Archive for October, 2005

Help!
I’m going out of my mind! I’ve lost control of my child! Some times we have wonderful tender moments when we are very close and she is just adorable and endearing to me. Other times, most of the time actually, she is defiant and ignores me outright. I’m so confused!

Wait, there’s hope
I just remembered, we are approaching her fifth birthday and I need the next book in the series, Your Five Year Old, Sunny and Serene. Hmm, can that be the right title? Where’s the sunny and serene part? I’ll just have to read the book and figure out what she needs to be sunny and serene. I’m still using the approaches I learned from Your Four Year Old, Wild and Wonderful and they obviously don’t work anymore.

Figured out?
Just when you think you’ve got your kid all figured out they go and change on you. And it happens about every six months. It can be quite frustrating!

My experience
About three months before my daughter’s birthday she starts acting radically different and I start reading the next book. If I don’t I get all frustrated and slip back into parenting methods that just don’t work anymore. (I’ve really got to start when she hits the six-month mark so I’m ready when it happens, but, alas, I haven’t managed it yet.)

They change every six months
 It seems that during the phases of growth a child swings back and forth, every six months, between mental and physical development. Mental and physical development take turns being the focus. So, just when you got it all figured out they go and change the rules on you. These books help you understand what your child is going through at any given time and how best to interact with your child  to bring about the development of a healthy, happy person. These books are a must have.

All children are different
Just remember that children aren’t made from a recipe or a cookie cutter, they are all different. These books offer GENERAL guidance. Not everything applies to ever child and not every child is even going to hit all the phases they talk about. I have still found these books to be helpful in general as far as following my daughter’s developmental phases and keeping perspective when she goes through certain phases. It has helped me appreciate her development and not get too frustrated when we hit phases of "disequilibrium".  I urge you to use your internal guidance system and your intuition about certain things in the book. If it doesn’t seem right to you then don’t do it! When I was reading Your Five Year Old, Sunny and Serene I was surprised when they mentioned that one sign of readiness for afternoon kindergarten was the ability to go to the store on their own. Firstly, I would NEVER send a five-year-old to the store alone and secondly I think kindergarten should ONLY be in the morning. Children are freshest and ready to be in the kindergarten environment in the morning. The afternoon should be for naps and downtime at home. And doesn’t it seem that the first years of school set a president for the rest of ones’ school career, 12 or more years? I would want it to be conducive to being fresh and ready to learn. So, use your own judgment and remember the most important things for raising a child: loving them and being at peace within ourselves.

View book details at Amazon.com: Your One-Year-Old: Fun Loving and Fussy

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Two-Year-Old: Terrible or Tender

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Four-Year-Old: Wild and Wonderful

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Five-Year-Old: Sunny and Serene

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Six-Year-Old: Loving and Defiant

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Seven-Year-Old: Life in a Minor Key

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Eight-Year-Old: Lively and Outgoing

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Nine-Year-Old: Thoughtful and Mysterious

View book details at Amazon.com: Your Ten to Fourteen Year Old

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Short summary of event
This is currently the Largest Alternative Health Expo in the northeast and 2005 was its eighth year. Distributors of goods and services in the Healthy Living field came from around the country and around the world to make this event a success. There were free yoga classes, free lectures and paid events. A weekend pass was available and there were opportunities to volunteer.

Long summary of event
The topics ranged from herbs and massage to energy and pranic healing. Paid workshops and lectures were given by big name speakers that you’ve probably always wanted to see in person. This year’s paid events included Iyanla Vanzant, Spiritual Life Coach, Inspirational Speaker, Bestselling Author, and regular on NBC’s Starting Over; John Holland, Renowned Psychic Medium; Michele Livingston, Psychic and Counselor; Carol Bowman, Past Life Regressionist; and a Concert and Kirtan with David Newman and Donna De Lory “An Evening of Inspirational Music”. Workshops and special events by local names included Mark Seaman, "The Healing Power of the Drum"; Gabriele Weber, "Re-igniting Ourselves as Masters of the Heart"; Rusty Stewart, PhD, "Personal Power: Proven Manifestation Techniques"; Robert Butera, PhD, "The Psychology of Yoga Poses"; Barry Kapp, "Coming Alive Again-Medicinal Aromatherapy"; and Meijin Lu, "Feng Shui for Health and Prosperity".

2004 event
I have gone to this event for several years now and I am always amazed at the collection of vendors and people who show up. I never fail to see several people I already know, including Anne Khoury, who has dynamically put this show together for many years now.
Last year I went to the lecture of a woman doing Feng Shui and she must have really known what she was doing because her booth was always hopping and her lecture was packed! That’s one way to know that a Feng Shui practitioner knows what they’re doing. It was Meijin Lu and she had a couple of workshops at the event.

2005 event
There was a raw food cafe and other vendors selling healthy food products. As for me, if someone else is going to make the raw food for me I’m ready to pull out my cash! And boy was it tasty. I didn’t bring lunch for the kids, because I knew we’d be able to find healthy, tasty food for everyone.
I spoke to so many different people (vendors) and learned about so many different products and practices that I didn’t even know existed! It’s well worth going. I hope you’re able to catch next year’s event.

2006 event

Vendors sign up
Vendors can now sign up for next year’s event on the website. Early bird pricing goes until August 1, 2006.

Advertise
The expo offers advertising in the Expo Guide which puts your ad into 35,000 guides. They target their audience through purposeful distribution of the guides. The advertising information can be found half-way down the page that this link takes you to.

This expo has quite a following. One astrology team comes from London every year and every year people bring their friends increasing the number in attendance. This show becomes a bigger success every year.

My recommendations to attendees
First pick out the speakers you want to hear. I highlight them in the guide, then in between those speakers I visit the exhibitors on the expo floor. That way I can see every speaker I want and still be able to check out the exhibitors too.

My suggestion to the Expo organizers

1. Offer a package for the weekend at a rate that is less than what it would cost to go to all the paid events one person could go to. So, let’s say you could go to paid events totaling $100 (obviously we can’t go to all of them since some of them occur simultaneously) plus the $30 for entrance the whole weekend. The price for the package for the weekend could be $100 or some amount that makes it worthwhile. The advantage to the organizers is that it gets more tickets sold for paid events and more people to the expo. The advantage to the purchaser is that they get to go to everything they want to for a discounted price! I had this offer at the Whole Life Expo in Maryland years ago and it was well worth it!
2. You could have a place on your site for visitor feedback after the event. People can enter what day and time they were there, what events they went to, etc.
3. Have a place on the web site for people to enter a speaker they would like to see at next year’s expo and/or people could vote on which speakers they would like to see most.
4. Create an email list so you can notify those who want reminders. It would have a place on your site to collect email addresses.

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Amazing Tip from Dawn
Sometimes I start to enter the contact information from a business card in my contact database and I can’t remember why I have the card. Use the “white space” on the back of your business cards to remind the recipient why they have your business card. Printed on the back of my business cards I have three lines of text: Line 1 – “I met Dawn at”, and you can fill in where you met; Line 2 – “on / / “, for the date; Line 3 – “We talked about” and leave the rest of the space to write down what you talked about. Add in the town and state, if you feel it serves you. You can either have it printed on the back of the cards (for an extra charge) or print it out on address labels and affix them to the back of the business card yourself. An advantage to using your own labels is that you can do most of the work before the event. Just fill in the place and date before you affix the cards and you’re set. (This can also encourage you to give out as many cards as you’ve decided to give out. You want to give out 100 cards so you put your label on the back of 100 of your cards. Now you HAVE to give them out or they can’t be used again!) You’ll be more memorable and more likely to get a return call.

Free Business Cards

My friend Susan told me about this web site where you can get free business cards, Vista Print. I checked it out and it’s legit. Let’s explore their many options…

Pre-designed cards are available for use as your very own business cards. If you don’t mind having VistaPrint’s information on the back of the cards you can get your cards for free, you do have to pay for shipping, though. Choose from their many styles and designs. This was the option my friend Susan had and she was quite pleased. The VistaPrint Branded Backside was tasteful and unobtrusive. Shipping is as low as $4.99. Reprints are the same deal: you just pay for shipping.

Premium Business Cards – Three ways

1. Pre-designed templates are available if you’re in a hurry or don’t want to design your own. Just select one from hundreds of preformatted design templates. All you have to do is enter your text in the fields provided and you’re all set to go.
2. If you have your design all ready to go you can choose the Custom Upload option and send the card design right to them for printing. I chose this option and the cards came out fuzzy. They said it was because it wasn’t saved at the highest setting. It looked fine on my computer, though. If you choose to use this option then I recommend making sure you have the file saved at the very HIGHEST quality you can get it (that they will accept). If you don’t want to chance it then I recommend ordering through FedEx Kinko’s. I usually email the file of my business cards to the nearby FedEx Kinko’s and they have it ready for me in 24 hours. They now have this service where you can send it through the website. You need to have Windows XP or Windows 2000 to use it though and it requires a download to add FedEx Kinko’s printer to your computer.
3. They also have a free design service where they say they’ll create two business card designs for you to choose from. How can they offer free design services? They feel they’ll keep you as a customer if you are really pleased with the business cards you get from them so they feel it is worth it to offer this service for free. You can get the ball rolling by calling 800-721-6215. I used this option as well and didn’t like what they came up with. It wasn’t very creative and the second design was exactly like the first design only the second design was half black. It didn’t cost anything so nothing was lost except a little of my time. So, if you choose this option don’t feel obligated to buy something you don’t like, I didn’t.

Other products
Post cards, brochures, calendar magnets, holiday cards, and folded note cards.

Caution!!!
Upon check out VistaPrint brings up special offers from their business partners. Keep alert to make sure you are only choosing ones you really want.

Is it obvious that this review was written while my daughter was around?
Save 25% Off Custom Printed Products at Vistaprint.com

Free VistaPrint Business Cards

Check out FedEx Kinko’s

Check out L&W Group where I get all my print work done. They always do a great job, are of great quality, competitive prices and a real print shop.

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We’ve finally done it!

Dawn of a New Day is finally on the web! I can’t begin to tell you how excited I am! Well, maybe all the exclamation marks will do it for me, huh?! Thanks for waiting for this site and thanks for all the encouragement you’ve given me to get started. I feel your love and support as we move forward.

My plans for this site are grand indeed and much will be added later
Right now we’ll start small, you and I. I’ll begin by sharing with you reviews of the books, products, practices, events, retreats, etc. that have helped me on my path, whether my spiritual path, healing path, path to be a better parent, partner, part of the change, whatever. For your convenience I’m adding links so you can purchase anything you want to try. I’ve searched for the most reliable, cost effective sources.

I wanted to keep my promise to you
so we are launching on my birthday as planned. The design, colors and layout of the site will change after the design company gets through with it but the content is ready to go now! We could have waited until everything was PERFECT but as I’ve always said, “No one will love the AMAZING website that we never made. But they will like the great one that we did make!” And you can quote me on that! Just change it to suit your needs, “No one will love the AMAZING restaurant I never opened but they will love the great one I did open!” Just change the words in italics to suit your situation!

For the financial support of this website
I have set up affiliate programs. It doesn’t cost you anything and it doesn’t make the stuff more expensive. It provides financial support to bring you this site. (Affiliate programs are offered by web retailers to market their sites and increase sales. It’s win-win-win!)

Email newsletter
Sign-up for my email newsletter and I’ll let you know when there are more reviews, articles, upcoming events and other interesting things for you to see on the site. We don’t share email addresses with anyone, ever, and for the most part I’ll only email you once a week!

Let’s get started!

To set the energy for the web site my first review is of Neale Donald Walsch’s book Tomorrow’s God.

Read my review of Tomorrow’s God!

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About Goji
Organic Goji Berries contain 18 different amino acids and all 8 essential amino acids. They have 21 trace minerals and taste great. They aren’t too sweet and they don’t make my blood sugar go crazy. The kids like them too and will eat them by handfuls. They are a great health snack for kids and adults alike! They travel well since they aren’t sticky and don’t go bad. Just don’t keep them in the car during the summer when the temperature gets above 105 degrees inside the car.

View Goji Berries at Rawfood.com

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