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One Simple Trick to Happiness

One Simple Trick to Happiness

You can’t flip through a family magazine, play a parenting podcast, or tune into a talkshow without being bombarded with advice, tips, tricks, and strategies to spend more time with your family and lead a happier life.

Want to spend more time with your children?  Have more quality family time, happiness, and all that?  Forget all the articles and books you’ve seen.  When it comes to spending more time with your family there is only ONE SIMPLE TRICK you need to know.

And honestly, feel free to substitute anything you’d like in place of spending time with your family.  This simple trick is fairly universal.

And unlike all those silly internet advertisements, this simple trick is real.

Looking for a way to spend more time with your children?  It’s easy:  JUST SPEND MORE TIME WITH YOUR CHILDREN.

But before the spade of “buts” come, there is one simple catch that accompanies this one simple trick:  YOU’LL ALMOST CERTAINLY EARN LESS MONEY AND HAVE LESS TIME FOR YOURSELF.

My wife, Liz, and I have been testing this trick since the day our oldest child was born.  We work(ed) very hard to spend a lot of time with our children.  On workdays we have breakfast at home, some days we even make pancakes or waffles from scratch.  We hunt for bugs under rocks or blow bubbles on the porch.  At a time when most people are still working at their desks, we’re sitting down to dinner.

The best of all, with few exceptions either Liz or I, if not both, have spent Fridays with our children.  For us three day weekends are the norm.  For us Fridays aren’t that slackadasical last day of the work week, instead they’re trips to the less-crowded zoos and museums, picnics in the park, hikes in the woods, puzzle-building in the dining room, block building in the living room, and all around fun-having.

Though we didn’t take up this grand experiment so willingly.  Initially we had no choice in the lifestyle.  I was laid off from my job as an architect when our oldest child was just four months old.  I made due with part time and odd jobs for a few years and in doing so Liz and I came to cherish all the time we had together with our growing family.  It’s nice to be up every morning before the sun is.

I had time to make some playthings for the Kids and heard a few too many “you should sell these” comments.  So I did.  Thus Happy Bungalow (famous wooden toy company) was born in our basement.  It has been a tremendous amount of work, but has allowed me to earn enough money while working from home and spending more time with my family.

Now every morning isn’t berry topped oatmeal for breakfast.  And every Friday isn’t a Mary Poppins inspired romp through the chalk drawings.  We have to leave early or work late sometimes.  Fridays see sick or grouchy kids (or parents).  And now that our oldest is in school, mornings have become much tighter (and funny enough, the school doesn’t subscribe to our three-day weekend schedule).

The catch though?  Working less to spend more time with our children means earning less money.  This means we’ve become even handier at fixing lawn-mowers, repairing leaky gutters and toilets, and getting by with clothing that’s more worn than we’d like.  We make pancakes from scratch, because it’s so much cheaper (they taste pretty darn good too).  We eat in more because we can’t afford to eat out as often as we did pre-children.

Then there’s the stress, the worry, the anxiety, and the occasional fight.  Liz has had a full time (though flexible) job throughout our children’s lives, but I’ve largely had unpredictable work.  Initially as a part time architect, then as a newbie professional toy-maker.  So for several years the burden of supporting the family financially fell on Liz.  Again, very stressful for everyone.

BUT WE’VE MADE IT WORK

Sticking with this lifestyle hasn’t been easy on the accounting end, but it’s been wonderful on the personal side.  Our children will only be young for so long.  We’ll play catch-up on the monetary side in a few more years when the Kids aren’t so into spending an afternoon playing made-up adventure games in the park.

I know, this isn’t easy, and it may not be possible for you.  Though I will say that before we were put into the situation, we wouldn’t have thought it possible for us.

DIY Lighting for Product Photos

How do you create great product photos?  Wait for a sunny day, drag your products outdoors, take four dozen pictures, find the best pic, and endlessly tweak it in Photoshop.  No sun?  How about you round up all the lamps in your house, take eight dozen pictures, struggle to find one passable photo, and then spend too much time trying to make it look ok.

Thankfully there’s a better way and you don’t have to spend a fortune on professional equipment.  You’ll just need to head to the store and pick up a few items.

Here’s your shopping list:

  • daylight fluorescent bulbs
  • light fixtures
  • white sheet (or whatever background color you’d like
  • something or someway to hold your lights up (see below)

Happy Bungalow DIY lighting setup

A note about the light spectrum.

I used a number of light fixtures (you can see 4 in the picture), but you don’t need to.  I thought the strip fixture would give good general lighting (it does), but the light isn’t as strong as I thought it would be.  The clamp lights seem to deliver the most light and offer great flexibility (they’re about 7 dollars each).  I had the trouble light (with the yellow handle) and the blue lamp with taped on cardboard already around the house, so I used them.

It is important that all lights used in the photographing area be daylight bulbs.  Non-daylight bulbs will give your pictures a yellowy tint.  You’ll want to arrange your lights evenly to give good light to all sides of your product.  Or place your lights to one side to create a moody vibe.  It’s hard to have too many lights.  I went back to the store for reinforcements myself.

Fiddle with your camera.

I have a four year old point and shoot camera that cost a hundred bucks, but it has quite a few handy features.  If you have a digital camera, I’m guessing your camera has a few features too.  I can adjust my camera’s white balance, brightness / contrast, and lighting type exposure.  Then I can save these setting for later recall.

Take some pictures.

I started off lint rollering the white sheet I use for a backdrop before each shoot.  But I realized fuzz and minor stains will usually disappear with enough light an proper camera fiddling so know the lint roller gathers dust.  The picture below is the result of the setup shown above.  Happy Bungalow DIY lighting setup results - walnut boxes

 

Stayed tuned for Part II where I’ll discuss the creation of a white box for taking pictures of small pieces and free photo editing software.