Magazines, Dreams, Libraries;-)

I'm going over to a friend's apartment tonight to share a cup of tea and give some emotional support. My friend is going through a tough time, but I'm hoping along with looking at the past (we all need to just cry it out at times), we can spend a bit of time looking forward and starting a dream board.

Along with some homemade goodies, I'm bringing over some poster board and a bunch of magazines that I got for free at our local library. If you don't have a magazine exchange at your library yet, offer to start one. All it takes is three or four bins or boxes and people drop off and pick out whatever they like. It is a huge help environmentally as the same magazine may go through twenty people as it keeps getting used and put back into the bin. Sometimes pages are missing, but that still leaves lots of helpful info, all for free.

At our magazine exchange, I recently picked up Cosmo, Country Gardens, Country Living, House Beautiful, More, and Harper's Bazaar from this month's edition to two years ago. If I subscribed to all these, I would be out at least $150 annually and have more clutter than my house needs.

When you decide to start your dream board (pictures representing all your dreams), you can get a huge stack and go to it. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words, so if a new baby is one of your dearest dreams, get the cutest picture Huggies ever produced, cut it out and paste it up. If you hope to publish your book this year, find an ad for a bestseller, carefully trim around the "Best Seller" headline, and insert your name for the author's.

It's is a wonderful and mostly free way to really focus on what your dreams and goals are. Then you just thumbtack this dream board to the wall and look at it often, imagining all those dreams have come true. I've done this for over ten years with great success and have my current dream board up in my bedroom where I see it every night when I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up.

A side note, some studies have shown that women can get mildly depressed after seeing an issue of Vogue or other fashion magazine. Both the model shots and the ads, the purpose of which is to convince you you're not quite up to par unless you purchase XYZ, can be a bit daunting. And if you find yourself feeling worthless after perusing Cosmo, even knowing all those poor stick models are airbrushed beyond reality, that it is highly unlikely any of us have ever seen in person anyone faintly resembling the Brooke Shields that appeared on the cover of MORE, and that you really are awesome and beautiful as you are, then probably best to avoid those for a bit;-).

Maybe start with the annual Star cover story that pays some big money to stalking paparazzi to get shots of models and stars without their makeup, no wigs or hairpieces, and with all their flaws for the world to see when they just needed to sneak out for a quick run to Walgreens. And be glad no one is likely behind the shrubs at your local drugstore when you need a two a.m. bottle of baby Tylenol, catching on Kodak, you at your most shabby;-).

So if you have time this week or next, white poster board at Walmart is 58 cents, magazines can be had for free, a bit of glue and a whole new, even better than ever, you emerging soon;-). Best wishes. Eileen