(it's all about the) food – Page 7 – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

Library book sale

July 31, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, family, friends, teens

My daughter and I ventured into new territory together last year when we volunteered together for the Friends of the Wells Public Library annual fundraising book sale.

We had such a good time volunteering last year that we are planning to do it again this year.

We mostly sorted and carried books to their proper spots on the tables that we helped to set up first thing in the morning. There were plenty of people of all ages there helping out along with us, including The Boy Scouts!!!

This years sale is scheduled for Saturday, August 10th from 10am -2pm and (you guessed it!), for some reason they need more volunteers than just me and Izzy. If you are so inclined and are local and want to help out, just email Susan at susan.layne1@gmail.com. Currently volunteers are still needed from 12pm-3pm on both Friday and Saturday.

If you come to help us, bring something to drink, like a big bottle of water (or maybe keep a cooler in your car with some cold drinks and an ice pack if you are planning to stay a while-hint! hint!). Also, a granola bar or two for you teenagers wouldn’t hurt (because God forbid you eat an apple or something).

If you don’t have time to help, consider coming to shop!!! Spending your money at the book sale will also be appreciated! The book sale is Saturday at the Wells Junior High School in the gym.

Remember (like Susan says): Many hands make light work!

See you there!!

Getting married at the wedding

July 21, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Date night, Marriage, Midlife Crisis, relationships

When my husband and I got married, we had very little money. To make our dollars stretch as far as possible, we decided to have our wedding at home. We contacted a Justice of the Peace who was happy to perform the ceremony in our living room. I chose a bouquet of mostly carnations with a few roses instead of mostly roses with a few carnations. We ordered a small cake. We kept the guest list short, inviting only our immediate families.

Also, we decided not to hire a photographer.

We had a lovely wedding and I have always been happy with how we did things…except I wished we had a nice wedding picture.

Our 22nd wedding anniversary was in June. As it approached, my husband mentioned that he had been thinking about how he wished we had a nice wedding picture (you know, Great Minds Syndrome?)! So, we talked about it on and off, here and there, when suddenly we thought:

Why not take a nice wedding picture now?

(At other times in our marriage, we have had blinding flashes of brilliance like this, such as: Instead of waiting until we retire to move to Maine…why not move to Maine now?)

Once the decision was made, everything just fell into place. We chose our wedding clothes. We scouted locations (and may I say that the Episcopal Churches in southern Maine are beautiful??) and found one we both loved: St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport. My brother, who is an excellent photographer, agreed to take the pictures…and 254 photos later, here we are.

Now my only regret is this: why didn’t we think to get a CAKE?

🙂

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50: The year I got old

March 30, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Adult children, family, fitness, health, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50

I was thinking about how I have been in a funk these past several weeks, when I realized, no, it’s actually been several months now that I’ve been feeling this way. I realized what is partly affecting my mood and my decisions is this: I feel old.

My skin looks old.
All of my joints hurt all the time so I don’t want to exercise.
If I do exercise, all my muscles hurt the next day.
My bowel pattern is a constant concern.
No matter what time I go to bed, or how late I sleep in the morning, I’m still tired all the time.
I don’t want to do any work anymore.
I don’t want to eat “healthy” anymore. I want cappuccino whoopie pies and DQ blizzards and apple crisps and Peanut M+M’s every frikkin’ day.
I don’t even want to read anymore because my expensively, progressively, trifocally, Transitions vision sucks.

How’s that for pathetic? After I read my list it dawned on me: I’m depressed. SAD probably, since this is the longest, coldest, snowiest winter in the last, what, million years.

My daughter was reading this over my shoulder without my knowledge as I was writing it. A little while later she said,

She: “Mom, it’s not true.”

Me: “What’s not true?”

She: “That stuff you were writing; it’s not true.”

My daughter: yep, think I’ll keep her.

Mentoring: top ten tips

March 11, 2013March 11, 2013 by Karen, posted in Life in the cube, Midlife Crisis, quest for the best, Work from Home

In my first career, I managed a restaurant. Over the years I trained a lot of waitresses, ice cream scoopers, grill cooks, supervisors, and even managers. We had a three step process that worked really well. First, she watched me do it. Next, I watched her do it. Finally, she did it by herself, but I was nearby; present but not hovering, taking more and more steps back until she was efficiently operating on her own.

That was it.

Now I am in a different profession. I have been a trainer/mentor for many colleagues over the past several years. I recently have been on the trainee side of the equation again (hel-lo) and it’s helped me remember what is helpful and what is not so helpful from this side of the table.

Listen to your trainee
Choose your verbs carefully: “Struggling” is unkind. “Learning” is another word that expresses the same phenomenon but doesn’t leave your trainee feeling crushed.
Rookies make rookie mistakes. Let them.
Tell your newbie that she is doing a great job. Tell her frequently, every day, even it if’ it’s overstating things a bit. It’s very motivating.
Adult learners process information differently (read: more slowly) than they did in their earlier decades of life, and they might be coming face to face with this difficult truth in a new and uncomfortable way. Give them frequent little breaks to absorb what is coming her way.
Allow a little time to debrief at the end of the day.
Chocolate helps. A lot. In large amounts.
Introduce some fun; fun is good.
Remind your newbie that you were sitting in the same seat that she is now when you first started, and look at you now!
Never forget rule #9 yourself.

Birthdays

February 24, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, friends

My lovely daughter is turning 14 in a couple of months. We have given her a birthday party every year of her life, so there is a fair chance that she will be expecting one this year too.

What to do?

There is some pressure not only to do something that is new and different from a)what we’ve done before, but also from b) what everyone else had done before.

No easy feat, that.

We have had all kinds of parties over the years, but the Smitty’s birthday party was my favorite. We go to the theater and everything happens there: the cake, the presents, the meal, the activity (movie, duh), the goodie bags. The employees clean up afterwards. In other words, I got off easy.

I am finding that this idea is a hard sell to my teenage daughter, who has ‘been there, done that”.

We are leaning toward a …wait for it… spa party. I have a couple of ideas and potential tricks up my sleeve, so if the planets align it might all come together into a nice day for my daughter.

Choose happiness

January 27, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, Midlife Crisis, Turning 50

I read about Liz Gilbert’s Happiness Jar idea last year when I was turning 50. I thought it was a great idea. I thought I would do it.

I did not do it.

Today, I was thinking about how I used to get on the scale every day, so I could nip any pesky post-Weight Watcher’s weight gain in the bud. I was thinking about it because my friend revealed her current weight to me yesterday and I realized that I had no idea what I weighed any more since I had no idea when I had braved the scale last.

I braved it this morning.

I immediately wished I hadn’t.

I started thinking that I should go back to eating in a healthier way, so I had some Strawberry Rhubarb Pie (okay, okay, full disclosure: à la mode) for breakfast. Then I recalled the Cappuccino Whoopie Pie that I had for a snack last night, and the piece of chocolate fudge from Divine Chocolate I treated myself to earlier in the day.

I love chocolate. 🙂

Then, when I was putting my finished pie dish into the sink, I spied the jar that I used to keep chocolate in (before I ate it all) which was now empty, languishing on the kitchen counter, waiting to be useful again.

The twain met.

My former (pre-weight gain) chocolate jar could be my new happiness jar!

Then I remembered that I still have a little piece of that fudge left.

The first entry into my 2013 Happiness Jar is this: Chocolate fudge made me happy today.

Resolutions

January 25, 2013 by Karen, posted in books, Midlife Crisis, no fear, quest for the best, Turning 50

I remember getting to the end of 2011 and thinking “What an awful year this has been,” and hoping 2012 would be better. Fast forward one year: I remember getting to the end of 2012 and thinking, “What an awful year this has been,” and hoping 2013 would be better.

I’m sensing a pattern here, people.

So, when I saw this online course on The Daily Om’s website, The Best Year of Your Life by Debbie Ford, of course my interest was immediately piqued. Then I thought, “What if this year, instead of just hoping that it would be a better year (reference the definition of insanity), I took some active, conscious steps to try to make it happen?

What this course has going for it:

It’s online. No hauling my sorry ass out of the house in -1 degree weather to get to it.
It’s relatively cheap: $21 for the year.
No stupid, exorbitant, deal-breaking shipping and handling charges are tacked on at the end.
It’s structured. I like structure.

I am not sure if I’m going to sign up for this course or not, but I’m leaning toward it at the moment. Debbie Ford has written a book with a similar title The Best Year of Your Life: Dream It, Plan It, Live It (2005), but so often I buy books then put them in the to read pile, where the languish indefinitely. It might be 2014 before I find it again, and then 2013 might end the way 2011 and 2012 did.

What good would that be?

Gratitude continued

January 24, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Gratitude Journal 2013, Marriage

January 24, 2013
1		For my husband, who took my daughter to school when it was 1 degree below zero so that both I and she could stay warm.
2.		My Grampa’s Garden microwavable body blanket. Enough said.
3.		My washer and dryer. I remember hauling laundry to the laundromat.
4.		My crock pot. Best winter cooking tool.
5.		Hot chocolate with whipped cream (reference 1 degree below zero above).

Mantra for 2013

January 1, 2013January 1, 2013 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, Midlife Crisis, restaurants, teens

At a company that I worked for a while back, the atmosphere was dark and heavy. People often described the job as “Well, it is what it is.” Body language and facial expressions left no doubt that what it was, well, was yucky.

After years of hearing this “It is what it is” crap, it became kind of ingrained in my subconscious. This phrase popped up in all kinds of situations that were unpleasant. “It is what it is” makes you feel powerless, even desperate.

I was thinking about it this morning as I drove to work. It’s New Year’s Day. I had gotten up extra early (hello, can you say 4:15AM?) so I could make a stop on my way. My quest for an early morning breakfast treat (a small baked good; not too much to ask for, right?) proved fruitless, because even though the McD’s and Dunkin Donuts in Sanford and Wells are open at 5AM, the McD”s and Dunkin Donuts in Kennebunk, alas, are not.

There I sat at 4:55AM, waiting for the drive thru to open up. At 5:03AM it occurred to me to give a quick check of the hours sign at the front door and I realized my error. I got on the highway, thinking that I would still have just enough time to go to the DD’s close to my job (the bad one that I have been avoiding since the cashier dumped an early morning coffee on a colleague).

I made it in time, got to the drive thru, and (hurray!) ordered my coffee and muffin. The clerk interrupted my happy dance to say, “Well, the muffins aren’t ready yet.”
What?

What?

My first thought was (you guessed it), “It is what it is.” Then, it occurred to me that this is indicative a Bad Attitude. I am not going to start my new year off with that old shoe on my foot. I’m going to put my best foot forward in 2013 and so I’ve adopted a new mantra:

“It is what you make it.”

When I got home from work, my daughter (who knew nothing about my morning) had a surprise waiting for me on the kitchen island:

This reminded me of another (worthy) mantra:
“Life is good.”

🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 :

Moscato who?

December 30, 2012December 30, 2012 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, Date night, italian, Marriage, quest for the best

bella bolle

My husband and I have different tastes in a lot of things, and wine is no exception. Years ago, someone gave us a bottle of Moscato D’Asti by Nivole, which (surprise!) we both loved. Every so often we bought a bottle, for a birthday or anniversary or some such occasion.

Then suddenly we couldn’t find it anywhere anymore. Everywhere we went, we looked for and even asked for it, and everyone was familiar with it, but no one actually stocked it anymore. Which totally sucked.

So, we finally gave up. One day when we were food shopping, I saw a pretty bottle of wine that happened to be a moscato d’asti. It was a different brand, but it met our wine-buying criteria:

1. Pretty bottle

2. Cheap

I’m talking $7. We decided to live dangerously and buy it. It took a couple of weeks to finally open it. If either Bill or I had to be up by 4:30am the next day, neither of us was very interested in sharing a bottle of wine the night before.

The planets finally aligned on Christmas day. We both had the following day off from work so we cracked open the wine. There was only one negative: what a bitch that cork was to remove! Other than that, however, we both loved the wine. I am saving the bottle so we don’t forget what kind it was.

We definitely plan to get this one again. You know, unless this brand goes MIA next.