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Melissa Venable

Rockin' a FabYOUlous life as an author, speaker, blogger, coach and consumer of way too much caffeine. Let me help you to ditch the drab and find your FAB--it's possible and it's FUN!

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A Year End Review–My 10 Favorite Posts of 2015 from Other Bloggers

The words TOP 10 printed on clothespin clipped cards in front of defocused glowing lights.

As a blogger, I LOVE spending time researching and writing posts for FabYOUlousLife.com. However; my second favorite blogging activity would have to be reading posts by other great bloggers. My favorite tool for following all of my favorite blogs is Bloglovin’ . If you’re not familiar with Bloglovin’ you should definitely check it out. Basically, it is a tool that feeds posts from your favorite blogs all into one place for easy access.  I have it as an app on my iPhone (it’s free in the App Store) so I can easily scroll through the latest updates from my favorite bloggers without having to jump around to each individual site. To check out Bloglovin’  for yourself and subscribe to the FabYOUlousLife.com feed, simply click here.

On average, I would guess that I read three to five different blog posts a day. Sometimes it’s more, sometimes it’s less, but when you add this up over an entire year–it ends up being A LOT of blog posts. Though I rarely read a post that I don’t like, there are some posts that have had a more profound impact upon me and stayed with me long after I finished reading them. As we wrap up 2015, I thought that it would be fun to share with you some of my favorite posts from other bloggers that I have discovered over the past year. Each of these posts has enriched my life in some FabYOUlously tangible way and I’m sure that they will do the same for you. So, without further ado and in no particular order, here are my…
Top 10 Favorite 2015 Blog Posts from Other Bloggers

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Fab-YOU-lously Simple Knit Slippers

846f76_0a4247eaae3b43639c51b57e07d33bc6It is Christmas Eve as I am typing this and I JUST finished up my last Christmas present. Nothing like waiting until the last minute huh?

This year, my mom and my sister-in-law will both be receiving a pair of these super simple and yet super comfortable knit slippers.

The thing that cracks me up is that I’ve already given my mom three pairs of these slippers but she loves them so much that she keeps asking for more. In fact, even though she knows that she is getting a pair for Christmas, she has already put in an order for another pair for her birthday in January. That will make FIVE pairs of slippers that I’ve made for my mom over the past year.

Lucky for me, these slippers are super simple to make and are a fairly quick project for anyone who knows how to knit and purl. I wish I knew where this pattern came from originally so I could give the creator credit, but I honestly don’t know. I just know that I was at a Sip ‘n’ Stitch session (yes–wine and knitting are excellent companions as long as your pattern isn’t too complicated–ha!) at my local yarn shop and one of the knitters showed us the great slippers that she was making. She had the pattern memorized so I made her recite it to me as I scribbled it down on the back of a Wendy’s receipt that I had in my purse. Thankfully, once you’ve made a pair of these slippers the pattern really is easy to remember (though, I did transfer the pattern into a word file on my computer–just to be safe!)

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Finish Strong

Athlete woman crossing finishing line

The holidays are upon us which means that we will soon be ushering in a new year that is full of hope and promise.

In the past, I’ve been known to jump on the resolution bandwagon and have determined to “fix” every area of my life with a slew of New Year’s resolutions that rarely lasted past February (if even that long.) After years of failing to fulfill my resolutions, I finally decided to chuck the whole notion of them. Now, I no longer set “resolutions”, instead, I set intentions for the year (more on this in January). I also choose to bypass January and do the biggest part of my annual goal setting process in the summer with my annual birthday audit (read more about that here.) Yes–it is an audit but it is an enjoyable process that I genuinely look forward to every year, and if you aren’t too overloaded with holiday happenings, it would certainly be a valuable process to help you begin your year with purposeful intention.

However; as important as all of this intention setting and goal getting is (and it is important!) I believe that there is one crucial step that is often overlooked in the success process. In order to start a new year well (whether it be on January 1st or on your birthday) I believe that we must also strive to finish well.

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Resume Tweaks to Land You an Interview

resume tweaks

Last month we took a look at different ways to go about finding your dream job (click here to read that post). What do you do once you find that dream job though? Well, you submit your resume of course.

It sounds simple enough but too often, wonderfully qualified candidates never make it to the interview stage of the hiring process because their resume failed to grab the attention of or impress the hiring manager.

So many people focus a lot of time and energy on learning to polish their interview skills, and while that is important, those interview skills will never be needed if their resume doesn’t first land them the coveted interview. Make sure that your career aspirations don’t get the kiss of death before you even get out of the gate, by incorporating these easy tweaks as you update your resume for your next position.

 8 Easy Resume Tweaks to Help Land You the Interview

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Fab Factor #7: Security

Five Exercises to Strengthen Your Sense of Security

blonde girl

According to Dan Baker, Ph.D. and co-author of the book, What Happy People Know (Rodale Inc., 2003), an abiding sense of security has been determined to be one of the top twelve contributing factors to a FabYOUlous life. That being the case, it is important that we define what exactly is meant by security. For some people, a sense of security comes from having enough money in the bank to weather a financial crisis. Others find security in their relationship status, outward appearance, social status etc. While there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these factors, they each fall short when it comes to understanding the meaning of a true and lasting sense of security.