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Making Dinner Great Again: The Ingredients for a Politically Palatable Dinner Conversation

Making Dinner Great Again: The Ingredients for a Politically Palatable Dinner Conversation

by: Jamie Bjazevich Without any explanation needed, almost everyone knows the taboos of family dinner conversations.Eating together can be a bonding and unifying experience so naturally we avoid topics that could be sources of dispute—politics included. While we might still have a bad taste in 

Dating Culture and the Taboo “No”

Dating Culture and the Taboo “No”

You know the drill.  You’ve just been asked out by someone that you don’t really know; and frankly, you’re not interested.  So, what do you say?  Dare you say, “no”? Disclaimer:  I realize that not everyone adheres to the trends that I’ll discuss in this 

Book of Mormon Challenge

Book of Mormon Challenge

By: Elizabeth Hansen

For all the women who were able to watch, read, or hear about General Women’s Conference this past October, probably heard  President Nelson’s Book of Mormon challenge. He challenged all the women to read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover from the time General Conference ended to the end of this year. This challenge seems difficult and even unrealistic. It can be hard to find time during our busy lives. So, here are some tricks and ideas of when and how to complete the Book of Mormon challenge that will fit your needs best!

  1. How to Mark: There are a few different ways you could mark every mention of Jesus Christ in the Book of Mormon. The longest way is to mark all the mentions of Jesus and underline all the places where He speaks in first person. Or, you could just mark every mention of his name. To save on time, you could also just circle the number of every verse that his name is mentioned in. If you happen to be in the car or walking a lot, listen to the audio of the Book of Mormon and really focus on every mention of his name rather than just passively listening. Whatever you decide to do, make sure it fits your needs of scripture study.
  2. When to Mark as a Student: If you are in college, your time seems to be all taken up by class, work, homework, and then trying to fit in social time with what is left over. So, here a couple of ideas to fit in that scripture time. Before you start your homework, just give 3–5 minutes for you Book of Mormon study. Keep your Book of Mormon in your backpack so you always have it if you are using a hard copy. This won’t give you the excuse to not have enough time after studying for scriptures. Like mentioned earlier, maybe you are in the car or walk a lot. Listening to the audio of the Book of Mormon when you have time is better than doing nothing. You may not have a marked up hard copy, but it will still be marked in your heart and mind where it matters. Just experiment with morning, afternoon, or evening study. If you find a time that works for you when you have more energy, go for it! Don’t try to force yourself to read in the morning if you’re not a morning person and vice versa. It doesn’t matter when, just that you do it.

I am still working on this challenge. If I’m being honest, I may end up doing a couple of 50-page weekends, but that’s the reality of it. Find what works for you and know that you will be blessed in your efforts for following the prophet and also for just reading and studying the words of God.

Parenting for All

Parenting for All

By: Elizabeth Hansen Whether you are single, married and not ready for kids, don’t want children, struggling with infertility, or more, you can still be a parent—mother or father—in many ways. There are many relationships we have in our lives where we can step into 

Use Your Words!

Use Your Words!

“I’ll come play with you really soon!” Yeah, we’ve heard that one before. I’m currently studying the English language in one of my classes, and we discussed a property of language known as cultural transmission. This means you learn and define words as you hear 

Home Improvement – Interior Design Beginners Tips

Home Improvement – Interior Design Beginners Tips

As college students, newly weds, young parents, or even veterans in the marriage arena, your home can be a place of refuge that you can call your own and also personalize to your own tastes and desires. However, it can sometimes be tricky to know how to arrange or decorate your house, especially if you can’t afford an interior designer or decorator.

While an interior designer or decorator might be wonderful to hire at some point in our lives, here are some beginner tips on how to arrange and manage the interior design of your own home. They are easy to follow and also give you a sense of power and understanding surrounding your own home.

First of all, lets get the definition straight of an interior designer versus an interior decorator. An interior designer understands how and why people behave so they can create a functional space specific to an individual or commercial business. An interior decorator, on the other hand, furnishes a space with items that are in fashion, beautiful, etc. While an interior designer can design and decorate, a decorator can decorate but cannot design.

Now, a few starter tips to improving the space of your home:

  1. Scale vs. Proportion: Scale is the actual size of an object while proportion is how big or small an object feels in relation to another object or to the room as a whole. So, have you ever felt like your space just isn’t big enough? Maybe its not the size of the room, but rather the scale and proportion of your furniture. Recently I felt the same way about my living room, but after removing our rather large scaled coffee table, the room seemed to double in size.
  2. Balance: Having balance, whether it be symmetrical, asymmetrical, or radial, can help a room feel bigger, smaller, more calming and familiar, and more! Symmetry can help you understand, organize, and control your space better.
  3. Emphasis: A common feature of emphasis is having a focal point in your space. Do you feel like there is so much going on in your space that you don’t even know where to start organizing, cleaning, or decorating? You might be having an emphasis problem. Creating a focal point can help your space feel less chaotic. This can be done through adding some color, a focal piece of furniture, etc. If you have too much of one color or too many demanding pieces of furniture, you will lose this sense of emphasis.
  4. Harmony: Harmony includes variety and unity. You want your space to have some variety to it, so as not to be overly boring, but it also needs unity so the space and all its elements go together. A good rule of thumb, is that if you are going to add a new element to your space (e.g., a new color), you need to add it at least three times so that the space maintains a sense of unity and not too much variety.

Of course, there are many more factors and details that go into making a good design, but hopefully these few will put you on the right path to evaluating your home and creating a more perfect space for you and your family.

All of these facts and principles came from the textbook, Interior Design by Stephanie A. Clemons and published through The Goodheart-Willcox Company, Inc. This is a great place to start to learn more.

Día de los Muertos

Día de los Muertos

My parents tell me that Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a dying tradition in their small hometowns of Coeneo and Tunguitiro in Michoacán, México. As a family, we do some symbolic traditions here in America to represent my parents’ culture from 

How to vote! A beginner’s guide for the unintentionally ignorant

How to vote! A beginner’s guide for the unintentionally ignorant

“Are you registered to vote?” “Do you know who you’re going to vote for?”
“You’re going to vote, right?” “You’d better do your public duty and vote!” “Have you voted yet?” There’s a theme here: “You’d best go and vote, or you’ve failed in your duties 

“Special Time” – Balancing Time Between Children

“Special Time” – Balancing Time Between Children

This is the story of how I learned to balance time between my children.  The year is 1991, my husband and I just had our fifth child, and the oldest is only seven. In the next seven years, we would add four more children to our family. I loved having all of our kids close in age; our home seemed like a constant party to me, and I love parties. What we lacked in peace and quiet, we made up for in planned chaos.

However, there was a certain problem that began to stand out in that memorable year of 1991: I began to notice that moms are always having to say, “no” in one form or another.  Needless to say, when five young children were repeatedly asking for individual things such as wanting to go to a certain fast-food place, begging me to play Barbies with them, or asking if they can help me put gas in the car, I would have to reluctantly respond with, “not this time.”

Saying, “no” to five kids, all day long, was wearing on me, emotionally.  Don’t get me wrong; we did fun things all the time, every day, but it was always in a group setting.  I longed for the chance to create one-on-one time with each child so that I could be a “yes” mom.  I needed to come up with an invention that would satisfy me.

Getting Creative

Plato said that “necessity is the mother of invention,” and it was necessary that I invent something that would turn me into a “yes” mom instead of a “not this time” mom–something that would allow me to balance the needs of all nine children simultaneously. The day of invention came and there was no question as to what to call it. Out of desperation to be a “yes” mom and to be able to be alone with each child, I easily named my invention “special time.”

Once I had a name, I came up with a plan. The first thing I did was to choose a night of the week that our family could set aside for individual “special time.” The next step was to write on the family calendar, on that night, each week, the name of one of the five children, until each child had had a turn. My plan included the goal of each child getting to do something they wanted with each parent. I wrote the names of the children, in birth order; Stephanie, Brian, Chuck, Missy, and Emily. Then I alternated “mom” and “dad” with each child. Therefore, it would take ten weeks for all of the kids to have had a “special time” with each parent.

Commitment With a Game Plan

I was determined that this goal would not be like a New Year’s goal that would fizzle out within a few weeks. We needed simple “special time” rules so that we could continue this for the duration of raising our family. The first rule was that it could only last about an hour. The next rule was that “special time” would not become a “shopping spree.” This was a time to enjoy each others’ company and to be able to say, “yes.”

The last rule was that each child could choose where or what they wanted to eat and what they wanted to do for an activity. Many of our “special times” were spent driving to pick up whatever fast food they wanted and then coming home to watch one of their favorite videos. We had a room we could go in, to be alone, and the rule was always that the other parent would be sure to take care of the other four children so that “special time” would not be interrupted.

The End Result

It took no time at all to realize what a blessing this idea was. It was so peaceful to be in the car with just one child; I could ask all the questions I wanted and listen to everything they had to say, never being interrupted by either a more talkative child or a baby crying. And the best thing of all? If they asked to help me put gas in the car, I could say, “yes!” I immediately reveled in my new life of being a “yes” mom!  It was perfect:  I could balance the needs of all nine children without the dreaded “I don’t have time.”

One “special time” that stands out to me was the time my four-year-old son had chicken pox. It was his time for “special time” but obviously we could not go anywhere where there were other people. His choice for dinner was McDonalds and his choice for an activity was to drive around and look at the Christmas lights. We went through the drive-thru to get our food and then proceeded to drive around town enjoying the beauty of the lights everywhere. After about twenty minutes, he asked if we could go home. This night together was proof that “special time” could be as simple, yet stay in my memory for over twenty-five years.

What’s the Take-Away?

My “invention” was out of the necessity, for me, to be a “yes” mom. Your invention can be anything you need it to be. Everyone in your life deserves to feel special, whether it be immediate family, friends, small children, adult children, relatives, or colleagues. Choose who it is that you feel needs your extra attention and set aside some amount of time to be with them. I promise that you will quickly feel the blessing of one-on-one time.  One day, you will look back and hold those memories in your heart as some of the finest in your life.

A Lesson from a Prophet and His Sons

A Lesson from a Prophet and His Sons

God organized us into families to give us a way to help and support each other. I was thinking about this as I read 1st Nephi chapter 8 in the Book of Mormon. This chapter is about Lehi, who was a prophet of God around