the happiness project

Being happy has always been wayyyy up there in my resolutions. The biggest reason for this is that I'd love to see everyone in this world as happy as I find myself most days, and the best way to start to accomplish that is to be happy myself! Over the years I've found many ways of keeping my happiness levels up and trying to boost other peoples as well, but it's a work in progress.

I'd love to be perfect, to never be irritable or rude, to always put everyone else in the world before myself, to do the right thing all the time. I've been blessed with a wonderful life; especially the fact that I have such an amazing family and now, SUCH an AMAZING boyfriend. :) I have no reason not to be happy but sometimes I let life get me down. So I've spent a lot of time recently thinking about happiness and how it directly relates to my life, the life of the people closest to me, and the lives of everyone I come in contact with.

something I just remembered: the other day, someone I work with said to me, "Clare, you're so full of smile." That comment made me smile so hard the rest of the day, and also whenever I think about it. That comment meant more to me than any other kind of compliment on my appearance could have ever meant. (It also made me think, I need to give out more compliments! They make people feel great about themselves!)

I went to the library searching books on happiness and picked up this one. I've carried it around with me for about 2 months (it's a month overdue....hehehe) before I finally broke down and bought my own. It came yesterday! I have a hard time buying books sometimes because there are a lot of other pressing needs I have to pay for, and I worry that I'll read the book once and never look at it again. But this book is a treasure trove of information, it caused me to think so hard and so long about my life and my actions that I know I will return to it again and again.

The premise of the book is one relatively happy woman's quest for happiness. To enjoy every moment, to not commit actions she will later regret, to stress less and to live more. To accomplish these goals she sticks to a rigid one year happiness plan, using each month to focus on a different area in her life. While I'm not sure I could commit to something of this scale, the ideas in the book have inspired me beyond belief to reexamine my actions, thoughts, and attitude every single day.

Gretchen Ruben, the author of the book, has a blog of her own as well as something she calls a happiness project toolbox which will give you all ideas to start your own happiness project. Focusing on becoming a better person and striving for happiness, for ourselves and those around us, is something which I think is extremely admirable. I would recommend this book to EVERYONE. Although a lot of the ideas in the book are thoughts which have already floated through my head, seeing them on paper, from someone else's head, made a world of difference as to my idea of the importance of these thoughts.

I'm still working on becoming a better person, and I'm in the process of developing some resolutions of my own. But that's a blog post for another time :)

Happy Father's Day :)

Since Sunday was Father's day, it is only fitting that I say some things about my Dad.

My Dad is the person who will always make you laugh, no matter what. He's the person who will always say the nicest things, and never anything mean. He loves history, he loves camping, he loves blasting music through the house to wake us up on a Saturday morning. He loves coffee (black of course), he LOOOOVES pie (which is why I made him one for Father's Day), but most of all he loves my mom and his seven kids. He will do anything for us. He's always been the person I can depend on, the one who can fix anything, the one who always has the answer (or if there isn't an answer and the situation just sucks, he's always got a joke to make you smile). He's the person I always turn to when I need help. He's the greatest dad in the world! He's the person I'm always trying so hard to be.

He's my hero.

I love you, Dad. Happy Fathers Day!

blueberry, blackberry, and strawberry pie :D yum.

I made this one for my Grandpa :) along with a photo collage of all of us kids.

I love you, Grandpa!

clare's creative cards

from time to time the occasion occurs where a card is necessary. this is something i've always enjoyed and so at one point i started taking some pictures of the different ones i've made. here are some examples :)

father's day cards to come.

i live for the weekends

I had the greatest weekend EVER the past three days :D

Friday after work, Trevor & I went on a date to celebrate our 10 month anniversary, which was the day before. I planned it and suprised him with where we were going :) We went to Sonic because he'd never been there before, we ate outside and it was lovely. After that we went to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean, in 3D! And ate lots of yummy popcorn. I love going to new places, it's so much more exciting than the same old same old in my town. It was a great date and I really felt like it strenghthened our relationship. It might seem silly but I feel like dates are really healthy for girlfriends & boyfriends, they make me realize how much love we have for eachother and how happy we are. They make me consider my actions in the relationship, what I'm doing right and what I might be doing wrong. Plus, it's a time for us to just enjoy each other's company without any stress of our regular lives. And a chance for us to slow down and talk about everything going on in our lives, to reconnect again like we used to bwhen we first started dating, before all the chaos of our regular lives intervened. Anyway I think I loved Trevor even more after the great date night that we had, I kept thinking about it the whole next day. :D It made me smile every time!

 Saturday was girl's day! Dulcie & I picked up my twin sisters Emma & Rachel from South Haven. First though, we got coffee with my mom & then went to a farmer's market = awesome! Then I took the twins to get haircuts, which they were really happy about. We were in need of some lunch so we went to Meijer's and spent about an hour shopping for picnic food. We bought salami and rice cakes, string cheese, apples, chips & some FUZE to drink. Quite a good healthy picnic snack I think.

Then we hit the beach for a few hours. It was quite hot but I think we all got a little more color, yay. The water was a bit too cold to swim in, but maybe the lake'll warm up by the end of this week. I can hope. After that we went to Dulcie's and painted our nails and talked about girllll stuff. When we got bored of that, we went out for ice cream and walked around town! When I drove my sisters home they were exhausted from all the things we'd done that day, but they said they had a lot of fun :)

I love being a big sister! It's so fun and I love being able to take my sisters to do fun things :) It's what I've always wanted to do. And I love having money to spend on a day of memories we'll never forget.

Sunday my brother graduated :) Trevor & I drove up to Grand Rapids for his graduation mass, the twins were also a part of it because they're graduating from eighth grade. When I got there my mom was like, "Uhhh, we're supposed to have a photo board for Rob..." So Whitney and I put one together in about forty minutes, I couldn't have done it without her help and honestly I'm pretty proud of it :D It looks nice, I loved all the pictures of my brother. They were taken on Thursday when I attempted to take his senior pictures, he's a dork. But they show his personality perfectly! But I was really proud of my brother this weekend, and my sisters too. It's crazy that they're so old already, I can't believe it.

Afterwards my whole family, Grammy included, went out to dinner at the Great Lakes Shipping Company, which was a really cool nautical themed restaurant. I had my first Stella Artois which was DELICIOUS. I love beer, especially good beer. It tasted kind of like champagne to me, or at least what I think champagne would taste like because I don't think I've ever had it before. But either way, YUM.

Then we toured Holy Family Radio, courtesy of Dad who was really excited to show us everything (and we were excited to see, too! It's very interesting). And that wrapped up my fantastic weekend :D

I freaking love my family, we have the greatest times together ever. They make my whole life meaningful. :) I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have such a good family and SUCH a good boyfriend! <3 And I've never been so happy in my life as I am right now, in this moment, looking at these pictures and remembering the great weekend I had. And next weekend, camping and the world's longest breakfast table!! The fun never ends.