*new to me*

myla and i have been home twelve hours since our cross-country flight from Los Angeles. I just spent the week in southern california while my twelve year old attended tennis camp. We split our time between Laguna Beach where we stayed in a studio guest apartment with family, Newport, and Irvine. when we arrived last week, i instantly learned that husbands cousin had written a book! this was new to me. somehow, this big news had missed being passed on and i was thrilled to get my hands on a copy. four copies actually.

this cousin is a rockstar. she’s one of those relatives that my girls admire, and when she spends time with us she gives them little female-pep-talks about staying away from boys, doing their best in school, being true to who they are-type of thing. she’s so entertaining that these pep talks are quoted long after they are received. i’m pretty sure she doesn’t realize the significance and impact her words have.

so finding out that she has an entire book of her words! {gasp!} we are delighted.

one please. the pictures above are of mia signing our books this past week. one please is real and entertaining and is shaking up all these inner parts of me… her passions regarding anthropology, on how often she bypasses death, on love, on life…she is a modern woman and an amazing writer, and trust me…it is a great read.

here’s a peek at the first chapter:

Most girls my age are married or about to get married. They have Z Gallerie furniture, Ralph Lauren bath towels, send Christmas cards and have wine parties. I’m not like most girls my age, or any girl really. I spend my money on plane tickets and travel the world instead of all that American dream lifestyle stuff. All six of my sisters have the husbands, treadmills, Saturday soccer meets and maxed out credit cards. I don’t. They all think that I will snap out of it, settle down, find a man on match.com and start having babies. Unlikely. I’m not gay (my mom lets me know it’s OK if I am, every year) I just haven’t met the right guy to buy designer towels with yet.

you can find one please at the laguna book store in southern california, you can look for her at local book signings!

you can purchase it online here, or purchase a kindle copy here. also – you can find our beautiful cousin mia on Facebook here.

check these out! Here she is at Bourj el Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp:

and here, at Baalbek, Lebanon!

today is monday… i am happy to be home. it’s safe to say we are fairly settled and unpacked in our new home, so i am going to start tackling all the new decorating projects i have bouncing around in my head. in-between family bike rides.

before i sign-off for today, i want you to check this out. a reader of seejaneblog, ayesha, emailed me this past weekend -

Me and my husband have a passion for art and how it can change people lives. I volunteered for a year in Boston at a shelter and saw art transform so many. We have decided to put this into action and take a rundown Airstream we have completely re-do it and hit the road allowing people to MAKE. The project is affectionately called Make Mobile: Vehicle of Change. We are finalists in a contest to make this dream a reality and now all we need are votes to make it happen.

how cool is that?!? check this out, and vote here for Make Mobile. you can vote once every day till July 25th. give ayesha some love my friends!

see you back here tomorrow, xoxo.

Posted in extended family, new to me, read a book | 5 Comments »

a scarf with a story…

this little girl of mine is obsessed with fashion. so audrey is an obvious icon – when we spotted this book, it was a must-have, must-read. and ever since we read it the first time, sela instantly became more interested in her little red scarf. she is a girl after my own heart.

do you notice when your kids are inspired by trends? i have two kiddos that adore fashion, and two that could care less about what they are wearing. it’s a good balance.

{images by me}

Posted in read a book, sela | 3 Comments »

DAD RULES by treion muller

it’s fun to see the people you meet earlier in life evolve into what they become later. what they do. where they live. do you agree?

in college i was on a ballroom dance team & one my friends on the team was a guy named treion muller who boasted the most charming accent from south africa. i recently reconnected with him via Facebook.  i found out he is married with five children and has a new book coming out today! the book is titled, Dad Rules.

Dad Rules is the everyman’s instructional manual that fathers have been waiting for, in the language they can understand. Dad Rules includes 81 short but entertaining rules to help fathers understand what they should know, say, and do in those difficult moments when they cannot find an app to solve a problem.

it can be found here from barnes & noble. and here via amazon.

i received an advanced copy of the book & after reading through the 81 rules, my favorite was #74 -

even though you may have already graduated from college, remain a student. Always be engaged in learning something new, whether formal or informal. You can join a book club, teach yourself how to assemble a car engine, or learn how to speak a different language.

“Tell me, I’ ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand”
—Chinese proverb

i love that. great advice for all parents.

{post sponsored by treion muller.}

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parent-child book club

in january i received an email from kJ’s teacher announcing a parent-child book club. kj is 8 years old and in the third grade. we were instantly interested. until this point of parenting, i had never heard of such an idea. as a parent, i read to my kids when they were babies & toddlers. i love surrounding them with good books filled with beautiful artwork. as they get older, my husband and i put in hours of effort to teach them to read. plus, they receive instruction at school to learn to read. and i’m realizing that somewhere around the time my kids become good readers, i stop reading with them.

typically, because i have four kids, it’s because i have another child on the ladder to assist. i have one child that really struggled with learning to read, and two that just seemed to pick it up naturally. each child is so different. this also caused me to focus more time with our child that struggled, while being content to let my other two read on their own. we are still working on learning-to-read-skill with our youngest. we’re not done yet!

so, when this email arrived – i loved that it motivated me to spend one-on-one time again with my buddy, who is a great reader, but reading is not his favorite activity. this book club encouraged me to schedule time with him at bedtime, and made him really excited about reading.

we each have our own copy of the book we are reading and we take turns reading every other page out loud.

the first book for the club was love that dog.

Love That Dog is the story of Jack, his dog, his teacher, and words. The story develops through Jack’s responses to his teacher, Miss Stretchberry, over the course of a school year. At first, his responses are short and cranky: “I don’t want to” and “I tried. Can’t do it. Brain’s empty.” But as his teacher feeds him inspiration, Jack finds that he has a lot to say and he finds ways to say it.

Jack is both stubborn and warm-hearted, and he can be both serious and funny. Although he hates poetry at first, he begins to find poems that inspire him. All year long, he is trying to find a way to talk about his beloved dog, Sky, and the poems his teacher offers him eventually give him a way to do that.

Jack becomes especially fond of a poem by Walter Dean Myers titled “Love That Boy,” and it is this poem that finally gives Jack a way to tell the whole story of his dog, Sky. In gratitude, Jack invites Walter Dean Myers to visit his class.

we read our first book so fast {we finished weeks before the book club met for the first time} that we decided to keep reading other books together plus the book club books! kj also enjoys doing his homework at the library now, he gets a studious-buzz from the experience.

we are already fans of our local library, but now we are going all the time. i let kj pick out what books he wants us to read. he is a fan of shel silverstein… so our second book was Runny Babbit – hilarious and difficult to read out loud! lots of belly laughs at our mistakes.

we are currently reading, Everything on it.   it’s always good to slow down for moments like this -

have you ever participated in a parent-child book club?  if yes, are there books you would recommend for this age that interest the parent & child?  any advice?

{all photos by me.}

Posted in jane, KJ, read a book | 11 Comments »

happy friday!

friends, this past year i have been reading, the happiness project. have you read it? heard of it? it’s written by Gretchen Rubin and it’s based on,

“Why I {she} spent a year trying to sing in the morning, clean my {her} closets, fight right, read aristotle, and generally have more fun.”

there are twelve chapters in the book & this year, i’d like to highlight each of those chapters here on see jane blog.

on the first friday of each month, “happy friday,” i will introduce & discuss each chapter, starting with January and Chapter 1. I’ll give a little insight into what i was impressed with & what i plan on working on that month. I’d love you to join me, what do you think?

This is the type of book, that I read with pen in hand. by the end, i’ve marked up the whole thing, made notes, asterisks, exclamation points. in “getting started,” the first thing i underlined was this,

“…It’s like dieting. We all know the secret of dieting – eat better, eat less, exercise more – it’s the application that’s challenging. I had to create a scheme to put happiness ideas into practice in my life.”

love that. {remember, i am a goal-happy-kind-of-gal!}

Chapter 1 Boost Energy – Vitality.

In this chapter, Gretchen focuses on: go to sleep earlier; exercise better; toss, restore, organize; tackle a nagging task; act more energetic. She also states that, research shows, being happy energizes you, and at the same time, having more energy makes it easier for you to engage in activities – like socializing and exercise – that boost happiness. common sense, right?

I am following one of Gretchen’s goals for this month. go to sleep earlier. I love being a night owl because it allows me to accomplish so many things after my kids have all gone to bed, but while raising kids i don’t have the luxury of sleeping-in either, so i live on very little sleep at times. i also function alright on little sleep, but i realize for good health, i should be sleeping more. her book states, sleep is the new sex! ha! so funny.

another point Gretchen points out is, “start walking more.” i have always had this strange judgement towards walking. i expect myself to be running, so if i go walking i am disappointing myself. i will turn down a walk, just because i feel it’s not adequate exercise. and that’s lame. i want to focus on my regular workouts + walking more. especially since we are currently living in such a beautiful green, lush area of the country.

in the section under toss, restore, organize, gretchen says, people are finding their possessions truly unmanageable. we cleared out most of our clutter with our big move this year. but i realize, that since moving, i am still keeping a few items that we are not using & i need to toss or organize better. this is on my January list too!

it is by studying the little things, wrote samuel johnson, that we attain the great art of having as little misery, and as much happiness as possible.

the first chapter is packed with more goodness than i mentioned here. however, those are the two items i am going to focus on this month. sleep + organizing.

what will you do?

happy friday!
xoxo.

{image source. this is not a sponsored post.}

Posted in goals, happy friday, organizing tips..., read a book | 10 Comments »

STARGIRL

this is a super quick read, that i read in december while i was traveling.

We did not know what to make of her.
In our minds we tried to pin her to cork board like a butterfly,
but the pin merely went trough and away she flew.

this is a novel about the importance of being yourself, accepting you for who you are and what you are. believing in yourself and your abilities. this message is good for young teens, and for adults too. as an adult, are you being true to who you are?

of course stargirl is a fictional-magical-mythical person. she’s peter pan. she’s forrest gump. she’s linus. she’s a hundred other characters we know who in due time meet the real cruel world and are injured by it.

i stopped the book i was reading to read this one. the book cover and auther intrigued me. plus, both my older daughters had already read it. at the very least, it makes a great gift for any girl in your life who is in junior high.

friends, what have you read lately? any recommendations?

{image by me – scanned in via my book cover.}

Posted in gift ideas, read a book | 8 Comments »

LINCOLN PEIRCE…

is the author of the big nate comic strip & book series.

KJ, my not-such-a-fan-of-reading-son, loves the big nate series.

so. when i found out that our local library has an UH-MAZ-ING line-up of visiting authors…
AND, that lincoln peirce was coming…
we had to be there!

lincoln spoke to the kids/parents for an hour – he gave drawing demonstrations and chatted about how & why he got started in doing comics.

the best part: i was just as entertained as kj was – lincoln was so funny & inspiring.
the even better part: right in the middle of lincoln’s presentation, kj leaned over & told me,

“mom, this is my favorite day since we’ve moved to boston…”

golden.

lincoln signed ALL of kj’s ‘big nate’ books, what a stud.

Posted in boston, KJ, read a book, sela | No Comments »