#could also buy him a pretty new bookshelf with little carvings in it

[kaneki-week]

what present would you give Kaneki for his birthday?

[xcherry-popx]

I'm not sure if you're asking for ppl to choose one of the ships or not, but just in case you're not gonna do them all (which like. 👀👀👀 if you do!), how about black king 1/black pawn b1 or white king 1/black knight 2? :0

i did mean choosing between them actually! i considered doing them all but…

i’ll put the others on the other ask! 

black king 1/black pawn b1 ( “dorian” oskar / “voyce” jayden

    Who accidentally pushes a door instead of pulling/vice versa

oskar….. it’s not often but sometimes he encounters those doors that Look like they should open the other way and instead of realizing his mistake he just keeps trying to do the same thing while jayden has his head in his hands saying “no- no, that’s not- other way we came in through this door this isn’t a new door you do this every time-”. eventually he learns but it takes enough time that jayden judges him for it.

    Who doodles little hearts all over the desk with their initials inside them

you would assume it’d be oskar, but jayden’s actually the more mushy romantic of the two. he’d draw date ideas in his notebook during class and hide it from everyone else. although, if they happen to be in a park or something, oskar might suggest that they carve their initials in a heart on the side of a tree. so basically, jayden is a mushy romantic internally and more stoic in front of his love, while oskar is more openly romantic around his partner and leans more towards daydreaming when away.

    Who starts the tickle fights

oskar definitely. theres a high chance of a sneak attack….

jayden: ….oskar where r u? you disappeare-AAH

oskar: i got you! :D

jayden would be very embarrassed about it but he doesnt hate it completely….

jayden: …why…..

oskar: i just love being close to you ! 

jayden suggests cuddling instead but his face has become tomato red.

    Who starts the pillow fights

that probably depends! if oskar is in a more hyper mood he may yell pillow fight and thwap jayden in the face. meanwhile if they’re more relaxed and trying to figure out what to do next, jayden would probably suggest pillow fights since he used to have them all the time with his two childhood friends. either way it ends up with a lot of giggling as they run around the house together.

    Who falls asleep last, watching the other with a small affectionate smile

it probably depends…. jayden has some nights where he can’t sleep at all, so the two of them would chat sleepily until one of them drifts off. if jayden has been having several sleepless nights he becomes prone to passing out randomly, and oskar ends up admiring him and cuddling up with a blanket wherever they ended up.

later jayden asks why they slept in the kitchen and insists that “you could have just…. moved me….”

    Who mistakes salt for sugar

i feel like jayden probably has messed up taste buds…. like, he can’t tell specific flavors apart and mostly relies on how strong they are to figure it out. so while he likes super spicy food, he also like super sweet food too.im reminded of the time i bit into a pizza crust and wondered what the unusual flavor was before looking at my hand and realizing i was also eating an orange peel. he has those kinda chaotic eater vibes

meanwhile oskar is a pretty picky eater so its just oskar handing jayden something he doesnt want expecting jayden to throw it away for him and jayden just eats it whole

     Who lets the microwave play the loud beeping sound at 1am in the morning

oskar grew up in a world pre-industrial revolution so he forgets that microwaves make noise sometimes. fortunately jayden is either awake or sleeping too deep to hear anything.

jayden on the other hand, probably just lets it beep because he doesn’t care. sometimes he falls asleep before its done and considering oskars a light sleeper he’ll come out if he doesn’t hear it answered quickly and have to pull jayden off the floor.

     Who comes up with cheesy pick up lines

oskar will definitely randomly say the cheesiest things. jayden insists they’re stupid but sometimes oskar will succeed in making jayden v flustered.

     Who rearranges the bookshelf in alphabetical order

if jayden has been having several sleepless nights, you’ll find all the furniture reoganized and the food, dishes, clothes, and books all rearranged into type, color, size, and other criteria. meanwhile, oskar naturally keeps his belongings organized like that. their friends often assume oskar is the one who organized the house that way but it’s pretty much all jayden.

     Who licks the spoon when they’re baking brownies

jayden will lick it and plop it right back into the bowl. oskar is disgusted. if oskar wants to try brownies raw he’ll make a special batch specifically to be eaten as is and then pour it into a bowl and eat it with a dinner spoon.

      Who buys candles for dinners even though there’s no special occasionoskar…. he was raised as royalty, so even if he lives in a more modern world now, he still likes having more “fancy” things at times. meanwhile jayden will heat up lunchables for date night

      Who draws little tattoos on the other with a pen

i feel like they both would, but they’d draw different thingsoskar would draw little hearts and birds, along with stars and flowers. he gets pretty good at it, spending hours to do one thing at timesmeanwhile jayden never does more than little doodles. little hearts, spirals, more abstract designs.

      Who comes home with a new souvenir magnet every time they go on vacation

oskar! he loves seeing new places and having things like postcards and souvenirs. meanwhile jayden will go somewhere, befriend the local birds, and come back with three bags full of the gifts the birds gave him. its his version of a souvenir.

       Who convinces the other to fill out those couple surveys in the back of magazines

oskar is the one who suggests it, but jayden ends up more interested than him. 

"it says we may encounter problems in our relationship moving forward.” 

jayden: *begins to tear up* 

“you do know this thing isn’t an indication of how we’ll actually work as a couple, don’t you? jayden? oh no-”

     bonus: what nicknames do they use for each other?

oskar calls jayden basically anything (honey, sweetheart, dear, darling is especially common) but the most prominent one is “my songbird” ! jayden has a lot of powers relating to birds and kinda looks like one too...

jayden doesn’t use nicknames in public, but in private he’ll sometimes call oskar “my prince”…!!!

[waywarddaughterwrites]

Hidden

A/N: This began as a one-shot, but it has taken a life of its own. I'll post chapters as they come! Pairing: (eventually) Sam/Reader Warnings: None _____________________________ You found it by accident. You'd been living with the Winchesters in the bunker for about three months, now. The boys had left you on research duty for a hunt and you decided some exploring of your new home was much overdue. You wandered down the hallways, not caring to keep track of where you were. The bunker was a labyrinth, interconnected hallways and hidden doors. The three of you had been so busy during the short amount of time you'd been here that you hadn't wandered farther than the necessary bedroom/bathroom/kitchen locations. Now that you had some down time, you were going to find out as many of your new home's secrets as you could. Your feet led you to a room with a dusty handle at the end of a long hallway. The boys had obviously never been in this room, or if they had, they didn't see reason to spend any time here. You gripped the handle and opened it to find...nothing. Absolutely nothing. The suspenseful dusty handle led to an equally dusty and empty room. You breathed out a sigh of disappointment and began walking back up the hallway. Every room you'd found so far had at least something in it: bookshelves filled with unnamable curio, machines that did Chuck-knows-what, one memorable room had only a rocking chair in pristine condition in the corner surrounded by a "do not cross" rope you'd find in front of a club. This was the first room you'd found that was completely empty! It didn't make sense! No...wait. It didn't make sense. Knowing what the Men of Letters were, not everything was as it appeared to be. That room had a secret. You were sure of it. You turned around to go back to the dusty room when you heard the front door slam from the distance and Dean's faint call of your name. The mystery room would have to wait, it seems. *************************** It was another week before you found time to go looking for the mystery room. The three of you had decided a break was well-earned and were taking the weekend off. Dean had dragged Sam to a bar. They tried to get you to come, but you preferred to stay home. Besides, you knew what would happen. Dean would get drunk and hit on some girl, probably take her to a motel close by or even back here to the bunker. Sam would drink a little at the bar, watching his brother find a girl to hook up with. The hot bartender would start flirting and the two of them would hit it off and he would bring her back here and spend the night and you'd be forced to see her in the kitchen tomorrow morning wearing his tshirt and making pancakes and--okay, calm down, you told yourself. You'd recently been developing feelings for the younger Winchester. Knowing that he saw you the way Dean sees you, a surrogate sister, and also knowing the types of girls Sam usually brought home, you tended to let your jealous imagination take over. It hurt to know that the two of you would never be. Not only for the reasons above, but for the fact that you both were hunters. Dating someone also in the life was tempting Fate at her finest. So, you turned down the offer to tag along. You had other ways you wanted to spend your time. You tried retracing your footsteps from the week before, but you hadn't entirely been paying attention then, so it took almost an hour to find the offshoot hallway that ended with the correct room. You felt the anticipation building as you turned the knob, but even though you knew there was nothing on the other side of the door (that you could see) you felt a pang of disappointment when you surveyed the standard 11 x 11 room. You walked into the middle of the room and looked around. "If I were a secret, where would I be?" You thought out loud to yourself. You kneeled down and started pressing and knocking on the floorboards. Nothing interesting happened. You walked around the edges of the room. The walls were covered in a peeling floral wallpaper from the 50's. You pressed on the walls in various locations. Nothing happened. You sighed and leaned up against one of the walls. Maybe this was really just an old, empty storage room. You absentmindedly picked at a rip in the wallpaper. Wait...what's that? You pulled on the rip a bit more and uncovered a perfect circle blackened into the wooden paneling. It could be nothing, but your intuition told you it wasn't. You pushed your thumb against the patch and heard a click. Turning, you saw on the other side of the room a section of the wall push inward like a door. Your eyes widened. You pushed the button again and the door closed. You ran to the wall, examining it. It sealed so well it was virtually undetectable. If you hadn't know it was there, you would never know. You ran across the room and pushed the button again. The door cracked open. Heart pounding, you walked to the door and pushed it farther open. All you could see was darkness. You pulled out your phone and turned on the flashlight. You could see shapes in the darkness. Oddly lumped shapes, sitting perfectly still at random intervals. Turning the light to the right, you saw a chain hanging from the ceiling. Against your better judgement, you pulled the chain. To your surprise, a light turned on overhead. How this odd area of the bunker still had working electricity, let alone a decades old lightbulb that still worked, you didn't even bother trying to understand. The Men of Letters were weirdly brilliant people. The light didn't illuminate as much as you would have liked, but it made the space light enough that your eyes could better adjust to the dimness. The odd lumps seemed to be furniture of some kind. You walked to the nearest one and pulled the sheet from over top of it to reveal...a couch. You were right, it's furniture. But why is it stuffed away and hidden like this? You walked around pulling sheets off to reveal various pieces: a coffee table, an end table, an antique armchair, a bookcase, a china cabinet...it was as if this was a secret stowaway room of some kind...just add a bed and it could have been someone's room. You came to the last item covered. It was large and in the corner of the room. You pulled the sheet to reveal a beautiful grand piano. You ran your hand over it. It was breathtaking. You'd played piano growing up, but once everything had happened and you'd entered the life, it was the first thing to fall off your radar. You'd been quite good, too. You'd won several competitions and even played live on your local cable channel on their "Young Prodigies" segment. It had been at least five years since you'd even touched a piano. You wondered if you remembered how. Opening the keylid, you found Middle C and pressed the key. Immediately you cringed. Not only had the sudden sound irrationally startled you in such a quiet, dark place, but the piano hadn't been tuned in years. Closing the keylid, you looked around at your findings. Smiling to yourself, you knew you'd found your new pet project. ********************* You spent as much time fixing up your new hideout (that term feels so juvenile but really, what else was it?) as you reasonably could. You wanted to keep it secret, so you were careful to only spend time there when the boys weren't home. If they were suspicious about your sudden increase and enthusiasm in volunteering to stay home on research duty during hunts, they didn't voice it. You tried to tell yourself that spending time away from Sam would help lessen your feelings for him, but you couldn't help thinking and worrying about him from the moment he left to the moment he returned. You never found out what happened the night they went to the bar. They didn't come back to the bunker until after you'd gone to bed, and you didn't care to ask. Perhaps your imagination was worse, but you didn't want reality to confirm it. You'd snuck in some lamps that you'd found in a storage room. Buying new bulbs for them and cleaning them a bit, you finally had sufficient light in the room. You could see more details of the room. The walls were a detailed oak paneling with intricate designs carved in the wood. The floor was wooden as well, with a large ornate (and very dusty) area rug taking up three-quarters of the room. It had taken you three runs with a vacuum cleaner to get all the dust out of the carpet and now the deep reds and earth tones shone through beautifully. You'd found a small wooden bar cart you'd missed the first time in a corner near the couch. Opening it, you'd been surprised to find a half-full bottle of what looked like whiskey and a decanter full of a rich, thick red liquid you were suspicious was not booze. The couch had needed a little cleaning and the entire room needed dusting. After a solid two weeks of sneaky work, the room was fairly clean. You'd even taken a few of your personal belongings and books to put on the bookshelf. The room had become livable, and you were going to take full advantage of your new secret. You turned to look at phase two of your rehabilitation of this room: the piano. It was going to be a pretty huge undertaking. You'd looked under the lid and there were no less than ten strings that needed replacing, all of them needed cleaning, and of course you needed to tune the whole thing. You glanced at your watch. It would have to wait. It was getting late and you didn't want to boys to get suspicious. Why you were so intent to hide this from them you didn't know. You turned off the lights and walked out of the room. Pressing the hidden button, your secret sealed itself away. You crossed the room and closed the door as quietly as possible. You turned to walk down the hallway--and walked smack into Sam Winchester. The impact had thrown you off balance (it was seriously like hitting a wall) and he reached out his hands to grip your shoulders and steady you. "(Y/n)? Here you are! We've been looking for you. We're going out tonight. You, me, and Dean. No, no protesting--" you'd opened your mouth to argue and he'd placed his finger over your lips. You wanted to kiss it. "It's been a long couple of weeks and you, especially, haven't had a night to relax." You sighed and he felt your shoulders drop in surrender. He smiled and your heart raced. He glanced at the door behind you. "What were you doing in there, anyway?" Your eyes got wide as your brain scrambled. "N-nothing!" You stated firmly. "I was just...exploring. I got lost. Thanks for finding me! Let's go have fun!" Hoping he would take the hint, you plastered a huge smile on your face and marched away down the hallway. He watched you turn the corner. He turned and opened the door to the room you'd come out of. It...was just an empty room. Shaking his head and quirking a smile at your endearing eccentricities, he closed the door and followed you.

[hellofastestnewsfan]

For Martin Law, Marie Kondo’s tidying regimen was life-changing, until it wasn’t. Law, a 32-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of Cambridge, went through with most of Kondo’s popular tidying method two years ago. “I managed to get rid of a great deal of items that I previously had found difficult to let go of,” he told me, including about half of his clothing.

After Law’s big cleanout, though, the stuff gradually crept back in. His kitchen gained a series of useful but not vital devices: a new cookie cutter, a larger whisk, a machine for making peanut butter. The accumulations of the past two years have added up. “The house is probably no better than it was—perhaps marginally better, but in reality probably no better,” he says. His commitment to having very little has, he confesses, petered out.

“If you adopt this approach—the KonMari Method—you’ll never revert to clutter again,” wrote Marie Kondo in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, published in the United States in the fall of 2014. Millions of people have bought her book, and many of those millions have since learned whether her promise holds for them as they systematically purge their homes of items that do not bring them happiness, or “spark joy,” as Kondo famously puts it.

I recently checked in with more than a dozen people who did their first KonMari-style cleanouts in 2015, 2016, or 2017. They were generally enthusiastic (even Martin Law) about the way Kondo’s book made them reconsider their relationship to material things, although many of them lamented the onslaught of new stuff that must always be kept at bay.

[Read: Marie Kondo and the privilege of clutter]

That process has come more easily to some than to others. “My house has never gone back to the way it was before I started doing this three years ago,” says KK Holland, a 37-year-old who lives in Santa Barbara, California. Yes, clutter occasionally mounts, but she works to keep it in check. “I remove items that no longer spark joy on an ongoing basis, and I am a pretty fierce guard of what comes into my house,” she told me.

At the end of 2017, she and her husband had a baby girl. “I’m happy to report our KonMari survived an infant,” Holland says. She insists that nothing makes her uniquely good at vanquishing clutter, but that Kondo’s approach has staying power because it prompts people to fundamentally revisit why they own what they own.

Most people I talked to, though, carved out exceptions to or ignored certain recommendations in the process outlined in the book. A couple of them kept more books than they thought Kondo would want them to. And two women—one in Massachusetts, the other in Hanover, Germany—independently told me they thought it was too onerous to remove everything from their handbags each day upon returning home, as Kondo prescribes.

And for some people, the project of going through every last thing they own, one by one, was too much to handle. Mike Fu, a 33-year-old Brooklynite, estimates that he made it through about three-quarters of the KonMari method three or four years ago. “I probably chickened out at the point where it was going through all the papers and non-clothing or -book objects,” he told me. Fu says he was at one point enticed by minimalist “lifestyle porn,” such as an image of a “sparsely decorated all-white living room with an iMac,” but he’s since come to terms with having a bit of clutter. And he and his partner are planning to give the KonMari method another try, “at our own glacial pace.”

Jasmine Bager, who’s 35 and lives in New York City, also tried a KonMari cleanout but decided it wasn’t for her. After she piled up all her clothing for a Kondo-style review a few years ago, she found the prospect of carrying through with the project too exhausting and avoided the pile, shifting it back and forth between her chair and her bed. She later came up with her own decluttering system, which she says works for her: Every day, when she leaves her apartment, she forces herself to take three items with her to get rid of.

There is some flexibility to Bager’s rule (a bag of garbage counts toward the quota, and she doesn’t follow it if she’s in a real hurry), but she has been sticking with it for more than a year. In the course of what she calls her “little game with the city,” she’s been leaving behind various objects—a magazine, a key chain, a book, shoes—around town, unlabeled, with an expectation that someone who needs them will claim them. Once, months after abandoning a headband she’d made herself, she was pleased to see a stranger wearing it at a subway stop near her apartment.

Whether or not they followed the instructions in Kondo’s book, Bager and the others I talked to for this story discarded a significant amount of stuff. Some thought about it in terms of volume—a Jeep Grand Cherokee’s worth of objects, or enough furniture to fill a two-bedroom apartment. One woman estimated that she and her husband chucked 60 to 70 percent of their belongings.

Even with all this throwing out, people have had very few regrets. Most told me they now don’t miss a thing, even stuff that they hesitated to discard. Some recalled isolated instances of (usually fleeting) second-guessing. Velma Gentzsch, a 40-year-old in St. Louis who KonMari-ed in 2017, says she wishes she still had the pair of brown leather boots she parted with. “I loved them, but they were half a size too big … [but] it’s not a huge deal,” she says.

Christina Refford, whose fourth KonMari-versary is this year, remembers twice going to her bookshelf—once for a stack of cooking magazines, once for Susan Faludi’s Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women—only to realize that she’d tossed out what she was looking for. She wasn’t too bothered. “Almost anything I would’ve gotten rid of can be found somewhere else,” Refford says.

The most missed item in all these purges was a special-edition pack of Pepsi bottles, each emblazoned with a cartoon alligator, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the University of Florida’s football program. The bereaved: Imani Clenance, a 34-year-old graduate of the university who lives in New York City. “Every now and then I think about those, like, Hmm, those might’ve been kind of cool to keep … But if I really wanted them, I could probably find them somewhere on eBay,” Clenance says. (I looked—she could.)

Marie Kondo writes that when doing a cleanout, “starting with mementos spells certain failure,” for they are plentiful, meaningful, and often irreplaceable. Kondo recommends tackling this difficult category last because it’s so hard, and indeed it’s one that the people I talked to struggled with. Many of them still haven’t finished it.

Lisa Shininger, who’s 40 and lives in Dayton, Ohio, told me about a beloved, ragged old T-shirt that she agonized over when she KonMari-ed in 2016. It carried so many memories for her that discarding it would feel like discarding them too. After rescuing it from her get-rid-of pile a few times, she ultimately let it go, and now she reports that she doesn’t miss it.

“If something didn’t make it in a move, or somebody else got rid of it by accident and I didn’t know about it—those kinds of things I regretted not having anymore,” Shininger says. “But I found that [wasn’t the case] when I myself made the deliberate choice [to get rid of it].” She particularly appreciates Kondo’s suggestion that people thank their stuff as they bid it goodbye—she thinks that helps prevent regret.

One particularly diligent KonMari practitioner, a 62-year-old retired child psychologist living in Washington, D.C., mentioned a strategy that helped her with this stubborn class of belongings. (She asked me not to publish her name because she didn’t want her clients’ families reading about her personal life.) She took pictures of the art her children had made in school and some trinkets she’d received from her grandparents. “I enjoy looking at the pictures,” she said, “but do not miss the actual objects.”

Another devotee, Ian Bate, shared his own secret to success. “I was surprisingly ruthless about [mementos], partly because I have an advantage: I’m old.” Bate is 70, an age at which he says it’s become clear which memories matter most to him and, more practically, “who might or might not like [my stuff] after I’m gone.”

“A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective,” Kondo writes. “It is life transforming. I mean it.” Language like this makes her book veer into self-help territory, but based on the experiences of the people I talked to, Kondo wasn’t overpromising. Whether a matter of causation or just correlation, many of the people I spoke to also said that their cleanouts coincided with pivotal moments in their lives.

One had just broken up with a longtime boyfriend when she did hers two years ago, and is planning another with her new partner now that they have moved in together. One found that his cleanout finally unburdened him of keepsakes he’d inherited when his parents died almost a decade earlier. One KonMari-ed, and then made long-procrastinated headway on getting her finances in order. And one finally went on the six-month backpacking trip she’d been thinking about for a long time, once she didn’t feel weighed down by her stuff.

“I wish I had encountered the book when I was 30,” Bate told me. He reflected on his career as a “good American consumer” and concluded that the majority of what he’d bought over the course of his life wouldn’t meet his new KonMari-calibrated standard. “If I had done it back when I was 30,” he says, “I just would have saved myself a lot of hassle by not buying and having to dispose of endless piles of crap.”

from The Atlantic http://bit.ly/2TP6ylY

[maggieminordesignssculpture-blog]

10 Books that can Make you a Happier Person

I believe that our surroundings and our mindset are intimately connected. Our surroundings not only include what we look at but also who we talk to, what we watch on TV and what we read.

If you're like me and you're always striving to be a better person here are 10 books that have transformed my life. They have affected every aspect of my life...and are the reason I'm even writing this blog and running my business today. 

Even after I've read them I still keep them around my house in strategic places depending on what kind of support I need in my life. For example, I've kept the Tao of Pooh and my gratitude journal on my bedside tables for almost two years. Even if I'm not actively using them they still serve as positive anchors in my morning and nightly rituals. The gratitude journal reminds me to do my gratitude exercises and the Tao of Pooh reminds me to meditate and connect with what is. 

I've also placed books facing outward on my bookshelf in my living room to help keep the messages of the books in the forefront of my mind. It also reminds me that like friends my books are there to support me and I can refer to them again whenever I need guidance.

They are in no particular order and if you're looking for change in your life and you feel a call from one of these books, I encourage you to buy it and carve a little time out to read a chapter a day....even if its just one day a week.

Understanding that your Feeling are the Key to Happiness

Reading the Desire Map by Danielle LaPorte changed my life. There's a part in the book where she talks about how we go after goals and things in our life because of how we think they will make us feel...this part was a gigantic ah-ha moment for me. It allowed me to finally understand what was really driving me and would become the foundation for all of my personal development. It allowed me to plan a future, not based on goals that caused me anxiety, but instead on things that make me feel good. 

In fact, this book is one of the foundations for my own theories behind room design.

Being Grateful is a Direct Link to Happiness

I'll admit it. I was a total skeptic at first about gratitude. When I first watched The Secret and everyone said that I needed to be grateful in order to bring more abundance into my life I totally scoffed. But then I heard Oprah talk about her gratitude journal...and then countless others. It was like alright Universe I get it! So I bought this little journal from amazon and started writing at least three things I was grateful for every night before I went to bed. It took almost six weeks before I started to feel the affects....which I have to say were life changing. 

I went from thinking how much my life sucked every night to how many positive things I had in my life...and more importantly it started me on a journey to seeing the world through more positive eyes. It also broke a life long habit of me comparing myself to pretty much everyone around me.

Learning to Live with More Ease

The first time I read the Tao of Pooh I liked it because it was easy to read and it had little lessons in it that made a lot of sense. Seven years later when I read it I realized that it used little stories to deliver powerful messages. The author had captured in super approachable language how the way we think about and approach our lives determines our experience of it. I'm looking forward to reading it again in another seven years and seeing if I find an even deeper message. 

I keep this book on my bed stand now as not only a reminder of how I want to live, but also as a reference guide. When I'm having trouble settling down for the night and meditation just isn't doing it....I reach for the Tao of Pooh and open it up....I almost always find the answer to what I'm looking for.

What you Read your Children Affects you too

If anyone were ever to ask me what the most influential book I ever read was I wouldn't say War and Peace or anything like that...I would saw The Little Engine that Could. Why? Because I remember my parents reading it to me vividly. I remember cheering on the train with all its toys. I actually remember thinking if the engine can I can too...and that's a strong message to give a child. And I have no doubt that I wouldn't be where I am today without this book.

I also think that what we read our children impacts us. After all you're the one reading it to them night after night so why not make it a positive experience for everyone....give everyone a boost. And prominently display the cover outwardly so you and your child is constantly reminded of the book's message.

Boundaries...the Foundation of all Happiness

After my life came crashing down around me about 5 years ago this was one of the first books that I read. I read it over the weekend. I just sat on my front with my mouth japing wide open because I couldn't believe what I had been allowing in my life. This book changed all that and continues to influence me in some of my most difficult situations. Because of this book, I now understand how to say no, and how to be respectful in my friendships and intimate relationships.

In general it has taught me how to give myself the space to let in happiness.

A Little Moral Support to Declutter your Home & your Life

Marie Kondo's masterclass on how to organize and tidy up will answer any questions you have on decluttering. Her philosophy is simple but its powerful...get rid of anything that doesn't bring you joy. Simple but harder in real life especially if you haven't done it before. 

However, as I've written about countless times on this blog decluttering your home is connected directly to decluttering your life. Our things represent past events, people and emotions that we're carrying onto....so the physical act of getting rid sometimes requires a little instruction. If you need that then this is that book.

Trusting is a Cornerstone to Happiness

In order feel happy we have to feel positive about the future. In order to feel positive about the future we have to trust....trust the people around us, trust ourselves, trust God (or whatever bigger power you believe in), and trust that our life will go in a positive direction. 

I picked up this book at a time in my life when I didn't believe in anyone or anything...and it helped a lot. In the book she calls the reader out on all of the excuses (valid and not valid) that we give not to trust. She also helps you realize how important trusting is to moving forward in life...and to your general happiness.

Getting Over your Money Issues

My eyes were opened when I read Get Rich Lucky Bitch. I never realized how many of my everyday thoughts and childhood hangups were preventing me from being successful. This book breaks out all of the different layers of what holds us back from making the money that deep down we know that we can. 

Written primarily for women the book opens up by talking about all of the super negative messages that we receive about money as women...in particular how our culture subtly degrades women who have made it on their own and how to over come that. This book and this section in particular made me really see for the first time the power play that money has played in my own family particularly among its men and women...and how strongly that has impacted me as an adult. It made me realize how much I had been dumbing myself down to fit into the demure role a woman is supposed to play. As I've become aware of this, grown beyond it, and ventured forth with my head held high I've noticed a subtle backlash because I haven't 'stayed in my place'...and its because of this book and Denise's amazing Lucky Bitch Bookcamp that I have persevered. 

How to Get What you Want

I've loved Jack Canfield ever since I saw The Secret. I've watched countless people interview him and every time I've learn something new...so when I found out about his book The Success Principles I knew I needed to read it. But I kept putting it off. Then a few weeks ago I sat on a bed in the house I'm staying in, thought about the book, and looked up at it on the shelf. I immediately pulled it down and started reading it. It was clearly a sign.

I've been carrying it around like my success bible ever since and man let me tell you its powerful. Not only does it help you figure out what you want but it takes you step by step through the process of getting it. It's easy to read and practical. If you're unhappy with your life and want to change this is the book you should read.

Forgive Everyone and you will be Happier

I used to think that people who forgave were wooses...but what I realize in retrospect is that I didn't really understand what forgiveness was...or most importantly that it was not about the other person but about me. So as I began to forgive with the help of Iyanla Vanzant's Forgiveness course I felt lighter and more free....and finally happy. I'm not going to lye it was a long painful process to forgive all of the wrongs in my life but it was worth it. Because now I actually understand what happiness is....and I know that I will be happier and happier as I get older. 

So I'm ending this list with Iyanla's book, Forgiveness. I haven't read it but it was the basis for the course that changed my life and I knew if I didn't include it that I would regret it.

Forgiveness is the foundation of happiness (if done correctly).....and this book and course show you how to so it in detail.

For More Inspirational Artwork and Design Ideas

Visit my modern sculpture, modern wall sculptures, abstract canvas artwork, and abstract framed wall art pages. And click on more inspirational posts...

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