How to Communicate Love Part3: Gifts

February 18, 2013 by Art of Eloquence

Okay so we talked about words and actions that show love, but there is another way to communicate love and that’s with gifts. Does your gift need to be an expensive trinket or token? Not at all. In fact, the most precious gifts don’t cost much at all! What they do cost is thought, time and preparation.

I have an incredible niece. She’s a treasure. She recently had her 16th birthday and I wanted to give her something special. Instead of a nice article of clothing or an expensive piece of jewelry, I created a photo album for her to keep her memories in. I purchased a special photo album in her favorite colors and filled the first few pages with things that she loved as a child. I included a letter I wrote to her about how I watched her grow and what a lovely young lady she had become. I added pictures of her and her brother and some trinkets of things she treasured. And I told her to fill the remaining pages with treasures from her life as she begins adulthood.

The idea behind a special and treasured gift is to make it personal and infuse it with meaning. Personalize your gift. Let it be a reflection of what you know about them, what they need, their hopes and dreams.

It’s the thought that counts isn’t an expression we should remember because it excuses us from giving an appropriate gift or spending a lot of money. It’s one that should remind us of the way our gift should make the recipient feel: special!

Check back next week for my wrap up article and how you can find your spouse’s love language!

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Don’t forget to check out our Valentine Special where you can get two e-books that will help you and your spouse build a happier and stronger relationship! Plus our free bonus gift, 28 Days of Love: 28 scriptures, sayings and beautiful illustrations that will help you become better able to express your love for your spouse. It can be Valentine’s Day all year long!

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Filed Under: Communication Articles Tagged With: birthday, communciation, Dreams, gifts, hopes, love, personalize

Recap of Birthday Bash week

November 2, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

Today is the last day to enter our Birthday Bash Contests!

It’s also the last day also to get our Birthday Bash freebie, my 3rd Book of JoJoisms!

Download our 3rd JoJoisms edition, The 3rd Book of JoJoisms: Technology. Created especially for our Birthday Bash visitors and Includes: JoJoisms, Visual JoJoisms, several of JoJo’s articles and more!

Download your free copy of the 3rd Book of JoJoisms here!

Also, in case you missed the announcement:

All Art of Eloquence eBooks are only $10 for a limited time! Check out all the titles. Browse by age or subject!

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Happy Birtl Day, Chris!

June 11, 2012 by Art of Eloquence

Today is my son’s 13th birthday and I had planned to dispense with my usual discussion of communication to share a little bit about him with my readers. Here’s part of what I had planned to share.

This is a very fuzzy picture of him winning the Youth Cart Racing League over at K1 Racing. He holds the undefeated title of fastest lap ever at that location in all the years they have been open. This includes some professional race car drivers!

I’d already shared about my daughter’s recent college graduation so I thought I’d give equal time to my son.

I had planned to share my son’s incredible sense of humor and how he had inspired some of my latest JoJoisms, but God has a sense of humor and I just have to share with you how it played out on his birthday–partly because it’s hilarious and partly because it holds some wonderful lessons for us all.

We gave him a birthday party on Saturday where we had planned to serve an ice cream cake. Scrambling around to get ready for everyone’s arrival, I had forgotten to take it out of the freezer to make sure it was thawed by the time we were ready to eat it. Fortunately, my dh reminded me and it wasn’t too late. I put it in the fridge and had planned to take it out into room temperature to help it along.

My dh suggested I leave the cake out in the garage so it would thaw quicker, but I told him that was a bad idea. See, we live in ARIDzona and this is June. It was only 104 that day, but that means that the garage would be about 110 or more so I put it inside the house instead. I came back to it every so often to check, hoping it would be ready to eat. Not finding the cake where I put it, I asked my dh who said he put it in the garage.

Though it had only been in the garage for about ten minutes, the icing melted sliding the blue piping down the edges until it rested on the bottom of the carton. The ice cream inside was oozing out of the corners of the box and the word, birthday, split it two and ran down the side of the cake which now said, “Happy Birtl Day.” Now, you knew there’d be a communication funny in here somewhere, didn’t you? lol

My first reaction was, “I told you so!” But it soon turned to fits of laughter and an urge to capture this film on before the cake became ice cream soup.

My dh’s first reaction was guilt, turning quickly to acceptance as I wasn’t scolding him because I was too busy laughing and trying to find the camera.

We lit only one candle and sang a quick chorus of “Happy Birtl Day” to our son before the cake could slide off the table and drip onto the floor.

We all ate bowls of Birtl Day cake with spoons and had a ball. Later on, my dh did something he rarely does. He admitted, in public, that I was RIGHT and he was WRONG! Ahh…sweet vindication. lol

The moral of the story? Well, there are a few lessons to be learned from this experience.

First and most important: ALWAYS listen to your wife. ;D

Second: if you live in ARIDzona, NEVER leave ice cream cake out in your garage in June.

Third: if something unexpectedly goes wrong, get out your camera and have fun with it. We had such fun with this. In fact, my mom suggested we make new family tradition of Happy Birtl Day for Chris every year. I don’t think he will ever forget his 13th Birtl Day. Do you?

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: 13th birthday, Arizona, birthday, Birtl Day, cake, chess, daughter, garage, God, Ice Cream, racing, University, Vanderbilt

Tomorrow’s my birthday…

September 7, 2011 by Art of Eloquence

Tomorrow is my 49th birthday and next year I’ll celebrate 50 years…half a century on this planet. Hard to believe it’s been that long. Seems like just yesterday I was 12. Time goes by faster when you’re old. lol When I was 12, it seemed like it took 12 years before it was my birthday again. Now that I’m 49, it seems more like 12 minutes.

Things change as we age; our perceptions are only one of those things. Times have changed. Communication has changed. The technology with which we communicate has changed. I shared my thoughts on how communication has changed in the last 50 years yesterday on TalkShoe. I shared how we communicate differently when we get older too. Here is the link to the audio if you missed the live seminar.

As many of you know, I’ve written a JoJoism or two about aging. Here are just a few:

JoJoism#17 Age is just a number. So after 50, I’m going to begin counting backwards. I wonder how long it’ll take me to pass my kids on the way down?

JoJoism#33 Don’t think of them as grey hairs; think of them as nature’s highlights!

JoJoism#60: ” I’m a year older today. Then, again, I am somewhat older than I was before I said so.”

JoJoism#137 “The secret to long life is…don’t die so young.”

JoJoism#150 “We are born with a finite amount of energy. Unfortunately, by the time we figure this out, we’re in our 40’s and forced to conserve.”

JoJoism#152 “Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and…that’s why I don’t exercise anymore.”

JoJoisms: Revealing Life’s Truths…as I think of ’em!

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Happy Bar Mitzvah Erving?

April 1, 2011 by Art of Eloquence

Today is April Fool’s Day, but then I’ve never liked April Fool’s. Some of the tricks played on this day seemed mean and others were downright cruel. However, I have a funny story for you that kind of qualifies as April Fool’s, Tabares Style. I need to begin at the beginning and that would be way back in the 70’s. Let me take you down memory lane.

All in the Family was a popular show in the 70’s and, if you are old enough to remember the show, you’ll know that Archie Bunker was a cheapskate. One episode had him purchasing a cake for his wife’s birthday and coming home with a cake that said, “Happy Bar Mitzvah Irving!” Why? Because the customer failed to pick it up and it was half price. All during the episode, people laughed and said, “Who’s Irving?”

My family had a great sense of humor and so for my mother’s birthday that year, we (on purpose) bought her a cake that said, “Happy Bar Mitzvah Irving!”

Run a bit further down Memory Lane and you’ll come to the early 90’s when my dd was a little girl. We told her about this family story and she loved the idea. She always said she wanted a cake that said, “Happy Bar Mitzvah Irving!” but we thought she was kidding.

Our dd is away at college in her junior year. Every year on her Spring Break, she and friends have a missions trip somewhere. Last year was San Diego. This year was Tampa. So she is almost always either 1800 miles away at college or on a missions trip during her birthday.

This year, on March 13th, she was scheduled to drive back 12hrs on a bus from Tampa to Nashville. She told us that the director of the organization she went with was planning something for her birthday. One of the activities was to have all 40 of her friends sing Happy Birthday to her each hour of the trip. They ended up singing in several languages and using many different arrangements of the song.

I contacted the director ahead of time, explained the story behind the cake and asked him to help me provide the cake for everyone on her birthday. He emailed back that he would be happy to help and gave me the number of a bakery near where they would stop for lunch. I ordered the cake and verified all the details of the cake.

I called her for her birthday after she should have had lunch and the cake. She was so excited and everyone had a great time with it. After all, this was a Christian ministry team on the way back from a missions trip eating birthday cake that said, “Happy Bar Mitzvah Irving!” Or did it? This story gets even more bizarre when you hear the punch line.

My dd mentioned that the cake was misspelled. I was a bit worried that the bakery wouldn’t spell Bar Mitzvah correctly. It’s not a popular spelling word. To my surprise, Bar Mitzvah wasn’t the word they misspelled.

Happy Bar Mitzvah Erving!

My dd said the cake was actually fairly ugly. Plain white icing with several GREEN roses. I had asked them to put a few flowers on the cake with green writing. Everyone said the cake was delicious and a fun time was had by all!

I regret that I don’t have a picture to show you. I had asked them to take pictures and they did, just none of the infamous cake. I do have good news, though. My dd has asked that this become a tradition on her birthday. Each year we’ll spell Irving a different way.

Happy Bar Mitzvah Urving

Happy Bar Mitzvah Earving

Happy Bar Mitzvah Yving…

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: April Fool's, Bakery, bar mitzvah, birthday, cake, Irving, Tampa

What is old?

September 8, 2010 by Art of Eloquence

Today is Word Wednesday here on Communication FUNdamentals and it’s also my birthday! According to my kids, I’m old. In fact, my dd has been calling me ancient since she was about 3yrs old. She’s now 20, I’m currently celebrating the 30th anniversary of my 18th birthday and you can do the math on that one!

Old is another one of those words that has been misused in my, perhaps seasoned, opinion. I mean, what is old anyway? If you ask a 3 y/o what old is, she’ll probably say twenty. If you ask a 20 y/o, she’ll probably say 30. If you ask a 48 y/o she’ll probably say, “Hey! Are you calling me old?!” Besides, what is an old person now-a-days isn’t old compared to Biblical times. Methuselah! Now there’s a man who was old! I think most people today would consider an 80 or 90 y/o to be “old.”

But “old” is a relative term anyway. How old is an old car? After five years, when the warranty runs out, YOU consider it old, dontcha? Okay, but what if you’re in the market for a used car? How old is old? Ten, fifteen years? Surely, you wouldn’t buy a used car that was 80 or 90 years old? Well, you might, but you’d pay a much higher price…and they’d use a slightly different term for it: Antique! Funny how old vs antique can look vastly different:

But it gets even worse than that! If you put an ad in the Recycler selling your old computer, you’d be hard-pressed to find a buyer if they knew it was 15 years old! Even five years is OLD for anything electronic. And don’t get me started on food! I wouldn’t touch an old donut with an old ten foot pole!

As an added bit of fun, I include this video for your giggling pleasure. My father sent this to me for my birthday. He’s got a fabulous sense of humor. It’s just too stinkin’ funny and appropriate for me NOT to include it here today. I sometimes feel like I’m falling apart in my old age…Enjoy!

So, today’s my birthday and I’m 48 years old, young! Whether you’re older or younger than I am, please leave me a birthday note. Feel free to sing!

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Filed Under: Communication Articles Tagged With: birthday, old, Word Wednesday

Remember when Ricky made breakfast for Lucy?

September 9, 2009 by Art of Eloquence

So it was my birthday on Tuesday and my dh called me from work to tell me that he’s getting out of work early, not to make dinner and we were going to go out when he got home. Then he calls me from the parking lot of the grocery store to ask if we have white rice. Why? Cuz he’s going to cook me dinner! And not just any dinner, mind you, but THE dinner to end all dinners: Seafood Medley! We usually only eat this very special meal once a year when I make it for him on his birthday. Ok he’s got my attention!

He asks me if I can start the rice for him because he isn’t sure we have enough and to call him back to see if he needs to stop again to get more. I start it and find we probably do have enough but we wont have any for left overs so I call him back and he stops off to get another box.

He comes home with a few bags of seafood and all the fixin’s to make Seafood Medley telling me to just sit back and relax while he does all the work. In fact, he says, HE’S going to do all the dishes! WOW! 22 years of marriage and this is the first time he’s ever cooked! And I don’t think he’s EVER put a dish in the dishwasher!

So I go upstairs to finish some work I had waiting and I hear…”Jo! Do we have biscuits?” So I go downstairs and look and find them.

“Jo! How do you preheat the oven?”

“Where’s the cookie sheet?”

“Can I use this pot?”

Up and down the stairs I go thinking how sweet he is to do this for me but feeling a little like Lucy Ricardo in the episode where she was pregnant and Fred and Ricky made breakfast for her. It was exhausting, but bless his heart he really did a great job with the Seafood Medley!

I came down for my special dinner to find the table set with our good PURPLE (what passes for) china and a Coconut Cream Pie thawing on the counter for dessert! Coconut is my favorite!

It was a lovely meal and afterward he actually did the dishes…ALL of them! Not only did I have a great meal but no dishes in the sink afterward! Hmmm! You’re jealous about now aren’t ya! He’s MINE! ;D

I woke up this morning to find another surprise. He saw that the dishwasher was full so he put the soap in and turned it on so they’d be done by morning! What a guy!!! I usually have to remind (read that BEG) him to turn it on and he will only do it if I put the soap in for him.

We had left over Seafood Medley tonight for dinner too. So I didn’t have to make dinner tonight either! What more could a gal ask for for her birthday?

Gotta go! My son is at Theater practice and Ricky wants to have some coconut cream pie with Lucy.

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Fowl Language

September 8, 2009 by Art of Eloquence

“I feel goofy…oh so goofy! I feel goofy and loopy and wise!”

Today is my birthday! I’m older so I must be wiser! LOL And I’m in kind of a goofy mood. Can you tell? A few days ago, I posted about foul language (happily, the lack there of!) when I shared Biblical Word Fun. I got to thinking how funny it would be if you spelled that a little differently. My goofy mind began to run wild and here’s what I came up with:

Fowl Language

It’s important that we teach our little chickadees to speak respectfully so they are not pigeon holed into using fowl language consistently. Birds of a feather tend to flock together and one turkey of a word can fowl up a whole conversation. Don’t duck the issue and don’t be chicken! Learn to speak eloquently so your words glide on the wings of eagles!

A friendly reminder from JoJo at Art of Eloquence.com.

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My baby is 10!

June 11, 2009 by Art of Eloquence

Chris is 10 yrs old today! Here he is at a recent golf class. One of his new loves along with the keyboard. Double digits! Boy do they grow fast! Happy Birthday Little Man!

chris-at-golftn1

chris-gilfingtn1

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How to Communicate Love Part3: Gifts

Recap of Birthday Bash week

Download your free copy of the 3rd Book of JoJoisms here!

Happy Birtl Day, Chris!

Tomorrow’s my birthday…

Happy Bar Mitzvah Erving?

Happy Bar Mitzvah Erving!

What is old?

Remember when Ricky made breakfast for Lucy?

Fowl Language

My baby is 10!

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