The Family First
Newsletter
Promoting family unity one issue at a time
Vol. 10 Issue 37 - Week of October 1, 2007
ISSN: 1527-6201
©2007 - Joyce Pierce --All Rights Reserved
In this issue:
Five Free
Recipes
How To Develop Your Intuition
Celebrating Life with Children in October: 22 Simple Ideas
Great Costumes for Less!
Good morning!
Welcome to October. Fall is my favorite time of the year. A friend asked me one time why that time of year when things were dying was my favorite time. I had to think about that for a minute because I had never thought of it that way. I've always thought of myself as the optimist, and this just reinforced what a pessimist that particular friend had always been. For me, Autumn is rich with the colors of the trees changing from green to red, gold and yellow. As a child I loved walking through the crunchy leaves on my way to school. It's a beautiful time of year - not too hot and not yet cold. To add to the beauty of it, my birthday is in October. It's a great time of year to celebrate life!
I am grateful for all of the blessings in my life, and I appreciate you! Please forward this issue to someone who may benefit from it!
Joyce Moseley Pierce
P.S. Be sure to visit our sponsors! We have some great promotions going on this month.
Five Free Recipes
Note from Joyce: This past week I invited bunches of people over and served my homemade chimichangas. Just two pounds of ground beef cooked and drained, plus some chili pepper and cumin, a can of refried beans, some dried onion, and grated cheddar cheese rolled up in flour tortillas and deep fried. I think I made about 50 of them and there were no survivors! They were delicious! To accompany the chimichangas, I made a fresh spinach salad with plenty of avocado and my own special recipe (which means it changes every time) of olive oil and apple cider vinegar. The whole dinner was a hit with everyone there. One of our friends ate five chimichangas and even passed up dessert to leave room for the last chimichanga on the serving plate!
You'll soon be finding that recipe on my favorite recipe site, www.freezersmarts.com but for now, check out the five free recipes that are there today. I went to the site planning to share one of them with you here, but it's so much nicer with the link because it takes you through each step with directions and pictures. Visit www.freezersmarts.com and click on the link in the upper right hand side to download five free recipes along with complete directions and photos.
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How To Develop Your Intuition
Why is it desirable to develop your intuition? Your intuition is the means by which you receive information from that wise, infinite part of you on the spiritual plane, your Higher Self. As such, your intuition can assist you in making decisions, setting goals for yourself, and aligning with your life purpose.
Many people don't think they are intuitive. But it is actually fairly simple to develop your intuition. It just takes a little mindfulness and practice. Here are six steps you can take in your life to develop your intuition:
Make room for the possibility
If you are convinced that intuition does not exist, or that it simply is not available to you, nothing will be able to persuade you otherwise. Remember that whatever you believe shapes your reality. It's fine to have doubts, or to be a little apprehensive. But in order to develop your intuition, you must at least allow for the possibility of its existence and validity. Open yourself to the idea that you are a highly intuitive being. Imagine all the information that might be available to you, if only you'll allow for the possibility.
Ask for guidance
Opening up to just any information makes it hard to discern intuitive guidance when it arrives in your life. Instead, focus on a specific topic or question that you wish to receive guidance on. Write that topic or question down, and ask your Higher Self for help with the issue. In this way, guidance will be easier to recognize when it comes in. When you are first working to develop your intuition, it is good to focus on a specific subject.
Create space to receive
Guidance may come in many ways. You may suddenly become inspired in an unexpected way -- or suffer an extreme lack of inspiration in other areas. You may forget or remember items on your way out of the house. You may feel sudden impulses to do something differently. A friend or acquaintance may suddenly offer up the answer you've been looking for all along. Spiritual guidance comes to us in many ways. It is subtle and integrates itself seamlessly into the fabric of our lives. In order to develop your intuition, you must create some space within which you can allow guidance to unfold. Look at your life events from the perspective of receiving guidance. You may be surprised at the many hints that have been coming your way all along!
Take action
Guidance is only as good as what you do with it. If intuitive information is never acted upon, it remains useless. It does take courage to act on your intuitive instincts. When you develop your intuition, reason and logic sometimes has to take a back seat to gut feeling. Try acting on guidance in small ways at first, to help you develop confidence. Then you can begin applying your intuition to more important life decisions.
Let go of the outcome
When you develop your intuition, you may find that you have a great need to be "right." However, intuitive guidance is a moment by moment process. What is right for you today may not be right for you tomorrow. You are, after all, one day richer in life experiences. You are no longer the same. Therefore, what you need today may differ from what is aligned with your highest good tomorrow. Act on guidance as it occurs. Let go of the outcome. We all think we know how a situation should unfold. In reality, life may present something far better than we could possibly have imagined.
Acknowledge assistance
Develop a sense of gratitude towards your Higher Self. It works hard to offer you the information that serves your highest good. Acknowledge the wealth of assistance that has come into your life. Thank your Higher Self often. As you do this, you are acknowledging the greatest part of your own being.
As you develop your intuition, you will discover yourself navigating through life with a broader perspective. You will discover the untapped resources that are available to you for the asking. You will begin to recognize yourself as a spiritual being living a human experience.
Andrea Hess is an Intuitive Consultant and author of "Unlock Your Intuition: How to Accurately and Reliably Access Your Most Valuable Resource." For more information on her book, her readings, or to read more of her work on her blog, please visit
http://www.EmpoweredSoul.com
Andrea Hess may be contacted at http://www.EmpoweredSoul.com or Andrea@EmpoweredSoul.com
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Celebrating Life with Children in October: 22 Simple Ideas
With leaves crunching underfoot and gorgeous colors overhead, October is one of the most beautiful times of the year. Here are more than 20 simple ways you can celebrate the simple life with your children this month.
Take your children to a football game of your alma mater. Have an old-fashioned tailgate party.
Make an apple pie or, if you are feeling less inspired, a simple apple crisp.
Treat yourself to takeout tonight: a rich soup and fresh crusty bread.
Make a Halloween costume for your pet.
Savor the fruits of the harvest this time of year. Make some pumpkin bread or zucchini bread.
Roast pumpkin seeds.
Plan a neighborhood Halloween party, or -- if your kids are a little older - recruit them to create a spooky haunted house through part of your home or yard.
Take a drive as a family to see the gorgeous autumn foliage. Stop for apple pie ala mode midway.
Treat yourself and your kids to cute matching socks in an autumn or Halloween theme.
Make popcorn and watch a Halloween themed movie as a family. Depending on the ages of your kids, you may choose something scary -- or something a little more benign, such as ET or a Halloween special featuring their favorite cartoon characters.
Bring home a festive fall flower arrangement that you can enjoy all week.
Make caramel apples. While still warm, roll them in nuts or chocolate.
Invite the neighbors over for mulled apple cider.
Rake the leaves into an enormous pile and have all the kids jump into them.
Stop at a local craft fair and pick up a locally made or handmade item to give someone for the holidays.
Make a gooey batch of caramel corn.
Visit a pumpkin patch and handpick a few of the best to take home.
Take the kids out to gather leaves and ask each to make a fall collage, using only the items found in your backyard.
Make a recording of scary Halloween noises to play on your front porch on Halloween night. Kids love to come up with scary ideas: screams, creaking doors, sinister laughter.
Make some stew in the slow cooker for dinner.
Give each of the kids a disposable camera, and take a drive, a hike, or a walk through the neighborhood. Ask each child to document the signs of fall in whatever creative way they choose.
Share the bounty of the harvest with people who are less fortunate. Talk to children about what it means to be thankful - to have an abundant harvest. In what ways is your family enjoying an abundant harvest? Talk about abundance in all facets of family life, as well as life at school and in the neighborhood. In what ways do your children see abundance all around them? Finish off the discussion by determining, as a family, how you can share your abundance with those less fortunate.
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Great Costumes for Less! Support Family First
- visit our sponsors and friends To view past issues:
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By Tawra Kellam
You can really come up with some cute and clever ideas for costumes, even if you
don't feel particularly creative. Don't wait until the night before Halloween to
start your costumes. Look at the people and things around you and ask yourself
how " how can I recreate this?" Look at thrift stores and garage sales for
costumes. Go ahead and buy the costume or piece of a costume if the price is
right. You really can't go wrong spending $0.25 on a piece of costume. Even if
it doesn't work you haven't lost much.
Costumes can be very simple and still make a big impact. For example, instead of
the usual witch robes, drag out your elegant black dress and add a witch hat
with a veil of spider webbing stretched over your face. Cover the spider web
with plastic spiders. For a man, a nice suit and tie and a funny mask makes a
good simple costume. For a couple: get a REALLY big sweatshirt, both of you get
in it and be Siamese twins! Some examples of costumes for kids are:
Sunflower - For the body, use a white sleeper or sweat suit. Paint the child's
face yellow, adding black spots to simulate seeds if you like. Make a flower to
fit on the child's head out of felt or glue sunflowers on a white hat.
Angel - Again use a white sweat suit or long white dress for the body. Make
wings out of heavy white poster board and paint the edges gold. Attach tie
straps to them that go around the shoulders. You can also shape a metal clothes
hanger into a wing. Make two wings, hot glue fabric around them and add straps.
Pea Pod - Cut 2 small foam balls in half with an electric knife or a knife with
a serrated blade. (Note: Do this BEFORE attaching them to the child!) Wrap in
green fabric and pin them to the front of a green
sweat suit. Make a hat out of 2 shades of green felt and a little brown felt for
a stem.
Lion - Buy a yellow hat or dye a white hat yellow. Buy long brown fake fur,
yellow fake fur and a yellow sweat suit. You can get fake fur at your favorite
fabric store. Add brown fur to the top of the hat (for a mane), hot-glue yellow
fur into a long tail, adding a poof of brown for the end. Pin the tail on the
back of the costume. Make an oval of the fur for the child's tummy and use
eyeliner for whiskers.
Dalmatian - Pin black felt dots onto a pair of white sweats. Paint black polka
dots on the child's face. Add more polka dots to a white hat, make some black
felt ears and add black shoes to finish it.
I Paint, Therefore I Am - Glue a copy of a painting with a face on it on a piece
of cardboard. (Ex. Mona Lisa). Cut out the face and then put their face in
instead.
Race Car Stroller - Decorate a stroller as a race car by adding fabric or paper
racing stripes and a number. Add two flashlights for headlights, plus some
reflector tape. If you want to get really creative, add a wind foil, a foil
covered paper towel roller for an exhaust pipe or whatever else your clever mind
conjures up. Cut a
steering wheel out of cardboard for the child to hold. Your child can wear
whatever clothes he wants. Just add an old helmet or baseball cap worn
backwards.
Think of themes for all of the kids in the family.
It can be fun for all the kids to dress up in costumes that complement each
other. Some sample themes are - superheros, vegetables, candy bars, rabbit
family (or other animals) or cartoon characters (i.e. Mickey Mouse, Minnie and
Donald Duck). They could also dress in pairs like a mouse and cheese, a plant
and a watering can or doctor and patient. The sky's the limit.
Christmas theme:
One child could go as a present, another a Christmas tree, another Rudolph and
the 4th as Santa.
Ideas for how to make the costumes:
Rudolph - Dye an old pair of sweats brown. Put a light brown felt tummy on the
shirt, make a set of cardboard antlers and paint the child's nose red.
Present - Wrap an old box that is big enough for the child to wear. Cut out the
bottom of the box and make holes for the arms and head. The child can wear a
turtleneck & stretch pants underneath it.
Christmas Tree - Cut two pieces of cardboard into the shape of a tree. Make two
one for the front and one for the back. Hook them together with a piece of
string over each shoulder. Paint the pieces green with
latex paint and attach old tinsel and ornaments with hot glue. Make a star head
piece by gluing glitter to a cardboard cutout or use a Christmas tree angel as a
head piece.
Santa - Trim a pair of red sweats with white fake fur and a large black felt
belt. Make a beard with more fake fur, top off with a Santa hat and add a little
"Ho, Ho, Ho" for good measure.
Of course if all else fails you could wrap the child head to toe in aluminum
foil and send him as a frozen burrito...
Tawra Kellam is the author of Dining On A Dime: Eat Better Spend Less. For more
free tips and recipes visit her web site at
http://www.LivingOnADime.com/ . In 5
years, Tawra and her husband paid off $20,000 personal debt on an average income
of $22,000 per year.
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