DIY Life

I took a negotiations class a couple of years ago. I really rocked it. Seriously, I was amazing. I had people giving up their land and walking away winners. Does this make me a master haggler? Not at all. While I was great in class I just can't seem to translate those skills to the outside world. I don't think I'm unique in this struggle. Most people are pretty comfortable in a setting designed for negotiation but freeze up when things are unstructured.

How to haggle, offers 12 steps to effective haggling. These aren't your typical negotiation tips, but truly applicable pointers designed to get you through an unstructured haggle successfully. The first tip is to stop caring what people think of you. I think that getting over this alone is half the challenge for many of us.

You probably spent Thanksgiving with your family and friends. If you were lucky enough to find time between cooking and serving, you enjoyed some meaningful conversation and reflected on how grateful you are to have such a wonderful group to gather with. Monday morning rolls around and the people you are closest to have driven back to their houses and you all start another regular week with the people you share less significant relationships with.

You'll find yourself standing in line tomorrow morning at the coffee shop, riding the elevator to your office, getting on with your day, lingering in the lunch room, chatting about work, the weather and how busy the malls are. You might start to miss the evocative conversations you had with close friends and family over the weekend. This doesn't have to stop when you get back to the daily grind. You can have meaningful interactions anywhere.

It's funny to think that we need to teach ourselves how to calm down, but it's true. We spend so much of the day on over-drive that when the time comes to decompress, we're not really sure where to begin. It is worth carving out time in the day for some calming rituals. Lifehacker points us to 12 ideas for establishing a calming routine, which I think are incredibly useful.

The tip that really caught my eye was this one about establishing a bedtime routine.

There is something special about toys that talk. I guess the whole idea of personifying a toy is exciting to many of us. Your fascination probably started with that doll that could be programmed to say your name, or your talking remote control car. If you're like me, the fascination probably didn't go away. This new book is sure to get you excited.

Making things talk by Oriel, publisher of MAKE magazine, is a book lots of DIY'ers can't wait to get their hands on. It's full of DIY projects for making toys that talk. I'm sold! I agree with Daniel Terdiman, in Making Things Talk - DIY projects that communicate, most of these projects are probably beyond me.

I'm sure that many of you readers are far more experienced with this sort of project than I am. How many of you are ordering the book? We'd love to hear about the projects you tackle and the cool talking toys you create.

Every Wednesday is tip day at The Happiness Project. This weeks tip has a DIY spirit and will appeal to those of you who want to naturally boost your energy. She suggests 9 ways to do that in the next 10 minutes. My favorite tip is number 3, act with energy:

We think we ACT because of the way we FEEL, but often we FEEL because of the way we ACT. Trick yourself into feeling energetic by moving more quickly, pacing while you talk on the phone, and putting more energy into your voice. Also, research shows that when people move faster, their metabolism speeds up.