I am writing a series of 101 small changes that we can make to make the quality of our life better and build and lead a happier life that is in tune with our heart and mind. These are small changes that I have made and am working on now, so I know they are possible for anyone to do.
If you have not read previous posts, check out a few posts on the changes from the past:
Pomegranate fruit or its juice is popular in India and other part of Asia. In US, many people seem to know and drink POM juice bottles, which seems to be popular among some health conscious people. However, fresh Pomegranate fruits are easily available in even regular store and can be used in variety ways in cooking for its nutrition. One of my friend wanted to try eating fresh fruit but did not know how to cut and use in recipes or even making a juice at home. While cutting open Pomegranate fruit is not complicated, it can be messy and its juice can stain your clothes and sometimes even counter top. So, taking some minor precautions will make this task much simpler and easier.
About Pomegranate Fruit:
Pomegranate fruit is native to Iran and used in Asian areas such as northern India and Himalayas region. It is now cultivated in California and Arizona area. There are several varieties of Pomegranate with flowers and without fruit which are grown for its red flowers looks. Usually fruit is size of large lemon or grapefruit size. One fruit can hold anywhere from 300 to 1500 seeds, depending on size.
Health Benefits of Pomegranate:
Used in Aryuvedic medicine for traditional remedy against diarrhea, dysentery and intestinal parasites.
Its juice is used in Aryuvedic medicine for stopping nose bleeding and gum bleeding.
It is also used for firming-up sagging breasts and treating hemorrhoids
Some use the juice as eye drops for cataracts
It supposed to help reduce the heart disease risks
It provides Vitamic C, B5, Potassium and other flavonoids
Pomegranate is high in fiber which is best for digestion
Where and how Pomegranate can be used in cooking?
Pomegranate juice and seeds both can be used in various ways in savory or sweet recipe dishes. Juice can be drank, reduced to make syrup as gravy on top. Seeds can be used in salad, chutney, curry sauce, as a garnish on soup and stews. Dried Pomegranate seeds can be used in dry cereal or making granola bars, topping on yogurt, frozen yogurt and so on.
How to Open or Peel Pomegranate fruit?
I usually cut the small crown on top of the fruit first to make it easier.
Score Pomegranate in four quarters with sharp knife, do not worry about breaking the seeds.
Put all four pieces in bowl filled with cool water, one at the time.
Softly take out seeds by gentle hand touch to dislodge seeds from the cut pieces.
Once out seeds should sink and other fruit part will float.
Take out the floating parts and drain the water and take out seeds.
Place wet pomegranate seeds on to paper towel to pat dry
Now it can be used to be eaten raw or in any recipes as you desire.
You can keep those fresh pomegranate seeds in fridge for 4-5 days.
Add to Salad, juice can be added in to dressing, garnish on yogurt, soup, stew, pasta, couscous or in vegetables.
For those of us who are busy can buy frozen Pomegranate seeds or dried Pomegranate seeds delivered to your home, or ask skilled friend or mom to do it for you. I like those fresh Pomegranate seeds, it looks so much like small bright ruby stone that you can eat and are cheaper than real ruby gems!
Disclaimer: I am not a doctor and so always check with your doctor and its facts before trying out at your own judgement and risk.
I admit, I celebrate Halloween much more as a parent then when I was in college. Sure, as single gal, we did costume party and gathering but now as a mom we do pretty much whole October month as a Halloween celebration that includes, visiting many pumpkin patches, petting zoo, jump houses, attending fall carnivals, costume party and family gathering sometimes. Most kids love Halloween, what is not to love? Dressing up as their favorite super heroes, princess or character is fun and getting free candies while playing dress up! It sure seems like logical fun holidays for most young kids, some teens and a few adults too.
Kids loves trick or treating and we attend a few safe school or neighborhood trick or treating. My kids also love when other kids come and trick and treat at our place. We have fun guessing what they are dressed up as. As a parent safety during trick or treating is important to all of us. Here are a few quick tips to make Halloween fun and safe for kids and parents both.
Halloween Safety Tips for Kids :
Go with your kids to trick or treating, specially if they are younger. For older kids, still go together, some parent may choose to follow older kids with bit distance. My kids being young I or Zenguy usually go with them.
Do not go to strangers house or dark houses you do not know well. Try to visit your local street or people you know for trick or treating.
Always watch out when crossing the road and hold hands, specially young kids.
If older kids or teens want to go alone, make sure they carry cell phone and tell parents the path may they take and stick to it.
Pick and choose a costume that is safe to walk in to. It can be store bought or home made.
I am always shocked at sexed up costumes for young girls, avoid it and choose age appropriate costume that is well suited for kids and colder evenings during Oct 31st. You can make some easy costumes at home as well.
Do not over plan and make a busy Halloween with trick or treating, parties and gathering. Keep it simple as younger kids tend to get tired and cranky easily.
If you host a party for family, try simple decor as too much scary decor will scare some kids.
Keep simple finger food, music for fun gathering for family and kids alike.
Most of all, make sure do not finish all candies on same day! That goes for mom and dad too!
With simplicity and clean fun in mind, Halloween can be fun for all ages of kids, teens and adults.
As an adult many of us are driving daily to work, groceries, errands and social and official gathering. Things gets more hectic, if you have kids as a parents we tend to drive kids to one class or sporting event to another. At the time as mom of 2 kids, I feel like a overworked driver sometimes. It is easy to feel tired and get driving fatigue, if there is a such thing as that!
While talking to other parents, I realized that I am not the only one, other parents also feel similar ways along with a few single people who seems to be doing lot of driving for various reasons. So, how do you fight the driving fatigue? How do you keep yourself energized? I found a few tips that helps me when I am feeling driving or parenting chauffeur fatigue, I am sure it may help you as well.
1. Get Enough Sleep
Most of my problem of fatigue that I do not get enough sleep. As I am busy all day with house, kids and other things, I sometimes stay awake after kids go to sleep to read a book, do bills or even watch a movie. Nothing wrong taking sometimes for myself but problem is I get little less sleep so next day I am usually bit tired as soon as the day starts. Not a good way to start a morning. So getting enough sleep for what your body need is first step to stay awake and energetic.
2. Eat Well Balanced Diet and Snacks
I notice that when my toddler is cranky and acting out, usually is that either he is sleepy or hungry. After having a snacks, he is best kid again. I came to realize that might be true for adults too. At least it is for me, when I am rushing to get house chores done, I am eating on run. That means not eating well balanced food or not eating well. Now I stock my car with salted and roasted nuts, mixed fruits and nuts, granola bars, water so just in case when we are running late, me and kids have some snacks to eat to keep us going. I even keep small plastic bowls so I can put some snacks for kids to eat during go. It has been so helpful.
3. Listen to upbeat Music
Sometimes when we are stuck in traffic or have 30 minutes or longer drive to a class, I put some fun songs or music for us to listen. Sometimes we get also upbeat and start singing with radio or music CD. We might look crazy to next car driver but it keeps us happy during traffic jam.
4. Get Some Air
Sometimes when we drive air gets stuffy, so I open some windows to get fresh air in. It changes the mood quickly. When it is hot outside, we blast off Air condition in car for sometime. Cool air just lower our body temperature and cools us down too.
5. Take some Break
With little kids, most of our drives are around 30 minutes or so. When occasionally we have to drive longer, we take break after 40 minutes for restrooms or stretch a leg. Most of the time, it is rest room break with young kids for me, including one who is being potty trained so it is very much needed. Sure, it takes us longer to reach a destination but we are happier when we get there.
How do you fight fatigue when you are driving a lot?
During summer break, our family traveled around US, and India for 2 months. With 2 young kids, we learned a lot about traveling and adjusted as needed. Most time kids loved outdoors and new places but still needed some what familiar routine. Our younger one was traveling outside US first time, so I was bit apprehensive but in end kids adjusted much better than us. 🙂 Who knew?
Traveling With Kids: Tips for Tired Parents
Here are some lessons I learned during our long long trip and I am hoping our next one will be much smoother.
1. Keep all Kids Legal Document with you
If you are traveling by air line, make sure you have either birth certificate for domestic travel and Passport of international travel. In some cases, parents have been asked to show some legal documentation such as birth certificate for even infant. It is always good to have extra precaution to carry legal document to be on safe side.
If you have passport, make sure it is current. If country you visit, need a visa you will need to get those for yourself and kids too.
2. Keep Travel Itinerary light
We learned this hard way, when we decided to travel for months with visiting many places we thought kids may enjoy. Surely, kids would have loved it all, but young kids need break and free time in between so plan for it. Keep one big site seeing or little 2 things to see and do daily. Keep enough time for possible naps, relaxing play time and restroom breaks.
3. Carry small carry on suitcases with toys and books
Carry a small carry one suitcase or back pack just with kids small toys and books. We also carried crayons, coloring books and small easy crafts that can be done on go. It sure helped. In addition, we carried Dora and Diego DVDs or back up to see on Zenguy’s laptop when boredom hit with what they already played with.
4. Carry extra snacks, juice, Diapers and wipes
You never know what emergency may come during travel, so I always pack extra kids favorite snacks, juice boxes, diapers, wipes and extra change of clothes in carry on bags. It is also good idea to carry kids medicine and over the counter Tylenol just in case needed. When one is driving during road trip you may stop and buy things but it is hard to do when you traveling in plane or train so carrying extra is always better for parents, it was for us.
5. Bring Car seat or stroller for young ones
Most infant car seats and some toddler car seat will fit in airplane seat so bring it. You child will nap better and his or her neck will be rested on car seat better compared to regular seat on plane. You can use stroller at the airport before boarding and you can check in stroller at the boarding gate and pick it up when coming out. It will help you keep small sleeping child safe and secure in his stroller. Use heavy duty, umbrella stroller suitable for traveling. If you have a small infant check out 10 tips for flying with Baby for useful tips.
6. Take turn and Use help
Luckily both of our kids were fine and on very good behavior but surely seat next to us, kid kept on crying making it hard for parents. As a parent we were sympathetic and offered our help for a bit. If you are traveling with a spouse, use his or her help. Take turn for sleeping, eating or taking care of kids. I am double lucky as Zenguy helped me out a lot and kids were good on plane as long they as they had something to do and someone to talk to. If you are traveling alone with kids, ask help from air hostess or friendly person sitting next to you for little bit to give you a break.
Some little kids may cry during take off and landing as their ear hurt, so you may want to give them a sippy cup with milk, juice or pacifier, or even breast feed during those time to ease of pressure of those little ears.
7. Keep flexible
Having low expection and being flexible will keep traveling much smoother on you. Do not compare your crying child to easy sleeping child in seat behind you. Or do not expect you 3 year to travel as same as your infant, sibling may travel and have different temparament. Keep low expection and change as needed. Sometimes letting go of being in control and surrendering to reality of parenting may be a good thing.
Conclusion:
While our airline traveling was much smoother, we did plan too many activities once we landed. Kids did not get enough rest as they needed and we all got sick and it was surely not fun looking for doctors and medical stores in new strange places but we became flexible and adjusted our plans as needed and still managed to survive and have fun in process. Next time, we will do short traveling and little less site seeing to make trip even more fun. Read How to travel with Children for more ideas.
How about you? What is your best travel tips with kids or as a single or married couple?
This is a edited re-post from my earlier blog post.
Have you set your goal? Once you have set the goal how do you achieve it? Finding ways to support your goals and making sure how do you stay on track to get to your desired road to your final goal destination.
Sometimes it is easy to get of the track and get of the path. Sometimes life comes in between, you know unexpected events or daily life things get in a way. I know I have been off goal track a few times, and I am sure I am not the only one who has gotten off the track. The key is to get back on track to your goal as soon as possible.
Having clear goals with set of steps to achieve them surely will help. It seems simple and easy. But it is true, if we want to take control of where our life is going, we have to stop doing what is not working and start doing things you have been postponing for some day later.
Take a look at your life right now. Is where you want it to be? Can you change, improve it? What is your true personal value and what you want to be and do in your life? Knowing what you want and your values is big step.
Easy Ways How to Stay On Track
1. Be clear and know your core personal values and prioritize them.
Doing this step is important so that you will not do things outside of core values or ethics.
2. Look at your life to see what is working and what can be changed.
3. Set Clear and measurable goals based on previous steps.
4. Make sure your goals are balanced in life. Such as, do not set only money related goal and forget health or relationships. Make sure you have health, wealth and relationship with your final goal.
5. Follow or get mentor. Having a couch or mentor can help you clear your doubts and helps you keep in direction you supposed to go. Mentor can be a expert, a friend, a relative or hired expert. One does not have to spend lot of money to get right mentor.
6. Be with people who have similar goals. It has been said, we do get influenced by friends and family we usually hang out with, so be with right kind of people and with positive attitude. If you can not find right people to hang out, join a community, organization or forum of similar minded people to reinforce the goal and its road to get there.
7. Tell other people about your goal, write it down to make sure you are held accountable for your actions. It will keep you on track.
8. When things are getting off the track, ask yourself what is working and what is going right and do not focus on negatives. Making small changes towards goals will have gain you self esteem and motivation to keep going until you get to your goal.
Conclusion:
Sometimes life happens, we may get off the track of our goal. Having clear goals, mentor, a friend who held you accountable will steer you back to your road to your goals and back to track.
I wrote this article originally when I was blogging for less than a year, a few years ago. I believe in slow blogging movement then and I still do now. I blog for passion and not as a business, so it makes it easier for me to do that. As a mother for 2 young kids, my priorities are different. I rather write when I have time and something worth while to say. Read on and I feel it is still relevant as it was then.
I have been blogging at Heart and Mind at snail’s pace. Recently someone asked, how come I do not post every day. I said I am into “slow blogging” jokingly, not knowing how much time we can spend doing blog related activities. Here are a few things that are in blog time black hole.
Many of us are busy bloggers and also blog readers. Blogs are now easy to set up for free and for a few lucky ones have became very famous and made some money in the process. With social network sites such as twitter, facebook, digg, stumble upon and many other social media out there, many bloggers are working crazy hours on internet. Starting a blog is easy but Being a successful blogger is not, as one needs to be out there to market themselves and their blog. A few bloggers have quit their 9-to-5 job and make enough money to survive just from blogging. Good for them but are they burned out? Can they relax for a few weeks without posting on a vacation or take care of Family in time of need.
Here are a few ways we blogger can spend long and crazy hours on our blog and blog related work; If we are not careful, we can easily spend over 60 hours in a week, that is more than a full time job!
1. Many blogger post article once a day, and some other hard working people like Trent at Simple dollar posts articles twice a day, including weekends and Trent does long posting and great quality content posting. That is lot of writing time! I am always impressed by sheer quantity and quality posts on his site. And there are many good blogs are like that, who are posting good quality content regularly.
2. Many blogger write original content, that requires a some research, typing up and proof reading and editing each post before it goes live. It generally takes about 1 hour to 5 hour for each post as I read it somewhere over the net. (I am unable to find original link, so can not give credit, if you know it, let me know)
3. Many blogger, often write guest posts for other popular and similar niche subject blogs. Generally Guest posts are the best of best stuff and requires great research and time. Also, asking and getting approval of guest posts takes some time.
4. One way we keep in touch and market our blogs is to comment on other blogs, in similar niche subject. That means, really going through RSS or feed burner feed, or actually going on the website to read and leave, thoughtful, maybe helpful and relevant comment on the blogs you read. If you are like me, you read lot of blogs, commenting on each one can take lot of time. Some time I see many commenter leaving generic comments, and one can tell who really read your post and who browsed through it 🙂
5. Many bloggers are on social media, I am told it is part of necessary evil of blogging world. Many times we follow people, read and comment and reply to tweet and face-book fan. It is very easy to spend hours a day on it, if one is not careful. That is one of the reason, I am not on ANY social media for now.
6. Maintaining your own comments, spams, emails takes time each day and must in your blogging-to-do list.
7. Adding new plug-ins and features and looks on your site can take up lot of time. For example, my website, even though Zenguy and web designer did most of the work, I had to supply and give ideas on what I wanted. That meant, I needed to know what features and plug-ins and features are available.
8. For people who have advertisements on their blog, will have to maintain in that area as well.
9. One of my blogger friend is obsessed with Google analytic and keyword search and other site statistics, he is always tweaking and seeing stats, that can hinder creativity and put focus on wrong thing such as traffic, ad revenues and Alexa ranks, instead of following creative writing juices.
10. Some people also attend blog conventions, get together and social in-person meeting, that can be fun to really meet people only you know through their blog only but requires time. If you are doing only as strict business sense, you may miss out on true friendship.
11. Many blogger can create e-books or other valuable content to sell, which requires either time or money to get it written by someone else.
12. Reading and browsing through many blogs, this is my biggest weakness. There are so many wonderful blogs out there, and I have interest not only on personal development, self improvement but also food/cooking, parenting, crafts, news, finance, blogging itself and much more. I may not comment on each blog I read, but I spend lot of time reading cool blogs out there. I am always learning something from everything I read, and there is so much to learn.
As we can see, there is many ways to spend so much time on the blog or blogging related activities. I blog about once or twice a week at Heart and Mind , not because I am not serious about my blogging but I do not want to make blogging a chore, it should be fun or something you value. No, I am not telling others to stop writing everyday, I enjoy all these posts, but if you think, you are being burned out, you can choose to slow down. I am sure, many loyal readers will stick by you, if your blog content is good enough.
There is also slow blogging movement going on that I was not aware of, read the New york times Article Slow Blog here. Apparently I am not the only one who feels this way. Do what works for you but give a slow blogging a try, you may like it, or at least get some much needed rest.
How do you blog, if you have one? If you are reader, how many blogs do you read and how often? I am curious to others point of view on this. Are you in to slow blogging movement like slow food movement? I am doing it since I started about 9 months ago, so far I am satisfied but am I am successful? Only time will tell. But, I am enjoying the pace and liking it so far.
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——————————————————————————————————————- How to Organize: I would not be able to survive without my to-do list and planner. I have taken Franklin Covey Seminar and since then I use for organizing my life with it.
I use it for my family organization planning, but you could use it for work/job or business
It comes with quick start guide, 52 weekly compass cards and pouch page finder plus more
In past couple of years I have done “No Spend Month” Challenge where my family of 4 spent about 0 on daily expenses, not counting mortgage/rent, utility and phone bills. One year I did great and another I did not. This time, I am going to be out of town traveling during month of July, hence decided not to do “no spend month challenge” this time.
If you are curious about it check out past few years post to see weekly updates and how I fared below; If you decide to go through this challenge, let me know if you have any questions or concerns. It is always easy to do this with a friend or online friend support.
Learning from No Spend Month Challenge and Experiment:
I have learnt a few things from being stay at home, Zenguy being out of work for 22 months and doing this experiments for a few years;
Using cash made me aware what I was spending
Credit card usage made me spent more and did not realize where money went, until bill came
Writing down daily expenses, including small 50 cents expenses made me more frugal
Cooking at home is always cheaper, faster and healthier
Kids did not even know anything was a miss, they simply enjoyed it.
Money does not make life better, there are lot of simple things that makes us happy
Library has great resources for entertainment such as new books, movies and even music CDs to enjoy
Paying down bills made me more happy then spending it on luxury item at the end
It is not money but how we feel about money makes difference in our life
Knowing I spent less and was able to control my “I deserve it”, made me learn patience in life
Reading how to save money books surely gave me ideas on ways to save in my daily life without feeling the pinch.
Finding new ways to make money from home or start blogging to supplement income also helps.
