Shopping Tips and Guidance by Mandy Claire

By: Amy Bortnick

Good morning!

 Ready for breakfast? ...I am! I've been dying to try my hand at flour-less pancakes since I found a couple recipes on a blog i've been following. I don't know why it's taken me so long because they are DELISH!! They are also very easy to make!

 Here it goes:

 1 Banana

1 1/4 cup Raspberries

1 scoop vanilla protein powder (I used pureprotein vanilla cream)

1 Tbsp ground Flaxseed

1 Tbsp unsweetened vanilla almond milk

1/4 cup egg beaters (you can use an egg)

1 Tbsp Peanut butter (optional topping :))

 


I mashed the banana in a bowl with the protein powder, flaxseed, almond milk, eggs, and a couple raspberries until combined. Then I formed a pancake on the stove.

 


In no time they were ready I added a Tbsp of peanut butter ...because well I love peanut butter and I tossed on the rest of the raspberries! YUM!

 



The Nutrition:

 432 calories (with the peanut butter)

46 grams of carbohydratess

10 grams of fiber

39 grams of protein

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," plowing through the old mid-life crisis one freakout at a time! I'm the crisisee, Anne Johnson. No, I did not make the name up. My mom gave it to me (embellished a bit). I'm named after a princess.

For some time I have been considering my options for continuing education. School teachers are expected to seek master's degrees and such, in order to better their practice. I myself am enrolled in a master's class in teaching right now. And the shoe doesn't fit.

Nor am I particularly interested in trying to shove my creaky feet into a master's degree in English literature. And I literally sprayed selzer water across the keyboard ten minutes ago when I opened my email and saw a message for an online master's degree in creative writing. For the love of fruit flies and first drafts! Can anything be taught online these days? Oh, snap. Not for me.

On Sunday I went to an ADF Ritual. I've visited with this Grove for a few years here and there, but they're sort of hard-core, camping and such, and my camping days are behind me. However, the ADF does have a formal program of study. Reading, writing, reflecting, doing Ritual, improving spiritually.

Voila. I'm going back to school! Requesting ADF study materials. Don't mind doing this online, or even penning the work onto vellum. If I am to pursue continuing education, it must warm my soul in the autumn of my life.

This study will not be undertaken to improve my employment opportunities or to inflate my grandeur. Quite the opposite. It's high time to get serious about studying, in an effort to understand myself, the deities, and other people better.

Don't worry. "The Gods Are Bored" won't go all Druid. There are too many other bored deities who need praise and worship! But you gotta pick from what's out there ... and ADF is out there.

[begin optional edit]

Some of you come here for laughs, so here's a previously unpublished tale from the Annals of Anne.

Back in the previous century, when the Heir was a little girl, I enrolled in a Bible study class, mostly just to get out of the house twice a week. It was part of a large pursuit called "Precepts" that billed itself as being scholarly but, in my observation, was not particularly scholarly in nature. To whit, there was only one correct answer to every question. Nowadays this doesn't even work in math.

The first 90 minutes of "Precepts" was a tedious trudge through a specific book of the Bible. The one I enrolled in was the Book of Daniel, which (thank goodness) is a splendid read. But of course, anything parsed verse by verse in 90 minute trudges is going to get tedious. Can't avoid it.

The final hour of "Precepts" consisted of watching a videotape of some female evangelist. Her name completely escapes me, but she was absolutely fascinating. For one thing, her clothes were to die for, week after week, tape after tape. For another, she was a mesmerizing speaker. It didn't matter that her "one plus one" didn't add up to two (at least in my opinion). She was just dynamic. Didn't convince me, but it was entertaining to watch her try.

Here's the funny part. Sometimes when I'm teaching, and I feel like I'm losing the audience (which is easy to do if they're 15), I tap into the old memory cupboard and bring out that evangelist. She taught with her whole body, lots of gestures. Guess what? It works! Pep is a real asset to a teacher.

Who knows? Maybe I'll be a Druid preacher with lots of pep. I'll ditch that part about only one correct answer, though. Can't build a civilization on that.

[end optional edit]

It's exactly time for me to go to my master's degree class. The class begins at 5:15 and ends at 8:15 ... and it's held in a classroom 15 miles from my house. After a long day teaching teenagers, this holds no appeal.

Pick your battles, pick your books. The time of life is short.

Here are some great tips to save calories, money, and time at the grocery store! Tackling the grocery store can be a challenge, but if you follow this advice, you will be on your way to a smaller waist and more room in your pockets from all the money you are saving!

I dagens artikel visar vi hur man kan använda bladmetall på olika sätt. Detta vackra men ack så flyende material. Bladmetall är namnet på äkta metall som hamrats ut väldigt tunt. De vanligaste sorterna guld, silver och även koppar har vi nog alla sett men det finns även i tenn och aluminium. Denna form går även att äta då det går rakt genom kroppen utan att tas upp. En liten fin pralin dekorerad med bladguld är så fin att man knappt vågar äta den.

Slagmetall kallas den icke ädla formen och är legerad av zink och koppar. Förutom de vanligaste metallfärgerna finns den även i variegated som är en brokig, flerfärgad variant i exempelvis röda, gröna eller blå toner.

Vanligtvis förekommer de som väldigt tunna blad men de finns även som flingor som dels är enfärgade och dels vackert flerfärgade.

För att fästa slagmetallen finns flera möjligheter. Det lättaste tycker jag är att använda dubbelhäftande tejp eller dubbelhäftande limark. Men du kan även använda sprejlim, limstämpeldyna, sticky embossing powder som blir klibbigt när du värmer upp det samt olika lim som är ägnade åt det såsom duo embellishing adhesive.

The Artsy team article today is about metal leaf. Metal leaf, also known as composition leaf is a really thin foil made of real metal. Gold is commonly known but we also have silver, copper, brass and aluminium. This is eadible since it passes through the body without uptake. This way, we can enjoy a beuatiful chocolate piece with some gold decoration!

Imitation leaf is what the name inclines - an imitation, not made from the expensive material, but rather a alloy (mixture) of zinc and copper. Variegated is the name of a mixture of colours in red, blue or green.

We find them as very thin sheets of metal but also as metal flakes.

To fasten the metal leaf I find the easiest way is to use double sided tape. But there are lots of other products, spray glue, glue pad, sticky embossing powder of one of all the glues made for this work such as duo embellishing adhesive.

Enough said about that. We have had a DT-call and we would like to welcome our two new members to the Artsy team. To be fair, we picked one from Norway and one from Sweden!
We look forward to see a lot of their artworks and we are excited to have them on our team!


Hanne from Norway is more known as limogglitter and this is what she tells about herself:

My name is Hanne. I started to make cards in 2004. I love to make my own backgrounds on my cards. Looking forward to be a parta of Team Artsy.

Jeg heter Hanne og har laget kort siden 2004. Liker godt å lage egne bakgrunner på kortene mine. Gleder meg till å være med i Artsy Team!


An equally warm welcome to Maria, Bellamio that also tells a little about herself:

White cs, embossed coloured and punched borders. Spray glue and drizzled on gold flakes.

Gold flakes on the edges. Coloured with distress, embossed and stamped.
Gel medium on cardboard and stamped when wet. Left to dry, put on Lumiere and silver leaf. Stencil and fiber paste is used to make the swirl.

Old wrinkled note paper glued to cardboard. Distress ink, gold metal and Inka Gold.

Lizard made of polymer clay and covered with gold leaf. Background with distress and colour wash spray. Leaves from old plastic plant.

Decopauge background colored with acrylic paint. Black rub ons, flowers painted with gold leaf.

Background with distress stains water, stamps and glimmer mist. Metal leaf on tape, rubon and on the edge of the picture.

Serendipity background with distress and acrylic paint dry embossed. Gold leaf. Bead made with fimo clay and gold leaf.

Background with candy wrappers. Brads made with fimo clay and gold leaf, alco ink and gloss.

Hope this have been an inspiration to you and don't forget to show us what you have done, we really would like to see your creations. And maybe you have found yet another way to use metal leaf or metal flakes! In the next few days we will post our cards in our own blogs and tell a bit more about them so check them out. If you have any questions we are happy to answer them!

Okay, so I know we are all supposed to be rational, thinking beings, able to calmly and rationally think away everything that makes us feel bad. It's called the Power of Positive Thinking or something like that.

What I want to know is this: Who thought up all this "rational" business? Did that person ever feel anything at all? I'm not Mr. Spock, and damn it, I don't want to be! The pox take rationality! A plague upon its house!

My sister and cousins decided to sell the family farm in Appalachia. I can't stop them. This isn't some George Clooney movie.

And yes, you kind readers have reminded me that I will always be an Appalachian, even if my name isn't on some parchment in the  Bedford County Courthouse.

And yes, the man buying the property has called me multiple times (mostly on weekends at happy hour, when he's feeling particularly garrulous) to assure me that I will always be welcome to come and walk the land.

And YES, Bedford County long ago named the road where the farm is JOHNSON ROAD, so never mind that there's not a single Johnson left on it now ... it used to be nothing but Johnsons. Ergo, the name, Johnson Road. With all the Johnsons gone.

I am a raging beast over this.

What makes me rage is the fact that most rational, educated Americans are just that -- Americans. They may know what country their ancestors came from, but it's a dim memory. So they tell me to ground, center, grieve, and move on.

Trouble is, the rational Americans have gone unglued from their origins. They are blissfully unaware of the agony their ancestors must have felt when leaving the parent country behind. Let me tell you, being a first-generation expatriate is one agonizing haul. The Israelites were Psalming about it back in the Old Testament, when they got carted off to Babylon!

I am happiest now amongst my students, many of whom are expatriated from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, and most of them not completely. They still identify as "Dominican" even if they have citizenship. It's great to be around them, because they have the same pride of place that I have, the same white-hot links to a home land. Make no mistake, Appalachia is the Dominican Republic within America. Many of the people who live in Appalachia consider themselves part of another nation, same as the Native Americans. Same as my Dominican students. Same as the Israelites, who wanted to dash their captors' children's heads against the trees.

I'm not going to dash anyone's head against a tree, but I can understand the passion that propels such feelings in an expatriate. In short, I feel like an exile. Maybe I'm not Dante, banished from Florence upon pain of death. But that's how I feel.

Therefore, I, Anne Johnson, do hereby plan to have the Zip code of Artemas, PA tattooed onto my back. I'm going to use part of the ill-gotten gains from the sale of the property to have this done.

Go ahead and be rational if you like. You might devise a method of purifying water ... but you won't write Inferno.

Imbolc 2012 has begun with rejoicing here at Chateau Johnson! All hail Queen Brighid the Bright, the Great Goddess of creativity!

Today an envelope arrived in the mail for The Spare. It was from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She was accepted. Additionally, she was given a $16,000 annual scholarship. This scholarship recognizes her potential as an artist with a promising future.

Ironically, Spare almost didn't apply to the University of the Arts.

You see, Spare is one of those people who can't dig into standardized tests. Give her a number two pencil and a bubble sheet, and she just cringes. Therefore, when the SAT scores arrived in this household, they were greeted with a great gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. University of the Arts requires the reporting of SAT scores.

Spare never thought she would get in the door of that school when they saw her numbers.

Turns out -- and this will be bitter news to Snobville parents -- the numbers don't always cut it. With little to lose but her fifty buck application fee, Spare took her portfolio and her moxie to UArts for an interview. The lady who talked to her frothed at the mouth. A week later, Spare got her letter,

So here's my free advice to all you young parents out there who are worried about getting your kid into the right college. Instead of enrolling them in the right preschool, let them play in the back yard. Instead of making them do math homework, let them fool around with scraps of old clothing. Instead of parking them in front of a video game, get them outside: snowballs, flower walks, treasure hunts, hikes, fairy festivals.

For more than a decade, Mr. J and I have wondered if we've done right by Spare. First we nagged her about her grades, then we gave up and let her follow her Muse. Turns out the Muse is a bored deity. No big surprise there!

Congratulations, Spare! We may not be perfect, me and your dad, but we love you.