I knew it, I knew it! The moment I wrote a bit about a date, you all inundated me with good luck wishes, desires for updates, and helpful comments. You are a riot! You all want to know more about my love life than you do how to build your businesses, LOL!

He brought flowers! Okay he is very romantic, brought me a white rose in a vase (inside his coat) to the restaurant. We had a lovely dinner at Capital Grill in Buckhead and capped it off with dessert at The Ritz (in the lounge, get your mind out of the bedroom!)

Back in Atlanta this weekend! Yes, I will see “him.” I am also checking out the Atlanta Art House, the newest exhibition at the botanical gardens Orchid Daze, and another art show on Friday night. Perhaps I will run into some of you local Atlantans.

Prospering by Design, Are You?

MG

Copyright Melissa Galt 2008/2009

I have yet to meet anyone that wishes they spent more time in the office or on their career; instead everyone seems to miss time with their families and friends. Family is not limited in this discussion and context to those related only by blood. Many of us have our truest and best family by virtue of lasting friendships and not blood relation at all. I believe that family is whomever you choose it to be whether by birth and blood or by choice and opportunity.

It is vital to make a truly conscious effort to celebrate our family in fun and rewarding ways often. Here are some tried and true and even a few new ideas for celebrating with your chosen family.

Blockbuster Movie Family Pack

While you can blow it out and take everyone to the movies complete with popcorn, orange gooey nachos, and gargantuan sodas, you can also do this at home and still provide the popcorn, more moderately sized refreshments and skip the pseudo food.

My clients have found that even a large TV in a great room is enough to keep family together and entertained for an evening or a rainy afternoon. If you have the option of doing even a small home theatre, there is never a reason to indulge in the high price of movies at the mall. You can even include your own popcorn cart and a mini refrigerator for cold drinks.

Bring Hollywood home and celebrate movies with your family.

Colossal Cultural Family Event

Museums are not always the stuffy places we think they are but often they will have exhibits that are family friendly and sometimes even specific to children. Museums also encompass the scope of venues including natural history (I call these bone museums and are great favorites for kids) and science museums. I even attended a Garbage Museum not long ago in Milford Connecticut devoted to the art of recycling. It was all designed to show our youth the path of goods that get recycled and those that don’t. It was fascinating and well done and would make a great family outing.

I remember my Mother dragging us (once in a while kicking and screaming) to museums as children, but the lessons sank in and I now go as often as I can and have enjoyed a much broader range of art knowledge because of those trips. It likely influenced even my career decision. Exposing children to art early on can have a profound impact on them, but best of all enjoying art as a family can be a very enlightening experience and provide an opportunity to share a diversity of viewpoints and interpretations of what is viewed.

Celebrate your family with art and culture.

Six Flags Family Fun Day

Now it doesn’t have to be Six Flags but any amusement park including those that offer white water fun and rock climbing experiences. The key is to allow everyone a chance to enjoy what they like and no one is forced to participate but can watch and wait patiently or find their own kind of fun.

It often happens that half the family decides to spend their time in line on the roller coasters and gravity defying attractions, while other family members prefer to indulge in face painting, hair braiding, and winning stuffed toys at the toss it booths scattered throughout. It isn’t important that everyone ride the monster coaster but instead that the day starts together, is connected for hair raising tails of terror and sharing of prizes won, and that everyone heads home happy and tired.

Celebrate your family with an amusement park getaway!

Family Aquarium Adventure Day

Many major cities now have significant aquariums and often sea water parks when located on the coast. If there isn’t one where you live, take a look at what nearby (driving distance) cities offer this and investigate a day trip. These are like ocean zoos and can be great places to learn about the creatures of the deep as well as share time as a family.

Aquariums often include IMAX movies featuring rescue of sunken treasures, or stories of underwater predators (movies generally need action and derring do.) In addition they’ll have daily underwater shows with divers portraying mermaids or just interacting with the sea life. This can also be an effective way to encourage swimming, and the opportunity to snorkel and scuba.

Celebrate your family with an aquarium adventure day.

Family to Family, A Legacy of Giving

While many of us are familiar with the idea of adopting a child in need, there are also organizations that encourage adoption of a family in need. This may be either overseas or in our own backyard. With such disaster displacement as Hurricane Katrina, families were taken in by other families and helped back on their feet.

Now, I am not suggesting you necessarily adopt a family into your home, but adopting a family by way of sponsoring them is a great way to start a legacy of giving. So often it is something as little as $30 a month to support a child and so a family might be $100 a month whereas in our lives that may be the price of a new pair of shoes or a dinner out.

This is a chance for everyone in the family to participate in the giving and to get to know a family less fortunate. The added benefit is it tends to keep us more grounded and aware of our blessings, rather than taking for granted what too few have. Organizations to facilitate this can be found online and through organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Ruby Slipper Project, Hannah Home and more.

Celebrate your family by sharing the gift of giving.

Get your free edition of Interior Destinations, Melissa Galt’s award winning newsletter devoted to Designing Your Business for Your Best Life Now, available at www.melissagalt.com. For more great articles and tips, check out Melissa’s blog at www.todaybydesign.com

Where are you the most productive? Do you find that your productivity is often based on the time of day and on your location? I know I get a lot more done in the quiet of my mountain escape than I do in the crazy energy of Atlanta! In Atlanta my schedule is more often loaded with sourcing for clients, site visits, speaking engagements, airport trips, and catching up with friends (oh and YES, dating, LOL). So I plan five day stays here in Highlands to get it all on track and moving forward. How can you plan your most productive times and emerge successful?

Mapping fun! This is my YEAR of YES, and that means I have to make a lot more time for my dream list. I’m planning a visit to Connecticut in May to see dear friends and then a trip to Bonaire for scuba certification and to see the house I did a few years ago for clients. They both scuba and train, but I’ve never seen the house! Rumor has it the neighbors and friends have given it rave reviews. What are you doing to plan regular fun in your life?

Heading into Hotlanta this Saturday! Got a date Saturday night (yes, we met on match.com and this is our first face to face!) Sunday, I’m meeting a friend for the last day of the Flower Show and brunch at Canoe. I’ve got client biz on Monday, then Tuesday reconnecting with my favorite design group for lunch and a look at Insidesign, http://www.myinsidesign.com/.

What are you doing to find new resources?

Together we’ll all go farther! Prospering by Design, Are You?

MG

Copyright Melissa Galt 2008/2009

I have yet to meet anyone that wishes they spent more time in the office or on their career; instead everyone seems to miss time with their families and friends. Family is not limited in this discussion and context to those related only by blood. Many of us have our truest and best family by virtue of lasting friendships and not blood relation at all. Many of us have very dysfunctional families and it is often not comfortable or enjoyable to share time with them and partake in the dysfunction.

I believe that family is whomever you choose it to be whether by birth and blood or by choice and opportunity. It doesn’t make sense to sacrifice your precious time off with the inevitable toxic relatives. We all have them; those that just make us crazy on some or every level. The ones that believe they are victims in life and are looking for a rescue; the sister that lives in perpetual crisis and with whom any conversation proves exhausting; the dead beat nephew or niece that just can’t get their act together and plays woe is me as their theme song; or the father that never was one and never wanted to be one.

I don’t believe in trying to change these folks or even influence them. I respect their limitations but also know that if being around them is not rewarding, I make the choice not to be. My life and time here is my own and too precious to allow the toxic types to rob me of it. I have had the unique privilege of knowing so many that are so wonderfully gracious to be with and give so much that they are who I choose to share my time with and call family.

It is vital to make a truly conscious effort to celebrate our family in fun and rewarding ways often. Here are some tried and true and even a few new ideas for celebrating with your chosen family, be sure to check out Part II of this article for even more easy and fun ideas.

Family Dining Delights

Now this could be any day of the week, that isn’t what is important. What is important is that it is an established day that everyone in the family commits to meeting in one place to share a meal together. It is a weekly opportunity to celebrate each family member’s triumphs and support them through their challenges. It is a chance to share advice and give feedback when asked. This can be done at one individual’s home or perhaps rotated weekly. It could also be at a favorite restaurant so no one has any set up or clean up. Often it is a tradition passed down from generations before or started by your Mother or even Mother-in-law. But regardless if you don’t have the tradition, you can create your own.

Celebrate your family with a regularly scheduled weekly dinner together!

Regular Reunions

Often these are held only every five years or so with relatives coming from around the globe to congregate, catch up, and celebrate family time. While these can require a great deal of planning and coordinating, it might also be fun to do it on a smaller scale annually with those in a specific region or proximity. We have the large gatherings every five years, but it seems each time there are more and more folks that I don’t know or goodness forbid just don’t remember. Five years can be a very long time in this age of instant everything. My aunt does an annual trip with her children and grandchildren for two weeks to some exotic local each year. This seems a wonderful way to bring everyone in her immediate family together. Exotic for them means Africa or Australia, but exotic to you could mean Disney World or Detroit. It isn’t so much about where you meet, but that you do get together and share face time.

We are all so accustomed to electronic means of communication we forget that face to face enables communication on a whole different and more integral level. With face to face we get the gift of expression, vocal intonation, gestures and body language. We also get the gift of touch that is so often ignored, repressed, or forgotten in the age of virtual relationships.

It always seems sad to me that too often today we find ourselves seeing long lost family only at weddings with all the attendant pomp and circumstance and funerals or memorial services with the protocols and guidelines as well, there isn’t enough time or effort made for family fun connections. Celebrate your family every day!

Celebrate your family with regular reunions!

Family Ties and Technology

Consider the fun in perhaps selecting a day a month and devoting it to catching up with family. The easy part is if you put these on the calendar at the beginning of each year and you have it to look forward to. Delete all the fuss and stress of the holidays and make this a casual get together.

Now this is where technology can really help. If you can’t all get to the same city, agree to a conference call, a family circle call (way less business like!). As much as I advocate face to face, I know sometimes it just isn’t possible and using technology to facilitate staying in touch makes sense. Why not create a family exclusive chat room, call it family talk, and have specific times that everyone jumps on to share their news, latest wins, and support in the case of challenges or losses.

Celebrate your family with creative uses of technology!

Family Sport Saturday

Many families have children involved in Saturday sports. What better way to celebrate your family than to extend that invitation to the next game or the playoffs to your extended family. Regardless of win or lose you can share time catching up in the stands and after words with a post game pizza or other festive fare. Too often it seems also that one parent is designated at the games while the other either goes in to the office or takes their other child to another event. Try to occasionally coordinate efforts so that everyone can be at the one game and cheer on that player and then change it to do the same for the other children later.

Include Aunts and Uncles too, particularly single ones, often we love just that kind of time with our families.

Celebrate your family with a Sport Saturday!

Botanical Garden Family Outing

Most major cities have botanical gardens and many smaller ones do as well or at least a wonderful park, well planted and that encourages picnicking or provides an in depth plant education, and play areas for children. It is funny to me to this day that the education my Mother gave us growing up on plants still sticks. Half the time I don’t remember how I learned about a certain plant but know that it was likely on a nature hike or botanical garden stroll with Mom. Now, I’m not talking about knowing all the Latin names and roots thereof, but just the delicate beauty of Queen Ann’s Lace, the breathtaking aroma of roses and their many varieties, the tender droop of a Lady Slipper, the heady scent of hyacinth, the happy sunshine of daffodils, and the elegance of bearded iris to name but a few.

Even just learning a little about the myriad of evergreens from pine and fir to arbor vitae and the shade loving hostas and ferns can be a lot of fun for kids too often cooped up inside with their attention captured only by a computer screen and keyboard. I actually had what I considered to be a black thumb for many years, only to find that when I took an active interest in gardening and did it for fun that I had really good luck with the range of plants selected and have been able to create a kind of spontaneous jungle of beautiful blooms. It would be easy to include children in the art of planting and then decorating the garden with sculptures, mercury glass and more. Give each a small plot to cultivate and call their own and watch the wonder and joy when they see their plants growing and producing fruits or flowers. If you are in a smaller home without a yard, window box gardens would just as well.

Celebrate your family in the garden.

Get your free edition of Interior Destinations, Melissa Galt’s award winning newsletter devoted to Designing Your Business for Your Best Life Now, available at www.melissagalt.com. For more great articles and tips, check out Melissa’s blog at www.todaybydesign.com

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I want to get you started on your own list of COMMITMENTS for 2009, and thought that sharing just a few of mine might inspire you. I’d love to have you share your ultimate COMMITMENTS with me by email, melissa@melissagalt.com or just reply to this ezine.

TOGETHER WE’LL ALL GO FARTHER!

On HEALTH & WELLBEING: (Energy begets energy, and I want more!)

On ROMANCE & RELATIONSHIPS: (Okay, I know you all like my tales from the dating trenches!)

On HOME & INTERIORS: (I have too much style for one residence!)

On TRAVEL & ADVENTURE: (Life is an adventure to be lived, not a problem to be solved.)

On CAREER & PROFITABLE PASSION: (What I love is to show you how to profit from your passion!)

This is just a sampling of my COMMITMENTS! I’d love to learn about yours. I am currently forming a DESIGNER MASTERMIND to take your business to the next level. You can participate in this with or without one-on-one mentoring. We all need the support, encouragement, advice and experience of those expert colleagues around us. EMAIL ME TODAY for details and to see if this is a fit for you.

Here’s to skyrocketing your success in 2009 and beyond!

Prosper by Design, ALWAYS!

MG