Revisit & Update: Making Networking Less Stressful

I've come a long way in my courage to network in the past two years. Working in the tourism industry and interacting with local business and civic leaders as well as attending events with other tourism organizations from across the country I had lots of chances to get to know people and make new connections. It's much less intimidating to me now, but it easier when you do it often. It's been a little while since I've attended a lot of business events and I'm starting to do that more again, so I need to sharpen my blade to get out there and network.

I've been signing up for business networking events around town and my goal is to attend at least two a month. Last week I attended a Facebook Boost Your Business event at the convention center here. I think everyone was stunned at how many people showed up. It was a packed house. I learned some great things and met some people. Just what one needs to do when trying to network.

My next event is a business class at the end of this week. I'm going to go learn about making sure product pricing is profitable. It's always a challenge to sign up in advance and then keep the commitment to get there. The closer you get to the event the more one might chicken out. So it's good for me to have a goal and push myself to get there.

Networking whether it's at a child's school, in a new church congregation, at the gym or in business is always a little unnerving. Here's a post I wrote a while back about ways to make networking easier with some tips and how networking can help you get closer to your goals and dreams.

How do you make networking easier? I'd love to hear your tricks and tips in the comments below.

Revisit & Update: Paper Butterflies For The Window

Last month when I took down the Valentine's decorations from our dining room windows, Kiddo asked me not to take down our sparkly, glittery, big silver snowflakes yet. Since it was still winter I obliged. But now that it's quite warm outside it seemed high time to put up something new. We have an Easter garland up and we continually keep up a garland of pinecones from our yard and a string of twinkle lights then I've just been rotating in and out the seasonal garlands.

Here is a little before photo. This is one of the best spaces in our home and it is so hard to photograph. I frequently want to share it or capture it in photos and I have yet to get a photo of the dining room windows that I really like. The backlighting is a challenge.

The snowflakes hang independently from the ceiling from five clips across that window space. I like them because they can last us from post-Halloween right through to Spring. I wanted to come up with something to hang from those clips that might carry us from spring through summer and then I remembered the paper butterflies I made a few years ago. Here's a link to that post, which was Pin Test #13. The link to the original tutorial I based those butterflies off us no longer works and it seems that the website no longer exists. So I found a similar tutorial that can be found here.

In the original tutorial they used brightly colored magazine pages, which is what I used the first time I made these. In the tutorial I am linking to now it's more structured towards a kids craft so they use tissue paper and pipe cleaners. I think you really can upscale or downscale these as much as you want. I photographed these outside hanging from a favorite tree as I might for a party so that the light would be better. I do love having a few decorations blowing in the breeze for a party, big or small.

I initially was going to use magazine pages again and in fact pulled a bunch and started making a butterfly but I realized I wanted bigger butterflies and maybe something a little sturdier and more classic looking. So I grabbed a pack of 12x12 inch scrapbook paper I had in nice spring colors and started pulling sheets that would work together.

If I could do one thing differently I think I would made the bottom half of the butterflies smaller. I started with a 12x12 square for the top and then cut down the bottoms to 10x10. Looking back at the others I had made before I like that the bottoms are smaller in  scale than the ones I made this week. Maybe they would be better if I went 8x8 or 9x9.

Whipping these up didn't take much time at all. I easily whipped up six in about 30 minutes. I stapled each folded section in the middle to hold it together and then bound the top half and bottom half of the body together with white and silver cord, leaving enough to tie them to the ceiling and have them hang down to similar lengths as our snowflakes, not too far above our garlands.

So now we'll have some pretty butterflies fluttering around our dining room instead of sparkly snowflakes. These butterflies would make great party decorations for a baby shower or girl's birthday party and would be really sweet hanging from tree branches for a garden party. Depending on the kind of paper you use these are one-sided or two-sided. Because I used one-sided scrapbook paper mine are only pretty from the front but no one really sees them from the back in that window. If I was going to hang them where they would be twirling more or blowing in the breeze I would probably use tissue paper, two-sided scrapbook paper - something that looks pretty from all sides.

These are a fun craft to do with kids too and using pipe cleaners is an easy way to get butterfly antennae too. Making them from giant sheets of newspaper or butcher paper could be really interesting. Or you could create simple painted sheets of paper, any size with paints or watercolors and then make butterflies from them. There are so many ways to make these that using a little creativity they can be personalized in size, color, shape and materials. If you try these, let me know. I'd love to see a photo and hear how you made them your own!

Update & Revisit: Packing For Travel & Teaching Kids How

We are going to be traveling again shortly and I am reminded about something I am continually grateful for. We have a kiddo who has been able to pack her own suitcase since she was four or five years old. Amazing and such a relief when you are rushing to get ready for a trip! A few years ago I created a little picture chart for her to use to be able to pack her own bags. Since then she's become quite a pro and is usually all ready to go long before her dad and I are.

Over the years we have traveled a lot on short notice and we have lived in two locations with a lot of shuttling back and forth so The Bug has had a lot of practice packing and it has been a big help for her to be able to be so independent. Does she occasionally forget something, yes, but we all do no matter how old we are, right? As my travel guru Rick Steves always says, there's usually a store where you can buy what you need when you get there if you have to.

The way my chart worked was that I basically created a standard packing list of how many of each item she would need for most trips and put a picture with each one, since she couldn't even read yet when I first made this chart. If there were three shirts, she needed to pack 3 shirts and if there were two pants she needed to pack two pants. This worked very well! Later I started just writing in a number next to the pictures if it was different than what was on the chart, based on the length of our trip and specific needs. That worked well too.

So before she was old enough to read she could get together her clothing and set it all out so that we could go through it and check her bag to make sure she had everything and then just pop it all in the suitcase or backpack at the end. I still remember one trip we took where we only had about an hour's notice that we were leaving for the airport and she was ready in less than 30 minutes. I think she was seven. She's a good traveler.

Having a good rolling suitcase that she can manage and a backpack she can pack her travel necessities in (blanket, pillow, snacks, drink, books, iPad, etc.) in has made life so much easier. Since she was tiny she's carried her own backpack which has grown in size a bit as she has. Suitcase checks in for the flight, backpack carries us through the flight on the plane. I always packed diapers or extra underwear and extra clothing in her backpack in case of emergencies too. For little kids I like to pack  quite a few small toys and perhaps even a few little fun surprises to keep them entertained on the flight.

For little kids, I factor in that about every 15-30 minutes on the plane they may get bored, so I bring enough things to keep then interested in something new every few minutes for the duration of the flight. For longer flights you can even rotate through what you brought twice throughout the hours. I find this philosophy works well for church as well. I've come to realize that the kids who are usually running unruly all through church or on the plane are the kids who don't have anything else to entertain them. If there is lots to do right there with mom and dad they will stay there and stay engaged. Worked like a charm for us for years and I continue to employ that tactic with other kids I cross paths with as well. I usually still carry a bag with a few toys in it to church just in case and it's amazing how often they get used.

Now that Bug is older, almost 11, I'm not so concerned about entertaining her on the flight. That is really her responsibility now and I assume she'll have a laptop to watch something online if she wants and a book or magazine to read as well. That should do it, thankfully. No more packing stuffed animals, toys and all that jazz.

But I still want to make sure she has a sweater or jacket for the plane, something soft to lay her head on if needed. A thin, down puffy jacket works well as both a jacket or  pillow on the flight and and is nice to have for cool mornings and evenings. I still usually always bring a pashmina with me for the flight as well, which also works as a blanket, scarf or pillow in a crunch. They fold up easily in a corner of a backpack. They often get used by other family members who turn up a little empty handed for pillows or jackets.

I have a good backpack too that I've been depending on for travel for quite a few years now. It has been a godsend for the amount of traveling I've done over the past few years. Everything I carry on has a place and so every trip I know where I'm going to store things and where to find them when I arrive. Having a system down makes things faster when you are packing, decreases the likelihood you'll forget something as you go through each section and think about what needs to go in there and you always know where to find things.

Here's another post about how I keep a toiletries bag especially for travel that is always ready to grab and walk out the door with. It's been a staple for my trips for almost 20 years now. Here's a post about using packing cubes for clothing. I've also been doing this for almost 20 years as well and I like how easy it is to keep everything orderly and organized. It also makes it very easy to have your bags searched if that happens. Having four cubes in your suitcase, one toiletries bag and a couple of shoe bags keeps things looking great and functioning well!

And lastly, this is my favorite travel bag for trips when I know I'll be out and about for long days and doing a lot of walking and wandering. It works as a fairly small over-the-shoulder bag and if needed expands to hold shopping purchases, a lunch or a jacket. I've had this bag for 20 years, it's still in pretty much like new condition except for a little fading. But you would never know it's 20 years old and they still sell the same bag now.

Revisit & Update: Bri's Chicken Noodle Soup Recipe

This is an update to a recipe I've been using for years that I got from friends. We eat this Bri's Chicken Noodle Soup on a pretty regular basis through the fall, winter and spring. The Friday before the Super Bowl, I had to make a Crockpot size serving to take to the Kiddo's "Soup-er Bowl" party in her school class.

I wasn't sure exactly how much I needed to make but I overshot it and made enough to fill a Crockpot and then some. Needless to say this was one of 12 soups at the class, so there was lots to bring home. Then I still had about half a big pot of it at home as well. So we've had three or four meals of soup since last week and there is a big container in the freezer for sometime down the road.

I'll share a couple of quick additions I've made to the recipe since we moved to New Mexico. I add a heaping teaspoon of minced garlic (from a jar) and a half-teaspoon of New Mexico green chile (are you shocked?! ha.) in with the vegetables when I am sauteeing them in the first step of the recipe. I like getting the healthy benefits of garlic and chile and it adds a little depth of flavor too.

I often use canned white meat chicken in a pinch since it saves me half an hour prepping chicken breasts. I just break it up a little big with a fork in the can before I toss it in. I like Costco's Kirtland canned white meat chicken or I often use Swanson White Premium Chunk Chicken Breast in the 12.5 oz can. I usually use two cans for a full batch of soup, one can if I half the recipe. I do often half this recipe because we often can't eat all the leftovers in time. Just a cost-saving hint on buying Swanson chicken. It runs about $4.75/can in most grocery stores but at WalMart it's only $2.75 a can. Huge savings, so I stock up when I'm get to a WalMart store every couple of months.

 I also play around a bit with the amount of chicken stock/broth I use because my family likes a lot of liquid in their soup. With a salad, grilled cheese, hot bread or cheese and crackers, this soup really hits the spot every time.

Get the recipe here: Bri's Chicken Noodle Soup. Hope you try it and enjoy it!

Update & Revisit: A Family Fun Bag Always In The Car

Since we're all hoping that summer is just around the corner here in the Northern Hemisphere, I thought it would be fun to revisit something we did a few years ago that had us ready for a little adventure and play time anytime we could stop at a park or the beach. Having a family sports bag in the car made outdoor activities simple and helped us easily make time for fun outside after dinner or while Daddy was working on weekends when Saturdays could get a little long.

 It's also great when you have a chance to meet up with friends or family for some outside time. There's something for everyone to do. Having it all in the car, neatly organized makes getting out and away more convenient too, no prep time. No hunting down balls, bats, kites, shovels. Just jump in the car and go!

Nowadays life is a little different because Kiddo is older and we spend a lot more time at home because we aren't living in a small apartment. With a big yard and lots of space, fresh air is just outside our doors instead of a walk or drive to a public green space.  Our kiddo isn't home much now that she's busier with school and extra-curricular activities so she doesn't need to get away from the house so much. She actually needs more time at the house. But boy was having a bag already packed in the car a few years ago a lifesaver!

I believe when you have kids who are home all day or a bunch of kiddos it's great to get them out of the house and to the park or beach often for a change of scenery and space to run like crazy and make a lot of noise. It's a great way to wear them out too.

Follow this link to see a great ideas for a family sports bag you can keep in the trunk of back of the car so you're ready for family fun any time. Click here.