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

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

Copyright Melissa Galt 2008/2009

How often do we find that we are losing track of friends without enough time to spend together? It seems easy to say “maybe next month,” “when I get that promotion,” “when the kids are out of school,” or any other myriad of excuses. The bottom line is if we don’t make the time to celebrate our friends we won’t have the time ever.

It is all about committing to connect, and creating opportunities to make that happen. Be sure to involve everyone in the fun by asking them to bring a dish or other element. No one likes to show up at a party empty handed and it is easier if you specify.

Here are just a few more ways you can celebrate your friends!

Halloween Fright Night

Time to spook it up and get back to the reason Halloween was created. Let’s return to scary for just a bit. Come as your favorite ghost, ghoul, monster, witch, or werewolf. This isn’t about any stuffed shirt party but a chance to make grunge look good and frightening.

You can incorporate trivia here with questions about famous vampires, Dracula, monsters and more (sure Buffy counts!) You may even want to create a mini haunted house complete with ghostly blow ups and spider webs and haunting music. Have everyone bring their most terrifiying treat to share.

Celebrate your friends with a Halloween Fright Night!

Broadway Nights

Girl friends and I got together and bought season tickets to a local community theatre. We go on a Saturday night about once a month and all convene for dinner before hand at our favorite neighborhood café. It is a lot of fun and this particular theatre has never let us down with a real variety of plays and great talent playing. I’d like to do the same with a handful of other venues as it means we have guaranteed seats and a night on the calendar to look forward to.

I have noticed that there are regular groups of couples that get together for the same theatre shows and even parents with their children and make it a family cultural outing. It is still a celebration of friends!

Outlet Therapy

I know that most men don’t enjoy shopping (okay they hate it!) except when it means being left for days at a home improvement center or auto dealership. So to make sure everyone has fun, the guys need to have guy stores to hang out at like Frontgate, Bass Pro Fishing, Brookstone, Best Buy, Circuit City, Bose or any sporting goods store. Usually there is at least one of these in most of the popular outlet shopping centers. Then the ladies can have their occasionally necessary shopping therapy at a discount.

Men are generally quite happy with one or two resources and spending time in research while women like the more stores the better, flitting from one to the next always in search of the best bargain (very rarely is it the ideal fit or most flattering look and many times it will sit in the back of the closet with the tag on, but it will be bragged about as the ultimate steal to fellow bargain hunters!) If children are in tow it can be helpful to ensure a stop mid-shopping at a food and entertainment emporium like Chucky Cheese.

Savvy retailers often provide play areas to allow Mom better shopping focus. The key is to know that something as proverbially ordinary as shopping can be a chance to celebrate friends and another pair of eyes is always appreciated to share the virtues of a dress that we might not otherwise need.

Celebrate your friends with outlet therapy!

Goodwill Games (Bunko/Bingo/Bridge/Poker)

I’ve got a handful of friends that have regularly scheduled game nights well apart from a supper club or theatre night. The games are most often a group of women or men, rarely mixed and include bunko, bridge, gin rummy, poker, and even bingo. Crowds range from four to ten plus and easy eats are provided in the form of sandwiches and appetizers.

Jigsaw puzzles could be added to this mix and certainly scrabble, monopoly, pig mania (really a blast!), and trivial pursuit. This is a really nice change from the monotony and soloness of computer games. It is a good social opportunity and allows for some of the competitiveness to come into play, just no sore losers please!

Celebrate your friends with a goodwill games night!

Art for the Ears

Recently I attended a concert at Atlanta’s Botanical Gardens with friends. It was a beautiful night and though they were very restrictive in not allowing food or drink brought in, they did provide for purchase delicious gourmet fare, beer, and wine by the glass or bottle. It made it very easy and the venue was smaller and more intimate than a large concert hall or performing arts center. I realized that it wasn’t truly important to me who was playing but that it was the comradery we enjoyed and the minimal planning since we could buy our feast on site only.

Now whether you are game for an outdoor venue and take your chances with weather or prefer the safety of a music center or playhouse is up to you. Music truly is art for your ears and it is another fun way to celebrate friends by creating a regular concert schedule to enjoy together. It can include food, beverage and picnic style or just grab a bite before or after at a local tavern. The point is to share the experience.

Celebrating time with our friends is one of the best parts of this life experience. It is up to each of us to create that time and make the commitment to honor those relationships.

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

Copyright Melissa Galt 2008/2009

How often do we find that we are losing track of friends without enough time to spend together? It seems easy to say “maybe next month,” “when I get that promotion,” “when the kids are out of school,” or any other myriad of excuses. The bottom line is if we don’t make the time to celebrate our friends we won’t have the time ever. It is all about committing to connect, and creating opportunities to make that happen. Be sure to involve everyone in the fun by asking them to bring a dish or other element. No one likes to show up at a party empty handed and it is easier if you specify what to bring.

Here are just a few ways you can celebrate your friends!

Savory Supper Club

This works well with couples or singles but is usually a kid free event. This can be a great way to get to know neighbors or other residents in a subdivision. Often it’s location is rotated monthly between different homes in a neighborhood. A supper club can be very simply created with each couple or person bringing a dish each time, categories are designated to avoid duplicate dishes or too many salads or appetizers. It is a chance for comradery and fellowship particularly amongst those that live nearby.

The food preparation duties and expense are shared by all, as are the benefits of original recipes and home cooking. Clean up is usually light work with many hands, and everyone relaxes and has a good time.

Super Sporting Event

Make it a real mixed event with singles, couples, and kids if desired. It can be live or on TV. If live, plan a festive tailgate is to bring everyone together before the game. If televised set up a buffet for noshing during the game and it can be pot luck, with everyone bringing a dish. Stick with paper plates and plastic cups and flatware and clean up is a breeze.

Just Girl’s/Guy’s Night Out

This is Mars and Venus’s chance to have some time to themselves with friends. Often a once a month regular event, sometimes once a week, this is a chance to connect with close gal pals or guy buddies and gossip, dish dirt, high five on successes, and commiserate on losses. It can be as easy as establishing a place to meet and regular date and time and everyone just shows up. Or it can rotate at private homes but needs to be understood that it is for just the girls or just the guys. We all share a little differently in mixed company! What is said with this crowd stays with this crowd.

Burning O’ Your Troubles Bash

Usually I throw this one just after New Year’s it is a great way to get the New Year off to a truly beneficial beginning. Again who you invite is up to you, generally this is reserved for adults only. You can make it potluck or provide the food yourself. Each person is to bring a listing of their last year’s trials, tribulations, losses, and challenges. You have a fireplace or preferably an outdoor fire (bonfire or chimenaya works really well) and each gets a few minutes alone to literally burn their troubles. Then each party goer gets a New Year’s cracker and that includes a paper crown which they then fill (some write these on the crown itself) proverbially with their hopes for the New Year and burn that as a toast to universal energy. I usually end the festivities with sparklers for everyone to have one last sizzle!

Oscar Party

This falls in early March so it is a great chance to catch up and celebrate with friends between New Year’s and Memorial Day. It is a dressy function with costumes optional. You can download the ballot forms online and I encourage ordering party favors and prizes with a Hollywood theme, again online sources abound. Be sure to start it a little early so everyone can get comfortable mingle a bit and get a bite. Decorate with Oscar statuettes and lots of gold, silver and black. Go glam!

You’ll usually have a handful of die hard movie fans that will be so intent on watching the awards that they won’t really socialize and will shush folks that talk during the show! Having a friend play emcee if you don’t want to do it can keep the party going with trivia questions and prizes. Everyone wants to win!

Be sure to check out Part II of this article for more great ways to celebrate your friends, including a Halloween Fright Night!

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

“Dan in Real Life” -
Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook, John Mahoney

Finally, a feel good movie! While Carell will never have the depth and comic genius of Tom Hanks or Jim Carrey, his is sort of a reality version. His humor is less expected and less quirky. This was wonderful and Binoche is always a delight. Widowed Dad to three girls is home for a reunion when he meets gorgeous mystery woman in the bookstore; he returns to the house to be introduced to the same woman (who completely captivated his heart) as his brother’s new and best girlfriend. Torture for the week as he sees the object of his affection romping with his brother, but can’t lay a glove. Even his daughter see the sparks fly. This is a fun take on guy meets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl back. The best line in the whole show is spoken by the teenage daughter’s boyfriend “Love isn’t a feeling, it’s an ability.” Brilliant, now if we could just live our relationships like that, it would be significant.