Mom's Visual Tweets, How to be Heard Without TALKING

Yep, I've personally tagged wall quotes in our home with the title and purpose...' Mom's Visual Tweets.'

My first child was born in 1986, and my last child came into our life in 2000. Watching the world change quickly has been an incredible, almost shocking ride. I've been holding onto the railings for a long time, so quotes prevent me from going postal. Fact.

Understatement coming....parenting today is challenging. There are too many outside forces coming at our children; products, technology...more stuff...more things...more useless crap, even more crap that's eventually going to become useless and rinse and repeat! Too much 'stuff' and too many 'things' make Mom a big grump and maybe a tad nuts.

Most of my boys are young men now, but I'm sure other parents can attest that parenting never ends, and I do mean NEVER. As the mom of 4 boys, it's hard to deliver life tips and messages without getting that 'hurry up, yah yah, glazed over look' from your kids-slash-young men.

So, to solve this dilemma, I used wall quotes and handwritten quotes to feature in our home.

Instead of Deciding to beat the 140 Character-Attention-Span-Syndrome, I Decided to Join It

By sporadically using wall words throughout the house, I can send a positive life message to the
boys (and myself). Oh yeah, the quotes get eye-rolled. But tough bananas, like Martina McBride said in her song, I Do It Anyway.

I haven't just purchased wall quotes; I've also handwritten them and put them on the fridge.

Unfortunately, the fridge started to look like a hippie wall from the '60s, so I've since transferred most of them to a binder.

The binder sits ready for the kids to read..I've yet to see them open it. I should stuff some cash in it - in 10 years, check it, bet the money will still be there. 

But I don't get discouraged. Not me. Nope. I'm going subliminal.

I just keep rotating them from the binder to the fridge, where one always sits in full view: I have to keep that puppy up for a long time cause it's usually a month before they notice 'a quote change'.

For the family, I particularly love quotes about the mind, our thoughts, and how "we become what we think about" - 'control your thinking, control your life.' <---I'm hoping to control that thought so it sinks in.

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I Was Here, I Made a Difference, I Mattered

History of Money Fridge Magnet Here

There's an Unexplainable Feeling in Your Soul; You're being Called to Contribute Something well Beyond Serving Self

It's an ache, a light, but mainly Something you're driven to achieve for the contribution it will make to the greater good.

Money isn't the driver.

Money almost annoys you. You've come to terms with the fact that money isn't even the measuring stick you were told it was.

Money turns out to be Something the human condition glorified as necessary paper in a desperate world saturated with mixed-up priorities.

This driver goes well beyond money.

This driver is the Art.

It's the grand vision to bring a smile to someone's face, aid a suffering heart, tell someone they matter, and bring unexpected laughter to a troubled soul ... you know the truth about this driver. This driver is timeless. The immortal spark that endlessly ignites creativity and genius through multiple generations.

You have been gifted a universal secret, and you comprehend the ultimate meaning of purpose:

"When this body has sung it's last glorious song, written it's last sonnet, or penned it's final poem, you know without a doubt that just like love, the artist leaves the body and lives on"

The Art is what's remembered.

Art is what matters.

The Art, like the artist, lives on.

I Was Here by Lady A:

(Lyrics) "I wanna do something that matters
 Say something different
 Something that sets the whole world on its ear
 I wanna do something better
 With the time I've been given
 And I wanna try To touch a few hearts in this life
 Leave nothing less Than something that says "I was here"

You can find the song I Was Here by Lady Antebellum on the Album 'Act of Valor' - A Compilation Album for 2008 Team USA. 

Learn more about and follow country music sensation 'Lady Antebellum' on Facebook and Twitter.


Article dedication: To George William (Billy) Tremblay, My Uncle - Forever remembered and respected. His Art lives in his family and will forever be his family.

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A Day of Paying Attention

“It is quite possible that an animal has spoken to me and that I didn't catch the remark because I wasn't paying attention.”   ― E.B White, Charlotte's Web      

Last week, on Review This! I wrote about the Shawan Downs Legacy Chase annual benefit steeplechase in Maryland.  I love going to watch the horses race around the course, jumping over a variety of fences.  It is an amazing, good time.

I made it a point to go again this year.  The weather Saturday was perfect. Following days of cold and rain, Saturday was a sunny, clear-skied day in the 70's.

Moving from one spot, to the next, finally settling on the deserted back fence. I sat in the long grass along the very old fence. Between races I admire the lichen on some of the ancient wooden rails.  Then I realized, despite my best efforts to find privacy, I was not alone.

Dancing spiders

There were spiders moving and dancing along these flat old hardwood boards.  I wasn't sure if they were marking their territories or trying to mate. Perhaps they were warning me to leave. Every few inches there was one of these thumbnail sized spiders. They slowly moved along, back and forth, lifting their hind ends high then dropping them, like hydraulics on a car in a parade. Up and down, up and down, while moving back and forth.

At first I nearly squealed. I'm not extremely afraid of spiders, but I do hate walking into webs when I hike and I'm afraid of the ones that jump.  Initially, I thought these would jump. They looked aggressive. I thought they would move up and down, up and down, side to side, then jump on me.  But they never jumped.

As I watched, mesmerized, I began to notice the webs spitting out of the spider's caboose.  I could see it with my naked eye, spurt, shooting off into the wind, iridescent in the sun.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Look closely, see the web?

I watched and tried to photograph the dances and web spurting, being very careful not to rest my elbows on the top board again in lieu of a tripod.  I was vaguely aware of people walking by, probably wondering what in the world the crazy lady was doing.  Why bursts of shutter clicking while no horses were running?

But I remained focused on the spiders. And their dances. Amazed at how relatively thick and how long the webs were. String after string, like invisible kites being guided by the spider's hiney. Not forming a cobweb, but streamers of spider string blowing to the sky.

The spiders had begun to look less ominous.  In fact, I began to think of one of my very favorite books of all time. Charlotte's Web.  What a great story.  And something was scratching away at the back of my brain.  I knew I had read a fun review about Charlotte's Web. Now just who wrote that thing, I asked myself over and over.

Charlotte's Web

I returned home and found it, the reviewer of Charlotte's Web was Mary Beth's granddaughter.  That explains why the review stuck in my head. Do you want to read a cute and insightful review from the perspective of a little girl? I am five times Rachel's age of 10 but I still love Charlotte. Isn't it amazing how a good story can stick with us for our entire life?

And that was how I spent my Saturday at Shawan Downs, watching horses fly and spiders dance.  

Written by Dawn Rae
Images of spiders by Dawn Rae

Disclosure: In affiliation with AllPosters.com, Dawn Rae is a blogger and content writer who may earn compensation from the sale of AllPosters products.

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Imagine, Create, Inspire!

Today I'm going to talk about why it's so great to share your crafts for kids online, and the best ways to do it!

First off, crafting for little ones is so very important, because it encourages them to be creative and imaginative from an early age, makes for great messy play (also very important!) and can benefit them in a number of other ways, ranging from fine motor skills to learning counting, colours and shapes.

It can be hard to know where to start for new parents, so anything online that can help inspire moms and dads is a wonderful thing - it's where I started when I was a new mama! Reviews of books and kits, ideas for resource materials and basics, and step-by-step tutorials for different age groups are all so very helpful to your readers! And even when you're a crafting pro, fresh inspiration for your kids is always welcome, so any more complicated crafts and fabulous ideas you may have are perfect for young crafters as well!

Remember, everything that you do with your kids that makes them happy, could make other children happy too! Sharing resources with other parents means you are inspiring others to imagine and create their own crafts and fun ideas.

As the Little Crafty Kids Contributor, writing about kids crafts comes easy for me because, chances are, we'll be doing crafts weekly anyway, I'll be taking photos anyway, and I'll be wanting to share them online anyway! So it's really easy to find things to write about each week. Plus I love doing it, so hopefully that shows in the writing! Be inspired by the seasons, festivals and events, what you can find in your recycling bin, or the story you've been reading together at bedtime. What can you make today?

To write a great article or tutorial about what you're doing with your kids, make sure you take nice, clear photos of each step, as well as the finished result! It can help to have a not-too-cluttered background, but hey, this is parenting, so that's not essential! Take some colourful pictures of the materials you're using, too. Pictures of your children actually doing the crafts are fab, but if you prefer not to put pictures of them on the internet, then take back-of-head shots of them crafting, or shots of each stage on the tabletop. If you're a wiz in a photo editing program, then you could make a montage of some of the photos with a tagline like "How to make a Toy Oven out of an Old Box" or "10 Great Crafts to Make with Pine Cones"! You could use this as an intro photo and also to promote the article on social media, especially great for visual ones like Facebook and Pinterest.

Think about niches and keywords, and how to get traffic for different kinds of craft articles. Individual how-to's might not get many searches, especially if your tutorial is something unusual, but if you can slot it into a niche phrase that is searched for, then write a piece that incorporates it - for example, you might have a review of an Easter Make and Do book, a tutorial on how to make an Easter bonnet, and a how-to on different ways to dye and decorate eggs, and so on. Write a lens or blog post on "Fun Easter Activities for Preschoolers" or "Easy Easter Crafts for Toddlers" and link to each of your related articles!

How else can you help other moms and dads? Last time I talked about reviewing craft kits. Craft books are also great to review - most parents will want to buy at least one or two of these, but there are so many out there, a really good selection of reviews can help them choose. If you put effort into your reviews and really show your enthusiasm or passion for the book (along with things you've actually made) then your readers will turn into shoppers!

Share your thoughts on:

• The ease of instructions for each craft
• Age suitability
• How clear/inspiring/beautiful the photos are
• How many projects and ideas there are
• Levels of difficulty
• Do they work? Are they easy to make? Are there good challenges? 
• And most importantly - do your children enjoy making the projects? 

 I created a list of craft books suitable for under-fives here, which you can use as a starting point for writing a book review. There have been some fantastic reviews written by Squidoo'ers in the last few weeks, such as this review of Show Me a Story by MeltedRachel, which shows the passion she has for the book as well as lovely photos of how she used inspiration from it to make story mats and maps from her leftover textiles. Meanwhile, tonyleather shared this bumper binder of books for making things from household items, which gets his granddaughter in the creative mood! Finally, CorrinnaJohnson gives a great example of how to review a seasonal crafts book with her take on Valentine Things to Make and Do.

Of course, when it comes to crafts for little ones, you don't have to just stick to basic crafts - you could also come up with recipes and ideas for materials (home-made paint, play-dough and so on), crafts to create toys and other items (we've been making rainbow rice for sensory play, and we've saved an enormous cardboard box to make a rocket out of!), and crafts for grown-ups to make things for preschoolers. The sky is the limit when it comes to creativity!

Next time I'll be looking at making recycled crafts from household items. Happy crafting!

Note: The author may receive a commission from purchases made using links found in this article. “As an Amazon Associate, Ebay (EPN) and/or Esty (Awin) Affiliate, I (we) earn from qualifying purchases.”

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