National Hot Breakfast Month – 2013

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By Terry Orr

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!  That is a fact – yet far too many people either skip or skimp on this meal.  One recent article stated that the average person only spends four minutes eating breakfast. Four Minutes. How on earth can you have a hot, healthy breakfast in four minutes?

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I make an effort each morning to take at least 30 minutes, be generally 45-60 minutes to enjoy my breakfast.  I start with some fresh fruit along with my morning medications. Then to my entrée – egg white omelet, blueberry pancakes, or hot oatmeal most days with some sort of breakfast meat and wheat toast.

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Growing up in Missouri – breakfast was important meal – while we did not have large breakfasts during the school week – we sure made up for that on the weekends.  Creams of Wheat and Oatmeal with fruit were favorites on school days – especially on the cold mornings.

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Now that you have successful gotten through January – take a few minutes most mornings and have a good hot breakfast!

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Inspire Your Heart with Art Day

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By Diane Forrest

When my brother was in high school, he acquired a fondness for drawing.  He took an art class in school, and became quite good at drawing flowers and fruit and still life.  I on the other hand have trouble staying within the lines while coloring a picture.  I love art, and I get thrilled when someone I know is artistic, I consider them like a rock star.  My cousin's daughter is 13.  She has developed a talent for painting and drawing.  I take a certain amount of pride in her achievements since I gave her one of her first sets of colors.

Art can be found everywhere.  Art is not just drawing or painting.  Art is music, acting, photographs, anything that pleases your eyes, ears and other senses.

While I can't draw, I love to sing.  I participated in the school and church choirs since I was small.  As I grew older, I sang in my church's choir, and continued singing until my husband became disabled.  He would love to watch me sing, and would tell me I looked like an angel.  I haven't been able to make it back to the choir since his death, but I am hoping to ease my way back.  Music is so emotional for me, and I sometimes find myself sobbing during particularly moving songs.

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My son is so entertaining.  When he was younger he could produce tears at the drop of a hat, and the next instant be rolling with laughter.  I always told him he should be an actor, and he participated in a few skits at school and church.  He has a rare gift of making people laugh.

Since my father retired he spends alot of time in his wood shop.  He has learned how to make beautiful furniture and turn wooden pens on his lathe.  A local reporter recently published a five page article and pictures of his works, and that article has drummed up alot of "business" for him.  He doesn’t sell his works of art, however if someone wants something he makes, he will "sell" something for a donation to the local Children's Home.

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Today is Inspire Your Heart with Art Day.  Art can be found everywhere you look...whether it’s a painting, photograph, music or architecture. Even the worn lines in a person's face or the pink cheeks on an infant, all of these will bring a smile to your heart or tears down your face.  So, today, take some time to look around you, take a stroll down your town's downtown area, and look at the buildings.  If you have a museum, walk around there and take a look around. Maybe you will even be inspired to show a little of your artistic side.  It’s never too late to get started, after all, Grandma Moses was in her 70's when she started painting, and she became one of the country's best selling artists!  Find your inspiration today.

Celebrating Backwards Day

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By Diane Forrest

Well the first month of the year has come to an end.  All the fun and parties from Christmas and New Years are over, and it’s time to shake things ups a bit.  That's why today is a fun day.  Today is Backwards Day.  It’s particularly fun for school kids, but that doesn’t mean the grownups can't have a little fun too.

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Some ways to celebrate include wearing your clothes backwards, eating your meals backwards, having breakfast for dinner, or eating your dessert first.  You can walk around the block backwards, or write your name backwards.  Learn to say the alphabet backwards, or make a pineapple upside down cake.

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You can read a book to a child backwards, or play a board game backwards or learn some palindromes.  The ideas are only as limited as your own imagination.  My personal favorite is changing stressed to desserts.....then eating dessert first!

Below are some palindromes from squidoo.com you can start with. Then share some of yours with us.

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Palindromes are words, phrases or sentences that read the same forward and backward! Here are a few to get you started!

1. Kayak

2. Racecar

3. Never odd or even

4. Do geese see God?

5. A Toyota

6. Was it Eliot's toilet I saw?

7. A nut for a jar of tuna

8. Aerate pet area.

9. Dennis sinned.

10. Madame, not one man is selfless; I name not one, madam.

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Interest pictures taken at just the right time...

Sure hope that you enjoyed!

Celebrating National Braille Literacy Month

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By Diane Forrest

Yesterday I wrote about the seeing eye dogs.  Today, I want to let you know about another tool used by the vision impaired to assist them with their daily lives.  In 1809 Louis Braille was born.  43 years and 2 days later, he died, but not before he created a reading system so that blind people would be able to place their fingers over raised dots and read. When Louis was 3 years old, an accident in his father's shop cause  an object to be tossed into his eye.  His wound became infected, and the infection spread to his other eye.  By the time he was 5 years old, he was blind.  His parents took great pains to raise him as a sighted child, teaching him how to navigate around the town alone.  He was "at peace" with his disability.  His bright and creative mind impressed the local teachers and priests, and he was encouraged to seek higher education.

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When he was of age, he went to school and learned to read by tracing letters on heavily embossed pages.  These books were very heavy and hard to handle.  According to Wikipedia.com, Braille was determined to fashion a system of reading and writing that could bridge the critical gap in communication between the sighted and the blind. In his own words: "Access to communication in the widest sense is access to knowledge, and that is vitally important for us if we [the blind] are not to go on being despised or patronized by condescending sighted people. We do not need pity, nor do we need to be reminded we are vulnerable. We must be treated as equals – and communication is the way this can be brought about."

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In 1821 he learned of a type of communication used by the French army called night writing.  It was made of dots and dashes that could be read by soldiers tracing their fingers over the pages.  This method was too complicated to learn and understand, so Louis devised his own method.  When he was just 15 years old he began working on his own system by using the same tool that cause his blindness.  His work was published in 1839, and the rest...is history.  He contracted tuberculosis and died, 2 days after his 43rd birthday at home with his family.

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This is National Braille Literacy Month.  ehow.com has some suggestions on how to participate in this great achievement.  They include:

1.    Celebrate the birthday of Louis Braille- see if you can learn to spell his name in Braille on the birthday cake.

2.    Talk to your children about blindness.

3.    Blindfold yourself and see how well you can manage to move through your own home with someone guiding you. Keep it up and see how much you improve.

4.    Check out a book in Braille in the library and study it. Show it to your kids.

5.    Learn to write your own name in the Braille alphabet.