Reviews: Inflatable Kids Education Toys

Inflatable toys make a lot of sense when you have to live in a small space because you can fold them up and put them away.
Create an outer space theme party for the kids with inflatable toys.

Why Do We Talk About the Weather to Anyone and Everyone?

Why is it that we can strike up a conversation with a stranger or someone we barely know, at any time, any place, about the most boring subject out there – the Weather?

Why do people bash Winter? Winter has been around longer than anyone on this earth. It will never go away for a very long time. yet people complain about it. I don't seem to understand that people who have lived through 60+ plus winters still continue to complain about Winter every year it comes around.

You think we would be used to Winter by now.

Weather is here to stay and so will conversation about the weather so why not spice up our weather conversations with current issue news? World Weather site will give you links to live weather web cams to every country in the world. Or get the newest releases on global warming. Weather is also a global conversation starter and that is a good thing.

Awesome Squidoo Blog Circle

I am happy to be part of this awesome Squidoo blog circle.

Be like the flower, turn your face to the sun

If you live in the Northern Hemisphere winter can be a depressing time of year. The solution is to move or travel to a sunny location during the darkest months. Did you know that animals react to the changing seasons with changes in mood, metabolism and behaviour and human beings are just the same.

How do you know whether you are suffering from SAD syndrome?

Symptoms tend to start from around September each year lasting until April.

Symptoms include:

• Sleep problems - oversleeping but not refreshed, cannot get out of bed, needing a nap in the afternoon
• Overeating - carbohydrate craving leading to weight gain
• Depression, despair, misery, guilt, anxiety - normal tasks become frustratingly difficult
• Family / social problems - avoiding company, irritability, loss of libido, loss of feeling
• Lethargy - too tired to cope, everything an effort
• Physical symptoms - often joint pain or stomach problems, lowered resistance to infection
• Behavioural problems - especially in young people

If you have these symptoms see your Doctor and start making changes in your life. You don't need to suffer 8 months out of every year with this horrible SAD.

Plan your vacations to sunny destinations like Hawaii - travel to Hawaii is easy to arrange.

There are many houses to rent on the Island of your choice called vacation rentals where you can stay for a month or more. Whenever I go to Hawaii I always go for at least a month and usually in Dec. or Jan. and the health benefits are always enormous.

Once you have checked a sunny destination out and you experience the improvement in your over all physical and mental health then you can seriously consider moving there. A place for your life to grow and expand because now you will feel well for 12 months of the year instead of just 4 months.

Is there a cure for SAD - I have found only 2 suggestions on dealing with SAD - The cure? Intense light every day. Go a brightly lit climate or try light therapy. My choice is go to a brightly lit climate as you can get outdoors and enjoy life rather than sitting under a special light bulb.

Where do you want to go for your next sunny vacation? Mexico? Fiji?

Dynamic Zazzle module adds Zing to your Squidoo lens!

A wonderful partnership has developed between Zazzle and Squidoo. The new Zazzle module is easy to use and it looks very professional when you add it to your lens.

Don't have your own Zazzle gallery yet? Feel free to use my id (gramabarb) to access my photographs for your lens when using the new Zazzle module. You can find the module under 'Add Module' - 'Sell Stuff' second page.

New to squidoo? Don't have a clue what Zazzle is? Ask any Squidoo Giant and they will be happy to help you. Gramabarb's Zazzle Gallery on Squidoo

Winter is the season for new Teddy Bears

Winter is the season for new Teddy Bears because it is cold and often children are home with bad colds and the flu and what better gift could there be than a warm cuddly teddy bear to help them get well. Teddy Bears Care

Not just children love to receive a teddy bear. Seniors do too. I want to tell you a story of a senior dancing with a teddy bear. One evening we had some musicians come to our assisted living complex to entertain us and one tune was especially good for old-time dancing. One lady in her 90's got up and walked across the room and picked up our resident 3 foot plush teddy bear who always wore a hat and she started to dance with Mr. Teddy and she danced and smiled through the entire length of the instrumental piece of music. She received a big applause from everyone.

Teddy Bears can warm the heart of a senior too. There are a lot of lonely seniors in some of these senior homes. Give a teddy bear!

More plush animals.

I love hunting - hunting on the internet for information about animals

Hunting information about animals on the internet seems to occupy part of each day. No matter what I am doing I always end up looking up information about another animal from the urban coyote to the little known Snub-nosed Monkey from China.

I love hunting for information about animals that are endangered and what we can do to save them. What groups can I mention on my lenses to help people get involved. Save the Panda has some great ideas on how you can adopt a wild Panda or have a Save the Panda party.
What better way to raise compassionate, concerned young people than to involve children early in caring actions. The future of the panda is in the hands of the young.

Lets "hunt" together for ways to care for our planet and all life on it. It is our responsibility.

For all Grandparents on Squidoo

A Grandmother's Love is filled with love and wisdom from Grandmother. If you are looking for gifts for your Grandmother you will find some carefully chosen suggestions.
http://www.squidoo.com/grandmothers

To all Grandmothers - "Thank you!": Financial Crisis

To all Grandmothers - "Thank you!": Financial Crisis

Financial Crisis

The current financial crisis that many face on a worldwide scale brought back to mind the Great Depression Era. A different time and different sets of problems but nonetheless the same human strength and courage is needed. How bad was the Great Depression of the 1930's?

It needed to be written about again and as I stopped to reflect often I spent an entire day creating this lens - The Great Depression Era

I remembered the stories told by my family and found many stories told by other families of how they coped and often had to leave their dreams to the relentless dust storms and the grasshoppers that ate everything in their path including the clothes hanging on the line to dry.

To all those people who are 'voices of the past" ...."we thank you!"

Read The Great Depression Era and then gratefully count your blessings.

A Favorite Decade is the Fifties.

A quick entertainment review of the Fifties - do you remember?

1950 - "Goodnight, Irene" was #1 on the charts for 13 weeks! It is still an old favorite today.
1951 - Have you seen the movie - "The African Queen (1951) - Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn" ?
1952 - "High Noon" was released July 24, 1952. It was not only a classic western, but a classic American film.
1953 - The song "The Doggie in the Window" by Patti Page ran 8 weeks as #1 on the Hit Parade.
1953 - was a very good year for Studebaker - Read the story in Time magazine Feb. 2, 1953 - "Studerbaker Vance"
1954 - "Sh-Boom" by The Crew-Cuts ran 7 weeks as #1 on the Hit Parade
1955 - The summer of 1955 "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets hit the charts and teenagers rocked the summer away. I was one of them!
1956 - Elvis Presley sings 'Heartbreak Hotel' on the 'Milton Berle Show.' An estimated 25% of the American population tuned in to hear him.
1957 - Tab Hunter's "Young Love" was # 1 for six weeks in 1957. (I was married in 1957 and this was "our song")
1958 - There are 4,063 drive in movie screens nationwide. Where you watched: Auntie Mame; A Long Hot Summer and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
1959 - February 3 of 1959, a plane crash took the lives of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. Listen to their music.
1959 - Remember the 1959 Pink Cadillac?

When you click on each year you will visit the music, cars and movies of one of the most favorite decades of all time.

Recipes from Grama Barb

This time of the year I always dig out my old recipes and scour cookbooks looking for something new. I guess it is because summer is over and I'm tired of salads, cold plates and barbecues. The days are cooler and I am on the hunt for something really yummy.

Some of my old favorites are meatballs and spaghetti - http://www.squidoo.com/makemeatballs

One of the recipes that always take me on a journey down memory lane are for Rusks or Skorpa (Swedish Toast)
Skorpa is a traditional Scandinavian coffee (kaffe) time treat.

My Grandmother Peterson's kitchen was well known for it's sweet aroma of skorpa' and fresh brewed coffee. I have her original recipe here: http://www.squidoo.com/grandmasrecipes

Today I found a new recipe that I would love to try! It is called

Overnight Corn Flake Breakfast Pie

http://www.squidoo.com/breakfast-pies Doesn't it look good?

But right now I am going to look for my old fashioned Peanut Butter cookie recipe.

Cute shoes from Zazzle

Grandmothers love all things cute for their grandchildren. Zazzle has a new product that can fill the need for "cute" - design shoes for your grandchildren. I am so excited about this and it works so well with squidoo lenses too.

Every child will want a pair!

Cute Shoes. Cool Shoes.

http://www.zazzle.com/gramabarb*

Cute Shoes for Kids

I'm on the hunt for more opportunities to take 'cute pictures'. Little toy stuffies sit still so they are an easy subject - as you can see from these cute kids shoes created by Gramabarb on Zazzle http://www.squidoo.com/cuteandcoolshoes

Zazzle has shoes as it's new product to add you own pictures to - how cool is that?
Check this great idea out:

Gramabarb's Photo Art

I am trying out this widget with the hopes it will link to squiddit and the squidoo lenses posted there:

Remember 'Archie'?

Today I received an email from stumpedia with an invitation to read a link about

Ten Great Moments In Internet History

So I did! And I am happy I did. The very first search engine was called Archie search engine and it was hosted and McGill University in 1990. I remember using Archie when it first came out and how amazed and excited I was when you could actually search for information with it.
The article brought back memories about six degrees.... one of the first successful networking sites on the internet - I made all sorts of friends on that site... what fun it was! We have come a long way since those early days on the internet! Now we into high speed and beginning to take the internet for granted thinking that is a 'normal' way of life.

In my life I have come from the days of using a telephone was like a miracle - we had to tell the operator the number we were calling and she would plug the right wires so we could talk to the person. All the phones were on a 'party line' with multiple people using your same telephone line. Now you can email instantly to anywhere in the world and when we have a glitch in our internet connection for a few minutes - and we are offline - we are often upset. Funny how we get use to all this high tech - and yet it is less than 20 years to when 'Archie' first appeared.

Now we have an exploding, expanding Squidoo and it is equally as exciting to me as Archie was. Why? Because now I can build my own web pages in an easy simple way in order to share my interests and passions and make a little coin while having fun. All in all I have a great productive time on the internet because of squidoo and all the hard working lensmasters that come up with amazing tools like http://squidutils.com/ and the new squiddit (for experienced lensmasters only) that will help us grow and expand our traffic.

Happy Squidooing everyone!

Create your own lens - it is free and easy! Start here - Click.

The Prestigious Giant 100 Club

I am very pleased to be counted worthy to be part of the elite and prestigious Giant 100 Club.

Thank you!

Squidoo community - Thank you

Being part of the Squidoo community is so rewarding and by working together we all get stronger together.
I want to say "Thank you" to all my fans for taking the time to stop by my lenses and leave messages, stars and favorites. I know how busy we all are and I appreciate everyone of you!

Gramabarb's fans:

I was "Showcased" with kind words

Thank you for all your kind words "Squidoo Team". I am proud to be a Giant Squid and for the opportunity to expression my passions and interests.

Read gramabarb's showcase at Giant Squid Community Showcase

Flowers

One of my many hobbies is photographing flowers and of course my grandchildren :)

I make a web page about flowers every chance I get - here is one of many: Flowers Galore


I found zazzle a wonderful place to be creative with my flower photographs.

Gardening with Grandma

Gardening with Grandma

Children love to dig in the dirt and gardening will teach them many valuable lessons while they do it.

Through the eyes of your grandchildren the birds and bugs in the garden becomes a lesson in biology - when they ask "why" and you take the time to answer.

The book "I Love Dirt" caught my attention and I just had to put it for sale for you to purchase too. Make gardening a fun learning experience for you and your grandchildren. Let them 'dress up' in gardening clothes and buy them a few inexpensive 'tools' and you will create memories that will last a lifetime. Take the time to listen to your grandchildren in your beautiful garden that you create together and what will blossom will be your relationship with them. Priceless!!
Enjoy!

Visit Gardening with Grandma

Wildflowers of the World

I love flowers.
Wildflowers are especially stunning and when you explore Wildflowers of the World it will also be a learning experience. There is an awesome youtube videos that will help you id flowers.
The newest wildflower guide books for the region are listed plus stunning pictures and art work. This site is well worth a visit.

Happy surfing!

How to plant a wildflower meadow
https://youtu.be/oNdePo62wwc

Oregon Wildflowers named
https://youtu.be/LxTkHrLl8GI

Wild roses of Alberta
https://youtu.be/4PrickLoG-U

Wild Rose Gift Necklace by gramabarb

Learn about nature from Grandma

Take your grandchildren birdwatching and you will be giving them a lifetime ticket to the theater of nature.

Create memories by walking through the woods, parks or your backyard with your grandchildren and taking the time to marvel at all the beautiful birds and flowers etc.
One of my earliest memories is of walking through the forest with my grandmother.

Start a beautiful Bird experience for your Grandchildren by visiting here:

Birding with Grandma

Shop for gifts at my Bird Gift Store

Introducing Grandmother

To all grandmothers, whose wisdom, courage and love have paved the path for future generations - we thank you!

Grandmothers are voices of the past.
Role models of the present
They open the doors to the future.

Learn the wonderful role grandparents play in the lives of young children at A Grandmother's Love

A Grandmother's Love is Always in Bloom magnet by gramabarb
Make cheap custom magnets on zazzle