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This is the third week in a series I’ve started for 2009 called UnMundane Monday.

Each Monday I will post an assignment to make for an UnMundane Monday – so we can get rid of the term "case of The Mondays". Each week’s assignment is inspired by current holidays or inspiration from my life – I have actually already planned out all of the weeks for 2009 – go me!

UnMundane Monday #3: Have a Dream & Make it BIG

Inspiration: It doesn’t take much to guess my inspiration for today, I’ll give you a three letter hint … MLK.

The biggest distinction I think between a dream and a goal is that goals are measurable and generally more practical. For this assignment I’m asking you to be outrageous with your dreams. You can take your larger than life dreams and break them down into smaller more measurable goals but it’s great to start BIG. When MLK presented his "dream" to the world he was thinking wayyy outside the box.

Recommendations:

• Dream BIG: Don’t limit yourself or try to be too "practical" with your choices of dreams on your first iteration.
• Think like a 5 year old: I’m not sure at what stage we outgrow the wild imagination but I’d recommend everyone take some time now and then to tap into their inner 5 year old – you know the one that wanted to be an astronaut.
• Play the magic wand game: When I was young and I was having a hard time deciding between two options, my mother always asked me "what would you do if you had a magic wand?". For some reason this question always worked for my entirely too logical brain. So think what would you dream/wish/aspire to if you had an elusive magic wand.
• Make it known: The power of declaration is the first step in getting the ball rolling. There is also the old adage "power in numbers." There are numerous sites that you can make lists to share with others. For this purpose I’d recommend SuperViva the place where you can "Make a life list & live a full life". Listography is also a great list building resource.
• Now is the time … take your first step: There is no action too small, even a tiny step in the right direction is better than standing still. Is your first step creating your dream list? Only you can decide what your first step will be.

My dreams:

• I keep an ongoing list of dreams (and also practical goals) scribbled in numerous journals around my house. For the purpose of today’s assignment if I could have just one dream, one OUTRAGEOUS, larger-than-life possibility, it would be … no more cancer. I’ve personally seen cancer touch and change the lives of entirely too many people. So today ladies & gents I blog before you and protest "I have a dream that our children will one day live in a world where the word cancer is merely read about in history books!"

And so I leave you with this lovely quote from non-other than Mr. Walt Disney – speaking directly to the inner 5 year old in all of us.

This is the second week in a series I’ve started for 2009 called UnMundane Monday.

Each Monday I will post an assignment to make for an UnMundane Monday – so we can get rid of the term "case of The Mondays". Each week’s assignment is inspired by current holidays or inspiration from my life – I have actually already planned out all of the weeks for 2009 – go me!

UnMundane Monday #2: Suit Up & Show Up

Inspiration: We are now on day 12 of the new year – sadly, this is about the time that some people start forgetting about their resolutions. I know many people have working out and/or getting healthy in their proposed resolutions for the year. So today’s assignment is to inspire you to continue going to the gym (or get back in the gym) by acquiring some piece of workout related apparel. According to FitSugar just the act of getting dressed to workout can get you motivated.

Lace up your sneakers and put on your workout clothes. If you’re dressed for exercising the chances are much higher that you will actually do it. Looking down at your sneaks will remind you that a workout is only a heartbeat away.

Recommendations:

• Do a quick inventory of your workout attire and see what items you are lacking. If you have an abundance of workout pants (*ehm* I’m talking to myself) you should probably opt for something different. We tend to get in a habit of buying what we like rather than what we need
• Ask your friends for recommendations or bookmark blogs & other resources so you can get the best deal.
• Be creative in your purchase – you want something that will make you feel good about yourself. Lack of confidence can be a quick source of lake of motivation.
• FitSugar recommends you go to sleep with your clothes in the bed with you – it’s an interesting concept, not sure I’d do it though.

My Purchase:

I often run errands after (sometimes before) I workout so I like to have some sort of light jacket to wear over my workout clothes. I have a black one I wear all the time so I’m thinking for my purchase I’m going to opt for this pink New Balance jacket from Amazon.

I also need to run to Walmart tonight to pick up a few miscellaneous items so I may do a quick run through the fitness section.

Where is your favorite place to buy workout clothes?

Update: Apparently I set this to autopost on Jan 5, 2008 — oops. Next week will be on Monday actually

Over the holidays I spent a few days at my grandmother’s house. She lives in a small town in no-where-ville Texas with absolutely no cell phone/internet/connection to the outside world. My days were spent eating and hanging out with the family, watching movies, ya know the typical holiday stuff. I also happen to be nocturnal, I have tried all sorts of remedies but for some odd reason if I don’t make it to sleep before 11pm them I’m up until 3ish. So to entertain me while everyone slept I read Good Housekeeping and several other magazines. I came across an interesting article (I should have written it down to link to it oops) about 30 ways to improve your life.

I started writing some of the ideas down thinking they would be fun blog topics, then I came up with a fantabulous idea (if I do say so myself). Today marks the first of a year long weekly series of fun things to do to make your Mondays UnMundane. Although I hate the saying "the case of the Mondays" – they do happen to many people.

So each Monday I will post the assignment to make for an UnMundane Monday. Each week’s assignment is inspired by current holiday’s or inspiration from my life – I have actually already planned out all of the weeks for 2009 – go me! My plan also will be to have already done the "assignment" so that I can post about my experience with it so I’ll probably be one week ahead.

UnMundane Monday #1: Schedule A Grown Up Slumber Party

Inspiration: In September of 2007 one of my college roomates got married in a small town and as her bridesmaids we all stayed in a hotel together. This had been the first time that me and my former roomates had all spent the weekend together since we lived together in college. We actually lived in a 4 bedroom 4 bath place. So from that weekend we started a tradition – every 6 weeks or so we have a slumber party at alternating houses. Logistical question – yes a few of the girls are married and no we don’t kick the husbands out of their homes, they usually entertain themselves while the girls go to dinner and whatnot.

Recommendations:

• Use some online event coordinating website to make it easy for everyone. I personally love evite.
• Plan ahead for what you will be doing for the evening/morning – we generally do dinner & movie and then breakfast.
• Air mattresses make for great impromptu sleeping arrangements.
• Remember to take pictures

Stories from my slumber party which just took place this weekend. As I went back to write this I realized I had posted most of this on twitter in the form of pictures

• One of our friends just had a new baby so we started the evening with a quick joint shopping trip to buy some baby gifts so we could mail off a joint package – we set a price limit before hand. We were in an out in no time.
• Celebrity friend: my friend is currently a graphic designer at JC Penney and a new line of T-Shirts had just come out that she designed so we had to go by the mall and see them. Well & take pictures!
• Next stop was dinner – sushi [pic] is our reoccurring theme
• From there we headed back to the house where we started our gift exchange. We all had such busy schedules during December we decided to hold off our holiday gift exchange until January. A fun twist we added to our gift exchange was we had a $5 limit per person. So, needless to say we got to get creative – some gifts homemade others in bargain bins & from dollar store. We had so much fun with this we decided we may carry this over into birthday and other gifting occasions.
• There was also cookie baking – one of the gifts I gave was a package of Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix
• Last stop for the evening was a movie we rented. We originally planned on seeing The Women together in the theater during our last slumber party but plans changed so we ended up watching it at the house this time. I must say I wasn’t really a fan of the movie. Should have checked out it’s 13% rating before hand.
• In the morning the hostess & her husband made us pancakes!

I decided I’m rejoining the flickr world so you can see all the pictures from the evening – here.

So when will be your first (or perhaps next if this is already a tradition) grown up slumber party?