BEST PICTURE

Dear friends,

This week I was particulary thinking of being old or growing old and how some people, somehow maintain their youth and their heart is forever you and pure. I am proud to say I know such people and those people are dear to my heart. I guess that what ages us prematurely is thinking ill of ourself and thinking ill of other, the lack of communication and the lack of peace and quiet in our hearts. We think highly of so many material things that we forget to enjoy the moments that pass by us... This is why I love children. Thir heart is still pure and they are not made perverse by the world and the things that surround them - well at least until a certain age... and unfortunately that age decreases rapidly... I remember finding the drawing/sketch below on the pavement in one of my walks back home in Iasi - Romania - and it instantly put a smile on my face. A kid drew a butterfly, big and colorful, and wrote just next to it "Just stay kid!"  It was like the quote/advice of the day! :)
The quote “I almost wish we were butterflies and livd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain” comes from the Bright Star: Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne. And I must admit I did my research and the average life span of a butterfly is usually about one month. Try to compress and zip your life in one month and tell me what would you do... Kids are like that, they think not of the things that grown-ups usually do. They most beautiful day for them would be the day when they would eat icecream and run along the alley or playing hide and seek, or just sitting inside and watching a funny movie. True, they are not grown-up and they have not yet faced the harshness and the struggle that is life but does that also mean that the grown-ups should always frown and try to look serious and forget about the little things in life that could make them happy? I think not! I - for one - wish not to grow old at heart and be happy and thankful for the little things :) How about you? What have you decided? To frown or not to frown - to have a happy heart or a heart fill with worries?

Yours truly,
A LadyBug Who Loves Butterflies

No, not Victorias secret. Secrets that are shown in a photograph. When it comes to capturing people, the most important thing is to is capture their true emotion, not the emotion that they create. Martina Holmberg captures a "secret" that is shown in a picture of children. "Good portraits are often characterized by the photographers ability to capture beautiful light, an interesting expression, or a captivating gaze." (113) Using this tip and following her example I was able to capture pictures of little cousins and nieces that showed a "secret".

            From the book Crazy About Cookies by Krystina Castella, there is a recipe called Masala Chai Tea Cookies. Out of all the recipes and cookies this recipe was the weirdest. I love tea personally, all types. I especially like Chai and Early Grey Tea.

Recipe:
" 1 1/2 cup flour
  1/4 teaspoon salt
   2 Tbs. Finely ground chai tea.
  1 Cup butter
  1/2 cup powdered sugar
  1 egg
  1 Tbs. Lemon zest " (Castella 118)
 
The recipe surprised me because I thought it was going to be a mixture of spices to resemble chai but actually it was the tea grounded. I figured it make the cookie spotty. I pulverized the tea using a marble grinder.
 
The cookies were rolled cutout cookies, the cookies are made with stiffer dough than drop cookies, this type of dough allows us to cut shapes in it similar to gingerbread man. (Castella 29)
 
After mixing the tea in I was sort of repulsed. It made the cookie a greenish tint with black specs in it and it didnt look appetizing at all. The smell is what kept me going, it smelled so delicious. So after the Chai I made Earl Grey cookies, only thing different is its earl grey tea with orange zest in it.
the look of the cookie does not give it justice.
 
 
 
 
My question for you is:
Do you like tea? Would you eat something that didnt look great but smelled amazing?
Let me know!
 
Citation:
Castella, Krystina. Crazy about Cookies: 300 Scrumptious Recipes for Every Occasion & Craving. New York: Sterling, 2010. Print.

Dear friends,

Laura Makabresku (born in 1987; lives in Krakow). Is a Polish visual artist and photographer. Her photographs are overflown with mystic symbols and the atmosphere of fairy tales. Close to the surrealistic aesthetics, she creates visual methaphores concerning eroticism and death.
„Patterns of distraction“
My photographies are like screenshots from beautiful but cruel fairy tales. Their narrations are not straight. Images that appear are more like feelings that come during a lecture of an old folk-based story – full of witchcrafts and retributions. The structure of my works is similar to the structure of a dream where natural tendencies of collecting and organizing impulses and motivations coincide with irrational clashes of objects and feelings. Isolation and wounds are closed into patterns, uneasy and artificial orders – visual spells created in order to divide beastillness from humanity and dreams from horror.
***
„Laura Makabresku condenses the fairy tale into a frame. One stage on which everything plays out. There is a heroine existing between the worlds. Beautiful and dark. Her sexuality fluctuates between girlish erotic fantasy and the extreme instincts of nature. In a childish way she is fascinated by death. Her land is inhabited by animals, monsters, people in animal masks, objects—all of them of equal status. The world’s orders tangle together. Death in this land is liberating, a kind of good dream into which we tumble, searching for eternity, and which exists within us as constellations painted on the heroine’s body. The motifs and scenes are repeated. Themes are repeated obsessively. It all exists outside of time, everywhere and nowhere, never and always, in the seventy-seventh land. And eternity is just as cruel as death."
[From curatorial text by Magdalena Kownacka „The moon is for adults only“]

The Map Of The Sky...

The foods that we love the most are also the ones that can hurt us the most.

Joel Fuhrman, a medical doctor who focuses on human dietary habits and the author of "The End OF Diabetes" warns readers of how our diets can effect everything from our health to how much energy we have. He tells how the modern American diet is full of processed foods that are bad for our body. He also states that eating nutritious food is good for more then just preventing diabetes, and that it can even help with how much energy athletes have.

I decided to see if changing my diet for 1 week would have any visible change in how I felt. In the book it tells of the benefits of substituting things like rice and potatos for greens and beans. Some of the benefits were "a sensation of fullness, Increased nutrients and fibers,  and lower glucose level" (Fuhrman 96). I would also be cutting out any fast food and trying to eat fresh meals that didnt include much processed foods. He says "beans are the best source of fiber"(Fuhrman 97). So I will try to incorporate those into my diet.  For the first 3 days of the week I ate my normal side of  potatoes and rice, and then swapped them out with green beans, spinach, and broccoli for the remaining 4 days.

Example of a starch. The potato

Example of a green. Broccoli

I noticed that I actually did feel fuller faster even though I had consumed fewer calories. I also felt more energized as the day went on compared to when I was eating fast food and the potatos.

What are some foods that you can replace with healthier foods in your life?

Fuhrman, Joel. The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Diabetes. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.

Dear friends,

Lately I stumbled into some nice info on people/babies born in the Autumn time :)

Have a birthday in September, October, or November? Lucky you. You may have above-average chances of living an extra-long life.
In a recent study, researchers from the University of Chicago looked at data from more than 1,500 people who were born between 1880 and 1895 and who lived to be 100 or older. The researchers compared that data with the birth months and life spans of nearly 12,000 of the centenarians’ siblings and spouses.
The majority of people who lived an extra-long life were born between September and November, the researchers reported in the Journal of Aging Research. Birthdays in March, May, and July produced 40 percent fewer centenarians.
This chart looks at mental illnesses: The purple rectangles denote a higher likelihood of developing psychiatric disorders. Babies born in March fare the worst, while those born in autumn and winter are much less likely to develop mental illnesses
This final chart examines the nervous system: The blue rectangles show the likelihood of babies born in each month developing disorders concerned with the brain. Those born in April are more likely to develop Parkinsons, narcolepsy, MS, motor neuron disease and have lower IQs.