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Hi all,
This here is the very first ever in all time Contest on my blog! Welcome! The fabulous prize is a Hand-Knitted Breastfeeding Advocacy Cloth from The Red Rose Boutique. Isn’t that the coolest? If you win the cloth you’ll get it sent directly to your house if you’re in the US or Canada, if you’re in the rest of the world I’ll have to ask you for shipping. Please forgive.
Here’s the contest!
Imagine you want to embroider a quote or motto or pithy saying or song lyric or love poem or activist propaganda or pep talk and hang it on your kitchen wall in a fabulous frame so that it will inspire you first thing every morning and make you happy or thoughtful or energized or brave all the day long. Something you want to remember. What would you embroider?
Leave your answer in the comments below, by Sunday this week (that’s June 27th if you have a calendar!)
I’ll pick my favorite (totally subjective, in every way) and announce it next Monday. If you would like to leave your answer without being considered for the contest then just mention that in your comment, and I won’t consider you for the prize. (I know, I know, competition isn’t all it’s cracked up to be ;o)
Ask any questions below too! and please spread this around!
xox,
Heather
Mine would probably be one of my favorite quotations, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I shall move the world.”–Archimedes
“May Earth provide us with all the things of our requirements just like a mother, who breast feeds her child.”
-Atharva Veda
By the way, I just stumbled across this blog today, and read it all the way back to the beginning! you rock!
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1745201108&v=wall&story_fbid=129546420410073#!/pages/Davison-MI/The-Red-Rose-Boutique/116177905077720
Owner of The Red Rose Boutique here. I am also having a give away on my facebook page. Make sure you “like” my page and enter that contest.
It’s not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can’t tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself. ~Joyce Maynard
Love your husband. Love your kids. Don’t be afraid to be too happy.
“bloom where you are planted.” is my favorite saying, though i do say “taters? what’s taters precious?” more than most normal people do
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Not sure who said it, but it resonates every time I read it.
I have always wanted something on my wall that says “Please excuse the noise and the mess, the children are making memories.” It’s not incredibly inspiring, but it makes me smile.
Actually i used to have this on my kitchen wall, although i can’t take the credit for making it – ‘Peace Love And Domestic Squalor’. I find it very helpful on a daily basis! And another good one is ‘The optimism of the action is better than the pessimism of the thought’ – I think that has Native American origins, although Greenpeace highjacked it here in the UK a good few years ago.
Cleaning and scrubbing will wait ’till tomorrow, but children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow. So quiet down cobwebs! Dust go to sleep! I’m rocking my baby. Babies don’t keep. – Ruth Hamilton
“To those born into the gaze of loving eyes,
life is beautiful.
To those welcomed by tender voices,
life is peaceful.
To those embraced with gentle hands,
life is secure.
To those cradled at the breast,
life is secure.
To those born into a world of compassion,
life is good beyond all measure.”
–Author unknown.
oops…I forgot to proof read! There are two different ways I have seen this, but prefer the “to those cradled at the breast” line better than “to those embraced with gentle hands,” it is usually one or the other not both!
“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Suess
Pretty much my favorite quote ever, and absolutely words to live by!
“Let them bask in your Radiance & Sunshine”
love you heather
Julie
So hard to choose!
I have signs up on paper all over my house. So it would fit right in! 
The 2 that immediately come to mind are:
All shall be well. All shall be well. All manner of thing shall be well. Julian of Norwich
Or
Love is all over the place — Ani Difranco
“Teach your children well. Feed them on your dreams.” -paraphrased from CSNY
“Either you think or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.”-F. Scott Fitzgerald
This quote always makes me think about birth but it applies to a lot of things!
I’ve always liked “No one can make you feel inferior without your prior consent” E. Roosevelt
Then, in my 20s it was “All Junkies are liars” taped to my phone after a couple of junkie sob stories from friends.
Now it’s “Don’t Stoop” to their level or engage when they are trying to start a fight. Nothing pisses people off more than spoiling for a fight and not being able to provoke you into joining in their childishness.
I try to remind myself, “Don’t wait for a new day. It’s a new 5 minutes right now.”
I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
There are sooooo many…but here’s what I actually have up in my kitchen right now (just printed out in large font), though I’m working on a more permanent stitched version right now
“Just breathe.” I’m always saying that to myself. I find that when something goes wrong I take a big breath in and forget to let it back out until it explodes out (often in words no child should be repeating). Something about my brain being oxygenated properly makes everything else seem way more manageable.
I am currently working on these next two as cross/back stitch designs. I’ve changed the first one around a bit, but it’s still basically a quote by Haim Ginott. I changed classroom to home and teacher to parent, though I am a teacher to my children, we aren’t in a classroom…unless we go with a very broad “world” definition of classroom.
“I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element in the [home]. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. As a [parent] I possess tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated, and a child humanized or de-humanized.” Haim Ginott
And who doesn’t love the Ruth Hamilton poem?? I’m always repeating the last lines “quiet down cobwebs, dust go to sleep, I’m rocking my baby, and babies don’t keep.”
Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(lullaby, rock-a-bye, Lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(pat-a-cake, darling, and peek-peek-a-boo).
The shopping is not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there is a hullabaloo.
But I’m playing “Kanga” and this is my “Roo.”
Look! Aren’t his eyes the most wonderful hue?
(lullaby, rock-a-bye, lullaby loo).
The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.
Ruth Hulburt Hamilton, 1958
“…yet.”
I know I won’t win,
but I LOVE Romans 8:21 and remember it often in regards of opposition to my way of parenting: “If God is for us, who can be against us?”. I see that the Bible that is totally in line with natural simple living and parenting.
How ’bout:
“IF you can grow a human for 42 weeks,
birth her naturally,
and be her sole source of food for 6 months,
then you can do anything!”
That’s what I tell myself when I’m feeling frustrated or in need of empowerment.
” … small group of committed people …” quote is Margaret Mead, I believe: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_mead.html
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”
William Makepeace Thackeray
I first heard it on ‘The Crow’, but it’s been incredibly helpful all of my mothering life.
Do, or do not. There is no try.
~Yoda
“These *are* the good ol’ days.” –to remind myself to enjoy each day and to stay centered and present. It’s wonderful to dream and make plans, but if you are always saying to yourself that you’ll be happy when… Well, who knows when you’ll finally get to be happy.
Oh, and saw this one on signals.com, “Be Good or Be Gone.” http://www.signals.com/signals/Item_Be-Good-Or-Be-Gone-Sign_VH2052_ps_srm.html As a mother of five–Love it!
“Remember, no matter where you go, there you are.” Buckaroo Banzai
Be kinder than necessary… everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle.
LOVING this blog Heather – just found it today, and I’ve read back to March! Hilarious.
“We didn’t inherit the Earth from our parents, we are borrowing it from our kids”
My favorite quote:
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.” G.K. Chesterton
My next favorite:
Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.”
— Shel Silverstein
“Use the talents you possess for the woods would be very silent if no birds sang but the best” Henry Van Dyke
I love this quote, it helped me get over my crippling stage fright and pass my piano exams!
Wow, some of my very favorite quotes ever are here!! I read that Ginnot passage in a graduate course and it really struck me. And “teach your children well..” And Amie, The Crow was the first place I’d heard that quote too.. before having kids. Its the only thing I remember about the movie and now that I’m a mother I *really* understand it. It haunts me now.
If I have time, I’m digging out my Dewey quotes. But for now.. Hm. How about quoting shipping boxes? Fragile.. handle with care.. this side up.. open here..
My current fave is one I’m unfortunately going to have to paraphrase, I can’t recall the exact source or exact wording…
“Live your life as though you have travelled back in time and this is your second chance. Every moment then becomes a gift, every friend is treasured.”
My favorite is on a bumper sticker on my mom’s mini-van, “Children are a gift from God,” and I add to that, “Our children are borrowed from heaven, they can be taken back at any time, we need to take care of them as best as we can” That is something I heard a while back, and it is so true.
Absolute self giving is the only path from the human to the divine. Saint John of the Cross
“Most unhappiness in life is caused by giving up what you want most, for what you want at the moment”
Don’t remember where I heard it, and couldn’t find the author when I googled, but great words to live by.
My favorite will always be “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” –Ghandi. I try to live this every day. I don’t always succeed, but I get better and better all the time.
“Where’s My Midwife?”
I’m entering the rallying cry for our grassroots organization. This cry, this questions, was born from a community of women who became activists over night. The cry was born from a crisis that we experienced last summer when two midwives in our community were suddenly fired from the private practice where they’d been helping many many families give birth the way they wanted to. From one day to the next 80 women and their families were left without their care providers. At a time when women are especially vulnerable, they felt abandoned and scared. See the movie about what we experienced at: http://www.wheresmymidwife.org
We picketed the hospital every day, wrote letters to everyone we could think of and eventually changed an antiquated hospital policy. We’ve been energizing women not only in North Carolina, but all over the United States to come together. It’s time for a revolution. It’s time to improve maternity care in this country. We believe that midwives offer the best care in terms of quality and value.
Thanks for everything you do, Heather!!!
So I found a bunch of quotes from a project I did for that graduate class I mentioned earlier. Here they are. I could have quoted more Dewey.. I love Dewey.
“Better to ask forgiveness than permission.”
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a
single moment before starting
to improve the world.”
- Anne Frank
“Beyond mountains, there are mountains.”
- Haitian proverb
“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to
entertain a thought without accepting it.”
- Aristotle
“How shall the young become acquainted with
the past in such a way that the acquaintance is a
potent agent in appreciation
of living in the present?”
- John Dewey
“The belief that all genuine education comes
about through experience does not mean that
all experiences are genuinely
or equally educative.”
- John Dewey
“I must take issue with the term ‘a mere child,’ for
it has been my invariable experience that the
company of a mere child is infinitely preferable
to that of a mere adult.”
- Fran Lebowitz
“To discover what is really simple and to act
upon the discovery is an
exceedingly difficult task.”
- John Dewey
If you want to see what children can do, you
must stop giving them things.
- Norman Douglas
“The test of the morality of a society is what it
does for its children.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“The wisest mind has something yet to learn.”
- George Santayana
“Things are more like they are now than they
have ever been.”
- Gerald R. Ford
“Anarchism is founded on the observation that
since few men are wise enough to rule
themselves, even fewer are wise
enough to rule others.”
- Edward Abbey“
“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go
after it with a club.”
- Jack London
Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.
Act. Don’t React.
BTW.. Who won?