Stuff

MY Best vs. THE Best – 523 Ways to Be Awesome

April 5, 2016 by Kathryn

Today is the official release day of 523 Ways to Be Awesome! It’s the second book in the Drops of Awesome series and I’m super excited about it.

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I guess you could say that today is the book’s birthday and since I wrote it, David Miles designed it, Stephanie Yan edited it, and Christopher Robbins (not Winnie the Pooh’s homie) masterminded the whole thing, we are all accepting gifts and salutations through midnight tonight.

The book is doing well on Amazon already thanks to you Awesome people and Familius has been working hard to get this book and the last one into some epic retail locations. I’m not naming names, but someone I know has been stalking the book shelves at Whole Foods because… ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!… any minute every Whole Foods in North America will have one of these bad boys.

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The whole thing is totally surreal to me.

Free range happy bacon.

$10/ounce soy cheese.

Handbags and leggings fashioned out of Kale and Hemp fibers.

Book
s by Kathryn Thompson.

All things that belong at Whole Foods.

We’re even working on scheduling a Costco book signing! You guys! I may get to hang out at Costco like the Blendtec guy, hawking my wares while people try to avoid eye contact and then eventually succumb to David’s gorgeous design and buy my book.

All of this is thrilling and I’m stoked. However, in some ways it puts me in a place where I desperately need to apply Drops of Awesome thinking.

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The truth is… there is always something more I could be doing to send this book out into the world more effectively. In fact, there are so many things I could be doing to spread the word about 523 Ways to Be Awesome that it can be really overwhelming. I slip into focusing on everything I’m not doing, which is ironic, considering the theme and content of the book.

Yesterday I sat looking at the list of marketing tasks I wanted to do before the book was released. The list was vast. And the check marks were… not as vast. And I was a day away from launch. And I didn’t have long to focus on it because I had to make dinner and get my son to baseball so I could go run a softball practice for my daughter.

In situations like this, it’s easy to think, “I’m not doing my best to launch this project.”

But then you have to dig further, “I may not be doing THE Best, but am I currently doing MY Best?” These are not the same thing.

THE Best is a notion that there is one perfect right way. It’s rarely realistic and frequently frustrating. MY Best is an honest assessment of what I am capable of doing based on my current circumstances, knowledge, and abilities.

And maybe My Best isn’t as good as I want it to be. So, what can I realistically do to increase my capacity today without beating myself up about what my capacity looked like yesterday?

To help with this process, I’ve been keeping a weekly to-do list, rather than daily. I write down everything I hope to accomplish for the week. Then, each morning I break my day down into time chunks that work around the flow of my non-negotiables and appointments.

Then I add as many items from my weekly to-do list as I can fit into those time chunks.

This gives me a realistic picture of what I actually have time to accomplish in a given day and I’m not quite as hard on myself when I find that I can’t do EVERYTHING. Time is finite and all I can do is use my time well. Sometimes this means changing my non-negotiables, cutting down on the appointments and commitments, and saying “no” to a few more things so I can say “yes” to different things.

I don’t have all the answers to this because I still get frustrated sometimes when I know there is a better way to do something and I just can’t quite get there. But I do know that I am happier when I focus on what I’m doing right and on realistic positive change.

I wrote a book. Drop of Awesome.

I gathered a team of fabulous friends and supporters to help promote it. Drop of Awesome.

I have been studying and planning and learning how to better execute social media strategy and I become more focused every day. Drop of Awesome.

Thank you so much to everyone who is taking this journey with me! Let the launch day festivities begin.

Madama Butterfly – Fathom Events Giveaway

March 22, 2016 by Kathryn

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I’ve only attended one live opera. I wasn’t expecting to like it since I’d spent my entire life making fun of opera singers and their vibrato but I figured I had to go to one once in my life. The show I attended was La Traviata and I fell deeply in love with Verdi and gained an appreciation for opera music in general. The music was so passionate, so intense, and the level of skill needed to perform it was so high that I’ve been an opera fan ever since.

So, when Fathom Events reached out to me to see if I wanted to give away some passes to their upcoming live broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera’s performance of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, I couldn’t pass it up.

The show is Saturday, April 2^nd at 9:55am PST and the tickets I have are for AMC Southcenter near Seattle. The show is being broadcast all over the country and there’s an encore performance on April 6^th. They have an amazing cast and crew and it should be a gorgeous production. If you love opera or if you’re even curious about it, I recommend you check this out.

If you’d like to see the show, leave a sentence or two with your feelings about live opera and how many tickets you’d like. I have 5 admit-2 passes to give away and I’ll draw for winners this Friday night, March 25^th, at 10pm PST.

Sometimes Good Food Tastes Good

February 22, 2016 by Kathryn

I’ve been dieting and REALLY NOT DIETING and then dieting again for most of my adult life. I fluctuate in size and in most other measures of health and I work hard to shield my kids from my food weirdness. However I’m sure I shield them less than I intend to and it’s not ideal.

I’m a vegan.

Nope. I’m Paleo.

I eat whatever I want, dangit!

Whole 30 for life.

Chocolavores unite!

What my kids see is just food. On the table. Some of it’s good. Some of it’s less so. They know I’m always cooking some weird new thing and they mostly accept it, although sometimes with grumblings and rumblings.

Often, when I’m trying something new, I make two complete meals, one for me that I tell the kids is to help my body be healthier, and one for them to keep them happy.

Currently I’ve stripped it back to a Drops of Awesome approach to diet and nutrition. I try to rack up as many good choices as I can and I don’t stress too much about the junk that slips in now and then. It’s working at the moment, in that I’m not stressed about food and it’s become like a game to see how many vegetables and tablespoons of flax seed I can consume each day.

So you’ll see my plate overflowing with roasted vegetables and chicken and my kids are piling up on white rice and cheese. Everyone’s happy.

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However, I was recently reading Jonathan Bailor’s book, The Calorie Myth, an exploration of hundreds of medical studies about how our bodies actually evolve with diet and exercise. It had a section about helping our kids form good habits with food and I thought, “If I’m trying to eat more vegetables, lean meats, and good fats because that’s the healthiest way to eat, why did I give up the battle of encouraging my kids to do the same?”

They may not be having problems with health or fitness now, but if they keep eating the way they are, they will have problems in their future. It’s a difficult thing to figure out because, if anything, my kids struggle with being underweight, so I feel justified filling them up with empty calories to bulk them up when what I should really be doing is helping them eat more, higher-quality foods.

The problem is, I’m willing to eat healthful food simply because I know it’s good for me. My kids expect things to taste good. So, the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on adapting favorite recipes to make them a few Drops of Awesome better for everyone. I’ve had some hits and some misses, but more hits and it’s encouraging.

Yesterday when the kids got home from school, rather than letting them get their usual bowl of breakfast cereal, I spread lettuce leaves with a Greek yogurt dip they like, filled them with sliced turkey breast and made little roll-ups. They all gave me the stink-eye at first. But every one of them ended up loving the new snack.

Then for dinner I took a family favorite, cheeseburger pie, made it crustless, and changed the topping. Instead of topping it with a bunch of cheddar cheese, I topped it with a little cheddar cheese, some low-fat cottage cheese, an egg and several egg whites, and broccoli florets.

I held my breath. This was a major overhaul. But they all, LOVED it. Even the pickiest, Wanda, asked for seconds. And in the family prayer, Magoo said he was thankful for all the yummy food I’d been making lately.

We’re making progress.

The cherry on the top came at lunch today when I surprised Wanda with leftovers. She hates leftovers on principle. However, today she was ecstatic to eat her “new favorite meal,” the healthier version of cheeseburger pie.

“I like this better than mac and cheese!” she said. High praise, my friends. “What’s the real name of this dinner? I want to know because last summer in swimming lessons my teacher had me yell out my favorite food when I did a cannonball at the end of class and if she has me do that again next summer, I want to yell, ‘THIS THING!’”

THIS THING, indeed. Drops of Awesome.

Seeking Ambassadors of Awesome!

February 18, 2016 by Kathryn

523 Ways to Be Awesome, the second Drops of Awesome book, is set to bounce April 5th from Familius and I would love some help getting the word out.

I would love that help from you.

I would love to appoint you as an Ambassador of Awesome.

Ambassadors of Awesome agree to do their best to do their duty to tell people about all the ways they are currently or can become Awesome.

If you’re an Ambassador of Awesome, you agree to receive email from me and the marketing team at Familius. The emails will contain Awesome Missions that we’d love your help with. Of course, you choose which Missions work best with your schedule and your network.

In exchange for your willingness to help with the launch, you will receive an advanced digital copy of the new book 523 Ways to Be Awesome and access to a private Ambassadors of Awesome Facebook page where we will all share positivity and have a great time together.

There will also be other giveaways and incentives exclusive to the launch team as April 5th gets closer.

If you’re interested in joining our team, please let us harvest your information below. We will never give your info to anyone besides our small team and we’ll try not to overwhelm your inbox with Awesome.

Please sign up below if you’d like to join us.

Tomorrowland: The World is Hopeless Because of You so Be Hopeful, OKAY!?

May 26, 2015 by Kathryn

I blame Johnny Depp for the letdown I experienced watching Tomorrowland with my kids on Memorial Day. It’s a summer blockbuster based on a Disneyland attraction so there’s no chance it can be good, right? Well. I was surprised by my love for Pirates of the Carribean – Part One of A Thousand and that love left me with a ray of hope that Disney could pull off something like that again sometime. But Johnny Depp was not in this movie. Neither was joy.

Tommorowland was a hundred minute prologue leading up to a 30 minute propaganda fest about never giving up hope and working together for a better tomorrow. Now, I’m all about never giving up hope and working together for a better tomorrow, but I hate being beat over the head with messaging.

I like to be entertained, and gently educated by a filmmaker who tells me a story and lets me draw my own conclusions. There can be some direct messaging but it has to be done right.

Tomorrowland ended up looking like a TV commercial for clean energy and youth engagement. Yay clean energy! Yay youth tackling social issues! That’s great.

Tell me a story.

Recently we watched Rudy with the kids for the first time. I had forgotten how much I loved that movie. Mid-twenties dyslexic runty athlete struggles repeatedly to get into the college of his dreams, won’t take no for an answer and ends up getting the stuffing beat out of him as he tries to prove that he’s an athlete – unsuccessfully. What he proves is – he’s got heart and you can succeed at anything if you never give up. He starts a legacy of higher education in his family. He makes me cry. And then he becomes a Hobbit.

Rudy didn’t have nearly as many decapitated flesh-covered robots as Tomorrowland and it definitely had more swearing, but it’s hands-down a better movie. And there are pep talks in the movie about never quitting and about having hope, but they are part of dialogue between the characters, not direct address to the audience as the next generation of robot recruiters marches off into a sea of wind turbines.

Yes they do.

A highlight of the film was Hugh Laurie as the evil bad guy who doesn’t love hope or spunky kid robots with British accents or humanity. That guy could make Anakin Skywalker’s lines from Star Wars Episode II seem moderately interesting. He’s that good. But not good enough to save this movie.

My five-year-old was simultaneously scared and bored and the other two, who love just about every movie by virtue of us seeing it in a theatre, were both highly underwhelmed.

“It was pretty anti-climactic and didn’t really have a story,” Laylee said, “But thanks for taking us.”

If you’re looking for something to do next weekend with your kids, I suggest blowing up lego models of the Eiffel Tower in your back yard and reading pamphlets from the Gates Foundation in your best George Clooney voice. It will be cheaper and probably more fun.

After writing this review, I decided to peruse the internet and see what critics were saying, something I failed to do before going to the movie. My favorite snippet came from A. O. Scott at the New York Times:

“My son briefly had a youth baseball coach whose way of inspiring his demoralized players was to stand at the dugout entrance screaming at them to have fun. “Tomorrowland,” Brad Bird’s energetic new film, a shiny live-action spectacle from Disney, reminds me of that guy. There is nothing casual or whimsical about this movie’s celebration of imagination, optimism and joy. On the contrary: It’s a determined and didactic argument in favor of all those things, and an angry indictment of everyone who opposes them.”

Yes.

Veganish – Review and Giveaway

February 4, 2015 by Kathryn

I am Vegan sometimes. Sometimes I’m Paleo. Every once in a while I’m a Dorito-tarian. (Don’t tell Jamie Oliver!) I love food. I dream about food. I consume it in ample quantities and I spend a lot of time thinking about what I do eat, what I should eat, and what I will eat.

One of my biggest goals is adding more vegetable into my life in a delicious and sustainable way. By sustainable, I’m not talking about composting and buying local. I’m talking about eating vegetables in a way that I’m willing to do over and over again till death do we part, which hopefully won’t be for a long time because, LOOK, I’m eating so many vegetables!

So I’m always checking out new cookbooks and I love vegan and vegetarian cookbooks especially because they focus so heavily on veg. I’ll take an awesome vegan casserole recipe and substitute chicken for beans or cheese for fake cheese. Because I like me some tasty animal products.

Mielle Chenier-Cowan Rose’s new-ish cookbook Veganish: The Omnivore’s Guide to Plant-Based Cooking speaks to the world of vegetable lovers who add in an occasional animal product for the health benefits. It’s pretty fabulous. The book has no pictures and a horrible index but the recipes and information are so good that I’ve gone back to it again and again. This is surprising if you know me and how heavily I rely on good indexing.

I worked through several of her recipes, cooking from it almost exclusively for a week and we enjoyed nearly everything. I think during that week I tripled my family’s veggie intake and not just for the meals I was preparing from her recipes. Veganish gave so many great veggie prep instructions and just plain motivation to live and eat healthier, that I found myself snacking better, sleeping better and drinking more water between meals.

In the introduction to the book, Mielle says she wants it to be more of a cookbook than a recipe book, to inhabit the nightstand as much as the kitchen. It did just that. I read it from cover to cover and got really fired up about eating better.

I’m sure you will too. If your New Year’s resolutions for healthy living are starting to fade, this book is a good refresher. I’m giving away a copy. ~~Just leave a comment below, listing your favorite veggie and I’ll choose a winner the evening of February 6th. You need to live in the continental US to win, unless you want to pay the shipping.~~ The winner is comment #5 – Valeri!

For those of you who don’t win the book, you get something too. By request, Mielle is sharing her Massaged Kale Salad with my readers. As a person who wants to love kale so I can feel superior to my spinach-eating friends, I was excited to find a salad that finally made this monster green palatable to me. I LOVE this salad. Maybe it’s because the kale is so happy and relaxed after its massage and happy food is tasty food. Whatever the reason, this one is a winner. I’ve made it for extended family dinners and neighborhood potlucks and it’s a crowd pleaser, among people willing to put kale in their mouths and chew. Enjoy!

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Christmas Gift Idea Smackdown

December 1, 2014 by Kathryn

Raise your hand if you’ve been planning and shopping for Christmas presents for months. If you’re like me, you feel like you’re behind if you’re not done your shopping by December One. But it’s December One and I’m not done. I want to spend that month celebrating, not fighting over the last Queen Elsa’s demonic disembodied head hair salon. So we need to get moving.

Let’s help each other out. I’m gonna throw out some gift suggestions I’m excited about and then you show me yours in the comments section. If you’ve blogged gift ideas, include a link to your page. Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list. It’s just stuff I like and think you might like too. Also keep in mind that you can give pretty much everyone on your list a copy of my book and I won’t judge you for your lack of creativity.

For Babies

Silicon Bibs – I had this style of bib in hard plastic for my kids and I loved that you could just scoop up the food from the pocket and shove it back in their mouths. These silicon versions should be more durable, less hazardous, and they are stinkin’ cute, yes?

Orbit labels by InchBug – I’ve given these as gifts countless times. You personalize the bands and they can be stretched around cups, sippy cups, bottles or sports bottles. For the second line of text, I now put my cell phone number. I have been called multiple times when we’ve abandoned the One True Sippy Cup at Target or track camp. Kids won’t love them, but their parents will!

Sophie Giraffe – Classic, Sweet, must have for a new baby.

For Kids

Snap circuits – My kids have built alarms, fans, and light switches with these versatile, durable electronic toys. Hours of educational fun and with the simple instructions they can do it themselves at an earlier age than you’d think.

Break Your Own Geodes – We ordered this specific set from Amazon when my son turned 9 and became obsessed with crystals. Every rock had beautiful sparkly joy inside and it was really fun to discover.

Zoobs – If your kid likes legos, check these out. These are probably the coolest kids building toys I know of. Their creations can pivot on hinges and there are so many cool projects they can build.

Party Machine – So, I bought this for me. And for a wedding present once. But the kids LOVE it. I probably really bought it for them, right? The sound quality is good, but not amazing, and it can hook up to your phone or MP3 player over blutooth or with a patch cable. The lights are really fun and it’s turned our Saturday chores into a dance party.

For Old People Like Me

Fit Bit – I keep giving these as gifts. I’m not sure why. It’s like I just want other people to count their steps and sign up to be my friend on the fitbit app so they can pound me. I am only asking for trouble. It’s fun to keep track of my movement during the day and sleep at night and compete with my friends and family. I’ve used the One and the Flex and I prefer the One.

*Punk Wireless Speaker by Sol Republic – I’ve tried several wireless speakers and I loved this one. It’s rugged and has great sound for a device this small. Give the gift of kitchen dance parties.

Glass Water bottle – We love these bottles and have given them as gifts several times. There’s no better way to drink water than out of a glass container. It just tastes better and these are so cute.

For Everybody

Woot Shirts – There is a Woot shirt for everyone.

Experiences – Indoor Skydiving, Laser Tag, Memberships to your favorite Museum, or Waterpark, tickets to a sports event, concert, or other performance

Something You Were Going to Buy Anyway – Sometimes I think about what I’ll need to buy for the person in the coming months. Buying it for Christmas and wrapping it up eliminates the need to “come up with something” to give someone. For example, I may give my kids supplies for band or ballet or baseball. They’re excited to get something useful to them and it saves me time and money. Clothes items are great for this too.

*Sample provided to me by manufacturer.

Affiliate links are included in this post.

An Awesome Book Tour

November 20, 2014 by Kathryn

This week I get to be an author on tour. The sentence I first came up with to begin this post was, “This week I get to pretend to be an author on tour,” but if we’re sticking with the Drops of Awesome belief that in the small moments of doing great things, we actually become the people we dream of being, then today? Tomorrow? I am a rock star author. I am leaving my home to go somewhere different and promote my book. I’m on tour.

Drops of Awesome!

I’ll tell you what there will be on this tour. Books. And good food. And great friends. And LOTS of vitamin C.

I’ve been fighting a cold since Saturday. Oh what a fierce battle it has been, but so far, so good. Thanks to some great advice from people who live on Facebook – *HI PEOPLE WHO LIVE ON FACEBOOK* – I have boosted the heck out of my immune system so the germs keep doing their worst but my body keeps shoving them back down.

This trip is something I’ve wanted to do since I wrote the original Drops of Awesome blog post in 2012. I have family and friends in Utah and a whole bunch of readers there, readers who should be friends and who hopefully will be after this weekend. I went to school there and I’ve been wanting to go back and connect with a bunch of people who have supported Drops of Awesome from the first day I put it online.

When you publish a small book, and honestly nearly any-sized book these days, you mostly promote it yourself. There aren’t big, extravagant book tours and I get it. They don’t really sell that many books. But this trip isn’t about selling books. Okay. It’s a little bit about selling books, as evidenced by the orders placed by Barnes and Noble for my events and the fifty-ton suitcase full of Awesome reading material I checked at the baggage counter. Mostly though, it’s about meeting people. And spreading Awesome. And seeing my new niece in person for the first time. And playing games with my sisters. And buying new clothes so I can be on TV because it is a fact that you can never be on TV wearing clothes that have been worn previously.

A word about the outfit. I love the outfit. The outfit took me three hours of concentrated shopping to find. The email from KSL recommended that I not wear black, white, red, patterns, sparkles… the list went on. Now, all of these recommendations were specifically to help me look better on TV and I’m grateful for them, but, MAN it was hard to find an outfit to meet those specifications. I did. It is accidentally purple. I know. Weird.

Now I talked about how I’m doing a lot of the promotion myself, but I’ve been lucky to work with a publisher that has a small staff of talented publicists who work way too many hours and they’ve helped me out a ton putting this Utah trip together and with other marketing stuff. When I said, “Utah,” they said, “How high?” and then they helped me schedule radio and TV interviews and book signings all in one weekend to maximize the trip.

And they’re not the only ones to hook me up. My brother-in-law offered to buy me a plane ticket down there with his bounteous air miles, and my family and friends have offered up so many spare beds, sofas, and air mattresses, I could stay for three weeks and sleep in a different bed each night.

It’s Wednesday night and I’m on a plane from Seattle to Salt Lake City. Sitting alone. Well, not alone exactly. But no one is asking me for snacks or where the potty is, or telling me their ears feel funny. It’s a strange way to travel.

Dan and several of my lady friends are taking care of the kids this week, getting them to their band practices and performances, Cub Scout meetings, music and dance classes, birthday parties and a whole lot of school. I’m super grateful because the truth is? I’m really excited for this time to get away to talk to people about ideas I’m passionate about. What could be more fun than this?

Event details can be found here.

My BYU Radio interview with Kim Power Stilson from earlier today can be found here.

I’ll be on Studio 5 with Brooke Walker on KSL in Utah on Friday at 1:00pm MST. (Link to come)

The pictures in this post are from a recent book talk and signing at King County Library in Duvall. Below are pictures of me making crazy-sauce faces while I speak. You know you want to see that in person! If you’re in Utah, come see me.

Hubby Can Draw Drops of Awesome Art Print Giveaway

September 24, 2014 by Kathryn

Tons of great things have come from releasing Drops of Awesome out into the world. One of my favorites is that it helped me discover Brandon Miltgen’s art. We met through my blog and when I saw the Drops of Awesome art he created, I had to hang it on the wall of my family room.

And there it lives, even now.

I posted a link to his work when I first discovered it and several people asked me where they could buy it, but he wasn’t set up to sell prints back then.

But… dun dun dun…. his wife recently set up an Etsy shop to sell is work and you can go there to get the Drops of Awesome print or a ton of other great pieces.

To launch the shop, Hubby Can Draw is giving away a free 14×11 print of the Drops of Awesome piece. To enter, just:

1. Visit and Like Hubby Can Draw’s Facebook page;

2. Share any post from the Hubby Can Draw Facebook page (Be sure to mention that you found Hubby Can Draw through Daring Young Mom to be part of the giveaway!)

That’s it! Anyone can enter from today until Saturday, the 27th at noon. One random winner will then be chosen from all the entrants and contacted through Facebook for their free Drops of Awesome print!

So head on over, and be sure to browse their shop – it’s got a bucket’s worth of awesome art for sale.

Bust a Prayer Printable

July 15, 2014 by Kathryn

I’ve been blogging for almost nine years now. I know, kids. I am the oldest Daring Young Mom ever. That was before Instagram was a thing. It was back when you’d say, “I blog,” and people would cock their heads to the side, squint their eyes and say, “You, what, now?”

After nine years, I decided to create my first printable. I figured it had better be something amazing, something life changing, something written by Stanley Kirk Burrell, doing business as MC Hammer. You’re welcome!

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