I love to learn and share about human flourishing and today on the podcast, I’m talking toys, creativity and the genius of play with my guest Anna Yudina, the Senior Director of Marketing Initiatives for The Toy Association. Anna is amazingly energetic, smart and generous and I know you’ll enjoy our conversation.

Listen to learn more about …

1. The Toy Association, its history and role in researching and providing for the needs of manufacturers, retailers and consumers of toys and entertainment.

2. How toys help meet the needs of trending demographics, like kidults and tweens/teens.

3. An interaction I had with my 3 year old granddaughter, Audrey that illustrates the role of imagination in healthy development.

4. The Genius of Play, a robust initiative to promote the benefits of play for all people.

I hope you’ll visit The Genius of Play and take advantage of the resources curated there. I know you'll walk away feeling more playful and better prepared to encourage and support playful activities that enhance emotional wellbeing. During our conversation Anna shared about the Emotional Wellness Playbook—but there is so much more, including a YouTube channel and a NEW podcast, Once Upon a Playtime. You can also follow along on Instagram and explore their Pinterest boards.

The stated Genius of Play mission is: to provide families with the information and inspiration they need to make play an important part of their child’s day. Through our website and social media channels, parents can find facts, useful tips and expert advice on how toys and play can help kids build confidence, creativity, critical thinking and other skills that will serve them throughout their lives. Plus, you can get ideas on how to keep playtime fun and fresh!

😉 The bottom line: Play is serious business and we’re not doing enough of it, so Anna is here to help—and be sure to stick around to the end to learn of two amazing resources for help with your holiday toy shopping!

I sat down recently with Jon Ogden, one of the founders at Uplift Kids to talk about the impressive and very helpful resource they’ve created to help parents teach their children values. Our children are growing up with access to global influences—for good and evil—and they are witnessing much division and contentious behavior.

FREE Two Week Trial HERE

A recent Uplift Kids Instagram post read, We’re too often walled off — from nature, from each other, from our inner compass. At Uplift Kids, we believe that one of the best ways to combat disconnection is through fostering connection at home.

I know you’ll enjoy our conversation and that you’ll be eager to learn more Uplift Kids. As I’ve poked around the website, I’m super impressed with the variety and quality of lesson materials. Jon and I talked through one of the many lessons that are available to members of Uplift Kids—one on Emotional Well Being, brimming color and easy-to-use ideas and illustrations. You’ll see here in the show notes, a chart of emotions, illustrated for children to understand and relate to.

It’s clear that much thought and intention goes into these amazing resources.

Click HERE to visit Uplift Kids and learn more!

For example, to help kids better manage a range of emotions, you can teach them the acronym, F-E-E-L, where F: is Find the emotion, E: is for Engage with the emotion (name and locate it in your body) the second E: to help you Express the emotion in a healthy way and finally, L: Love the emotion or consider what it is teaching or how it is blessing you.

I am so grateful for my faith in Jesus Christ—a sure and solid foundation from which I have taught my children and encouraged qualities like kindness, honesty, forgiveness and charity—but many today are walking away from religious faith, which can leave parents and children feeling untethered. Thank goodness the team at Uplift Kids has created something for these families to turn to as a way to strengthen relationships and to navigate challenging times.

You can follow Uplift Kids on Instagram and on Facebook

This week I have the privilege of visiting with my good friend, Shaun Brown who has just authored a children’s book, titled, The Best Ideas Come From God. Shaun writes about real people who have acted on heavenly inspiration to do important and historic things, and her much-needed message to the next generation is God loves you and wants to send his best ideas to help you!

I know you’ll enjoy hearing about Shaun’s creative process and that you’ll take encouragement to do the things you feel called to do!

Children need to know that God will help them in every part of their life. Learning how to listen for guidance from God is so important for safety and peace. Using examples from the lives of Harriet Tubman, George Washington, and others, this book illustrates how God has always helped his children and teaches children how to recognize when God is helping them.

I’m all in on helping Shaun promote this book and its important message!

In Shaun’s own words: Since I was 14, I have known I would one day write books for children. As a full-time mother, I read a lot of books to children, but never tried to write. A few ideas came to mind over the years, and I stored them for the future.

Eventually, with my own children grown and starting their families, I found I had time to write. But where to begin. I made lists, I prayed, I bought books, and I prayed some more – looking for inspiration. Finally, into my mind came the title of my first children’s book “The Best Ideas Come from God.” Once I had the title, I searched for ways to tell a story that would help children realize God does love us and he wants to help us. I wanted children to know how to recognize when God is sending ideas. Some of my favorite people in history trusted God to guide them, so I decided telling their stories would be a great way to teach the truths I hoped to share … once I started writing, I found I needed someone to illustrate the book. I learned about the site called Upwork – an online marketplace for illustrators, graphic designers, and other very talented people. I began reviewing the portfolios of different illustrators and found Sonja, from Serbia. She was amazing to work with, so fast, and so responsive. I would send ideas and she would create the image I was envisioning. It was a treat to work with her and I am so grateful for her talents in helping make the book a reality.

I chose to self-publish with Amazon because the only investment was $10 for the ISBN code on the back of the book—plus my time in the writing, layout, and cover design of course!

Perhaps one day I will pursue a more traditional path to publishing, but for now I enjoy the process of bringing my books to life myself. There is incredible satisfaction in holding a book in your hands, that you know you created from beginning to end, with God’s help and the help of people he helped you find along the way.

Purchase a copy of The Best Ideas Come From God HERE
Learn more about Shaun and the community newspaper she founded.
Thanks for listening!

A few months back I received an interesting email that resulted in an opportunity to interview Lovre Soric, who is creating an awesome solution set to help us in uniting families across time and miles.

Lovre hails from Croatia and works in California.

On a trip home he sensed a disconcerting disconnection developing between him and his distant family members. He knew there had to be something better than social media or email to stay connected and to share information and stories with his aging grandparents, mother, father and siblings. So with his degrees in engineering and business he decided to get to work.

Today you get to hear his story and perhaps even help him in his efforts to create a super-cool solution.

Click on this image or visit https://myroots.io to get started!

To learn more and help Lovre, click HERE and visit the Roots Family Newsletter homepage. Enter your email AND then let them know that Stacy sent you, or that you heard about them on Exactly Enough Time. This will result in a three month trial for FREE, so that you can create and personalize a family newsletter experience that works for YOU.

I’m going to give this a try with my Hall side. I talk regularly with my sisters, but don’t do a great job staying connected with my brothers AND as the nieces and nephews launch, I definitely want to hear what’s going on in their lives. I’m excited to take this newsletter solution for a test drive and share important feedback.

➡️ IF you have questions, you can email stacy@stacyulian.com OR lovre_soric@berkeley.edu

I opened today’s episode with the song, Uniting that was performed by Adessa, Chad Truman and the One Voice Children’s Choir at the 2023 RootsTech conference.

My friend, Jessica Vincent is on the podcast with me today and I’m super excited for YOU because what she has created is quite literally a game changer.

Jessica is the founder of Positive Sports Communities and is right now hosting a super cool event, called Travel with Your Team Summit that features trainings from a panel of experts on everything from mental toughness and anger management to better sleep and saving on travel.

Jessica Vincent from Positive Sports Communities

Once you’re registered you’ll meet people like Shawnee Harle, a two-time Olympian with 27 years of elite coaching experience and Nate Daniels a former professional football player, author, coach and entrepreneur. Everyone involved is qualified in a specific area of expertise! All of these phenomenal presentations include transcripts and many feature additional PDF downloads. For a small fee, you will be able to access a VIP pass that gets you extended access, bonus material and live sessions with panel members.

In my presentation, I am excited to share what I know will help busy parents manage the overwhelm created by hundreds of photos associated with just one tournament trip or big game!

Jessica’s hope overall is that this summit will help parents, players and coaches STAY HEALTHY, experience LESS STRESS and more POSITIVITY and create travel that is FULL OF MEMORIES.

The Travel with Your Team summit is FREE through June 18th, so you’ll want to click on the button and get registered.

During our conversation, Jessica mentioned Krista Miller’s course, Summit in a Box and I opened this episode with Take Me Out to the Ballgame by The Hit Crew.

It’s been just over six months—28 weeks to be exact and I’ve missed YOU—but, I’m back!
Today, June 8th, 2023 is Comeback Day.

🎙️ Let’s Do This!

Episode 137 is short and sweet and chance to think about how we treat babies and how we feel about baby stories. In May, on International Scrapbook Day (and my birthday) I gathered with friends via Zoom to tell stories. I started with two photos of me taken during the summer of 1966 and pictured below …

As I spent time with these photos I thought about me as a baby, about my first steps and the look on my face. I thought about my Mom and the love and encouragement she always offered me. I’m so grateful to her for the bits and pieces of my early life that she saved. She also saved one of the very first stories I wrote and now, considering all the stories I’ve written it is a treasure to me. It too is pictured below …

We do not criticize or demand or ever even downplay the efforts of babies—or baby things, like stories. Instead, we champion them. We know they are beginners—that they are just starting out. They are new and unsteady and they need support and encouragement. Which of course is what everyone needs.

I am still a podcaster because I’ve decided to make today Comeback Day!

And, I’ve decided to come back to offer encouragement. I know that babies and baby things and all the grown ups need encouragement and I’m especially keen to encourage the photographer, memory keeping and storyteller in you. Exactly Enough Time is one more way I want to share ideas and inspiration for living your life and telling your story.

IF you’re glad I’m back, click HERE and write a review. Tell me what you have loved about Exactly Enough Time in the past and what you want to hear moving forward. I’d LOVE to hear from you. You could even use the SpeakPipe button here to leave me a voice mail—which I just might play on a future episode.

AND don’t forget: Code LISTEN gets you a free month in my Live Your Story membership. At the end of June, we’ll be kicking off our Summer season and you’re invited to watch our New Month Meet-Up! on my YouTube channel. Be sure you are a subscriber, so you’ll be notified. You can also watch my International Scrapbook Day hangout and make a page with me—the replay is already on YouTube!

I opened this episode with the song, Let’s Do This by the band, Outskrts

My friend Marla is a memory keeper, podcaster, self-connection coach and overall champion of living with intention and I’m tickled she is on my show today. Marla does many things, but the thing she feels most called to do right now is to teach tools of self care and improvement and she does this in an experience called Camp Connection.

Marla helps women put together a first aid kit for life—and I love how each item in this visual kit represents powerful concepts and practices. Listen for how a compass, binoculars, a magnifying glass and a field notebook can help you create the life you want and then show up as your best self to live it!

AND, be sure to download your FREE Connection Planner at hunkeedori.com/stacy and you can also save 50% off any class that Marla offers at Hunkeedori.com/courses—just use code STACY at checkout!

To learn more about and from Marla, you can listen to her podcast: Overburdened No More (I’m her guest with her in episode 71) and follow her on Instagram.

Why do you think genealogy and family history are so popular? My guest today is Janine Adams and her answer is that it’s so much FUN, plus it connects us to past history in general and it invites you to play detective! Yes to all of that. Janine is a professional organizer, family historian and podcaster and we’re talking today about how to get started and stay organized when it comes to discovering and documenting family stories!

Here are my BIG take aways from our conversation. I can’t wait to hear what you learn …

1. Talk to your oldest living relatives. Ask them anything and press record on your smart phone.

2. Use FamilySearch.org or other online resources to verify the dates and information they share with you.

3. When you find verifying documents, download a copy to your computer. Name these file in a way that YOU can easily find it again.

4. Consider purchasing genealogy software designed for your computer’s operating system, so that you can keep, collect and organize all that you are learning and gathering. Janine uses Reunion, which is designed for use on a Mac.

5. Mine the documents you find for stories—there are MORE stories available than you might think and their lurking in all sorts of documents!

The important thing—even if you just dabble in this effort—is to be accurate. After our conversation, Janine wrote a blog post, called Sharing with Confidence.

Track and record your sources and then generously share what you find, as often as you can! But don’t just share, share with confidence 🌳❤️

Resources:

FamilySearch.org

Ancestry.com

Reunion for Mac

You’ll want to learn more about Janine. You can do that on her family history website, Organize Your Family History and on her Peace of Mind Organizing site too. Janine also produces the Getting to Good Enough podcast with friend and life coach, Shannon Wilkinson.

Podcast listeners are invited to experience 30 days of my membership, Live Your Story for FREE. Use code LISTEN and let me help you do something with some of your photos—and tell your story!