election almost over. I. CAN'T. WAIT.

Wow, so glad the election is tomorrow! I never remember seeing so much hate in any election before. I guess though with social media it is blasted in our face on a daily basis. I just can't understand why people don't want their candidate to win because they like his POLICIES instead of making it so personal. Both sides are guilty of this. People just generalize and say the candidate they don't like is all about one thing and then scream about it every day. I happen to think the candidate I am not voting for is a very nice man and has a beautiful family. I'm not voting for him because I don't agree with the POLICIES he wants to enact. I do not think he is evil! On a positive note a few things I did like from the election.

The cutest trick or treaters!


Love this video,definitely how I feel now.


The Obama Campaign Scares Supporters with Fake News Report

and links to a couple of more funny videos....
One on Presidential Mom Jeans and the presidents that wore them
http://www.buzzfeed.com/amyodell/presidential-mom-jeans-a-retrospective

Lastly a video of the Best and Worst Moments of the 2012 Election
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/the-best-and-worst-of-the-2012-election

       

family fun

Over at the blog nyctaughtme she has the funniest post about what she got her husband for his Birthday. He doesn't like her to get him presents and he doesn't like celebrating his Birthday. So she picked out a few gems for him at CVS. It reminded me of my brothers when we were teenagers. On Christmas Eve at 5:30 p.m. a half an hour before the stores closed for Christmas Day, my brothers would panic and run over to our local drug store to buy presents for the entire family. They always put off Christmas shopping until the last second. Needless to say their presents were hilarious, just as hers are!

photo: nyctaughtme

WTC Tallest Building in New York

Yes! EarthCam released a time lapse video showing construction of the World Trade Center from 2004-2012.




via...andrew sullivan

why was this a crime?

There is a heartbreaking article in the Washington Post by Gene Weingarten on a child that was accidentally left in a hot car and died. This and other horrible accidents happen with children every year and he reminds us that it could have been us. When this story came out there was a lot of ugliness by people saying things like the mother should be locked up and forgotten or she doesn't deserve to live. I so agree with his explanation below of people's hate-filled and judgmental comments.

 "If the ugliness seems puzzling to you, it doesn't to psychologists who have examined this phenomenon. It’s a form of denial, they say: Deep down, people understand that all lives are fragile, that we are all capable of momentary mistakes or misjudgments that could destroy us. We don’t want to face this terrifying fact. So we must convince ourselves that the people to whom it happens are unlike us. To sustain our delusion of safety, we must make them monsters."

hazards of confidence

Do you know how often confident professionals advising you are correct about their judgments? I often wonder about this especially with the ones that are overconfident. I also think about this with people that are so positive they know the truth about everything. Interesting article about this in the New York Times by Daniel Kahneman. It's entirety here and his summary below....


"We often interact with professionals who exercise their judgment with evident confidence, sometimes priding themselves on the power of their intuition. In a world rife with illusions of validity and skill, can we trust them? How do we distinguish the justified confidence of experts from the sincere overconfidence of professionals who do not know they are out of their depth? We can believe an expert who admits uncertainty but cannot take expressions of high confidence at face value. As I first learned on the obstacle field, people come up with coherent stories and confident predictions even when they know little or nothing. Overconfidence arises because people are often blind to their own blindness.

True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes. You are probably an expert in guessing your spouse’s mood from one word on the telephone; chess players find a strong move in a single glance at a complex position; and true legends of instant diagnoses are common among physicians. To know whether you can trust a particular intuitive judgment, there are two questions you should ask: Is the environment in which the judgment is made sufficiently regular to enable predictions from the available evidence? The answer is yes for diagnosticians, no for stock pickers. Do the professionals have an adequate opportunity to learn the cues and the regularities? The answer here depends on the professionals’ experience and on the quality and speed with which they discover their mistakes. Anesthesiologists have a better chance to develop intuitions than radiologists do. Many of the professionals we encounter easily pass both tests, and their off-the-cuff judgments deserve to be taken seriously. In general, however, you should not take assertive and confident people at their own evaluation unless you have independent reason to believe that they know what they are talking about. Unfortunately, this advice is difficult to follow: overconfident professionals sincerely believe they have expertise, act as experts and look like experts. You will have to struggle to remind yourself that they may be in the grip of an illusion." Daniel Kahneman

illustration : via new york times

treasures

Interesting photos showing what people treasure most in their life. The question asked from the blog The Burning House, "If your house was burning, what would you take with you?"
photos: theburninghouse
via: blackeiffel

japan

You can't help but feel a lot of pain and heartache for the people of Japan seeing all the destruction and tragedy coming from the earthquake. So it made me smile when I saw these sweet children in a photo from Hideaki Hamada's flickr stream. The caption below it reads:

"from Osaka Japan, we're okay. Thanks."

via: happenstance

manners

Wow, one thing I have really noticed lately is a lot of parents don't seem to be teaching their children manners anymore. I guess I'm aware of it more because my parents were really strict about it. It seemed annoying at the time but when I went to raise my own kids I was glad they were. My mom was really good about teaching us what to say, how to share and to be respectful to those around us. We would always ask my Dad why he was so strict with us in our own house. He told us then it would be easy for us when we visited our friends and played with them that we would automatically do the right thing because we had too at home. He was right of course, so I took his lessons and raised my children the same way. He also said he didn't want to live in a house with spoiled bratty kids and I totally got what he meant when I was raising my kids. Part of the reason I know more parents don't do this is because it is such hard work! You have to be on your kids all the time, watching them and disciplining them. In this day and age so many parents are stressed out with their work and all their activities that it just isn't a priority or they are too tired and just don't have the energy. I've been glad Brittany believes it is important to spend the time and energy to teach Noah manners. That has definitely not been a simple feat for her because Noah is not exactly your easy child and is constantly testing her limits. I can witness now how much her hard work has payed off as you can see the progress in Noah. When he plays at the park or with his friends he shares his toys most of the time or he doesn't get to play. One of the manners I love the most is when Brittany and I are talking and he wants to say something he will always come up and say "excuse me" before talking. It is the cutest thing and I can feel my Dad smiling from above.
image: here

gabrielle giffords

A sad day when an admired moderate member of congress is shot in the head and fighting for her life along with 6 other people that were killed. One of those that died was a 9 year old girl born on Sept. 11, 2001. What a tragedy. Which makes me wonder where all this hate comes from. The man that shot them hated our government. In the last few years there has been so much angry political rhetoric. Is that really necessary? Can't we disagree without all the hate. There are mentally crazy and unstable people out there and when we dial up the hate it is bound to influence them. I hope this tragedy today makes people step back and rethink some of the angry things that are being said. What is really disturbing to me is supposedly religious people I see are involved in a lot of this hateful rhetoric. What is that all about?
image: new york times

baby's first house

Over at the blog Young House Love they are getting ready to move out of their first house they remodeled and decorated into bigger house now that they have a 6 month old baby. It was their baby's first house and they wanted a way to show it to her when she was older. They decided to take a video of them touring the whole house with her and showing her what she liked to do in each room. The video is so cute......you can see it here.
image: clara's first room

religious tolerance

Things are getting crazy in the political world these days. A lot of hating going on with the elections getting close. That's why I especially loved these comments yesterday from President Obama about religious tolerance.

"One of the things that I most admired about President Bush was after 9/11, him being crystal-clear about the fact that we were not at war with Islam. We were at war with terrorists and murderers who had perverted Islam, had stolen its banner to carry out their outrageous acts. And I was so proud of the country rallying around that idea, that notion that we are not going to be divided by religion; we’re not going to be divided by ethnicity. We are all Americans. We stand together against those who would try to do us harm.

And that’s what we’ve done over the last nine years. And we should take great pride in that. And I think it is absolutely important now for the overwhelming majority of the American people to hang on to that thing that is best in us, a belief in religious tolerance, clarity about who our enemies are -- our enemies are al Qaeda and their allies who are trying to kill us, but have killed more Muslims than just about anybody on Earth. We have to make sure that we don't start turning on each other.

And I will do everything that I can as long as I am President of the United States to remind the American people that we are one nation under God, and we may call that God different names but we remain one nation. And as somebody who relies heavily on my Christian faith in my job, I understand the passions that religious faith can raise. But I’m also respectful that people of different faiths can practice their religion, even if they don't subscribe to the exact same notions that I do, and that they are still good people, and they are my neighbors and they are my friends, and they are fighting alongside us in our battles."
image: White House Photo-Pete Souza

facebook friends

An interesting thought on facebook friends from Stan James.

"Since TV was invented, critics have pointed out the dangers of watching the perfect people who seem to inhabit the screen. They are almost universally beautiful, live in interesting places, do interesting work (if they work at all), are unfailingly witty, and never have to do any cleaning. They never even need to use the toilet. It cannot be psychologically healthy to compare yourself to these phantasms.

So it’s interesting that social networks have inadvertently created the same ou effect, but using an even more powerful source. Instead of actors in Hollywood, the characters are people that you know to be real and have actually met. The editing is done not by film school graduates, but by the people themselves."

You will want to read the rest of his insightful post on "not-so-close facebook friends" here.

via:Ben Basnocha

conversation

Love this post about the rules of conversation via Scott Adams:

"A conversation, like dancing, has some rules, although I've never seen them stated anywhere. The objective of conversation is to entertain or inform the other person while not using up all of the talking time. A big part of how you entertain another person is by listening and giving your attention. Ideally, your own enjoyment from conversation comes from the other person doing his or her job of being interesting. If you are entertaining yourself at the other person's expense, you're doing it wrong.

You might think that everyone on earth understands what a conversation is and how to engage in one. My observation is that no more than a quarter of the population has that understanding. I was solidly in the conversationally clueless camp until I took the Dale Carnegie course, in which one small part of the learning dealt with the mechanics of conversation. It was a life-changing bit of knowledge.

Prior to the Dale Carnegie course I believed that conversation was a process by which I could demonstrate my cleverness, complain about what was bugging me, and argue with people in order to teach them how dumb they were. To me, listening was the same thing as being bored. I figured it was the other person's responsibility to find some entertainment in the conversation. That wasn't my job. The good news is that once I learned the rules of conversation, I was socially reborn. It turns out that active listening is more fun than talking, although sometimes you need to guide the conversation toward common interests."
via: Andrew Sullivan

beach living

via: pretty good

it all went so quickly

Oh, what a bittersweet moment that was watching Jay Leno say goodbye to the tonight show. I don't watch the show that much but I was drawn into watching his last show Friday night. I guess it was relating to him and all the goodbye's we have to experience in our own life. The first time I had to say goodbye was when my best friend moved when I was eight. I felt sick to my stomach for three months missing her so bad. Then there was walking to high school on my last day knowing all my friends would be headed in different directions and it would never be the same again. Dropping my daughter on her first day of kindergarten realizing her babyhood was behind her. Quitting a job I hated but crying in the parking lot as I left knowing how badly I would miss my friends I worked with. Taking my oldest daughter to college knowing she would never live full time in my house again. Attending my youngest child's graduation from high school knowing this was the last time I would be running around to school events. Helping my middle daughter clean her room and pack her bags the night before she got married. Which brings me to this week when my daughter, son in law and my sweet little grandson are moving. They are not moving far but having them 5 minutes away in the last two years meant I could see them whenever I wanted at a moments notice. So I thought of these times as I saw Jay Leno holding back tears, precious moments in my life, it all went so quickly........

by the seaside

Have a fun long weekend! I'm off to head down by the beach for biking, relaxing and a barbecue.
image: conde nast store

here we go

I'm starting a new blog about the lovely ideas of many talented people who inspire me. I'm constantly sending things to my daughters and now they can come to my blog to see them. When I was working on birthdays, showers, weddings or getting ideas on mothering I realized how helpful all these great sources were to me.

image: flickr