Don't let Thanksgiving stress you out. Take couple minutes and watch this video clip where I give you ideas to reduce stress.

So many of us rely and depend on the lessons Marla provides us with. Marla and I sat and talked at one point and this was one of the most important things to come out of that chat.

Mrs. Claus Shares Stocking Stuffer Ideas for the 5 Senses

The House Fairy and I recently took a trip up to the North Pole to visit Santa Claus and see what’s new in the stocking stuffer department. Mrs. Claus is in charge of that and she was very happy to show us her latest ideas for stuffers.

She starts each season with an empty shoebox for each child and by Christmas Eve the shoeboxes are filled with all the goodies she has collected for each one and the contents fit perfectly into the stockings Santa puts them in on Christmas Eve. She explained this year all good boys and girls will receive gifts in their stockings which please each of the five senses. She told us her husband fills stockings for all ages, so her ideas range from those for small children to those for teenagers and even moms and dads who have been good.

The Stockings Were Hung by the Chimney with Care

Gifts for the ears:

CDs

Earrings

Muffs

Whistles

Mp3 players

Concert tickets

Radios

Ipods

Earplugs

Gifts for the nose:

Perfume

Room deodorizer

Candles

Incense

Nose plugs

Breath Spray

Certs

Tic Tacs

How did I end up with the yellowest custard you'll ever see? You’ll see when you watch this video from my kitchen where I have such fun playing with food! When this yummy, custard dessert comes out of the oven you’ll impress and delight your hungry family or guests. AND of course this dessert is almost carb-free.

In my book, The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here! I talk about the journey I took toward better health and vitality by dumping excess carbs from my pantry and life. Join me now as I whip up a new take on this classic custard adventure!

Extra Rich Custard

8 egg yolks

One fourth cup sugar

One fourth tsp. salt

1 tsp. vanilla

2 cups scalded whole milk

Scaled milk on medium heat allow to cool until lukewarm.

Slightly beat egg yolks and slowly add sugar, vanilla, salt and cooled milk.

Cover bottom of a roasting pan with an inch of water. Pour custard mixture into buttered custard cups and place in roasting pan. Place pan in 325 degree oven for 40 – 45 minutes or until knife when placed in custard comes out clean.

In this video clip, my sister Peggy and I share some great Halloween tips and important advice.

You don’t have to succumb to the Halloween candy frenzy. This short video  just might persuade you to give non candy treats to those little witches and goblins that come trick-or-treating. And don’t miss the end of the video because I give you a great way to use most of the candy your kids haul in on Halloween.

In this video clip, my sister Peggy and I demonstrate the crazy ways we came up with last-minute creations for our kids to wear on Halloween and how fun they were to throw together. As usual, our television talk show hosts were somewhat speechless (that happened a lot!) when we’d shove coat hangers into tights and smear our faces with Karo syrup and coffee grounds.

The important lesson here is when we become more organized we set the stage to create. We become creatives! Clutter gets in the way of our creativity. Decluttering and ending your "stuff management" days will pave the way to fun, creativity, new adventures and excitement on Halloween as well as all the days of the year!

1. See the sights

October in our state of Washington and its neighbor Oregon are stunningly beautiful now. Take a drive through the countryside and it’s not too late to get one more picnic in.

What are some famous sights in your area? Go check them out. If you have already been to them, try to discover something new about them. If there aren’t any famous sights in your area, then go discover ones that aren’t famous.

2. Stock up on Scary Accessories 

Be sure to replenish your stock of of bloody ears, warts, sores, scars, witchy wigs, noses and glasses, eye patches and such, while the stores offer them. There's nothing worse than needing a bloody eyeball in the middle of March! 

3. Take a discovery walk

Things are always changing, but October seems to inspire Mother Nature to order up some drastic alterations. I like to think of her shopping some mystical catalogue, oblivious to what current color schemes are being pushed in fashion news and saying, “Oh, orange, red, yellow, lime green and brown, yes that’s what my trees are gonna wear!”

Would you like to have more harmony and peace in your home?

Can you call to mind a family in which each member is happy and loving? Maybe it's your own. Happiness is nurtured at home. A happy home is filled with peace and harmony. Would you like to have more harmony and peace in your home? Take what I learned from a different kind of family...my chorus. 

I love all the women in it: all 110 of them! When I joined ten years ago, it was as if I had an instant set of new friends that shared one of my passions: singing harmony. I’d like to pass on to you some lessons I’ve learned from being in this family of singers that might be applied to having a happy home.

1.   LOVE

Love is the most important element in any happy group. Every one of the singers in my chorus loves music and loves what happens when we sing together with love as our reason to be doing it. Our supreme goal is to have that love reflected out to our audience, lifting each person and changing the atmosphere in the room.

Of course we love our families and when all of our “To Do” lists are crossed off and our fondest figuring outs are quieted; our love is the most important part of our experience as women.

Child Locked in Antique Safe

A few years ago, I was at a grand opening of an internationally known bronze sculptor’s establishment. It was held in an historic building that has been restored to its original integrity. After the festivities, a child accidentally closed the door to an antique, walk-in safe, seeming to seal her younger cousin inside! The mother of the child in the safe went nuclear!

She had been one of the main organizers of the event and all the fussing and preparation for the big ceremony paled to the agony of this mother as she stood on the outside of the safe in hysterical horror. As it turned out, the safe had not locked. All it took was a screwdriver and a few minutes to nudge the heavy door open.

What I observed was a mother who was instantly reminded of what was really important in her life. Love of her child. Organizing the event, which I’m sure had consumed much of her time, was insignificant compared to her child’s life in that moment.

2. JOY

Do you like getting a fortune cookie after a nice meal in a Chinese Restaurant? Does it tickle you how we all love to open them? Close your eyes and imagine holding both ends of one and snapping its little, carbohydrate back into two pieces, exposing the secret note written especially for you. Do you delight in reading those messages?

I don’t think I’ve ever eaten with a group of friends in a Chinese restaurant when we didn’t read and share our fortunes with each other. And why is it, there’s always someone who brings up the rather off-color comment of reading their note and adding the words: between the sheets, to illicit a semi-porny edge to the innocent words? (It’s a tradition I hope our younger generation hasn’t been stuck with.)

October 1, 2014, by Pam Young

“Is this gonna be some lady’s magazine deal?”  he asked with a sense of apprehension.

“No, I’ve been reading Deborah Norvel’s book on the power of thankfulness.”

“So Deborah told you to do this?”

“Nope, I thought this game up all by myself.”

“Okay, what do I do?” 

“So, I’ll tell you something I’m grateful for about you and then it’ll be your turn and you have to tell me something you’re grateful for about me and the guy who can’t think of something loses and the other guy wins.”

“What’ll he win?”

“He’ll get taken out to dinner when we get to the beach.”

We probably traded 15 thankful comments with each other and what was very interesting to me was how much I loved hearing his comments for me and I couldn’t wait for the next one. 

I was telling Marla, the Flylady, about the game and she suggested we play it with our inner child. So I had a session with Nelly (she’s my inner child, in case you don’t know). Here’s what happened.

Rebel Without a Plan

So, you have stuff to do and you don’t want to do it, what’s that all about? I think I might have the answer.

This week, I talked to a very funny friend and she was so inspirational, I just had to share her wisdom and humor with you. Kristina is my Zumba teacher and has agreed to do a series of fun and lively exercise videos for me and I’ll let you know when they’ll be up on my website. She’s just adorable and so inspiring when it comes to the E word…. Exercise.

Kristina is an amazing ball of fire and her personal story is compelling. (I keep telling her she has to write a book.) She weighed almost 200 pounds on her 40^th birthday and when she saw the photos from her party, those pictures were the turning point for her. Although she was grinning and looking happy in those photos, she was miserable and she decided to do something about it.

I’ve known her for four years and my guess is she weighs about 120 pounds. I can’t imagine her being fat, but she has the photos to prove it. She loves to show them to her classes inspiring women to be healthy.

When we talked the other day, she told me about her problem with procrastination and how she’s solving it. Although she hasn’t read my books she knows about my inner child Nelly. She hasn’t gotten around to naming her inner child but she’s sure she has one and hers is rebellious and loves to play! She told me she came up with a plan which is really working and involves her inner child.

Kristina’s Four-Step Plan for Procrastinators

I just read an article that dealt with the psychology of overeating. It told about a couple of studies I’d like to share with you. One was conducted by researchers with extraordinary credentials from prestigious educational institutions, but the article concluded with this quote: “Ultimately, all this research shows we need to understand the brain chemistry behind overeating a lot better. Until we do, there won’t be any really significant advances in medications to help people lose weight,” Dr. David Herber, a professor of medicine and director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of California, Los Angeles.

1. You have the power to change your brain chemistry

You have the power to change your brain chemistry with your thinking and feeling. In one of the studies young women were asked to sit in a brain scanner while drinking a chocolate milk shake. Half the women were told that the yummy treat was a regular shake; the other half were told it was a low-fat version. In truth they all got the same shake.

As the researchers watched their monitors, the reward centers of the shake drinkers’ brains lit up when the women consumed the shakes. But the women who thought they were getting a low-fat shake had much less activation. In other words, “knowing” that the shake was low fat took a lot of the fun out of the experience. Low-fat labels may backfire by making food seem less tasty, according to scientists at the Oregon Research Institute. Nelly (my inner child) can attest to that! She hates those words “low fat” on a label!

Because of these fancy scanners we now know that we have a “reward center” in our brains! I know we can activate that center by having positive and loving talks with ourselves. Here’s an example before I tell you about the other study.

After Party Meltdown

I remember being in the back seat of our Ford family car and coming home from a glorious day at the circus. My sister and I were decked out in new matching dresses and new shoes we’d got just for the special outing and we started fighting over whose circus program was whose (even though they were identical).

The battle triggered a rash of admonishments from both of our parents in the front seat. Dad was first, “Girls, knock off the bickering or I’m gonna stop the car and take the programs away!” Mom chimed in, “I can’t believe you girls are fighting after all we’ve done for you today. Here we take you to the circus, you got brand new matching dresses and new shoes and we let you have hot dogs and Cokes and souvenirs and you’ve been fighting ever since we got in the car!” I recall feeling ashamed.

APM tends to go into remission as children mature, but the potential for its reoccurrence remains even into adulthood and it sneaks out in adults in subtle ways but it’s no more attractive than the episodes children display.

APM can start with just an, “is-that-all-there-is” feeling. It can emerge as a vacation winds down, as we drive in the driveway with a cranky knowing of what was put off in order to have the fun. It can appear in the form of the “full” feeling after a feast, or the frustration of receiving credit card statements in January reflecting the joy of holiday purchases. Acquisition is fun! Maintenance sucks and so do the bills that follow it.

Saving money was never this easy! Carving up a whole chicken instead of buying those pricey parts is what you'll learn how to do in this new video. No need to struggle with removing that skin either, because it’s full of nutrients you need and fat you’ve been afraid of.

As I wrote in my book The Mouth Trap: the butt stops here (low carb edition), “Science is proving that the medical community was wrong all these years in sending us all on a lower-your-fat-intake-program, and now were suffering the consequences with an epidemic of people with Alzheimer’s, dementia, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease. Our brains need fat.”

In this short video you’ll meet my two knife friends, Boning and French, as I divide and conquer my way around this beautiful bird. I show you how I might get sued (if I were a real doctor and the chicken a person) by making multiple cuts searching for the elusive joint in the chicken’s leg. It’s not Dexter, but close and you won't want to miss this one......