30.4.13

Shine a Light on Slavery




Visit enditmovement.com for more details on how you can be in it to END IT.

29.4.13

The Great Plastic Purge

Animated short about marine plastic pollution. The video serves as a call for action alerting individuals, companies and governments to the devastating effects of plastic pollution in our oceans. The animation outlines how we can all make a difference by reducing, reusing and recycling.

23.4.13

Cowboy Cookies

(click on the recipe)

22.4.13

Baked spaghetti

(click on the recipe)

19.4.13

Cranberry and walnut muffins

(click on the recipe)

17.4.13

You are more beautiful than you think...


Do women see themselves less accurately than strangers do? A new Dove campaign says yes -- and offers proof, in the form of forensic sketches.
Dove recruited seven women of different ages and backgrounds and had FBI-trained forensic artist Gil Zamora create composite sketches of them based on descriptions of their own facial features. In the above video, produced for the campaign, you can hear the women use phrases like "my mom told me I had a big jaw," "I kind of have a fat, rounder face," "I'd say I have a pretty big forehead."
Earlier in the day, the women had been asked to spend time with strangers, though neither party was told why. These strangers were later brought one by one into a room with Zamora and asked to describe the women who had been sketched earlier. The two resulting drawings of each woman were then hung side-by-side -- and the contrast is pretty stark. The tagline of the campaign is: "You are more beautiful than you think."                          in http://www.huffingtonpost.com

15.4.13

Cinnamon cookies

(click on the recipe)

14.4.13

Follow the Frog


You don't have to go to the ends of the Earth to save the rainforest. Just Follow the Frog! Shop for Rainforest Alliance Certified products here: http://ow.ly/dKlao

The Rainforest Alliance is a nonprofit conservation organization that holds Charity Navigator's highest rating of Four Stars:http://ow.ly/ekYUy

What's behind the green frog seal? Only farms that meet rigorous sustainability criteria earn the right to use the Rainforest Alliance Certified seal. These criteria address all of the three pillars of sustainability -- environmental protection, social equity and economic viability -- and farms are evaluated by independent, third-party auditors. Learn more about Rainforest Alliance Certification and its impacts here: http://ow.ly/ekYOW.


13.4.13

A point-blank gun control ad


Moms Demand Action has launched a campaign to drive support for new and stronger gun laws in America in the aftermath of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The video, "How many more rounds?," is an emotive depiction of the damage caused by gun violence. An AR-15 assault weapon is fired in slow motion with each discharged shell casing representing a major shooting in America. The video ends with the message, "How many more rounds are we going to let this go on for?"

10.4.13

Educate the Heart


When a child is born we do everything we can to protect them, nurture them, love them. A child’s heart and mind are fragile. As they grow we want to teach them everything that we know; we send them to school to fill their minds with wonderful knowledge, to give them the tools they need for life. At school they get a taste of what things are like in the world outside; there’s friendship, romance, disappointment, embarrassment, discrimination and bullying. But are the tools we give them enough to prepare them for this world? We have an enormous responsibility and an amazing opportunity. If we truly want to prepare them for the world outside, we must also educate the heart, because to navigate the world outside with compassion, acceptance and tolerance, we need to teach them compassion, acceptance and tolerance. This can begin in our schools and it can start today; it can happen at hockey practice, dance class, at day camps and music lessons; and it’s already happening around the world with astonishing results. If we want our children to grow into socially and emotionally capable young people we must ask for a balanced education that puts importance on educating both the mind and the heart.


What does “educating the heart” mean to you?
Somewhere along the way we got very invested in things that don’t care about us, because they’re things, they can’t love us back; money doesn’t love you back; your car isn’t going to sit down with you and hold your hand if your child is sick. But we had this huge disconnect happen where we started to invest emotionally in things rather than people, and people are what’s available toyou to really help you through those tough times. Now we see, you know, that sort of consumerist mentality where, you know, the new thing is going to make you happy, the new whatever it is, and I think people forget to talk to one another so you really do need that education of the heart, you really do need to show people that compassion is what makes the world a better place, it’s not a technology.
How can we “educate the heart”?
There’s no lesson to be learned, there’s nothing you can write on a chalkboard, it comes down to actual human interaction, human experience, and those are the things that we’re missing a lot of the times in schools; we’re not teaching kids to be compassionate.
 Who educated your heart?
You know there are people who say ”those who can, do and those who can’t, teach”, which to me is such a tragic insult; a teacher should be revered; I wouldn’t be where I am today without the teachers that I had, those who cultivate, and a teacher to me is someone who doesn’t just have the answers in the back of a textbook or whatnot; a teacher to me is somebody who can look into you and find those hidden talents or find that part of you that ignites a passion for knowledge, and so… to me… I love teachers!

Paper is not dead


A TV commercial about paper, iPads and technology... 

Edible play dough

(click on the recipe)