The Marble Jar Channel

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video, I'll give you my main take-aways from the horror of middle school.   Both of my kids will be in high school next year, which means that I can safely say that we survived middle school.  It was honestly touch and go there for a while.  My son's experience was easy and uncomplicated.  He had a good group of friends going into middle school, he wasn't too high up in the status hierarchy, nor was he too far down, and he was a boy.  He had some friends who floated up in status, but the majority of his elementary school friends actually stayed together and there wasn't much drama.  My daughter was a totally different story.  I'm not authorized to give too much info -- and it's not my story to tell, but it was a tough two years.  Like something you'd see on an after-school special.  She came out the other end with more solid friendships and with he...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll show you how I set up regular reminder emails using Google Calendar.  If you’ve seen some of my other videos, you’ll know that I use Gmail as the main single-stream communication funnel for the electronic information in my life. That means I check my email frequently.  I am also super forgetful and basically run my life on reminders.  I have lots of systems — see my plethora of videos — but many times, I would like a reminder delivered to my email inbox.  I've tried a bunch of solutions to this issue including Memo To Me and Boomerang -- some of which cost money, but I prefer to use Google Calendar since it is already a tool that I use frequently. There are two types of email reminders. The first is an Email Reminder with Appointment So, sometimes I KNOW that I’m going to forget an appointment or to do something at a specific time.  Here are a couple of e...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today’s video, I’ll tell you all of the reasons that I use Google Calendar and iOS Calendar together.  I did a video a little while ago encouraging you to ditch iOS’s innate Calendar app and use Google Calendar. I still totally stand behind that decision, but I have a confession to make — I didn’t entirely delete iOS Calendar. Instead, I use both apps together working in parallel  Google Calendar is my front man, iOS Calendar does some work behind the scenes. Let me show you how.   Search Searching your Google Calendar using a desktop browser is amazing, but on mobile devices the search function leaves much to be desired.  For example, if I’m searching for the last time I had dinner with my friend Debbie, the browser produces all of these results, while the mobile app only produces these.  It seems like it might be a problem with the amount of historic data that the a...

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll give my tips on engaging in healthy and positive conflict in your important relationships. Okay -- in previous videos, I talked about maintaining boundaries to prevent relationships from blowing up and how to determine whether your relationship is even worth the energy that conflict requires.  In this one, let’s talk about how to ensure that you are engaging in conflict in the most positive, constructive way.  First of all,  Check Your Motivations Presumably the reason that you are engaging in conflict at all is because you care about the relationship and something happened that bothers you, offends you, or otherwise makes you uncomfortable.  It’s very possible that you are pretty angry over this incident.  Remember, the main reason you are doing this to help heal your relationship.  So, if, when you check in with yourself, you find that your primary mo...