Guest post By Tammy Potkonjak

Any sort of hobby to keep our hands busy, I suppose, is a craft. Whether it is knitting, painting, scrapbooking, crocheting, woodcarving or whatever, it’s a craft.

Having a craft can be a lifeline to some. It is to me. When I am feeling stressed to the max, I like to pull out one of my many crafts and work on it in solitude. Many joke and say that doing crafts is much cheaper than a therapist. For the most part, they are absolutely right. A therapist will have to lay or sit on his/her couch and talk. What are you supposed to solve like that? What do you get from that?

When you are creating something, you have something in the end to show for your time and any money spent on your craft. You have ‘bragging’ rights, so to speak, of what you’ve made and you can show your friends and family. Having an hour or two creating something has such a calming feeling. Anxiety leaves and your heart rate returns to normal. Sometimes we even forget what was stressing us out in the first place.

When our stress levels are elevated, so is our blood pressure. Having a higher blood pressure often, can lead to many health problem. Those who live day to day with high stress levels, have a higher chance to experience a heart attack and/or stroke and age much faster than those who do not.

Using crafts as a form of relieving stress has several perks.

1. It helps us to concentrate on something other than our stress creators.
2. It helps us to create something new in our lives that we didn’t have before.
3. It keeps our minds active and creative throughout our lives warding off diseases like dementia.

Some may eat when stressed and then the stress heightens when they gain unwanted pounds. If crafts are chosen instead of food, you won’t have to deal with the added weight gain and your stress levels will diminish.

Throughout our lives, our crafting choices will often change. We may still love each and every one of them but our twenty-year old craft choices may be quite different from our sixty-year old craft choices. It may go from sewing to scrapbooking or photography. Our crafting ideas will grow with us and always help us to relieve our stress whatever our ages.

Craft Market,…
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So, did you love Amazing Race last night or what?  It wasn’t nearly as exciting as I anticipated but it was still Amazing Race so I’m happy.

The Teams

First, a quick rundown of the teams:

• Dave and Cheri – married clowns
• Bobber and Mark – best friends
• Misa and Miaya – sisters
• Brendon and Rachel – engaged couple
• Joey “Fitness” and Danny – best friends
• Nary and Jamie – federal agents
• Rachel and Dave – married 2 years
• Elliot and Andrew – twin brothers
• Kari and Stacey – best friends
• Vanessa and Ralph – dating 1 year
• Art and JJ – border patrol agents

The Race Begins!

So, as usual, they start in LA and they get their first challenge almost right off the bat.  There is a field with over 100 air balloons with baskets attached to them.  11 of those baskets have clues so the teams will have to race to find their clue before the others do.  Once they find their clue they can head out to the cars and drive to their first destination.  Elliot and Andrew get the first clue.  Misa and Maiya are the last team to find their clue

Once they get in the car they have to drive to the airport and fly to Santa Barbara, Argentina.  The first 6 teams to the airport will get their tickets on a flight that leaves 2 hours earlier than the other teams.  The rest of the teams will leave on a later flight.

Art and JJ take an early lead with Elliot and Andrew right on their tails.

Image via Wikipedia

nce they get to Santa Barbara they need to find their next clue – a Road Block.  Who has a great sense of direction?  That person must find their team mate who has to get in a plane, fly out into the dessert, and jump from the plane!  After they have found their team mate they will get their next clue.

Some interesting points from this part of the challenge:

• JJ is afraid of heights and he’s the one jumping from the plane.
• Brenden is apparently part Mexican and already hates the border patrol guys.
• Best Quote: “My uterus is in my throat!” – sorry didn’t catch who said that but I thought that was pretty funny.

When they get their next clue they are sent to a small town (once again, hard to catch so I’m not sure of the name of it) where they need to take part in an empanada making competition.  They need to watch the ladies make two kinds of empenadas and then copy them, making 60 of each kind.  Each empenada has a certain technique.  Art and JJ missed that fact at first and had to re-make a lot of their, which helped Elliot and Andrew move into the lead.  Rachel and Brenden were right behind them though.

Finally, they are off to meet Jeff.

While the leading teams are off to meet Jeff, the others are still working on the first challenge.  Maiya gets stuck in the sand when she pulls off the road and eventually gets pulled out by some kind passers by.  Danny has a lot of issues with the stick shift (apparently guidos don’t drive stick!).  Stacy gets in the plane ok but gets kind of stuck when her fear of heights overtakes her.  She finally gets up the gumption to do the jump when she realizes that if she doesn’t she will be sending her kids the message that it is ok to run away from your fears.  She admits that she loved it but would never do it again.

Somehow, Rachel and Dave manage to take the lead after making the empendas and they come in first.

Meeting Jeff

This is how the order goes:

• First place – Rachel and Dave – they get the Express Pass that can be used at any point in the race to get out of doing a roadblock or a challenge.
• Second place – Rachel and Brenden
• Third place – Art and JJ
• Fourth place – Nary and Jamie
• Fifth place – Vanessa and Ralph
• Sixth place – Elliot and Andrew
• Seventh place – Kerri and Stacy
• Eighth place – Dave and Cheri
• Ninth place – Bopper and Mark

Now before I tell you about the last two, I have tell you about the BIG screw up.  Fitness and Danny and Maiya and Misa were the last two teams finishing their empenadas.  Misa and Maiya finished first but they had to run out to the car and get their bags.  That slowed them down a bit.  Then then they had to go find Jeff and they were running around like crazy people.  At one point they ran RIGHT BY him and then went to look somewhere else.  Meanwhile, Fitness and Danny finished their empendas, grabbed their bags and made it to the finish just before the girls.

So…

• Tenth place – Fitness and Danny
• Last place – Maiya and Misa – ELIMINATED

I have to say I wasn’t really disappointed.

I  think that the season will definitely get more interesting once people get to spend more time with Rachel and Brenden.  Those two just encourage controversy where ever they go.  With Rachel around you know there is going to be lots of drama!

So, Amazing Race 20 is on the way!  What did you think?  Who are you rooting for?  Who do you hate?

How can you get anywhere if you can’t even imagine getting there?

How can you achieve something if you can’t imagine what that thing is?

How can you reach your goals if you can’t imagine doing it?

Imagination is a wonderful thing and it can take us all sorts of places. People used to tell me that I was a dreamer. And I was. I used to sit in class and day dream about being a famous novelist. I’d think about the fame and the glory and all that stuff.

As I got older though, I realized that people who actually reached that goal were rare. And I stopped daydreaming.

Then I lived, worked, raised kids.

And somewhere along the way I started wanting more than that. I started daydreaming again. And I remember what I wanted. I’d grown a bit though so my daydreams changed a little. I started thinking about ways that I could make money doing what I loved – writing.

And I took a course. I found out I was a pretty decent writer.

And then I got a computer and a whole new world opened to me – blogging!

Now I’m a blogger!

Do you dare to imagine???

Imagine

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So psyched!  Amazing Race 20 is starting in an hour!

Start early by meeting the contestants, starting with my fave team this year (so far)…

Brenden and Rachel:

Bopper and Mark (best friends, there to win the money for Bopper’s daughter):

Dave and Cherie (married couple, both professional clowns):

Elliot and Andrew (twins, professional musician and professional athlete):

Kerri and Stacy (cousins, Jersey girls – double trouble):

Misa and Maiya (sisters, Maiya is a professional golfer):

Nary and Jamie (federal agents):

Rachel and Dave (military wife and combat pilot):

Art and JJ (border patrol agents):

Joey “Fitness” and Danny (trainer and club promoter):

Ok – yes, total reality junkie here.  I’m psyched about the Amazing Race starting on Sunday.  I love all of my reality shows but I think this is the one that I like the most.

I think Amazing Race is the reality show that relies the most on skill and perseverance and has a  minimum of strategic politics.  Yes, there are a few times when you have to decide whether to do a U-turn on someone but mostly it is just a  matter of working your butt off so that you can finish before your team mates.

I love it when reality shows cross and contestants from one show up on another show.  Like when the adorable Jeff and Jordan from Big Brother were on Amazing Race.  They are so cute.  I adore them.  Unfortunately, they didn’t last too terribly long. But it was fun while it lasted.

This time, Big Brother contestants are crossing over again and we’ll find Rachel and Brenden (Brenchel) of Big Brother fame on the Amazing Race 20.  Rachel is an acquired taste.  She has a lot of haters and Brenden does, too.  Especially after he exposed himself to a girl on the Internet and the pictures went viral.  Poor Rachel found out about it on Twitter!  He then did a very public and very weepy apology to Rachel on YouTube and I think it is actually still there somewhere.

But despite the drama of the Brenchel team, I ‘m looking forward to seeing them on Amazing Race 20 because they are extreme competitors.  If they can keep their act together enough to not kill each other I think they could go a long way.  Mind you, the other teams are going to hate them because you know how annoying Rachel can be with the voice and the crying.  We should start a pool and make bets on how long into the season it will be before Rachel has one of her crying jags.

Anyway, I’ll be watching this season eagerly!

The Amazing Race

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Looking for something a bit different to do for your bachelor party? If the thought of a pub crawl around your closest city just doesn’t cut it, how about a booze-up in Munich at the annual Oktoberfest? Or perhaps you want something more action-packed – consider Krakow in Poland for a bachelor do that’ll get you almost as exhausted as the honeymoon!

Click the picture to see the full sized version!

Ever heard of this saying? I’d never heard of it before either but I get it. And it makes sense.

How many times have you put something to rest and then weeks, months, or even years later you pull it out. And the longer you leave that lid off, the more worms crawl out.

I think sometimes we really open a can that shouldn’t be opened.  And not just in our personal lives – in our professional and business lives as well.

For example, how many times have you had a disagreement with your boss and someone brings up something from the past that has already been dealt with?  Or a co-worker brings up something that you or someone else did in the past?  Or you do, maybe because you are angry and can’t think of anything else to say?  And then the can of worms has been opened.

The thing is, once that can of worms is opened again it affects your present mood, it affects how well you are able to work, and it hangs out in the back of your mind long after it has been opened because those worms have a way of burrowing into all of the nooks and crannies in your brain and it can be pretty hard to get them all back in the can!

A Can Of Worms
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Yes, boys and girls, it is that time of the year again.  Tax time.  Ugh.

Personally, I am one of those people that would put off doing my taxes forever if I could get away with it.  But there are two reasons why I can’t.

One is that I am a freelancer so I need to take care of taxes not just once a year but several times a year.  The other reason is that my husband is a bookkeeper and he’d kill me!  LOL.  But the good part of that second reason is that I don’t have to worry about taking care of my taxes because I have a husband that can take care of all of that for me!

Some people think that when you are a freelancer or have any kind of work from home job that you can automatically write off computers and rent/mortgage and Internet and stuff like that, but you have to be careful.  You cannot write off everything.  You have to follow the laws and if you don’t know them you’re likely going to screw up somewhere along the way.

Tax (Photo credit: 401K)

Whether you work at home or you work outside the home, your best bet when it comes to taxes is to have them done by professionals.  Professional bookkeepers or tax people will make sure that not only is it done properly and you are breaking any tax laws, but sometimes they know how to minimize your taxes owing or increase your tax refund.  And that doesn’t mean they are cheating – it just means that they know what you are allowed to get credits for and what you aren’t.

Ok – can you tell that I’m not the biggest tax person in the world?  I’m not.  But that’s why I would never try to do my taxes myself.

Do you do your own taxes or do you take them to a professional?

I watched Real Steel last night and it was so good I thought I’d do a review for it.  Not something I normally do but something I’d like to do more of.

Real Steel is a movie about a down and out  robot boxer, Charlie (played by Hugh Jackman).  Charlie just can’t seem to get a break and every robot he puts in a fight ends up getting the crap kicked out of him.  He owes lots of money and he has no way of getting another robot to put in the ring so he can make some of that money back.

Real Steel (Image via RottenTomatoes.com)

Until the mother of his 11 year old son, Max, dies.  Max’s aunt wants custody of him and her husband has a lot of money.  He works out a deal with him that as long as he takes the kid for the summer, the husband on Max’s aunt will give him $50, 000 at the beginning of the summer and $50,000 at the end and Charlie can sign over custody.  Charlie jumps at the deal, thinking that this is his chance to really do something.

His plan is to dump Max with his girlfriend while he goes out to the boxing matches, but Max has other plans and he ends up going on the road with Charlie.  It is after yet another robot has been totally destroyed in the ring that Max finds a Gen2 robot that normally would be useless and insists on getting a fight with it.  Atom is the robot that no one thought would ever win a match.  But he does.  Again and again and again.

Pretty soon, Atom and Max have won the hearts of the people who love robot boxing and things really get exciting from there.

I can’t tell you anything more about the movie without giving it all away but I can tell you that the boxing matches are exciting.  I can tell you that you will love Atom.  I can tell you that you will be rooting for that piece of scrap metal like you did for Rocky Balboa in the final fight.

The movie is irresistible and I highly recommend it.

Do you expose your children to culture? Museums, plays, music?

This can be a great way to expose them to different things and decide what they do and don’t like.  I think that we often just expose our kids to what we like but it can be a good thing to step outside our comfort zones and try something different.

There are many opportunities for culture in most communities.

Image via Wikipedia

Some things that kids like to explore:

• Plays
• Different kinds of music – opera, symphony, rap (age appropriate of course) jazz, etc.
• Museums
• Science fairs
• Street fairs
• Cultural events where they get to eat different kinds of food

It is amazing how interested kids can be in different things.  You might wake up a passion for languages or an interest in art or music.  It is fun to see their horizons expand!  And you never know – you might wake up a new interest in yourself, too.