Love Fete

The l o v e f e s t has officially ended. 

s e r v i c e & g i f t s 

Valentine's Day can be such a holiday of decadence, my daughter believes us to have crossed through decadence into p u r e gluttony. I remind her that we don't do seven deadlies. 

However, there were Edible Arrangements with chocolate covered strawberries and heart shaped pineapple slices, Italian cuisine carry-out from Luigis, movies galore. One being Charlie Countryman. I'm kinda obsessing over Shia Lebeouf at present. "I am not famous anymore." #iamsorry

There were dozens not thousands like Kimye, but dozens of r o s e s- pink, white and red. Frank Sinatra satellite serenaded us. 

Victoria's Secret made her d e b u t. TMI, I know. Skip paragraph if not interested. I really n e e d to publicly announce that by joining one of their clubs either PINK nation or the official store, you can randomly receive coupons in the mail for free unmentionables. 

Farmer Guy delivered chess pie, plain and chocolate! Can you hear points tally like at the end of an e x c e l l e n t round of Ms. PacMan? 

There were desserts! Boxed chocolate, tiramisu, chocolate cake, cheese cake and fried rice.  Don't judge, fried rice IS a dessert.

L. D. Eagle posted today that food was her love language... I totally get that. Hear, hear & Eagulls, Eagulls...Eagulls, Eagulls!!!

What's a love fest without l o v e  languages? We executed each one, and we could taste love wafting on farm cloud air.

Dr. Gary Chapman devised the love languages for us all to better understand and communicate love. I remember the analogy about the people speaking different languages, like when building the Tower of B a b e l. They may have been saying the same thing but they weren’t hearing the same thing.  It's not so easy to connect when we are communicating differently.

What's your love language? Find out now: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/ 

As with our online audience, we have to give love so they can hear it. 

These are the love languages:

• Words of Affirmation 

• Quality Time 

• Receiving Gifts 

• Acts of Service 

• Physical Touch 

Here's where we left off...

Receiving Gifts 

Remember that the way a person receives love is also how they give it.

• Crowdsourcing is critical here.  Contribute, or run a campaign.

• Give away. Online give aways. Swag in person give aways. Give stuff away.

• Give away really good tips on your blogs and posts. Content is king.

• Other nice gifts include memes, photos and videos.

Acts of Service

This is a fun one!

• Donate a part of your platform income to an organization that supports your vision or a really good fan.

• Participate in a blog tour and share other people's work. If someone you know has something wonderful going on share about it with your readers.

• Help a Reporter Out. Sign up with HARO if you have not already.

Physical Touch

Reach out touch them!

• Give shout outs.

• Go to events and meet folks. Online and offline - from google hang outs to meet ups.

•  Go off line and into the streets. Try to attend an event each season.

How else can we show love online? Drop me a line and let me know.

l o v e

h OO p y Valentine's

Listening to "What's Going On?", Marvin Gaye on Sade Pandora thinking about the journey and its fabulous detours. This past summer while my son attended a pre-college program at Pratt Institute the girls detoured to Girl Month.

Girl month.

We listened to audio books.

We made s m o o t h i e s, salads and soups.

We cleaned.

We called our girlfriends.

We did spa treatments. We scrubbed. We s t e a m e d. We hair straightened with Agave.

We road tripped. We spiked in Alpine. We shopped in Lubbock.

We worked out- girl look at that body.
Insanity, Zumba, Walking, Belly Dancing, Socacize, African Healing.

We ate c h o c o l a t e (good chocolate).

We fell in l o v e with Hugh Grant because we watched chick flicks.
Who knew that Julia and Jennifer had soooooo many movie credits?

When watching film, we integrated ab words (Of course, we played with words!). Like a drinking game, when the chosen word was said by a character- we hit the deck and did crunches. That got old quickly!

What else could we do that was ab - licious and fun?

It seemed like when I asked the q u e s t i o n, it appeared.

TE's exer-app updated on her FB page. You know the kind: TE just hula hooped for 10 minutes, and is now extra fabulous.

Hula Hooped? Really? And the point of that was what?
Jump roped for ten minutes... I got. Ran for ten minutes, uh yeah. Hula Hooped... mmmmm?

So I messaged her.
She responded.

The next night before the double feature, we went to the sporting good's store and bought a couple of hoops. With l i g h t s!

When ab words began. We hooped. We went to tennis courts and hooped instead. We replaced our morning Insanity class with hooping for obvious reasons. We just hooped.

It was then that I noticed an influx of elimination. TMI, but we love healthy number two elimination. I researched. Apparently the hoop massaging the c o r e and its internals did more than p u m p up the heart rate. Somehow my internet search lead me to a video of a beautiful masterful Black hoop artist, hoop dancing to "My Chick Bad".

I wanted to do that. We turned off the dvd and turned on the music. We tried.

Realization. People couldn't just DO that. I was gonna need a teacher.

Three months later, Farmer Guy handed me a b o x. A box with everything needed to become a licensed and certified Hula Hoop instructor from Hoopnotica! Shut-up!

Now I'm h o o k e d on hooping. So of course I needed beautiful hooping w o r d s! Introducing my new favorite p i c t u r e l e s s alphabet book.

H is for Halo available on Smashwords.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/284241
h OO p y Valentine's & Happy Hooping!