Soo PRetty Miss Denise!! Love those Sweet Roses and your Wonderful coloring!! The touch of sparkle is just Perfect too! And the turquoise really make everything Pop!! Love this Lady! 8-)
Such a lovely card. I love the teal and red together, and the sparkle on the flower is such a pretty extra touch.
Denise, this is AMAZING!!! What a restrained hand!! It can be hard to mix such bold colors, but your card is marvelous!
Fabulous use of the colors, Denise! This is such a bold and beautiful statement of love! The sparkle on the image is awesome!
Awwww....this is such a a lovely and beautiful card, Denise! Love the detail you added on the flowers and the use of those challenge colors!
So pretty! I love tags and this one is wonderful! Those dies are on my list too, but just haven't gotten them. :) Green... my favorite!
This green tag is perfect Denise. I love the lacey circle die and I think it is so pretty with the butterfly to the side! Beauty!
Since green is my favorite colour, loving this beauty, especially paired with the kraft, lacy circle and butterfly - all faves of mine too :)
What a beautiful tag, Denise! At first I thought your circle was sponged or water colored until I read the post! This is awesome!
Oh this tag is just divine! I love the detail in the scalloped circle focal point and think the kraft and green color combo are lovely together. Really blends well and I love that you made this for a girl when it would work great for masculine birthdays too!
With Christmas coming I need to make room for the onslaught of sparkly new toys. It also gives me the opportunity to have a good old clear out. Kind of like a Spring Clean but in mid-Winter.
Whilst both the kids are now over the age of three years old, for some reason, I still seem to have a lot of baby toys floating around which I really need to donate to a more appreciative home. I have tried, on several occasions, to give the toys away but it always seems to backfire. I gather all the toys up, pop them in a plastic bag which inevitably gets left in the hallway for weeks on end, whilst I decide what to do with them. Then the kids, with their ‘toy-radar’ turned on, gravitate towards the toys I am trying to get rid of and end up playing with them. And back into their toy box they go.
There is a part of me that feels a bit sad when I purge the house of toys. It makes me think of Woody and Mr Potato Head in Toy Story, and how anxious they were when new toys arrived.
However, I realise that I need to just man up and DO IT. And at the same time, organise all the toys so I (and the kids) know where everything is. So here are my Top 10 Ways to Organise Kids Toys.
Once they are in piles (dolls, Lego, train tracks, etc.) it’s much easier to work out what you have accumulated over time. For example, you might find that you have three Barbie dolls. Do you REALLy need three? Then it’s simply a case of choosing whether to keep it, give it to charity or if it’s beyond salvaging, then bin it.
They can the answer the question of whether they play with the toy in question, without being sidetracked by sentimental value or being concerned about how much something cost.
Nurseries and schools do this beautifully so take inspiration from them. If you have young children, use visual aids such as photographs or simple drawings rather than written labels.
Don’t be tempted to run to Ikea and buy new storage until you have worked out what is left after your clear out. You might find that you have plenty of storage once you have sent a load to charity. It also might give you the opportunity to repurpose that wicker hamper that’s been sitting in the loft for years.
Clear Plastic boxes are particularly useful as not only can you see what is in the box, but they are also stackable so they are a really efficient use of space. I am a big fan of Wham Boxes, which are good quality, stackable plastic boxes with different coloured lids.
They look smart, stack well plus the colourful lids make it easier to organise toys. They also come in a variety of shapes and sizes.
If however, you only have a few toys, which are kept in a shared space, then check out some more aesthetically pleasing ways of storing toys in my Top 10 Toy Storage baskets.
This works well in our house as it coincides with Christmas and summer birthdays, so it means we can have a clear out before the next influx of toys. If you can, try and do it during school holidays as it means the kids can get involved.
In order to keep the mess at bay then you’ll need to spend some time changing the kids’ mindset. Encourage them to tidy up after themselves or set the rule that they can only get a new toy out once they have put the last one away. It can’t be a bad thing to encourage the kids to take responsibility for their things.
For my own sanity, I have a catch-all basket. A beautiful pink bolga basket that I picked up on holiday in France that lives in my front room. This is useful when you are madly rushing around and don’t have time (or the inclination) to put the toys back in the right place. This is perfect for those days when the in-laws turn up unannounced and the house is an absolute tip. I just pick up all the toys and chuck them in my catch-all basket, which I then sort through later on. Sometimes.
So there we have it. And, on that note, I am off to do everything I listed above. I can’t say I am particularly looking forward to it but I am going to put on some Christmas tunes, courtesy of Michal Bublé, turn up the volume and just blitz it! Such a rock n’roll lifetsyle that I lead!
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One of the most important benefits that Saffron tea bag has is that it helps you to fight against Insomnia which is the biggest problem for youth nowadays. And to fight against another big problem which is depression. Depression is a problem which can be seen in 99% of people and all those 99% people can get rid of their problem by consuming Saffron tea before going to bed every day. Though lots of people are not aware that Saffron flavored tea is also there, but for those who know about this fact, they are getting lots of health benefits by consuming the tea.
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Born in Erfurt in Germany in 1864, Weber grew up to see his country convulsed by the dramatic changes ushered in by the Industrial Revolution. Cities were exploding in size, vast companies were forming, a new managerial elite was replacing the old aristocracy. Weber’s father, successful in business and politics, prospered greatly from this new era, leaving his son with a fortune that would allow him the independence to be a writer. His mother was a sober, withdrawn figure, who mostly stayed at home practising an extremely pious and sexually-strict version of Christianity.
Weber became a successful academic at a young age. But when he was in his mid-thirties, during a family get-together, he fell into a grave quarrel with his father over the latter’s treatment of his mother. Weber senior died the next day and the son believed he might inadvertently have killed him. This catapulted him into severe depression and anxiety. Weber had to give up his university job and lay more or less mute on a sofa for two years.
His wife, Marianne, turned out to be unhelpfully similar to his mother. The marriage was unconsummated and filled with neurotic complaints on both sides. Weber’s path to intellectual recovery began after he had a liberating affair with a sexually-progressive 19-year-old student, Else von Richthofen (whose sister, Frida, comparable in temperament, was married to the novelist D. H. Lawrence). Max Weber had the sort of life that his contemporary, Freud, was born to address.
Weber was largely unknown during his lifetime. But his fame has grown exponentially ever since – because he originated some key ideas with which to understand the workings and future of Capitalism.
Capitalism might feel normal or inevitable to us but, of course, it isn’t. It came into existence only relatively recently, in historical terms, and has successfully taken root in just a limited number of countries.
The standard view is that Capitalism is the result of developments in technology (particularly, the invention of steam power).
But Weber proposed that what made Capitalism possible was a set of ideas, not scientific discoveries – and in particular religious ideas.
Religion made Capitalism happen. Not just any religion; a very particular, non-Catholic kind of the sort that flourished in Northern Europe where Capitalism was – and continues to be – particularly vigorous. Capitalism was created by Protestantism, specifically Calvinism, as developed by John Calvin in Geneva and by his followers in England, the Puritans.
In his great work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published in 1905, Weber laid out some of the reasons why he believed Protestant Christianity had been so crucial to Capitalism:
Catholics have it – relatively – easy in Weber’s analysis. Believers who have strayed are able to confess their transgressions at regular intervals and can be ‘cleansed’ by priests and thereby recover a sense of their good name in the eyes of God. But no such purifications are available to Protestants, for only God is thought able to forgive and He won’t make his intentions known until the Day of Judgement. Until then, Weber alleged, Protestants are left with heightened feelings of anxiety as well as life-long guilty desires to prove their virtue before a severe, all-seeing but silent God.
In Weber’s eyes, Protestant guilt feelings were diverted into an obsession with hard work. The sins of Adam could only be expunged through constant toil. To rest, relax and go hunting – as the old Catholic aristocracy liked to do – was to ask for divine trouble. Not coincidentally, there were far fewer festivals and days of rest in Protestantism. God didn’t like time off. Money earnt wasn’t to be blown in feasts celebrating the here-and-now. It was always and only to be reinvested for tomorrow.
Catholics had limited their conception of holy work to the activities of the clergy. But now Protestants declared that work of any kind could and should be done in the name of God, even jobs like being a baker or an accountant. This lent new moral energy and earnestness to all branches of professional life. Work was no longer just about earning a living, it was to be part of a religious vocation connected with proving one’s virtue to God. The clerk was meant to approach his work at the office with all the seriousness and piety of a monk.
In Catholic countries, the family was (and often still is) everything. One would regularly give jobs to relatives, help out indolent uncles and lightly swindle the central authorities for family gain without too much compunction. But Protestants took a less benevolent view of family. The family could be a haven for selfish and egoistic motives, running counter to Jesus’s injunctions that a Christian should be concerned with the family of all believers, not his or her specific family. For early Protestants, one was meant to direct one’s selfless energies to the community as a whole, the public realm where everyone deserved fairness and dignity. To stick up for one’s family over and against the claims of the wider group was nothing less than a sin; it was time to do away with narrow vested interests and clan loyalties.
Protestantism turned its back on miracles. God wasn’t thought to be lever-pulling behind the scenes day-to-day. One couldn’t get prayers directly answered. Heavenly power didn’t intervene in a fantastical, childish way. Weber called this ‘the disenchantment of the world.’ Instead, in the Protestant philosophy, the emphasis fell on human action: the day to day world was ruled by facts, by reason and by the discoverable laws of science. And therefore, prosperity was not mysteriously ordained by God and couldn’t be won through imploring prayers. It could only be the result of thinking methodically, acting honestly and working industriously and sensibly over many years.
Taken together, these five factors created, in Weber’s eyes, the crucial catalytic ingredients for Capitalism to take hold. In this analysis, Weber was in direct disagreement with Karl Marx, for Marx had proposed a materialist view of Capitalism (where technology was said to have created a new capitalist social system), whereas Weber now advanced an idealist one (suggesting that it was in fact a set of ideas that had created Capitalism and given the impetus for its newfound technological and financial arrangements).
The argument between Weber and Marx pivoted around the role of religion. Marx had argued that religion was ‘the opium of the masses’, a drug that induced passive acceptance of the horrors of Capitalism. But Weber turned this dictum on its head. It was religion that was in fact the cause and foremost supporter of Capitalism. People didn’t tolerate Capitalism because of religion, they only became capitalists as a result of their religion.
There are about 35 countries where Capitalism is now well developed. It probably works best in Germany, where Weber first observed it. But in the remaining 161 nations, it arguably isn’t working well at all.
This is a source of much puzzlement and distress. Billions of dollars in aid are transferred every year from the rich to the poor world, and are spent on malaria pills, solar panels and grants for irrigation projects and women’s education.
But a Weberian analysis tells us that these materialist interventions will never work, because the problem isn’t really a material one to begin with. One has to start at the level of ideas.
What the World Bank and the IMF should be giving sub-Saharan Africa is not money and technology but ideas.
In the Weberian analysis, certain countries fail to succeed at Capitalism because they don’t feel anxious and guilty enough, they trust too much in miracles, they like to celebrate now rather than reinvest for tomorrow and their members feel it’s acceptable to steal from the community in order to enrich their families, favouring the clan over the nation.
Weber didn’t believe that the only way to be a successful Capitalist country was actually to convert to Protestantism. He argued that Protestantism had merely brought to their first fruition ideas which could now subsist outside of religious ideology.
Today Weber would counsel those who wish to spread Capitalism to concentrate on our equivalent of religion: culture. It is a nation’s attitudes, hopes and sense of what life is about that produces an economy that either flourishes or flounders. The path to reforming an economy shouldn’t hence wind through material aid, it should go through cultural assistance. The decisive question for an economy is not what the rate of inflation is, but what is on TV tonight.
3. Why is Capitalism not going so well in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (the poorest country on earth)?
Because, Weber would tell us, this unfortunate nation has the wrong mentality, one far removed from that of Rhineland Germany. They believe in clans, they have magical thinking, they don’t believe that God would Himself command them to be an honest mechanic or hairdresser…
Weber’s point is that if Capitalism is going to take root in developing nations – and bring the advantages of higher productivity and greater wealth – then we will need to look to changing mentalities, instilling something akin to an updated version of the attitudes of Calvinism.
Weber’s views on global development emerged in two books he wrote on two religions that he felt were extremely unhelpful to Capitalism, The Religion of India and The Religion of China. For Weber, the caste system of the Hindus assigns everyone to a status they can’t escape and therefore makes any sustained commercial effort futile. The belief in samsara – the transmigration of souls – also inspires the view that nothing substantial can change until the next life. At the same time, a Hindu ideology of the clan takes pressure off individual responsibility and encourages nepotism rather than meritocracy. These ideas have economic consequences; they are why nowadays, Weberians would argue, there are many excellent public hospitals in Geneva and Erfurt and not too many in Chennai or Varanasi.
Weber noted similarly unhelpful factors in China. There Confucianism gives too much weight to tradition. No one feels able to rethink how things are done. The devotion to bureaucracy encourages a static society – whereas entrepreneurship arises from a fruitful mixture of anxiety and hope.
Weber was writing in an age of revolution. Lots of people around him were trying to change things: communists, socialists, anarchists, nationalists, separatists.
He too wanted things to change, but he believed that one first had to work out how political power operated in the world.
He believed that humanity had gone through three distinct types of power across its history. The oldest societies operated according to what he called ‘traditional authority.’ This was where kings relied on appeals to folklore and divinity to justify their hold on power. Such societies were deeply inert and only rarely allowed for initiative
These societies had subsequently been replaced by an age of ‘charismatic authority’, where a heroic individual, most famously a Napoleon, could rise to power on the back of a magnetic personality – and change everything around him through passion and will.
But, Weber insisted, we were now long past this period of history, having entered a third age of ‘bureaucratic authority.’ This is where power is held by vast labyrinthine bureaucracies whose workings are entirely baffling to the average citizen. It’s not obvious what all the functionaries actually do in meetings and at their desks. Bureaucracy achieves its power via knowledge: only the bureaucrats know how stuff works, and it will take an outsider years to work it out (for example, how housing policy or the educational curriculum are actually structured). Most simply give up – usefully for the powers that be…
The dominance of bureaucracy has major implications for anyone trying to change a nation. There is often an understandable, but misguided, desire to think one just has to change the leader, who is imagined as a kind of super-parent personally determining how everything goes. But in fact, removing the leader almost never has the degree of impact that is hoped for. (The replacement of Bush by Obama did not lead, for example, to all the changes some people expected; Weber would not have been surprised).
Weber knew that today one can’t bring about significant social change just by charisma. It can feel as if political change should be driven by fiery rhetoric, marches, fury and grand, exciting gestures, like publishing a bestselling revolutionary book. But Weber is pessimistic about all such hopes, for they are misaligned with the reality of how the modern world works. The only way to overcome the power lodged within bureaucracy is through knowledge and systematic organisation.
Weber encourages us to see that change is not so much impossible as complicated and slow. If we are to get things to go better, much of it will have to come through outwardly very undramatic processes. It will be through the careful marshalling of statistical evidence, patient briefings to ministers, testimonies to committee hearings and minute studies of budgets.
Weber, though personally a cautious man, is an unexpected source of ideas on how to change things. He tells us how power works now and reminds us that ideas may be far more important than tools or money in changing nations. It is a hugely significant thesis. We learn that so much which we associate with vast impersonal external forces (and which hence feels entirely beyond our control) is, in fact, dependent upon something utterly intimate and perhaps more malleable: the thoughts in our own heads.
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I'm not one to make yearly goals, but I thought I would give it a shot this year now that I have this blog to keep track of my progress and you guys to hold me accountable. So we'll see how this goes this year.
Get a job that uses my degree: Right now I'm not doing anything that uses the degree I spent A LOT of money on and FIVE years to get. That needs to change. For those of you that don't know, my degree is Landscape, Nursery and Greenhouse Management and I would really like a job at a florist, but if that doesn't work out soon, then a job at a nursery. I just want to work with pretty plants and flowers again. Its been to long.
Clean out the greenhouse and use it again: Many years ago, my dad built a greenhouse in our backyard. I can't ever remember it being used as a greenhouse, but more for storage. See the problem? So in the next couple of months I would like to clean it out and start growing some seeds! It is so satisfying watching flowers and vegetables grow that you started from seed.
Work on flexibility: Once upon a time I was able to do the splits. Not so much any more. I've wanted to be able to do them again for quite some time but have never put in the time to work on it again. Not being flexible is so restricting, I feel… old. So hopefully this is the year. But if I were to pick a goal that I wouldn't follow through with, this one would be it. Just saying.
Take a picture a day: Well so far I have achieved this one! Follow me on Instagram and you can see my daily pictures. They may come a couple days late but they were taken on the day I say they were. I just think it would be so neat to have an album with a picture for everyday of the year. With this goal I plan to have monthly updates on it.
Learn more about photography: I have always loved taking pictures and just really started to get into it this year. This upcoming year I would like to get more comfortable with the manual setting on the camera and use the auto less. Learning what all those numbers mean would be a good place to start.
Identify trees and flowers around me: I took a plant identification class in college and completely loved it. But you know, you study just for the test and forget things after the final. So now I'm looking at all of these trees around me and I know I know what they are but the name isn't coming to me. Except, of course, for the cotton candy tree, won't ever forget that one. Its time to break out my old textbooks and identification cards and get back out there identifying these trees and flowers.
These are all rockstar goals! I am right there with you on writing more handwritten notes and being more flexible. A photo a day is ambitious, but would be so rewarding in the long run. How neat that you have a greenhouse degree! My dream alternative life job is being a florist :] Best of luck with the search
I love these goals! Especially pursuing a job that uses your degree. Nothing worse than feeling you have to settle for something that's not your passion. Been there! Best of luck with all your goals!
I love that you got a degree in Landscape! Best of luck finding a job where you can put all of that time and knowledge to good use. I'm right there with you in that goal. Except I will take whatever full time job I can get at this point so I can move out of my parents' house :)
Great goals! Concerning the job I have the same goal for 2014! These days I ask myself often why I studied and that I should somehow make something in my life that has to do with what I studied AND what I love!
Except for the job, my goals are rather "low"...like relaxing more and putting less pressure on myself :)