Today’s Wednesday Warmer is a jolly little piece from Jenn “Gurl’s Assylum” Jinright. Why not go say hello to her on Twitter (she does a great range in smiles and encouragement) or subscribe to her blog? And now Jenn, it’s over to you …

Social Media is a sneaky, sneaky thing. It slowly infiltrates your life with the goal of taking it over completely. Social Media  is slowly working at making sure you stay connected to your “friends”at all times, even when you’re visiting the rest room or in the shower! How do you know if the internet has taken over your life. Take a look at these six major signs. If you find yourself nodding or thinking that two or more describe you, odds are high that the internet is winning the battle!

1. Your Social Media followers know more about you than those you live with.
2. You can count the number of friends that live within a short drive on one hand.
3. Every time something happens, your first thought is “OMG I have to share this on (insert favourite social media site here)!!!!”
4. You find your self feeling lonely or abandoned when your online friends aren’t updating their status messages every half hour.
5. When responding out loud, you have caught you self literally saying “el oh el” or “Doubleyou Tee Eff”.
6. In the rare case you are somewhere that you can’t send or receive status updates, you panic and/or feel lonely or abandoned

Just a quick fun video post for you today, put together for the sole purpose of making you smile. Let me know how you like it in the comments below. Thank you

As promised, here are the other posts I made reference to in the video:

Re-thinking Wealth and Prosperity, a community post from Christine Livingston,

The search for our next project, video applications now being accepted,

and finally,

5 Easy Happiness Hacks, my guest post over at 6Aliens.com

Having yesterday introduced the new Wednesday Warmer, designed to bring a smile to your face and help you overcome ‘hump day’, I could think of no better start than to invite Nick Vujicic into our day again. If you’ve seen this before, don’t let that put you off. I’ve watched it at least 6 times and every occasion brings tears to my eyes

And if this is your first introduction to Nick, make sure you’re sitting down. He’s brilliant!

Monday can be full of great promise and anticipation. The start of a brand new week, you believe that anything is possible and dreaming big is easier than it might be on a Wednesday. But what do you do at the end of the day when you’ve been busy and you feel your eye lids drooping? You either press in and push through the fatigue or you take a break, have a cup of tea and find something to make you smile.

If you’re full of energy and raring to go, this post is not for you. If however you could do with a laugh, here are our top three laughter videos:

1. If you’ve never stumbled across the genius that is Miranda Hart, where have you been?! This is just a short preview clip but it’s enough to make you smile and I’m hoping it will also whet your appetite enough to keep you on the lookout for more from Ms Hart.

2. We’ve shown this clip on here before but it never fails to raise a giggle and so is worthy of inclusion again.

3. If you have a child who has a favourite laughter trigger (my sons is turning your hand into a puppet and making it play games!) you will appreciate this final clip. I dare you not to smile as you watch it

Back in January I anticipated the arrival of the beautiful sign that Winter would soon be over, the daffodil. After an unexpectedly cold two months, I saw my first crop of yellow just two days ago.

Here in Wales today we are celebrating the day of our patron Saint, David, with cakes, leeks, National costume and of course, daffodils.

For the benefit of my friends over the oceans, yes, Wales is a country, not a province. It’s not a part of England, it’s part of the United Kingdom (of which England is another part) and yes, the Welsh language is used on a daily basis. I remember an online acquaintance trying desperately to persuade me otherwise so thought it was best to clarify

Having been asked why she likes Dydd Dewi Sant (Saint David’s Day) my eldest replied, “Welsh cakes!” but the first of March isn’t reliant on cakes to lift your spirits. Here’s three other things that will try:

Sunshine

I appreciate this depends entirely on your geography but getting up to sunshine is psychologically much easier than not. Remember SAD? One treatment includes light therapy. There’s nothing like a generous dose of vitamin D to get you going.

Fresh air

Despite the best of intentions, for the majority, there’s no fun to be had in getting outside when it’s cold and gloomy. Saturday mornings at the beach wrapped up in scarves, hats and gloves has it’s appeals, especially when accompanied by young ones. However, whilst I appreciate it might just be me, I believe it’s much more fun to get outside when you don’t have to impersonate the Michelin man

Bird song

Call me a dinosaur if you like but I love waking up to the dawn chorus. I don’t remember appreciating it when I was in my teens so maybe I am getting old. I like to think it’s more an indication of my drastically earlier waking time than my age

So whether you’re Welsh or not, have a fabulous Saint David’s Day. Find some simple pleasures, get a little fresh air and smile

I love to smile, it makes the whole day seem brighter. If you need some reasons to smile today, try this short video clip containing some great happiness quotes:

A year or so ago I had a conversation on here about how maybe Tuesday had become the new Monday. A parting comment from a member of staff as I left a particularly challenging class this afternoon seemed to confirm my suspicions:

“And it’s only Tuesday!”

Personally I don’t believe in the Tuesday feeling but that’s probably because I don’t work a regular five day week. It’s all psychological of course. Why should Friday be any easier than Monday or Tuesday? Logically it makes no sense. As I said to year seven just before lunch, I prefer to use the Mary Poppins method. It makes life much more interesting Here’s how:

Find the fun

“For every job that must be done there is an element of fun. Find the fun and the job’s a game. Every task you undertake becomes a piece of cake!” – Mary Poppins

As year seven reliably informed me, there’s no fun to be found in being chased by someone trying to kill you Murderous chases aside though, you can find fun in pretty much everything you ever have to do. One of my least favourite jobs at home is cleaning the shower. Shall I tell you my secret for making it fun? You must promise not to tell anyone. OK? I pretend I’m Cinderella It’s a little sad but it keeps me engaged in the job. In my younger days I’d be known to pretend I was presenting my own cooking show when preparing dinner. Ainsley Herriot, eat your heart out

Wear your child tinted glasses

Someone who remembers their past fondly, choosing to forget the less than ideal aspects of it are said to wear rose-tinted glasses. Why not instead wear child tinted glasses from time to time? These allow you to see the world from a little one’s perspective. Some things look a lot more big and scary if seen from a child’s perspective but the majority of experiences are much more pleasurable viewed this way.

Children notice the colour and shapes of clouds as they move across a stormy sky. Children love the noise of their feet slap-slapping in the rain. Children will giggle when words are said incorrectly. Children will run to give you a hug when they haven’t seen you for at least 25 minutes. There is much to be said for wearing child-tinted glasses and Tuesday seems like as good a day as any

Today is a gift

“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present.” – Kung Foo Panda

Starting each new day with a sense of anticipation is a great way to ward off the Tuesday morning blues. Even if you think you know what you will be doing today, where and why, just imagine for a moment what could happen to make your day deviate from the norm. Is that a scary thought? Don’t let it be. Whatever happens today, you have the resources to enjoy these new experiences. Assuming I make it to 70, I have less than 14,000 days left of this life. to enjoy. I for one would like to make each new one count. Who’s with me?

photo credit: Chellbie

As I walked into the room where I was working for my mum today, I came eye ball to eye socket with the lovely chap you see in the picture above. Isn’t he fabulous? Being a bit of a science geek, I’ve always loved stuff like skeletons. My final year in school, we even got the opportunity to investigate the workings of a yellow rat. As a result, you won’t be too surprised to learn that I wanted my photo taken with our young man here.

I knew it would be brilliant for a blog post on here, I just didn’t know what about yet

So my photographer (my sister )  took the requested shot and it was as we were headed back after work that the song ‘dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones‘ started twirling around in my head. I was all set to share a wonderful thoughtful post about the value of life. It would have included a generous dollop of motivation, encouraging you to approach everything you do with passion. Undoubtedly I would have felt compelled to mark a distinction between the dry bones of my skeleton friend and the vitality and life we should run after.

But then I made a mistake

Searching for the lyrics of the aforementioned song, I stumbled across The Wiggles rendition of ‘Dry bones’ and all I’m good for now is giggling!

So for your delight, I’m pleased to present The Wiggles. If you’re not familiar with their work, allow me to introduce them as the Australian equivalent of The Beatles for children. But as my husband said when he saw this, no, the one in yellow is NOT Greg Wiggle. Greg left The Wiggles back in 2006 and as you may have gathered, he is sorely missed in our household

Eleanor decided that I needed to get on and write a new post as I have been somewhat idle.  Others might suggest I have been back at work and therefore somewhat distracted by that which pays the mortgage.  Either way, it has been hard to wonder what might be worth sharing.

I was attracted by the work that Heather has been sharing on her blog at shadesofadream.com (Apologies Heather for not commenting but have been really interested and very impressed by some of those screen shots of the interface you are working with).

It’s funny how your mind (OK funny how MY mind, I can’t strictly speak for yours) can drift!  As I thought about Heather, I reflected at what my number 3 son-in-law gets up to.  Like Heather, he is in to animation.  Unlike Heather, he is less disciplined at remembering to post stuff to his blog.   However, while he spends a lot of time at the computer, he also works with time lapse photography.  He was given a make your own Morph kit for Christmas.

Not content to just mould the plastercine, he went on and did the complete Tony Hart animation bit.  When he showed his efforts to the kit manufacturer, they put it on their website and gave him a prize!  Well chuffed is he

However, now that he’s done Morph, he’s working on a Doctor Egg animation for Give a Brick!  I’ve pulled a couple of pictures from his Facebook page:

As I understand it, to get his Egg to talk, he needs a set of different mouths to make the words form.  I await with baited breath, his animated appearance on the Give A Brick website!

However, as my mind wandered, I found myself returning to the two Animusic DVD’s that I bought myself for Christmas.  (“What?” I hear you cry, “bought yourself?  Unfortunately, yes.  I could not resist, it was too close to Christmas and I’d been looking at the various little bits available on Youtube for the best part of a couple of years since my little brother Roy The Artist introduced them to me)  So for your delectation, here’s a short clip:

It’s Saturday morning, we’re all still in our pajamas and in the last four hours, we’ve made pancakes for breakfast, learned how to knit, played dressing up and built an awesome train track

Usually by now I’d be half way through dreaming up the latest post, even if it wasn’t in written form.

However, as I write this via my phone, my eldest is demanding I continue knitting the scarf we’re creating for her toy dog!

So today, I’m taking the day off and I’d like to encourage you to do the same. Go outside, enjoy some time with your loved ones, read a book.

Go have some fun. The Internet will be here waiting for you when you get back. Go on! You know you want to

Over to you. What do you think?

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Have you seen our 1 Minute Motivators yet? They’re a great way to start your day