Do Life Right

My family and I live on an acreage south of Tucson, Arizona. We are fortunate enough to have land with many mature saguaros (as evidenced by many of my photographs on this site). We’ve owned our land for four years and we’ve lived on it for slightly over two. In those years, […]

My family and I (two daughters, ages 11.5 and 7.5) have been able to play with a variety of virtual pets over the past year and we’ve compared them side-by-side. The ones we’ve tried are: Webkinz, Shining Stars, Ty Beanie Babies 2.0, My ePets, and Ty Girlz. If any other company would […]

See “How to: Make Nifty Book Boxes for Our Triwizard Tournament Task 3” for the first part of this topic.
We made two puzzles for Task 3 of our Tri-Wizard Tournament: a crossword puzzle and a cypher. The cypher gave directions to the Champions of what they were supposed to do in Task 3. […]

For the past 2.5 years I, with the help of a really great team, have been working on our software company, ZenActOS, Inc. We’ve been seriously pursuing our first round of funding (as the experts correctly told us to say) for over a year. While we are still raising our first round of […]

Before the How to, it is better to first ask: Can you teach a person to get interested in your ideas?
Simple Answer: You cannot teach a person how to become excited. It just isn’t possible. Inspiration and excitement are internal. How about motivation; can you teach that? Yes, you can motivate people, […]

I’ve been asked how it is that I’ve come to be so confident. Interesting question!
This post could have been titled “How to Love Yourself”, as confidence and love go hand-in-hand.
A while ago my youngest daughter asked me, “Who do you love most in this world?”
I replied, “It’s a three way tie between you, your […]

I’ve been enjoying making pillows since I was twelve and received my first sewing machine. I’ve recently shared my love of pillow making with my Girl Scout troops. We made simple 4 square checkered pillows. My 7.5 year old daughter loved it so much, she made one completely by herself the next […]

Here are the photographs first, then the directions. These photographs are a year old and don’t show the full extent of our dyeing, but they’ll give you an idea of what the possibilities are.

I first got the great idea of dyeing fabric with Sharpie markers from one of my favorite kid’s science catalogs, Steve […]

My daughter needed dragon eggs. Since dragons are rare and difficult to find, combined with the fact that we’re vegan and try never to use animal products (especially the babies of a species), we’ve been working on creating our own magically made up ones. Here’s how we did it:

Get a large plastic Easter […]

I’ve had the opportunity to give multiple elevator pitches over the past year, for various reasons. I’ve discovered that no matter what you are pitching, the technique is always the same. An elevator pitch is usually either 2 or 3 minutes long (sometimes only 1 minute), depending on your situation. The gist […]