Friendly Friday 4/1/11




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Welcome to Friendly Friday!

Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog, too! Just get the InLinkz code and copy it directly into your post. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting the list is a great way to get even more traffic to your blog and make Friendly Friday more beneficial for everyone.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.

To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.

When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select three blogs at random and will feature links and a write-up for those blogs in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight some of those each week. Say hello to the lucky chosen 3 for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):

“More than a blog… a busy mom’s sanctuary” sums up what you’ll find Karen writing about at Barefoot in Portland. This busy mom of a beautiful 5-year-old daughter keeps up with her day job, her family, delicious recipes, and reviews and giveaways that everyone can enjoy. Stop by and see what this blog hopping, vacation-taking mom is up to next!


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Mommy Only Has 2 Hands is a phrase that many of us have thought but that Heather has turned into a blog of her own. On a quest to be the best mother and wife that she can be, come join her on her journey to go green through her reviews, giveaways, and tales of her adorable son, J Myster.

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With the cutest header that is going to make you long for the beach, Lesli at Put A Little Umbrella In Your Drink has the perfect mix of fun. Her posts will keep you up to date on deals, freebies, rebates, rewards, great giveaways going on throughout the blogosphere that you’re not going to want to miss, and her love of photography.

Now that you know about these 3 wonderful blogs, it’s time for you to join in! Add your family-friendly link below and we’ll see you back here every Friday! And don’t forget, you can get the InLinkz code to share the link list on your blog, too.
All three hostesses appreciate followers through GFC and Twitter, and we’ll follow you back – just leave a comment with your URL for GFC.   Linky opens at 10:00 CST.
109 Entries


 

 

 

Graduation Cupcakes

One of the teachers where I teach just recently completed her master’s degree.  Congratulations, Melissa!  We celebrated at our monthly pot luck, and another teacher made these adorable cupcakes that were so delicious!  Great job, Holly!


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The graduation cap is made by placing a Reese’s Miniature Peanut Butter Cup upside down in the middle of the cupcake and then placing a chocolate square (high quality chocolate like Ghirardelli – yum!) on top. I think she used a little bit of icing to “glue” the chocolate on top of the Reese’s.  Then make the tassel with a small candy like M&M’s Minis and use the tube gel icing to complete it.  So cute!  Great for any age of graduate from kindergarten to college!
(PS Thanks Alan!)

* Also: Cute Graduation Cake

Water Vs Sports Drinks

Sports Drinks for Kids: A Do or a Don’t?

Guest Post Written by Joy Paley who also writes for online accounting classes as well as other education sites found here.

Sports drinks have been getting a ton of bad press lately. Google the subject, and you’ll find a myriad of newspaper articles and blog posts “exposing” sports drinks for what they are—water with sugar and a little artificial coloring. But it’s no surprise that sports drinks have sugar in them; that’s something that’s never been hidden. The real question is, will that extra sugar be bad for your kid? Well, as most things, it depends.

Dental Health: One mark against sports drinks like Gatorade is that they can be bad for your teeth, if you drink them often enough. They all are relatively acidic, which can lead to enamel degradation. Juice and soda are acidic too, though, so it’s not like sports drinks are special in that regard.

Performance: The literature review of the effectiveness of sports drinks on preventing dehydration and increasing performance is mixed. In most respects, water and sports drinks perform equally well. After working out however, kids who have had the sports drink have been shown to have a higher body weight—meaning they lost less fluids during their workout. This is one potential benefit of choosing a sports drink over water.

Calories: Sports drinks are generally full of high-fructose corn syrup, providing many sugary calories to whoever drinks them. For example, 20 ounces of Gatorade Performance has 122 calories! That’s less than 20 ounces of soda, but it’s still nothing to sneeze at.

And, many studies have correlated a higher intake of sugary beverages, like soda and sports drinks, to higher body mass index and worse diet in children. It makes sense right? If a kid is drinking soda all the time, they’re consuming more calories, and drinking less of the beverages that are actually beneficial, like milk or 100% juice; greater intake of those beverages correlated to an adequate intake of calcium, vitamin C, vitamin A, and magnesium.

In Moderation: If you look at all the scientific studies I mentioned above, you might want to make a knee jerk reaction and pull that sports drink right out of your kid’s hands. Those studies aren’t about your specific child or family, however, and it’s important to realize how your particular situation could come into play here.

If you live in a house where kids rarely have soda or other sugary drinks, letting them have a Gatorade at sports practice isn’t going to make them obese. If your kid is already guzzling soda at home, then adding a sports drink isn’t going to help—but sports drinks are only one thing that should be on your list of dietary worries.

What you do want to avoid is having your kid think that sports drinks are somehow “healthy,” when the truth is that they’re not. And, you don’t want a situation where your kid drinks sports drinks in place of water, because they think the sports drink will somehow make them feel better. However, as long as the drinks are had in moderation, like being consumed only at a specific activity like sports practice, they aren’t going to make your kid unhealthy.

Other Possible Beverages: I would caution parents to avoid replacing regularly sugared sports drinks with lower-calorie artificially sweetened ones. The trouble with these? In studies, greater intake of diet soda has been linked to higher BMI. Why? People rationalize that they are consuming less calories, so they “make up” for it by eating more.

Instead, try creating your own fruit-infused water. Cut up strawberries, cucumbers, and apple slices, and let them sit overnight in a pitcher of water. The result is delicious and low-calorie. Or, pick up a low-sugar 100% fruit juice from the store.

The Bottom Line: If your kid eats a healthy diet and avoids most sugary beverages, letting them have a Gatorade at their practice or game isn’t going to hurt. Just don’t let sugary sports-drinks replace water in regular day to day activities.

Capture Special Memories

A lot of kids and college students have recently had Spring Break.  Families have been traveling, being sure their cameras and camera cases were packed in order to capture those special moments.  I love looking at pictures from trips we took with our kids.  Those are special memories, especially now that our daughter has her own family and our son is in college.  Now, they’re making their own memories.

Menu Plan Monday 3/28/11

Where did the weekend go?  I still have several things on my list (Christi can relate to lists!) that have still not been done.  I ran out of time.  Oh, well!  The most important things have been done so that’s what counts.  I’m just now thinking about a menu for this week:

Monday:  Eat at a friend’s house

Tuesday:  Salmon patties, corn, and salad

Wednesday:  Leftovers from Tuesday

Thursday:  Culinary Circle’s Rising Crust Spinach and Mushroom Pizza (Someone told me these are really good, and they had them on sale for $3.99 which is great!), salad

Friday:  Try a new recipe:  Quick Fish Tacos from Eat Better America


Video and Web Conferencing

We live in such a highly technological age.  People in other parts of the world are just a few clicks away on the internet.  Video and web conferencing make conferences available to those scattered across the country.

Dr. Temple Grandin will be doing a webinar on livestock tomorrow which illustrates how anyone, anywhere can tune in and watch this.  Having worked with children who have autism, I would love to meet or at least hear her speak.  Why?  In the 2010 TIME 100,  Dr. Grandin was listed as one of the 100 most influential people in 2010 in the Heroes category.  Why?  Because being autistic herself, Temple Grandin has given more insight into autism than anyone.  She didn’t speak until age three or four (I read three and a half but the movie about her says four), yet now she is a highly sought after public speaker and is a professor at Colorado State University.  What an amazing lady!  If I didn’t have to teach tomorrow then I would definitely want to watch and listen to her on the webinar.

Family Meals

Table Time: Why Eating With Family Matters

Guest Post By: Joy Paley also known for her musing on sites like sonogram technician programs and christian counseling degree

It’s certainly not getting easier to sit around the table with your family and a wholesome dinner. If you’re a working mom, you probably drive straight from work to pick your kids up from practice or another after-school activity. Grabbing a few burgers on the way home or eating sandwiches in front of the TV can be an inviting option when you’ve such had a long day. And, it’s hard to make kids themselves sit still for 30 minutes to share a little time around the dinner table. There are benefits to making the effort to have a family meal, however. Even if you can’t do it every night, consider making it a 2 or 3 times a week tradition.

Being Here Now: Sitting down to eat is a form of thoughtful meditation. It’s a time to relax and reflect on the day, in a conscious manner. Try it sometime—eating while standing in front of the fridge or while watching TV just isn’t the same. Sitting around a table lets everyone in your family have a little chill out time from work, from homework, from cell phones and other technology. It’s a type of relaxation that we don’t get enough of these days.

Create Stability: For kids, stability is created by events they can anticipate, that happen again and again. Making family dinner a usual occurrence in your household is one easy way to provide this stability, and to give your kids a sense of control in their lives. Several scientific studies have found a significant positive correlation between a family’s eating habits and the amount of conflict they experience. Families with healthy, stable eating habits had less turbulent relationships than those who ate junk in front of the TV.

My own family, while growing up, was not without problems. My older brother decided to drop out of high school and fought with my dad constantly. Through it all, we still had family dinner (although my brother didn’t always attend). As a younger kid, this stability helped me understand that we were going to get through the difficult period, and that things were going to be okay.

Make Time to Talk: Especially as your kids move into their teen years, actually talking to them about anything of note can become difficult. They clam up, and respond to any questions with a head nod or a mumbling “uh huh.” Eating around a table naturally encourages talking; it’s a low-stress environment for sharing and communicating with one another. It’s is a great opportunity to sneak meaningful discussions into your time with your preteen or teen, without them even noticing.

Eat Better: With nearly ¾ of the U.S. population overweight or obese, many people are doing all they can to stay healthy. Eating meals around a table is a simple step you can take for you and your family, to ensure that everyone eats better. Why? The more conscious you are of eating, the likelier you are to only eat the amount of food you actually need. Unlike eating in front of the TV, you won’t be shoveling food into your mouth without even noticing it.

And, meals served around a table are likelier themselves to be healthier. When is the last time you served a butter-laden bowl of instant mac and cheese for a family meal around the table? You’re more likely to put together a balanced dinner when it’s served in a bit more formal setting. So what’s the bottom line about family dinners? They help you relax, reconnect, eat, and feel better. They take a little more energy, but will certainly pay off over time for you and your family.

Investments

With the current economy the way it is, it’s hard to know for sure what is the best investment.  Some buy silver coins, some buy gold, some still buy stocks, etc.  Whatever the investment is, it’s always wise to do a lot of study and research before investing.  Nothing is a 100% risk free investment, but doing one’s homework and researching narrows the risk margin.

Friendly Friday 3/25/11



 

 

Welcome to Friendly Friday!

Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog, too! Just get the InLinkz code
and copy it directly into your post. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting the list is a great way to get even more traffic to your blog and make Friendly Friday more beneficial for everyone.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.

To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.

When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select three blogs at random and will feature links and a write-up for those blogs in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight some of those each week. Say hello to the lucky chosen 3 for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):

Maureen, a stay-at-home-mom to her young son named Collin, named her blog Are You a Mom? from a question often asked of her by a boy who would come in every week to the pet store where she used to work.  When she was trying to think of a name for her mommy blog, his question seemed like the perfect name.  Maureen loves her baby, enjoys sharing coupons, and offers giveaways on her blog.

Many people know Glenda as “Tootsie,” and so Tootsie Time is where she shares her love of gardening in Canada as well as her decorating ideas.  She is a single mother of three, loves to fix up old pieces of furniture, does interior decorating, and grows things in her greenhouse.  Glenda really enjoys her greenhouse and dreams of having one large enough to make a living from it one day.

 

Sheena at Sophistishe is one of the 19 Walmart Moms across the country who “represent the voice of moms,” so if you have any suggestions for Walmart then you can contact her.  On Sophistishe, Sheena tells about her new hobby which is painting, their toddler son named Jayden, her reviews and giveaways, and about starting up a new blog with a friend called “She {Hearts} It!”

Menu Plan Monday 3/21/11

Spring Break was so nice!  It was wonderful to have our son home from college.  We went to visit my husband’s mom and although she’s in her eighties and has slowed down a lot, she went on a little day trip with us to one of her favorite places.  My husband’s brother was able to come for a short visit, and the five of us were able to chill out, decompress, and enjoy the slow pace of life in the little town we visited.  Having soda at an antique soda bar where they still mix the syrup with the fizz, looking through antiques in a couple of shops, and visiting with some of the shop owners provided a much needed, relaxed small-town pace where we enjoyed being with our family.

Tomorrow is back to work, back to the fast track, so now to think about a menu.  I’m going to incorporate salads into our menu two or three days this week to help make up for the pecan pie, delicious peanut brittle, and taffy we ate several days while visiting my m-i-l.  🙂

Monday:  Leftover Chicken & Pasta from the weekend

Tuesday:  Chef Salad with Turkey

Wednesday: Chef Salad with Turkey

Thursday:  Salmon Patties, salad

Friday:  Maybe eat out somewhere?

Friendly Friday 3/18/11

Welcome to Friendly Friday! Remember, YOU can host the link list on your blog, too! Just get the InLinkz code and copy it directly into your post. The code is different every week, so be sure to get the new code when hosting Friendly Friday on your blog. Hosting is a great way to get even more traffic to your blog and make Friendly Friday more beneficial for everyone.

Thanks for joining the Friendly Friday celebration hosted by Christi at Frugal Novice, Xenia at Thanks, Mail Carrier and Charla at Healthy Home Blog! We invite you to join us every Friday to make more friends in blogville, get more blog followers and follow other great blogs out there.
To join in the Friendly Friday celebration, include your family-friendly link in our list, follow the hostesses in the first 3 spots and then start blog hopping! Visit other blogs on the list and comment to give them some blog love. Then take a minute to follow them through Google Friend Connect – this is a good way to keep up with other blogs, but also lets us show support to each other! Please DO NOT list your giveaways here, links must be to either your homepage or your Friday posting with your blog title. All others will be deleted.
When people comment on your blog and let you know they’re a part of Friendly Friday, return the favor and follow them back. This way everyone gets traffic and followers out of participating, and it’s a win-win situation. We would love for you to also grab our Friendly Friday button and post it on your blog and/or in a post – the more bloggers that find out about Friendly Friday and participate, the better!

Spotlight on Friendly Friday Followers! We love your participation and want to show it! In addition to gaining followers, each week we’ll select three blogs at random and will feature links and a write-up for those blogs in the content of next week’s Friendly Friday post. There are so many seriously wonderful blogs out there, and this will be a great way to highlight some of those each week. Say hello to the lucky chosen 3 for this week (and feel free to stop by and give them a little extra love):

 

Laura at Along for the Ride is just, well, adorable, and so is her blog. Laura’s a Christian and uses her blog as an outlet to share her faith as she writes about things she loves. You’ll find tutorials on DIY craft projects, giveaways, and a link to her etsy shop where she creates great clips and jewelry – the bias tape collection is especially charming.

Sassy Scorp at Single Mama in LA writes about her life with her daughter. She shares her day-to-day experiences and you can get to know her better through her participation in the “Meet Me on Monday” meme, along with posts about weight loss and even some heavier topics like being the loved one of an addict (especially relevant with all of the Charlie Sheen craziness going on lately). She also hosts giveaways!

Be forewarned – don’t visit Treat & Trick on an empty stomach, or before you know it you’ll be craving one of the delicious goodies the author shares! From cakes to more savory options, there are a ton of recipes provided for dishes from a variety of cultures. If you’re ever wanting to try something new, you can find Chinese and Indian recipes to throw into the mix. Just be prepared for an impromptu trip to the store for ingredients!

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Wordy Wednesday: Kimbell Art Museum


This picture was taken last summer while our son and I were visiting the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.  This colorful piece of art was located in front of the museum and caught my attention because of its fanciful nature, while inside were many older, traditional types of artwork from well known artists.  There were also relics from ancient Asia and Africa.

Although our son had to visit an art museum for an art class he was taking last summer and that’s really the main reason we went, we enjoyed walking through and seeing ancient treasures from the past as well as traditional paintings.  It was an enjoyable afternoon.