Paper Stuff for Kids and Grown-ups.

Get your printers and bookmarkers ready folks!

I have come across one of the best sites on the net for Paper Toys. As soon as you arrive at the site you will see that they offer printable paper models of many landmarks, vehicles, dolls and they even have a model of Bill Gates house (that was a laugh). items. My personal favorites are the Hummer and the Mississippi Queen. Along with the printable image they also have printable instructions.

Some of the images come colored and others are blank so you can customize your look. Just place it in an image program and color away or you may want to add to the fun by hand coloring them. You choose!

I was reading through the comments on the site and realized there are many uses for these models. You can use them for: Christmas tree ornaments, invitations, collections, classroom activities and… just plain fun!

Go have fun... Paper Toys

Stuck in a cell phone contract?

Are you stuck in a cell phone contract that you are not happy with and don’t want to spend the money to break the contract?

Cellswapper.com has come up with a solution and it looks like it is working quite well.

Quote from site.

“CellSwapper.com has developed a system to keep both cellular consumers and carriers happy. “

“CellSwapper allows millions of unhappy cellular users to transfer their contract to another consumer for the remainder of the contract period. The consumer is fully absolved of all responsibility and is free to initiate a new plan with a different carrier. This system also provides an exclusive deal for those looking to start a wireless service plan a short-term contract with no activation fees that may run as high as $45.”

“The carrier, on the other hand, is still guaranteed the monthly payments are made the remainder of the contract term. Furthermore, using the CellSwapper system the carrier is able to replace its unhappy customers with satisfied ones. This is financially significant because only happy customers will be driven to maintain their service relationship with the carrier after their contract has expired.”

I think this is a fantastic idea and even though it is a patent pending system, I am hopeful this will become a standard.

Get swapping…. CellSwapper.com

Protect Your Content

If you are a website owner or a blogger you know how frustrating it is to work hard on your content and have someone swipe it and claim it for their own. You may also be completely unaware that someone has stolen your content and that is where Copyscape.com comes in.

Copyscape is a service that makes it easier to find reproductions of your content on the Web. Just type in the address of your web site or blog, and Copyscape does the rest. Copyscape finds sites that have copied your content without having your permission, as well as those that have quoted you.

The site also offers information about what to do when you find someone who has plagiarized your work. Find that information in the Plagiarism section at the top.

Protect your content …. Copyscape

Food Fun!

There are many sites that offer recipes and cooking tips and I have my favorites. A new one that seems very promising is chow.com

“CHOW is a new kind of food media. Not only is our subject matter different—about the parties you really want to go to, the meals you really want to eat, the gear you really want to have—but we deliver it to you in audio, video, and everything else the Web’s got to offer.”

Visit CHOW for recipes, instruction, news, entertainment, discussion, and advice. Go often because they update the site daily.

I did mention that I have my favorites, I will post my favorite video cooking site a bit later this week, so keep and eye out.

Go….. Chow

100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English

I wonder if having a mother who wanted to be an English teacher and was constantly correcting me, has something to do with my constant cringing when I hear a word pronounced the wrong way.

Am I the only one who is bothered by the pronunciation of “ask” as “aks” or “business” as “bidness” ? I can’t possibly be the only one!

Here is a website that talks about the 100 most often mispronounced words. You might be surprised to learn that people have been saying “aks” instead of “ask” for about 1,000 years.

Have a look, you just might find an explanation as to why people cringe when you are speaking to them. ...... Mispronounced

Create Simple Household Cleaners

I remember that commercial a few years back (they may still play it) about the lady who goes shopping and gets a cart full of cleaners when she could have just purchase one cleaner that does it all. I thought it was really cool at the time, until I had to start cleaning my own home. Not only is there no such thing as a cleaner that does it all, it is difficult to find a commercial cleaner that cleans what it says it does. Cleaning was not as simple as they made it seem.

I was always amazed at how my Grandma made cleaning look easy. One thing I wish I had learned from her was.... how she had cleaning rags that stayed white no matter how long she had used them. The only way I have ever found to keep my cleaning rags white is to keep them in the package and never used them. Is there something she had in her cupboard that I wasn’t aware of? What was Grandma's secret to cleaning?

I went on a quest to find some old fashioned cleaning techniques when I ran into a great article. The article is titled: “Making the right choice”. It offers a list of household items and how they can be applied to cleaning, plus they also list by living area and what household cleaning products you can use to clean that area. Did you know that “Cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate). This common baking ingredient is a mild acid that can be used as a sink and bathtub stain remover. It can also be used to remove spots from aluminum cookware.” ? If you didn’t then you should really go and check the website out. Maybe Grandma's secret is out!

If you have an idea about how to keep my cleaning rags looking white without using a bucket of bleach (doesn’t work)…. Please clue me in!

Get Clean...... Household Cleaners

How to Make Edible Cookie Dough!

I love cookie dough almost any way you give it to me. I love it in ice-cream; I love it frozen; I love it cooked and I love it straight out of the bowl. So I was really happy when I came across this recipe for cookie dough that I can eat right out of the bowl. Now I won’t have that “salmonella” thought threatening to ruin my experience as I indulge myself.

This did make me wonder, if this is not a cookie that needs to be cooked can we give this treat an actual name instead of “cookie dough”? That would be fantastic and I would feel much less guilty about eating it!

There is a disclaimer about cooking this dough… if you want to bake these cookies then you need to add the baking powder.

Get the Recipe for....... Edible Cookie Dough

I Messed up!!!!

I know there have been plenty of visitors to my blog and that has been great. What did make me worried though was there were no comments left. I decided to look at my settings and I noticed one thing very wrong with them... I have comment moderation on and the email address I had them going to was not even my own. Now I had a laugh at that! I must have mistyped it when I was creating the blog. I ended up typing in the name of a avatar I know from the virtual world "There". The two names are quite similar... Someone must have been very confused to open up their email to find my comments section being sent to them.

IF that person finds their way to this blog.... I AM SORRY ABOUT THE MIX UP!

For all the rest of you who may have taken the time to leave a comment.... please try it again. Thanks!

Digital Gallery... Primary Resource Heaven!

I love it when i come across a true resource site. I get really excited to see the special collections of historical documents and photos. I usually get lost in these websites for days at a time. I book marked this site a few months back and promised myself I would hold off on it until I finished my projects I had already committed to.
The wait was killing me, so I took a peak at it and I am loving it!

NYPL Digital Gallery provides access to over 550,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities in the collections of The New York Public Library, including illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints and photographs, illustrated books, printed ephemera, and more.

They offer HIGH-QUALITY PRINTS and photo gifts in various sizes, with custom framing options. The electronic interface allows you to choose from most of the 550,000 images - including historic photographs and maps.
SWEET!!!


Go check out the.... NYPL Digital Library

Tree Grafting

Here is a site I ran across when I got on one of my crazy ideas to start a fruit tree. I love jaboticaba fruit and wondered if I could grow it on my own. I knew I should think about grafting it if I ever wanted to eat this fruit in my lifetime.
I looked around the net and in doing so, I found this great article about tree grafting.


Here are the easy to follow steps on how to start a new tree by grafting a branch of an existing tree... Tree Grafting

Bring the World to the Classroom!

GELessons is a site dedicated to providing teachers with the tools needed to enhance their instruction using Google Earth.

The lessons are organized by:

Google Earth How To's - Learn how to do the basics so you are comfortable teaching with Google Earth
Student Controlled - Where the student controls Google Earth. Suitable for labs, mini-labs, home school, etc.
Teacher Controlled - Suitable for Lectures, Presentations, whole class discussions, etc.
Mini-Lessons - Lesson starters for looking at various topics

What I find really great about this site is that it offers information which can be useful to anyone looking to learn a bit more about how to work with Google Earth... not just teachers.

Get learning about Google Earth now!... GELessons.com

Cool Tools! Foamcore Gray Card

Grey Foamcard is the perfect solution for those looking for backing for images on auction sites as well as websites and blogs.

Kevin Kelly (www.kk.org) has an article about this Cool Tool and explains some of it's uses.

If you want to create image effect with no highlights, even in full sunlight. as well as have photos of images that appear to be floating in air... Then hop on over to Kevin Kelly's site.
Go there now... Foamcore Gray Card

How to Deal with Creepy People

The founder of Perverted Justice (an online organization aimed at capturing internet perverts) has a new website for teenagers.

HowtoDealwithCreepyPeople.com launched in July 2007 and offers teenagers help when dealing with creepy people. They offer advice for a variety of situations including online bullying, stalking, sexual harrasment and other "creepy" situations. The site aims to teach you how to protect your identity and give you update information about where to go to report a situation.

On the sites FAQ page there is a question that reads:
"What's the point of this site?
To create a website that serves as a resource for teenagers, containing accurate information, practical suggestions, and (we hope) helpful advice."

The site states that it is designed for teenagers, I can't help but think that a lot of this information is useful for most of us.

If you are a parent, don't forget to check out perverted-justice.com and read up on the section about "what parents can do".

Find out now .... "How to Deal with Creepy People"

PBWiki

A wiki is a collaborative website which can be directly edited by anyone with access to it.
What does that mean for you?
It would be impossible to come up with all the reasons that you may want a wiki of your own. One thing I can say is that as an educator it has been an amazing thing for my classes. I have been able to offer class syllabus's as well as have my students write and submit essays directly from my wiki.
Entrepreneurs will find wiki an asset for their company with:
"Easy hyperlinked documentation of your projects, processes, events, and lists to share with contractors and coworkers. Search your wiki easily. Share business plans, marketing copy, and code snippets. Reduce your email workload dramatically."
Once you arrive at PB wiki website you may want to view their "about" page and see the many uses that the wiki has.

PBwiki stands for Peanut Butter Wiki. Their slogan says "Make a free wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich"

Go make your wiki now! .... PBWiki.com

Old Version (Sometimes Newer isn't Better)

Updating to a newer version of your favorite programs is usually a great idea. I am one who constantly checks for the newest update for my Firefox browser and a few other programs I use on a daily basis. However, there are times when my computer does not respond well to the new update. I can't just blame my computer for the lack of computability there are often many reasons that an update can go terribly wrong.

One of my more recent examples is the latest update to Firefox. I installed the 2.0.0.6 version a few weeks ago and I immediately noticed the new version was freezing at random. This made surfing the internet a very tiresome task. I messed around with the settings for hours hoping to fix the problem. I also checked the Internet and soon found other users have been having the same problem and there was no solution found yet. I eventually gave up trying to fix it and decided to revert back to the old version. I scanned my computer for the old 2.0.0.4 version to reinstall it and was not able to locate it. I knew that trying to obtain the software from the website would be a dead end since it is not a common practice for software makers to offer the older versions on their website. I thought about the thousands of computer users that go through this scenario every day and how frustrating it is. That is when I got the idea for this next tip. There is a site that exists for just this purpose.

Oldversion.com offers older versions of some of the most popular software. Oldversion.com is actually dedicated to several purposes as mentioned on their ABOUT page. Not only do they think that each user should have access to the version that works best for them, they also offer clean versions of the software. I think it is a remarkable site and karma points to them for saving my day.

Don't forget to bookmark them when you get there.

Go there now... Oldversion.com

Why do you need a Home Inventory?

Do you pay your insurance on-time every month; lock your doors when you leave home; put your car safely in the garage at night? All of these things are small precautions that we all take in order to prevent ourselves from loosing something valuable.

Even though we pay our home or renters insurance on time, that act alone does not guarantee us that we wont be banging our head against the wall and chewing on our nails when we sit down with our insurance officers to claim a loss. We will all be asked to provide proof of our inventory as well as identify items with serial numbers. Will we all be prepared for that moment if it ever happens?

Avoid the head banging and nail biting...

Learn step-by-step tips on creating a home inventory with Simple Magazine's article "Prepare for the Worst by Creating a Home Inventory" They offer tips on how to create your inventory list as well as offer free pdf worksheets to get you started with the inventory process.

Go there now... "Prepare for the worst.. article" and here are the "Worksheets"

Googling Genealogy Style

Google has become the search engine of choice for millions of internet users.
As of December 2006, Google is the most used search engine on the web.
Are you making the best use of this great engine?

Google offers advanced operators to help beef up the search capability of it's engine.
These operators are extremely useful when doing research or when the normal search just isn't cutting it for you. If you know what you are doing, you can use Google to search within
Web sites, locate photos of your ancestors, bring back dead sites, and track down
missing relatives. Learn how to Google as you've never Googled before...

Check out this article titled Googling Genealogy Style and learn 12 important tips for using google.

Design your home with Floorplanner

Are you buying a new home, doing a room make-over or just dreaming of it?

The folks at Floorplanner.com have created a web-based application that allows you to create complex layouts. The Floorplanner runs in Flash and has easy drag-and-drop functions that make the building process a fun and simple task. You can create, decorate and customize your dream home (to scale, even).You are given options for flooring, bedding, appliances and more. Print your design or share them with your friends.

The free account should be plenty for the average user but if you need more space for a big project, Floorplanner has several premium options available.

Sign up for the free account was quick and painless.

Visit: Floorplanner.com