Community Blog

Wanna prove it?

You’ll have your chance to outsmart them all on March 27th at the Florida Black Bear Festival! All you have to do is design a bear proof garbage can and you could win a gift card from Lowes! It will have to be more than a “No bears allowed” sign to win this contest!

Check out the rules and enter!

 

 

 

Photo: Umatilla Chamber of Commerce

Over the course of raising three kids, I’ve learned some valuable things the hard way about giving them big, expensive presents and parties in those early years. It’s this: Don’t throw a party! When it comes to very young children, they just get overwhelmed by an overdone production!

Like most first time moms, I threw my first child a huge birthday party when she turned one. She cried the whole time. We showered her with gifts … she cried. We brought out the cake with candles and gathered around her … she howled! It wasn’t hard to see why. She was absolutely overwhelmed. Ten gifts for one small child is too much to process let alone having a crowd gather and sing in your face. Too much! Needless to say, I did NOT repeat the fiasco with my other two children when they came along. Here’s where you can EASILY save your pennies without depriving your precious little one of their big day! Instead, of a big bash, keep the celebration down to a little cake after dinner and one present or invite ONE friend to have cake with your child. We did this with our children until they were old enough to enjoy a more social gathering. When they were old enough to get it and have fun, we invested the time and money in big parties.

I learned one other thing that is invaluable. A LARGE cardboard box is better than any other toy in the whole wide world. If you can score a refrigerator box, you have entertainment that could potentially last an entire year and you’ll be shocked at how much fun it can be! It can be a house, a cave, a pirate ship … just leave it to the imagination of your child. It’s cheap and it’s PERFECT for any small child from ages 1 to 5 or 6 years of age! Even my 10 year old likes a big empty box to make into a fort! Give it a try and see if your child doesn’t just LOVE it!

This fascinating video has captured the popping of a bubble in extra slow motion.  It’s not only fascinating to watch, it’s really COOL, too!

It’s a tough task to keep the kitchen organized especially if you’re not the only one to maintain it. My idea of the right spot for a certain pot may not be shared by my husband. Every few weeks I do a little bit of re-organization just to keep control of the things that have gotten out of place.

It’s not easy to know the best way to keep order. With these Simple Ideas to Organize Your Kitchen, I’ve figure out some helpful tips to keep my world in order. How about you? How do you organize your kitchen?

According to National Geographic, “Saturday’s Chile earthquake was so powerful that it likely shifted an Earth axis and shortened the length of a day, NASA announced Monday. By speeding up Earth’s rotation, the magnitude 8.8 earthquake—the fifth strongest ever recorded, according to the USGS—should have shortened an Earth day by 1.26 millionths of a second, according to new computer-model calculations by geophysicist Richard Gross of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.”

Gross estimates that the earthquake in Chile has shifted Earth’s figure axis by about three inches.

Would your child know what to do in emergency? It’s not something we like to think about but things happen and it’s better to be prepared in advance.

In the event of the need to call 911, even very young children can be the hero if they have just enough of the right information. Besides needing to know how to simply dial 911, kids need to know their address – the whole thing. Street name and apt number, apartment complex name, city and state. If they are old enough to be able to describe the area they live in, like a known landmark, that’s even better. Our kids need to know OUR first and last names, not just their own. It’s such a simple detail, many of us forget to teach our children our names! A dispatcher will ask for names … your child needs to be able to answer the question quickly.

Kids who must deal with emergencies do it best when prepared. Hopefully they’ll never have a crisis situation but in case they do, we can equip them to take positive action.

According to the Travel Network, the top rated restaurants in Miami and the surrounding areas are:

1. Romeo’s Cafe’

2. Prime One Twelve

3. Las Culebrinas (Coconut Grove)

4. Versailles

5. Havana Harry’s

How about you? Where do you LOVE to eat?

In these tough economic times, it’s encouraging and inspiring to learn about the successes of others who also have felt the pinch. This article in Reader’s Digest illustrates the ingenuity of many who have used the talents and tools they already to possessed to move on to something new. They’ve come up with clever ways to cut financial corners, start a new business or even live off the land!

Are you rising above the financial stresses? Share your creative ways to work around the hardships!

Did you know that admission is FREE every Wednesday at the Coral Springs Museum of Art? Enjoy the museum in all its splendor without shelling out a dime!

On exhibit now are the works of Neo-Expressionist, Hunt Slonem. He combines Abstract Expressionist techniques with mysticism and animal subjects of Islam and Mexico. He  is best known for his paintings of tropical birds, based on a personal aviary in which he keeps about 100 live birds of various species.

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