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In today’s look-obsessed world, Michelle Obama gives the best advice to all those searching for Mr/Ms Perfect.
“Cute’s good. But cute only lasts for so long, and then it’s, Who are you as a person? Don’t look at the bankbook or the title. Look at the heart. Look at the soul … When you’re dating a man, you should always feel good … You shouldn’t be in a relationship with somebody who doesn’t make you completely happy and make you feel whole.”
Money Matters for Kids: Earn it, Save it, Spend it, Share It! Traveling Exhibit and Workbook Launch * Nov. 7, 10 AM
It is never too early to teach our children to be financially literate. When we start young, we can be wise savers, careful spenders and smart consumers! Through a sponsorship grant by Citi Foundation, Museo Pambata presents a traveling exhibit and workbook on financial literacy for children. The traveling exhibit and workbook feature information, puzzles, games and ways to understand money and how significant it is in our lives. Similarly, a box of activity cards which comes with the workbook provide ideas for a child to further inquire about the meaning of money in their lives.
I was shocked to learn about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a vortex of over 3.5 million tons of plastic spanning 10 million square miles. 80% of the garbage comes from land-based sources, and 20% from ships at sea.
It’s a horrifying twist to the saying “Don’t shit in your own backyard.”
Charles Moore, the sailor who discovered the Northern Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997, warns that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, this plastic soup would double in size over the next decade.
Plastic has become an indispensable part of our everyday lives. At the moment, it’s virtually impossible to spend a single day without touching the stuff. However it IS possible to avoid creating MORE plastic waste. Here are just 2 actions that you and your family can start implementing TODAY.
1. Ditch the straw
Think of how many thousands of plastic straws you have used, wasted and thrown away. Did you know that it takes centuries for each one to biodegrade! The next time you dine outside, do think twice before accepting that straw. For those operating food joints, make that paradigm shift: makes straws an option, not the default.
2. Bag the Bag
Seriously, do you really need that plastic bag when you buy something at the local 7-11 or Ministop?
Let’s try to reduce our habit of using plastic bags when we don’t need them.
I discovered this pocket bag at the check-out counter of my favourite shopping centre – Daiso (aka the $2 store). I usually have it folded into a tiny square and tucked into my bag organizer. I whip it out whenever I grab a bite at 7-11, buy office supplies, pay a visit to the Library, use my umbrella on a rainy day… etc etc.
We are now also taking a conscious effort to reduce our collection of plastic bags when buying groceries. Those cloth bag giveaways at trade fairs & bazaars are discovering a second life.
It’s Blog Action Day today, focusing on Climate Change. How exactly does the reduction of plastic relate to tackling climate change? Everything is interconnected — manufacturing plastic depends on consuming oil so the indiscrimate use of plastic literally fuels global warming. Getting rid of them (plastic) in incinerators also adds a little bit more to the amount of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere.
As our family has found, it’s not that hard to make that shift to a greener life. Just take it one plastic bag/straw at a time and make the world a better, cleaner place.
A Disney trip is at the top of the vacation list for most young families. However, let’s face it, the happiest place on earth can also be the most expensive. Disney, amongst all the various theme parks, has marketing and promotions down to an art form and it can be hard to resist the pleas of the little ones as they hop up and down with glee. But do not despair, saving money in a world designed to make your spend IS possible. Here are some tips:
www.mousesavers.com. The brainchild of Mary Waring, MouseSavers finds and posts more than 300 pages worth of coupon codes and money-saving ideas on all things Disney whether it be Disney merchandise or a Disney Cruise.
Disney World DOES give freebies, such as free park tickets or free food during your stay. http://disneyworld.disney.go.com/special-offers. The only catch is in order to avail of these freebies you may need to stay at least 4 days AND time your trip during the off-peak season. Be sure that concentrating your stay in Disney World is indeed what you want to do since it may come at the expense of seeing other worthwhile sites such as the Kennedy Space Center and Universal Orlando.
Going as a big group? Skip the hotels and rent a house. You can take your pick of dedicated McMansions complete with pools, grills, and big-screen tvs. Another big plus – you won’t be held hostage by hotel food which can eat a big chunk out of your wallet. Take your pick of rentals from http://www.allstarvacationhomes.com/ and http://www.ipgflorida.com/.
Can’t get enough of Disney magic? The main hook of the Disney-run hotels are their extra perks – free parking and “Extra Magic Hours”. Be warned however – they cost at least twice as much as comparable hotels in the near vicinity. You may still be able to get some discounts during off peak season.
With careful planning and budgeting, your Disney vacation CAN be the best ever! =)
* Interactive Activity Areas
* 30+ Exhibitors and vendors showcasing products and services for
kids of all ages.
* All day talks and demos for moms, dads and kids at the stage area.
Come to EXPO KID and experience active fun, learning, imagination-building, and just smply having a grand time with your kids!
Featuring interactive activity areas and all-day talks and activities
showcasing some of the most progressive and creative kids activity providers today:
* My Masterpiece Multi-Arts School
* KidsAhoy
* Multiple Intelligence School
* Kiddieparty.com
Program Schedule:
10:00 AM Formal Opening
Kids Bazaar open to the public
10:30-11AM Yoga Kids
11-11:30 AM Balloon Show by Jiggles the Balloon Lady
11:30 AM-12NN Raffle
12NN-12:30 GSK Book Launch
12:30-1PM Games and Raffle
1-2PM The Bumblebee & Co 2009 Collection – A Halloween Costume Fashion Show
2PM-230Pm Science Exploration by KidsAhoy
2:30-3PM Little Theatre by KidsAhoy
3PM-330PM Drum Jam! by Dona Esteban
Enrich your child’s creative expression, coordination, team spirit and musicality through dynamic rhythms!
330-4PM Tumble Tots
4-5PM My Masterpiece multi-arts show
5PM-6PM Batang Pinoy by KidsAhoy
6PM Onstage Games
Raffle draws
8PM Closing
An Expo Kid Bazaar of 30+ vendors and exhibitors of unique finds for kids and everyone in the family.
Expo hours: 10am to 8pm
Entrance Fee: P 25/head
*All proceeds from registration will benefit Mio Mendiola, a 5-year old boy fighting leukemia. (www.miofightscancer.com).
I really love the message that Michael Jordan is saying in this ad — “I’ve failed over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
One of my biggest challenges as a mom is getting my 6-year old to take mistakes or defeat as a learning experience and not a personal failure. Teaching him to read bigger words usually ends in tears of frustration and sobbed-out phrases like “I can’t do it. It’s so hard. “ Saying “try and try until you succeed” will only get you so far until it become too repetitive and ignored.
I’ve always wondered how other parents nurture their kids. How do you teach them to be competitive yet sportsmanlike? How do you teach them that losing is not the end of the world?
Thanks to the internet and the generosity of certain think-tanks and universities, lectures by global movers and shakers are now accessible to the public: for FREE.
My favorite sites at the moment are the following:
1. TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design)
TED is a small non-profit organization which hosts annual conferences in Long Beach and Oxford, bringing together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). Videos of these talks are available online at www.ted.com. I love their mission – to build a clearinghouse that offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, and also a community of curious souls to engage with ideas and each other. Topics range from the environment to art to what makes us happy.
Must view video: Sir Ken Robinson’s talk about “how we are educating our kids out of their creative capacities.
2. FORA.TV
Hot on the heels of TED is Fora.tv whose mission is to “gather the web’s largest collection of unmediated video drawn from live events, lectures, and debates going on all the time at the world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences. We present this provocative, big-idea content for anyone to watch, interact with, and share –when, where, and how they want“ Be sure to catch George Kembel’s lecture on Awakening Creativity.
3. Academic Earth
There is a revolution happening in campuses around the world and this is being led by the edupunks who espouse a do-it-yourself philosophy with regards to education. MIT was the first to lead the pack — posting videotaped lectures on ocw.mit.edu. Other Ivy League schools such as UC Berkeley, Carnegie Melon and Yale have followed suit.
It was just a matter of time before someone had the brilliant idea of aggregating all these videos on to one website. Academic Earth now allows you to audit classes from various universities in the comfort of your own home.
I’m sure that we’ve all be in similar situations — plotted out our budget for the next 6-12 months – only to wonder why it isn’t working. Well, in my case, I realized early on that I had forgotten to account for seasonality — big ticket expenses such as yearly insurance premiums and quarterly tuition payments. I adjusted our budget excel sheet accordingly so we can now heave a sigh of relief ala Joseph during the time of famine. =)
For those who would like to do the same and take a calendar-based approach to organizing personal finances, there is a fantastic website called PocketSmith which can help you get started. If you want to repay your debt faster, see your savings grow, and track your expenditures against forecasts, then PocketSmith will do the job for you. Users simply input their scheduled salary payouts, bill payments, etc and have each of these categories repeat weekly, fortnightly or monthly which is made relatively painless through integration with Google Calendar, iCal (for Apple users) and Outlook. PocketSmith then calculates all incoming and outgoing transactions to generate a six or twelve month forecast.
What I particularly like about this online tool is that you can pick any given date and receive a predicted bank balance for that day. If you see yourself being “in the red” right after Christmas, you can adjust your scheduled ‘financial events’ and immediately see the changes reflected in the projected cashflow. There are even dynamic, animated graphs which will give you an illustrated breakdown of your coming year’s finances. It certainly helped us in finding ways to help us achieve our financial goals.
The basic version of PocketSmith is free, and subscribers can sign up for more premium versions at USD 5 and USD 12 per month.
Blogging and Personal Finance. These are subjects which don’t normally go hand-in-hand. =)
Randell Tiongson, Director of the Registered Financial Planners Institute of the Philippines will conduct a free seminar for bloggers on personal and practical finance. Randell will be talking about the various financial instruments that you can invest on so that you can break out of the “rat race”.
All you have to do is to sign-up by either leaving a comment on Carlo Ople’s blog or by e-mailing oplecarlo@gmail.com. The event will be on June 27, 2PM-5PM at the Victory Center, Promenade, Greenhills, San Juan.
Slots are limited so sign-up now.
Btw, if you would like to take your blog to the next level, you may want to consider enrolling in Anton Diaz’ webinars. Go to http://antondiaz.com/mavensecrets/ for more details.
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Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials. ~Meryl Streep
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Money Matters for Kids: Earn it, Save it, Spend it, Share It! Traveling Exhibit and Workbook Launch * Nov. 7, 10 AM
