In all the hustle and bustle that makes up life of nowadays, it is hard to allow yourself to stop and smell the roses, to only live in a moment where you are completely at peace. It is imperative that you do though, bringing calm and quiet into your life is a way to connect to your soul. One of the ways is connecting with what surrounds you in the space that you enter every day. Your home. Your sanctuary. Here are some simple steps to achieve that.

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Everyone of us has challenges in their life, physical, emotional, mental. They are there to teach us something, to keep us focused on our one task, the goal in this lifetime.

Most people, however, see their challenges as a weakness, and don't take the opportunity for growth that is encapsulated in them.

I will give you an example from my own life to show what I mean with that. When I started to get chronic pain, I got mad, really really mad at my body. I felt betrayed by my own body, and pain cycles usually meant me getting really depressed, and having a hard time fighting myself out of the dark pit.

Then I started to change. I began to do things that benefit my body, culminating in starting my yoga practice 1.5 years ago.

I'm not there yet, not by a long shot. I still have difficulty dealing with situations where I am faced with two challenges at once, but, I am getting there.

But I no longer see my specific challenges as a weakness. I see them as a sign that I need to slow down, to start living in the moment, to enjoy what I can do even in my physical situation. It's also a sign that I should stop living in my head, and just breathe in, breathe out. Usually after I get out of a spiral like this, I "suddenly" have a lot of ideas for a story, or I produce a lot of paintings, or I have learned something new by reading a book that was on my TBR pile.

I turned my challenge into a strength, by utilizing the quite time it gives me. And yes, even days where I sit down and only watch tv are days well spent for me. Because those are days I didn't give in to my usual fall back method for pain flares: eating.

And I know, one of the most annoying things you can hear when you are off in the deep end is that other people have it too, and they are making something of their life or they are doing things or they are... Well, I have no doubt you can fill in the blanks.

I just want to show you that even in the hardest challenges you can find bliss, even in the deepest darkness, there's always a light. Just open yourself up to the possibilities your challenges offer you. Because, in truth, challenges are a chance for growth. And by writing this post, I have taken the chance and turned it into something that hopefully inspires others.

Blessings
Tamlyn

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It's been a while since I wrote one of these, won't bore you with the details as to why :)

The upcoming weeks I will post simple steps that focus on helping you to have a great festive season, stress free and blissful. Today's focus is  on creating a wonderful space in your home for December.

Here we go!

Step 1
Visualize
This should be the first step in any undertaking. What is your vision for your home for the holidays? Do you want to go all out with christmas lights and a tree, and tons of decorations? Or do you want your home to have a calmer glow? What do you want to do to bring light into the cold dark winter months?
Just walk through your home with a notepad, and write down everything that comes to mind while you walk. Then pick one room where you will create the atmosphere you dream of. You can always move on to another when you are done. Not taking the whole house as a goal is a step that will ensure you set yourself up for success. For the rest of the post I will assume you choose the living room for this.

Step 2
Clear
Get some boxes, and remove everything that doesn't fit in your vision for your living room. Box trinkets, frames, anything that doesn't go with the vision you have made for your room. When you do this you remove things that didn't do much for you, but still are in the room because they always were there, and open yourself up for decluttering them later. Put things you want back in your living room in January in a separate box. Tape the other boxes shut. If you haven't touched them in a month's time, just declutter the contents.
Then clean the space, and maybe do some furniture reshuffling, until the room just feels welcoming and comfortable when you walk into it. When you remove frames you may run into the wallpaper colour being different behind it, because the sun bleached it out. What you can do then is get a picture that fits right with the season, and put it in that frame. That way you keep the festive theme throughout your room.
Just remember, an object is just an object. They don't have memories, you have them. If you for instance have a really ugly china sculpture that you keep around because it was from your grandmother, just take a picture of it, and then declutter it.

Step 3
Decorate
Now your living room is a blank canvas, you can get out your decorations, and start putting them around the room, keeping the vision you have in mind. Then sit in your favourite chair and enjoy your wonderful and festive room.

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When the announcement for Blog Action Day (http://blogactionday.com/) landed in my mailbox, I signed up immediately. I had no idea what I wanted to write about but I knew my passion for the topic would lead me to something. It did :)

When we hear about climate change, and the devastation to the planet it causes, one thought pops up almost immediately: it is such a big, global, problem, I am only one person. What can I do?

The answer: a LOT. Here are some truly simple things that you can do to fight climate change.

Eat less meat
The meat industry is one of the biggest sources for green house gasses. Add to that all the other things that are wrong with the industry (treatment of animals for instance), and it should be enough reason to go meat free for a couple days a week. There are so many delicious variants of vegetarian replacements for meat.

Short distance? Cycle, don't drive
Even though cars aren't attributed to be the greatest cause of green house gasses, you still can do your bit by using a bike for short distances. Or walk. You get two for the prize of one: exercise and no extra green house gasses added.

Bottle your own water
Don't buy plastic water bottles anymore. Get a stainless steel water bottle, and fill it with water from your tap. Don't like the taste? Get a filter! Brita filters make your water taste delicious. Don't add more plastic to the overgrowing garbage dumps.

Be a conscious shopper
As I said earlier, the garbage dumps are overflowing. People throw away everything. Next time you buy something bring your own bag. Add some small cotton bags to it, so you can put veg in there, and then go shopping. Don't accept more plastic bags, just let the fruit and veg be placed in one of your small cotton bags.

Grow your own veg
If only for the simple reason that you don't need to use a truck to transport the veg to your kitchen :) But, veg also tastes much better coming from your garden, and you can grow it without using chemicals. Much better for your health!

Location, location, location
So you need something new, some furniture, some clothes, an appliance, a gadget. You go to the store, and you buy what you think is the best, based on price, on functionality etc. Quite sensible, right?
Nope. Many things you can buy in the store today have caused a lot of pollution on their way to the store. Most phones for instance? Made in China and Taiwan for instance. It traveled from a factory over there, to a distribution center, and from there it was transported half way across the world, to another distribution center, and from there to your store. You may think: oh but it is just one phone... But everyone thinks that way.
So next time you are buying something new, check where it was made first. It may be something small, but a lot of something smalls still make a lot of difference. Also, watch out for durability. Sometimes it is better to save up some more money, to get something that will last you for 20 to 30 years.
The one exception to this rule for me is fair trade goods. That way I know that the person who made it, gets a fair price for it.

You can save the planet too. Do visit the blog action day site for much more information on Climate Change.

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This post is a revisit to a blog post I wrote months ago. I felt I had to, given the way posterous is changing now.

The other day an a-list blogger asked about simple blogging tools. Seconds after I recommended posterous, he said: no, not things like posterous, something to run myself.

I had to scratch my head after that, and revisited my reasons to run my blogs on posterous, and to even point my domain names to them. All of them checked off and more. It is even better now they have started themes. It took me five minutes tops to get the theme installed, and I am really happy with it.

It made me revisit my wordpress using days, and the fiddling I had to do to make my blog look simple but yet all me. This blog is. It is simple to post any content, it is bliss, because I don't need to fidget with hosting my blog myself. It just works, and that's perfection.

Then someone told me the other day, that not using wordpress or any other self hosted blogs, showed I am not professional. I just shrugged. If people are so shallow, that they think I need to self host my blog for it to be taken serious, they aren't my public.

My public is people who want to make positive, lasting changes in their life. Who want to live a simple, fulfilled, blissful life. Who don't mind that my blog has the lil posterous logo on top, but who come here to read something that inspires them.

So, I posterous.

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It is autumn, trees are showing us one last, colorful, spectacle before dropping their leaves, the air is crisp and fresh, and nature shows us a fabulous spectacle of clouds. It is a time to put away the flimsy clothes of summer, and to get the sweaters out, ready for winter.

It is a perfect time to let go of what holds you back. Get rid of unwanted things around your home (you can use my decluttering tag to find some tips), and create a comfortable space for these cold winter months coming up.

You can also let go of aspects of yourself that you no longer need in your life.

I love to do the following ritual:

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(Originally posted on frugalforlife.com)

As a little girl I used to save up a lot of money. Most of my pocket money went into my piggy bank, to save up for bigger items I would want to buy/have.

Soon I found out that doing this, made me a target. Family members came to borrow money, as I always had some. Most of the time my piggy bank was left emptier, and even though I got paid back most of the time, I started to see my saving as a bad habit.

That is when I started the downward spiral. I became addicted to stuff. My piggy bank was empty, and my room filled with toys.

Then, almost 7 years ago, I was married by that time, I reached the pinnacle of spendthriftiness. Due to medication I became depressed, and my answer to the depression was Ebay. I started to like those maneki neko (beckoning cat) statues? I bought 20. I started to knit again? I bought boxes and boxes of yarns.

Until, one moment last year, I started to realize that surrounding myself with stuff, didn't make me a very much happier person. Cleaning the house became a chore that I detested. I was spending lots of time putting our stuff in various hiding places, and then had no energy left to spend on the actual cleaning.

That was when I began decluttering.

The decluttering was my first step on the way to frugality. I started to collect things from the house, asking a two very simple questions with every item in my hands: 'does this item bring me joy?' or 'do I still use this item?'

I collected the items, for which both answers were no, and sent them to the thrift shop or sold them on Ebay. I still do both these steps, and every time something leaves the house, I feel more fresh air chasing the staleness away.

My second step was buying the tightwad gazette, and started to read on saving money. I found some ideas very radical, especially for my spendthrifty nature, but I took some great ideas from it.

My third step to frugality was reviving my love for the earth. Would I really want to clutter the earth any more with my waste? Did I show my love for the earth by buying things, that would cost the earth centuries to break down? And wouldn't we live much more in balance, if we were eating vegetables grown in our own backyard? All these questions, and more, moved through my head, and I knew the answers to all of them. It was clear, very clear.

We started our frugal life by doing monthly trips to cheaper supermarkets, filling our pantry with cheap and healthy foods. Then once a week we stock our fridge with perishables, like milk and veggies. We have become more conscious shoppers now, and have also stopped eating and drinking unhealthy stuff. All in all we succeeded in cutting our grocery bill in half, without spending lots of time comparing price lists.

Then we started to shop in thrift shops. When we now need something replaced, we first go look there.

More steps followed, and I realized that with every step we take, I feel happier. I feel more alive now, than I did two years ago. I have renewed my bond with the earth we live on through frugality. I know that sounds like two aspects that have nothing to do with each other, but for me both are linked.

The biggest surprise in this new life of being thrifty is, that my dreams are floating to the surface now. Not spending time spending money, is time spent on following my dreams. I have a focus in life, that I didn't have for most of my life, even though I always knew what my dreams were.

To me, this is the biggest, and most unexpected, gift of frugality, and it made me realize that frugality isn't about pinching pennies, or saving money. It is about saving yourself, creating the space where you can go and live your dreams.

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Every one of us has sighed one time or another that there simply isn't enough time in a day to do all what you want to do. Even I have, working from my home and all.

Here are a couple of simple steps to get more out of the 24 hours you have each day.

Step 1
Be aware

Awareness is the first step towards change. Be aware of what keeps you from using the hours in your day optimally. For instance, be aware of:

*  your inner clock
Have more energy in the mornings usually? Get up earlier! You can do way more things in a day when you use your energy peaks this way.

* your timesinks
(Want to watch one show, and stick around for two more? Want to  spend half an hour behind your computer, and in stead realize that two hours passed and you never noticed? Use a timer (doesn't need to be a physical one, there are a lot of freeware programs for all operating systems) for your timesinks, and force yourself to get up the moment the timer rings.)

*your mind
Is your mind racing, playing an endless list of things you need to do, making you tired the moment you are getting up? Keep a notepad with you at all times, and just jot down anything that pops up, you can make sense of it later. I like to sit down at my computer and enter those in my to do list on remember the milk.

Step 2
Define your priorities

Sit down and write down a list of five aspects of your life that are most important to you. Every time you don't spend time on any of those priorities, remind yourself that you don't have all the time in the world to spend on it, your priorities are elsewhere. For instance, if watching three tv shows isn't on your list, watch one instead, and then go work on something else.

Step 3
Simplify your tasks

Stop yourself before you go out and do what you need to do on a day. You can get more time for other things if you make lists of things you need to do and then group them. For instance:

• Only run errants once or twice a week in stead of every day, write down what needs to be done, and then do it when you have your errant time scheduled.
• Group all the calls you have to, or emails you have to write, make during the day, and sit down behind your phone or computer once or twice a day, and do what is on your list. Promise yourself you will stay away from the phone and email unless really important.
• Ask yourself with every task you put on your list: does this serve me, my family or the priorities I have set for myself? If not wonder why it is on there?

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