeting a police officer and being told she could not wear a two-piece bathing suit in public.
…shows Lilli in a bikini; when a policeman tells her that two-piece swimsuits are illegal, she says, “Oh, and in your opinion, which part should I take off?”
source – Time Magazine
The full name “Barbara Millicent Roberts” appears in a series of novels about her fictional life.
Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts. In a series of novels published by Random House in the 1960s, her parents’ names are given as George and Margaret Roberts from the fictional town of Willows, Wisconsin
source – Wikipedia
They bought the rights to the Bild Lilli doll in order to stop the production of that doll, which apparently they did not want to compete with.
You can read more about the history of Barbie at THIS LINK and you will see a picture of the original Barbie. Take note of the way her eyes are looking. You do not see dolls these days with that kind of a sexy, come-hither look.
image from Pinterest and Flickr
Barbie dolls became terrifically popular and are sold in 150 countries.
source – Good Housekeeping Magazine
Barbie’s appearance has been changed many times, most notably in 1971 when the doll’s eyes were adjusted to look forwards rather than having the demure sideways glance of the original model.
source – Wikipedia
Proportions of the doll have been redesigned to alter her unattainable body proportions and to make her look more realistic. The original doll had proportions that you do not see on real women. The waist is too small to go with the breasts and the hips.
image from Pinterest
Barbie’s vital statistics have been estimated at 36 inches (chest), 18 inches (waist) and 33 inches (hips). According to research by the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, she would lack the 17 to 22 percent body fat required for a woman to be healthy enough to have children.
source – Wikipedia
There is also an article that Barbie appears in, which is called “125 Women Who Changed Our World.” You can see a great picture of the original Barbie on page 14 of THIS ARTICLE printed in Good Housekeeping magazine.
I happened to come across a blog called Matisse Fashions and Dolls. She is a talented doll dress designer and you might enjoy taking a peak at her designs HERE. If you notice my earlier posts today you will see some links to some of my favorite designs of hers.
Even ZOMBIE killer Barbie has been spotted recently ! This is a character from the Walking Dead Series . She is Michonne.
Barbara Millicent Roberts has come a long way since 1959 and she is still getting wrapped and placed under Christmas trees all over the world !
Maybe she is under yours…
Thanksgiving Blog Meet-Up for My Followers
I am thinking of doing something on the holidays, here on the blog, for people who find the holidays difficult.
There are many people who read my blog who need some extra support to get through the holidays.
I have seen other bloggers do blog parties where people connect through their blog throughout the day. I was thinking of a “holiday connection day” kind of idea…not so much a party but more like a get-together.
I have nevet done this kind of thing before so if you have any ideas let me know in the comments below.
I want people to have somewhere to connect with me and with each other, in order to be able to talk to other people who understand how difficult the holidays can be.
GentleKindness 