In my grandfather’s lifetime he saw the invention of electricity. The invention of the phone, the car, radio and television; my grandfather even saw a man land on the moon! My grandfather was convinced that anything was possible.
In my lifetime I’ve seen a whole new medium created; the Internet. Computers so powerful and so affordable that within my reach is any technology to help me create anything I can dream of; and it all gets faster and cheaper ever 18 months. The future is wireless and the revolution will definitely be broadcasted.
When I first started participating on Twitter I discovered @5ThingsaDay and the basic concept of listing five things a day for which I am grateful. Wonderful, what an idea and what a joyous way to start a day, or end a day or both!
I think that if we get in the habit of identifying at least 5 things every day that we can give thanks for that our days will be more positive. I predict that we will soon have 10 things a day for which we are grateful and over time we will see that gratitude reaps more blessings inspires more thanks.
So today I am grateful for:
1. Thanksgiving is only 4 more days.
2. New friends.
3. the great dreams I am having every night.
4. waking up with a song in my heart this morning.
5. my cat Bill is still alive and lively 2 years after he was given only weeks to live.
I have many other things on my list now every day. I am grateful from my precious husband Tommy. He surrounds me with love. I am grateful for my cats BB and Rosie. They make me laugh every day. I am thankful for the wonderful studio that Tommy has built for me, and our new apartment in the City so that I can see my beloved Manhattan ever week.
I am grateful that I finally launched Greetums.com and that it grew to become something more than I originally imagined back in June of this year. I am thankful each time I review one of my e-cards. They each are a labor of love and a love of what I do. I am proud of my team and thrilled every time I get to watch and dance and sing-a-long with our wonderful little Greetums.
Finally, for today, I am thankful that I discovered the JOY of Twitter and that I have the boundless energy to devote a full-time effort to engaging, listening and helping the folks I follow on Twitter. I have three accounts, @Greetums, @KatCaverly and @Humorous. I am very active on the first two and just getting started with the third.
I loving Twitter is wrong, I don’t want to be right!
This is our holiday greeting from last year. A Sweetdream and Nightmare Christmas I am the voice of Sweetdream and Tom is the voice of Nightmare.
Whether it be a birthday, or TGIF or Halloween or Thanksgiving, we human beings have found new and wonderful ways to celebrate life. The lucky ones have found a way to celebrate daily.
The key in getting the most out of our celebrations is to discover the HOW we really want to celebrate! What if we got to create the party? Well you do!
Most people enjoy harvest celebrations. It is about the Bounty and the fruits of our labors. American Thanksgiving is one such Autumn festival and it is wonderful. I have taken it as an opportunity to give thanks and look at my life to find the things I have to be thankful for. It makes for quite a nice day. So this year I started early; the week leading to Thanksgiving day.
Oh but back to the WHY we celebrate. And when you think about it, this makes perfect sense. We celebrate to give us strength. It is healthy to celebrate. We laugh. We love. We dance and sing. We breathe deeply. It just feels GOOD.
So why wouldn’t I want to celebrate every day? I wouldn’t. I DO celebrate every day now. I celebrate life! And I celebrate any and all occasions. I look for celebrations that I can participate in and I found that it is all positive, and always makes me feel good. But in the search I have often found those who really hate certain holidays.
I know the birthday haters. I live with one. I know the Christmas haters. I live with one of those too; same guy. His birthday is part of the Christmas holiday season; close enough to be forgotten all too often. There is only one cure for the anxiety before during and after the holidays – celebrate! Celebrate in YOUR way. Personally I don’t buy presents, I prefer to invite people to celebrate! A dinner, a lunch, a trip to see Santa and I do so love the various holiday theatrical events!
My way of celebrating THE Season is to start with making a THANK YOU list and sending thank you cards to every one who has made a difference in my life during the past year. Then the music starts. I have so much Christmas music that it takes about 18 hours to listen to it all, and I want new songs too so I am starting early this year. It is really hard to continue listening to the holiday music after Jan. 6th little Christmas. Yes I have a little Christmas tree and little ornaments!
Presents are not important but since humans love to spend money buying presents for yourself is always a good option.Christmas is the Season of Giving but that could mean giving of yourself, your time which you probably do 365 days a year.
I personally love the Christmas tree tradition and have been collecting ornaments since my first tree with my Tommy, back in 1983. I still have that cheapo clothe angel I bought at the corner drugstore. It makes me smile every time I think of her. And I have about 150 ornamants which I define as anything I hang on the tree. This year I am making a video ornament, a special ornament character starring yours truly! This production is my Christmas present to myself and one from my Tommy too. He is writing the script, directing and working as the whole crew! It makes me cry with joy just thinking about it.
Don’t let anyone tell you how to celebrate any holiday, including Christmas or your birthday. But celebrate we must, because these are the little things that make such a big difference in our lives.
I discovered this mirror filter in my webcam software and played with its effect, just a little rehearsal and then a chair dance. Even the bad lighting seemed to work for the result.
There are some awesome moments and results, well worth the 5 minute or so watch! Never underestimate the Power of Silly!
I have been having the most wonderful dreams this past week; every night. One night I dreamt about little cupcakes. And on Wednesday night I awoke briefly to notice for the first time the street light creating an exclamation point on the wall above the bed.
WOW!
I took this as a sign. I clear, beautiful happenstance that had been there for the past 4 months but noticed by me for the very first time; a 10 inch tall light exclamation point on a clean white wall. Gorgeous!
I would have to say that the exclamation point is by far my favorite punctuation. I think I speak in exclamation points too; every excited all the time. And the sighting of this natural exclamation point thrilled me. I got to see it last night too. Evidently it’s always been there at night. So I will get to see it every night/morning when I am in the City!
The health benefits of Hatha Yoga pranayama are well established and recently I have started to practice Hayasa Yoga; laughing yoga. And while I’ve been concentrating the practice on my silent laughing technique I made a discovery: Silent Laughing is a kind of Pranayama.
Pranayama is the use of restriction of breathing to move the prana; the life force – through the body. BSK Iyengar demonstrates pranayama in this video and the wikipedia defines pranayama as the “restraint of the breath” and it is practiced to bring about “changes of consciousness”.
Last week I blipped a link to the Cuppycake song and soon was told how drippingly sweet it was and I thought “what if I got Tom to let me shoot him saying these ever so sweet things?” Well, Tom had to “rewrite” the words and it took me over 24 hours to really convince him, but:
Yes he done did it and if the truth be known I saw that smile in his eyes and when I played for him the first draft he laughed out loud! And for a moment he was happy. And then it passed! Listen carefully at the end of the video, and you can hear Tom tell me what he thinks I am going to do with this video! OY
It has been my life long dream that I could inspire people to devote the whole month of November to giving THANKS.
As a child I started the tradition of making a list of all the reasons I was thankful on Thanksgiving. This simple exercise brought me so much joy that I really wanted to do it every day. @5THINGSaDAY on Twitter reminded me of the power of making a list of at least five things you are grateful for that day, every day.
Now I’m in the greeting card business and the thank you card has very special importance. And I have this dream, that people will take the month of November to send thank you notes to everyone that has made a difference in their lives during the past year. If you’re like me it just need more time than one day a year to thank everyone.
What do you think? What would open up in your life if you gave THANKS to all those special people in your life?
El Día de los Muertos. The Day of the Dead. All Soul’s Day.
Halloweenmas is a three day festival, starting on October 31st with Halloween. November 1st is All Hallows or All Saints Day. And November 2nd is the Day of the Dead; which can be quite a joyous celebration.
Spooky Dooky is an original song by Chris Leap of No Evil Productions. Working with producer/production creative director Kat Caverly, Chris (aka No Evil Dog) got jiggy with a spooky comedy/horror genre.
Take a look at the production video shot during the recording of Kat Caverly’s performance and some “notes” by director Thomas Hudson Reeve.
