1. J-41 Eco Design Shoe Line, the Madrid…
J-41 Madrid
Recycled elastic and rubber outsoles, plus satin insets, make this vegan shoe a bit more eco than your average criss-cross Mary Jane. I’ve already gone dancing in them, and worn them to work, and I love their girliness/sturdiness combo.
2. Mixed Emotions Card Deck
This deck, which features a card for most any emotion you could ever have, helps to identify how you feel, and gives you opportunities to shift your mood, open up a conversation, and get more deeply fluent in emotional intelligence. I am also looking forward to introducing it to my kids. Right now Nathaniel feels extremely distressed if I give him any kind of correction, and maybe working with these cards will open that up to more nuanced responses on both ends. I especially like the illustrations; an idea like this could be so great, but if the illustrations were corny, it would fall flat.
3. Laura Egley Taylor’s iced oatmeal raisin cookies.
She brought them into the office after her husband and son decided they weren’t fans. Well, I am! Two cookies worth of fandom right here. Now if I could only find a little nook to crawl into and take a nap…
Subscribe to the Mothering.com Blogs Feed
© 2009 Mothering Magazine
Since I created the Mixed Emotions card deck, people have come up with all kinds of new uses. Rhonda McCloud, a crisis trainer who works with children and their parents came up with a way to play “Emotional Charades.”
Rhonda lays cards face down on the table and asks family members to pick one without letting anyone else see it. Then they either describe the picture, or tell of an experience they had that caused them to feel that emotion. It’s then up to the others to guess what the feeling is.
So, for example, if someone drew the Embarrassed card, she might describe the picture of a woman standing naked in public, trying to hide her nudity. Or she might say, “When I threw up all over the front counter of a Dairy Queen, I felt_________.” Or she might say, “This card describes how I felt when ____________.”
Rhonda says, “The families don’t want the game to end and have so much fun learning.”