Give the Gift of Experiences

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

Well, here we are back in the most anticipated and dreaded time of the year. The Holidays. 

How can something so beloved be so loathed?

The answer is easy. Expectations.

We have created a monster out of this holiday season with our consumerism. The unrealistic expectations of perfection are pervasive and stifling. We are expected to spend loads of cash to create an idealistic holiday full of picture perfect decor, food, clothing, and gifts just to name a few. We work hard year round just to blow a huge amount of our earnings on things. 

According to some statistics, the average household spends $1500.00 on the holidays. That's fine if you bring in 150K a year, but for the average Joe and Joanna that's a lot of moola greenbacks, dough, etc.

The problem goes beyond the exorbitant amount of money we spend. It's that those things that we buy disappear or lose their appeal almost instantly. Who hasn't spent hundreds of dollars and worked late into the night to purchase and assemble that gift your kid begged for only to be disappointed when the child ignores the toy and plays with the box instead?

Most kids will play with a toy for a day or two, maybe a week if your lucky. Then it starts to collect dust in the corner of the toy room (by toy room I mean your living room because let's face it the toys never stay where they are supposed to be). The child then begs for the next best thing they saw on TV or that their friend got for Christmas. 

I'm all for a great meal with family and friends gathered to talk and laugh and just enjoy each others company. Sipping wine or cocktails and eating delicious food is, in my mind, money well spent. Making memories is they way to go. 

Even buying decor for the Holidays is money well spent. I like to buy an ornament each year for my daughters that represents a milestone or a hobby of the past year like a piano or mellophone. Maybe the ornament will represent a favorite thing like candy or shoes. These ornaments are hung each year and create conversations and laughter as we recall each girl's past experiences. 

Decor can be passed through the generations to create bonds through time. Stories of grandparents and other relatives who owned the ornaments create an unbreakable bond between family who never got to meet.

Great memories and experiences make the best gifts. So how can we come to terms with the embedded expectation to buy things even though we know many of those things will be unappreciated or forgotten quicker than it took to unwrap them?

Easy Peasy!

I have complied a few ideas of experience gifts that you can even wrap and place under the tree. The best part about experience gifts is that they often provide more opportunities for you to spend quality time with the people you love the most.

These gifts are great for adults and kids alike.

5 Experiences to Gift

1. Zoo membership. Many zoo passes include a free or discounted pass to zoos across the country. So if you by a pass to the Pittsburgh zoo might use that same pass in Cleveland, Columbus, and Baltimore, all with in driving distance. Look to see if your zoo is part of the same network.

To make this gift more exciting wrap it up with a stuffed animal, an animal picture book, or coloring book about zoos  to give something more tangible on Christmas. Spend time planning trips or researching zoo animals with your kids or grandkids. 

2. Museum Memberships Not all museums are free like the Smithsonian or the Cleveland Museum of Art (an awesome place).  Buying a museum pass is a great gift. If you buy a pass to the Carnegie art museum you get entrance to four museums! That is an awesome deal.

To make this gift more exciting wrap up some sketching tools like a paper and pencils to encourage kids to draw what they see when visiting. You can give them a framed print of an artwork they might find at one of the museums. Of course take time to plan an adventure with your child. 

3. Tickets to a concert or sporting event Pair this with some memorabilia or a CD (do they still make those). This gift is sure to thrill any music or sports fan. 

4. A trip to a nearby town for a day or longer to explore. Make it more affordable by planning a picnic and going when there are free events like festivals or outdoor concerts.  Heck if you are feeling generous give tickets for full vacation week. Who wouldn't love that! 

Important note here: If you do give a vacation for a gift beyond a weekend you must think carefully about whether or not you should tag along. Sometimes giving the gift without being part of the deal is the most generous thing you can do.

5. Lessons for a favorite hobby Purchasing lessons for art, theater, music, sports, sewing, knitting, or a million other things will give your loved one a chance to learn or refine a skill. So many people won't splurge on something like this so do it for them. 

To make this gift more exciting pair it with things they will need to complete the class like art supplies or a bus pass. Offer to babysit on the nights they need to be free for class. Whatever it takes.

I hope these ideas inspire you to think beyond the traditional sweater or Barbie doll. Give the gift that keeps giving, EXPERIENCES!

September Sights and Sounds

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

It's labor day 2019 and my head is foggy with the sleeplessness of the night before. The storms were big and loud and long. The humidity rose unexpectedly and the breeze through my third floor windows was not enough to keep me cool enough for a restful sleep. The dog barked in fear. My daughters radio blasted music from beneath her closed door.

Eventually the storm died out and sleep came back to me in fits and starts.

The morning brought chatter from my youngest and her friend. The news blared from the kitchen TV with more stories about guns and hurricanes. It seems peril is everywhere. Everywhere but here. My home is safe and cozy even with the nonstop talking and bickering between all of us.

Later, I turned on a movie because it's that kid of day-cloudy and damp. The yard is soaked from the torrential rains. A mist and drizzle persists. I try to tune out all the background noise and focus on the actors before me. 

The family exits returning my oldest daughter to college after her long weekend home. I stifle the tears pricking my eyes as I say goodbye once again wondering when I will see her again. I think she was too.

I stay behind to recharge and regroup with much needed alone time. 

The movie (The Women in Black) was perfect. It was compelling without tragedy. (There is enough real life tragedy I don't need fictionalized trauma.) It was happy but not trite. I was left feeling better than I was when it started. 

I noticed the sun peeking through the thick curtain of grey clouds and allowed myself to be drawn outside to sit in the yard. I resisted the urge to put on music or listen to an audio book. 

I just sat and looked and listened enjoying the quiet.

The ice cream truck chimed its tunes in the distance trying to coax the last customers of summer out of their homes and into the rain for a frozen treat.

The wind rustled the leaves making that ruffled sound that we will not have for much longer as Autumn can be felt and smelled in the breeze. The broken umbrella creaks in the wind sounding a bit like the doors in all the haunted houses that will spring up soon.

The bees buzzed my sedum getting the last of the flower pollen before all the blooms die off. The crickets and other creatures chirped, and trilled, and sang the songs of evening even though it was just late afternoon.

The birds were quiet. I suppose they are leaving unnoticed for warmer places.

I could hear the water seeping into the ground in the places that were turned to bog in the late summer storm.

I saw the fading flowers in my pots and gardens in the backdrop of more vibrant and hardy species like my dinner plate Hibiscus.

The vegetable garden was decorated with pretty pests like the Japanese Beetles. A few tomatoes struggle to turn red before it's too late for them.

The pear tree has one last pear to offer. Last year we had dozens. This year blight limited our crop to just three.

The grape vines drip with fruit both green and purple. A good pruning will make them flourish next year. 

The yard is still pretty and inviting even with the fall approaching. 

Last night we had a fire to warm us in the cool evening air. The scent of burnt wood lingers.

My reverie is suddenly interrupted by the return of my family minus one. The truck pulls in, the doors slam, the dog barks in greeting. My youngest daughter is still talking, she never stops. She comes in with stories to tell even without an audience. 

I suppose I might be doing the same. Even with no one listening or not many, it feels good to share.

Enjoy these days while they last.

Making the world a better place one quarter at a time: How ALDI is changing the world for the better.

By: Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

Times are tough. Mass shootings are happening more than daily. We had 4 shootings in the last 24 hours. I believe the latest statistic shows more 253 mass shootings in the last 216 days.

I am scared.

I want to cry.

I want to scream

With these incidences, we cannot deny that we are living in a divisive and violent world. We are polarized by politics, racism, sexism, poverty,  wealth, climate change and many other factors.

I can’t help but feel that we are meaner, more judgmental and more isolated than ever before. We cannot agree to disagree. Instead, we launch anonymous insults over social media. We unfriend and unfollow each other. We say hateful things with no regard to who we might be offending. We no longer talk and listen. We make snap judgements based on sound bites and other people’s opinions. We refuse to meet in the middle. We wave and wear symbols of hate

We do virtually nothing to make the change we need.

Before the world got so complicated, I allowed the little things in day to day life make me angry. I would rail against the small injustices like line cutters or mispriced merchandise. These minor infractions got my ire up sometimes to boiling. It’s funny how just making it out of a store without being shot is the current goal. Coupons and grabbing the last bargain off the shelf no longer matter.

Before gun violence distracted my shopping adventures, one of my biggest annoyances at the grocery store revolved around shopping carts. I would pull into a parking spot only to discover that some thoughtless patron had left his or her cart smack dab in the middle of the diagonal lines marking the deceptively available spot.

This left me with some hard choices. A) I could put the car in park, get out and move the cart. B) I could use my car to nudge the cart out of the way. C) I could relocate hoping to find another truly free spot.

This never failed to put me in a foul mood before I even exited my vehicle. No doubt I would take my frustrations out on the other customers or staff (though never with a gun). I would be impatient as I pushed past carts stopped a bit too far in the aisle. I’d groan as that indecisive lady hemmed and hawed about which jarred sauce she wanted. I would stand seething as I waited for my turn making the same decision which, of course, I would make much more quickly. Next thing I know I’m rudely reaching in front of her offering a curt and insincere, “excuse me” or “sorry.”

Equally annoying, after finding a truly free spot and walking the half mile to the store, I would enter through the automatic glass doors to be greeted by the cavernous area that was supposed to house the carts for the shoppers. The echo of my sigh and grunts of frustration would fall on deaf ears as the staff was busy stocking shelves with merchandise I had nowhere to store. They were oblivious to the lack of ready carts for the customers.

A simple look out of the plate glass window revealed a parking lot over flowing with carts. Carts in corals. Carts in parking spots. Carts abandoned on the small dirt islands that helped to divide the parking are into neat rows. Carts everywhere but inside the store entrance where I needed one.

My aggravation, once again, would translate into anger as I stormed out into the lot to push a rattling metal cart over the rough and uneven pavement. The loud vibrations finally abated once we reached the smooth linoleum of the store.  Safely inside, the front wheel revealed an annoying squeak previously masked by the thunders trip inside and of course,  a slight tug to the left.

ALDI grocery stores, with a stroke of simple genius, solved all of these problems, well most of them, by simply tethering each cart to the one in front with a device that requires a quarter to free a cart to be used in the store. The quarter is easily retrieved once shopping is completed, the groceries are safely stored in the car parked in the spot you pulled into the first time without incident and the empty cart glides back across the seemingly glassy smooth terrain of the ALDI parking lots.

With this simplistic system no carts are left abandoned in strange and inconvenient places. Plenty of carts wait in the coral (at least on the off-peak hours I shop) ready for the customer to slide in the quarter before slipping easily into the store. Freed from the frustrations and annoyances of traditional grocery store cart usage, customers’ grasps their carts and shop with kind and joyful hearts.

Shoppers, overflowing with patience, gladly wait for that weird, indecisive lady to smell each melon oblivious to dozens of others stacking up behind her as her cart blocks the entire aisle.

The staff smiles and practically sings as they checkout customers and stock shelves knowing they do not have to tramp out of doors in all types of inclement weather to wrangle carts left willy-nilly in the lot. Customers’ kindness rains down on them making them smile and even like their job. They volunteer to get that item you overlooked bringing an array of flavors or styles to let you choose never asking the customer to reshelve it.  

A simple quarter, twenty-five little pennies, have made the world a better place. A quarter is just enough money to motivate people to want the refund and return the cart but not so much as to discourage shoppers from spending lots of money.

Even better, a generous spirit overtakes some folks. These new philanthropists offer up their carts to new arrivals waving away the quarter proffered to pay them back. This simple act of kindness inspires a chain reaction of paying it forward as that one cart gets handed off free of charge all day long.

People help each other out by commandeering recently unloaded carts right at the trunk of their fellow shopper’s car saving them from pushing it back to the coral. An act rarely witnessed in traditional grocery store parking lots.

The good mood of the customers often translates to other small gestures such as helping a less abled body person wrangle that impulsively purchased bookshelf into their too small car.

The addition of a quarter to release a cart into the customers care is genius.

Twenty-five cents might just be all we need to make our country unite and find compassion for each other. The white supremacists hands the cart to the Mexican-American. The misogynistic boss hands off a cart to the administrative assistant who suffers with low pay and daily harassment. The climate change denier helps the woman with cloth bags unload her cart of the organic, ethically sourced foods she purchased so he can push it back into the store to load up with his processed foods.

The mighty quarter may just lead the way to making us kinder, safer and happier.

Just in case that doesn’t work stop what you are doing and write or call your congressional representatives and demand change so we can shop without getting shot.

Links for contacts can be found here:  https://www.conginst.org/contact-congress/

Returning to Nature Through Pictures

By Elizabeth Redhead Kriston

Spring has sprung here in Western PA! The trees are budding. The daffodils are blazing in hues of yellow and orange. The grass is greening up and needs to be cut (or "needs cut" if you're a local). The songbirds are busy with their mating rituals and provide a symphony of music as the sun rises. The pollen is torturing every poor soul that suffers from seasonal allergies.

This past weekend I joined a group of folks who I'd like to think were significantly older, but in reality were my peers, sigh, on a trek through the woods of the nearby Yellow Creek State Park. We were led by an experienced nature photographer. She gave a thorough and information-packed talk on how to best take pictures in nature using whatever camera you own. 

Some of my photog cohorts lumbered around with cameras and tripods or cameras with lenses as tall as a toddler or just a simple cell phone. All listened intently as we learned how to take advantage of light and shadows. We learned how to frame a shot. We were encouraged to spend time with one subject and take the shot from different angles using a variety of settings (when available) to get a different effect.

We began our slow meandering walk into the woods forcing ourselves to see the beauty in the leafless trees, the rotting detritus of last fall that carpeted the forest floor and the general browness of the landscape.

After a few minutes and shifting my idea of what beauty is, I was able to spot a variety of shapes, textures and even some color peeking through to photograph. I spent some time fiddling with the manual settings on my Canon EOS not relying on the automatic options. I changed F stops and ISO. I zoomed and unzoomed. I got low and aimed high. 

I found green lichen making interesting patterns on the bark of trees. I found bark in all types of textures and shades of brown. Moss provided a spectrum of greens and textures. The sun glowed through thick clouds that at first appeared to be a solid wall but when studied they had shape and shades of grey. The barren trees made for dramatic angles. Red berries the birds hadn't eaten popped against grey-brown bark. Little yellow wildflowers popped from brown leaves providing a contrasting background.

Once I started to appreciate the beauty of early spring, I couldn't stop taking pictures. Most of my pictures did not come out as I had intended but it was nice to get back into using my camera that had been collecting dust. I needed this push to get me excited about a hobby I let slip away. I love taking pictures, especially black and white photos.

As I started to snap shot after shot I became excited. I got dirty as I knelt i in the ground for better angles. I wandered off from the group and winded my way into the woods looking for more interesting images.

I would have kept at it but my 10-year-old camera decided it had had enough and just shut off.

As I wait for the new battery to arrive, I anticipate my next foray into photography so I can hone my skills.

Until then I will share some of my not so great shots with you.

Happy Spring. Take time to enjoy the little beauties that get lost.