Mother’s Day, occurring on May 13th this year, has been known for being one of the most important holidays of the year; its a day to give back to all moms that support, help, and care for their children. Mother’s Day is just around the corner and many people have been planning surprises for their moms. Are you struggling to plan a special surprise for your mom? If so, here are some fun and caring ways to show your love for your mom on Mother’s Day.

Start with the morning: It is important that every mom wakes up to a nice, home-cooked breakfast. Start the morning by making breakfast for your mom; make something you are capable of cooking because it is always the thought that counts. Some common breakfast foods people have made in the past include pancakes, fresh fruit salads, and coffee. If you are not the best cook or cannot cook at all, go out in the morning to your mom’s favorite bakery and buy her favorite pastries or breakfast items. Also, stop by a coffee shop to pick up a nicely brewed cup of coffee. Be sure to also add a bouquet of flowers at the center of your mom’s breakfast surprise.

Afternoon fun: Today is definitely meant for relaxing and having fun for moms; in the afternoon, go out to a place you and your mom would like to go and enjoy a day together. Fun activities for mother-daughter outings include shopping or going to nail salons. Boys usually like to go out and play sports with their moms or watch a fun movie together.

Surprise! The perfect gift: The biggest dilemma of all would have to be the Mother’s-Day gift buying. We have all been looking through stores and online shopping for hours to find the perfect gift. Some recommended gifts that are both reasonably priced and loved by all mothers are brooches, scarves, wallets, and other accessories. Accessories are easy presents for Mother’s Day because they can easily be shopped for and can definitely put a smile on your mom’s face.

 Homemade presents: There are also some people who prefer making their own homemade Mother’s Day gifts. Some common homemade gifts include baking treats or even knitting a hand-knit scarf for your mom. Also, one of the easiest and most thoughtful gifts is to decorate an old picture frame and add a photo of you and your mom to it.

Mother’s Day is definitely a special day for all moms that work hard everyday and are a big part of our lives. To make their day even more special, follow these tips to put a great, big smile on her face.

Being young and modern comes with a few drawbacks, such as being left with incredible amounts of junk: floppy disks, phone books, maps, and the list goes on. As these items become expendable, what is the next generation to do with piles of junk? Here are creative ideas on how to recycle your junk from lost decades. What else would we do with them anyway?

1. Floppy disks: Floppy disks seem obsolete nowadays with flash drives the size of a fingernail able to hold kilobytes of data.
*Use floppy disks of different colors to create a mosaic poster as a work of art to appeal to your geeky side of home decor. They can be used to create Pacman-shaped creations for the inner gamer.

2. Wires: Wires have not yet fallen behind the times, but they are definitely getting there. No one remembers having to stand by the phone on the kitchen wall with cell phones that work virtually everywhere.
*Use wires as supplies for jewelry. Cut up all the wires around your house and create wonderfully chic bracelets, necklaces, and even rings if your fingers are up for a challenge.

3. Maps: With the invention of GPS in our cars and phones, the meaning of getting lost has, well, been lost.
*Satisfy the voyager in you and use maps as decorative wallpaper. You will never get lost going from room to room.

4. Phone books: Modern smartphones can fit more smartphones than an 100-pound phone book ever could. Save time by surfing through your phone rather than flipping through a phone book.
*Exercise your body instead of your fingers by stacking multiple phone books on top of each other and doing step aerobics.
*Create the longest flip-book in history with a phone book! Your ball could bounce from A to Z.
*With summer vacation and plenty of free time coming up, put your fingers to work and recreate the Tale of 10,000 Yellow Swans with the Yellow Pages!

Step into the future and use these creative ways to recycle the junk of the past!

Television vs. Stadium - Which one is better? photocredit - mrsec.wise.edu

Sporting events are fun and exciting to watch both at the stadium and on the television, as each have their own advantages and disadvantages, but which one is more entertaining and an overall better experience for the fan?

Millions of people worldwide have enjoyed watching all types of sporting events at home on the television and at a team’s arena for decades.  Both allow the fan to watch their favorite team play and provide hours of entertainment.  However, there are many contrasting qualities about both ways to watch that make them distinctly different.

Watching the big game, like the Super Bowl or the World Series, on television is one of the most entertaining and exciting times of the year.  Families crowd around the television in anticipation of what will happen next.  Besides the fact that you do not have to pay for a ticket to  the game, choosing the watch the game on the television has many advantages over a stadium, including privacy, clean bathrooms, and vastly cheaper food.  Watching the game on television is also great for high school students because most do not have time to go and watch games during the weekend and they are great to watch while doing homework.  These comforts usually make watching a sporting event on the television an overall much more enjoyable experience.

However, there are many things that a stadium has that a television can never give to the fan.  One of the best aspects of being inside the stadium is watching your favorite players live right in front of your eyes as history is made.  Being at the stadium also gives you the chance to get some free gear, especially in the baseball stadium where fans can catch homerun or foul balls to take home.  These are things that a television simply cannot replace.

Whether you prefer to watch sporting events on the television or in person at the stadium, both are sure to give the viewer hours of entertainment because they both let you watch your favorite sports teams.

We all have candy wrappers and stacks of construction paper lying around that can be made into eco-friendly, fashionable, and fun purses or pencil bags. These bags make great gifts for birthdays and Christmas and definitely look great with any outfit.

Creating a candy wrapper consists of three steps: folding rectangles that serve as the base to creating the purse and assembling strands of rectangles, to sew together. For this project, you will need construction paper, magazine pages, candy or potato chip bags, scissors, rulers, markers, and sewing equipment. Here are the steps to creating a candy wrapper bag:

Folding Rectangles

First, cut out strips of 18 cm by 10 cm from old paper, candy wrappers, or any bag that was once used to store food. Use different colors and designs to make your bag colorful.

Second, lets start folding! Fold the paper hotdog-style in half. Then open up the piece of paper and fold both sides in towards the middle. Then, fold both flaps together so that they create a narrow strand.

Fold the narrow strand of paper in half and fold both sides to the center where the crease was made.

Fold the two halves together to form a small rectangle.

Repeat this process several times to createthe base for creating the bag. Now that we have all the parts to makingthe bag, lets put them together!

Assembling Strands of Rectangles 
Take two rectangular squares and open one of the creases slightly

Slide the ends of the other rectangular square through the two holes and pull it through the other rectangle-make sure it is tight.

To add another square to this two-rectangle piece, open the creases on the other side and put the sides of the other rectangle into it.

Continue adding rectangles to create a strand of rectangles.

Sewing Strands of rectangles

First, find a needle and sewing thread.

Take the strands of colored rectangles and sew them together.

Once you have stranded all the pieces together, you can create different types of bags including pencil cases, purses, and clutches. To create a fancier look, add zippers and straps to your candy wrapper purse.

Fun of Fantasy Sports; photo credit - playasonly.com

Have you ever dreamed of owning or managing your very own professional sports team?  If you have, you are in luck because participating in fantasy sports allows you to control every aspect of your very own team as you compete against friends in a league.

A fantasy sport is a type of game where players pretend to be owners of a team and compete against the other owners to gain the highest amount of points throughout the season.  Points are earned through the real-life players that each owner has and that player’s real-life daily statistics.  A typical league starts with a draft, live or auto pick, of usually about 10 or more players.  Each participant can draft any player they want, granted another team did not already get him, allowing a participant to get a largely varied team filled with favorite players from every single professional team.

Once all of the players have their own team, the fun really starts.  Every week, in head-to-head style leagues, you go against a single opponent in your league and compete to have the highest statistics in each category.  Essentially, it then becomes a sort of strategy game in order to get the best players from the free-agency pool every week and make decisions similar to those of real professional sports general managers.

There are many reasons to join or start your own fantasy sports league: a person can learn more about a sport as well as the players and interact with and meet new friends.  Playing a fantasy sports league daily for an entire season is sure to grant the player an immense amount of new sports knowledge.  An even better reason to join is that there is always a great feeling after beating a friend’s team week after week and then winning the championship of the league.

Fantasy sports are growing more and more popular every year as people can now play year round in various sports including basketball, football, baseball, and hockey.  Most are completely free to participate in and help you to learn the game as you play like Yahoo! Sports and ESPN.   These websites are wonderful because you can play with friends or with complete strangers, but fun is always guaranteed.

Next to the Pocky chocolate covered biscuits, Hi-Chew fruit flavored gummies and Pretz savory cracker sticks is an unknown Asian snack that has not reached superstar status yet: haw flakes. Despite the weird name and overtly Asian packaging, inside carries a tasty red nickel-sized wafer.

Made from the fruit of the hawthorn tree, it is sweet and tangy with a chalk-like texture. It tastes much better than that description though. It also has some believed health benefits. According to eastern medicine, haw flakes help stimulate bowel movements and regulate the digestive system. At about fifty cents for a pack of ten, it is much cheaper than Activia. Despite the health claims, it has the amount of sugar of a regular snack. At about thirty-two grams of sugar per roll, it can be very unhealthy consumed in large amounts.

However, my obsession with haw flakes has transcended all common sense and instead I eat haw flakes excessively and frequently. Portable and endorphin stimulating, it almost has the description of a perfect drug. Some say I will overdose on them; that my bowels will go haywire and that I will be in a sugar high all day; however, I do not want to stop eating them. Delightfully cheap and delicious, I much rather go on the haw flake diet in college than the ramen diet.

Pottmore's logo (Photo Credit: http://piratalondon.com/2011/11/pottermore-pt-ii/)

J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore, a virtual and online experience based on the acclaimed Harry Potter series, finally concluded its beta-testing phase and opened its magical gates to all muggles. Pottermore allows users to relive all seven books of the series in the most creative fashion: it places the user within the book, allowing users to witness the story of “the boy who lived,” Harry Potter himself, firsthand and also allows users to learn the secrets and back stories of many other characters, such as Professor Mcgonagall and the “we hate but love you” Professor Snape.

Pottermore also sorts its users into the four houses of Hogwarts: Slytherin, Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff, after a fun and comprehensive personality test. After users are sorted and learn more about their house, they are then allowed various options to continue their online wizarding experience. Users can continue to follow the book and its marvelous tales, or they can participate in potion-making games and dueling battles. Successfully mixing a potion (without mishaps) and winning duels award the user and their house housepoints. The house that has the most points at the end of a set period of time wins the House Cup, just like in the books and the movies!

Pottermore is also a very safe online environment for all ages. The site uses cryptic usernames and is very strict with privacy policies. The developing team also monitors most of the activity on the website, guaranteeing the safety of all of its users from the Death Eaters.

Do you think you have the magic in you? Go try and visit Hogwarts at www.pottermore.com.

Make yourself more aware the signs of lying so you aren't fooled! Watch out for those who are notorious liars. (Source: http://myinnergoddess.blogspot.com)

             As human beings, it is not uncommon to lie or be lied to by others.  It is basic human tendency to trust what others say.  A teacher could lie straight to your face and you would probably accept it because of his or her position.  Everyday, we talk to friends and other people, but how do we know whether they are being truly genuine? By paying attention to these aspects of the other person’s behavior, hopefully you will be able to sort out the liars from the pack”

1. Eye contact.  A person who is lying will try to avoid any eye contact.  His or her eyes may wander back and forth, up and down.
2. Stuttering in speech.  It becomes more difficult to speak clearly and without fault when one is lying.  The person’s speech could become more broken and filled with “um” and “uh.”  This could be because that person is having a difficult time developing his or her lies.
3. Ask for specific details.  Someone may be able to create a web of lies that seems like it is truth, but there are always small details that even the most thorough thinkers could not have thought of beforehand.  If the other person becomes tongue-tied it could be a sign of lying.
4. Changes in the tone of voice.  When someone is lying, his or her voice may become more high pitched than usual.  This is caused by stress the person could be feeling.
5. Sweating.  Sweating is also a sign of stress, which is not unusual if one is lying. If the person is nervous then sweating can occur. However, this is not always the most accurate indicator since some people may naturally sweat more than others.
6. Body language.  If the person is fidgeting around a lot, or doing the complete opposite — stiff, rigid movements — then he or she could be lying.
7. Dramatic changes in behavior.  People can feel threatened sometimes if they are being bombarded by probing questions.  They may become hostile when answering some questions and lash out at you, becoming a very unpleasant acquaintance.
8. Formality of speech.  If the person’s speech is too formal then it could indicate a rehearsed speech or story.  When the conversation becomes stilted and unlike a normal, flowing conversation, be wary.
9. Tell them to repeat the story.  Watch out for any inconsistencies in the story.  It is easy to make up a story, but it is difficult to repeat the story, especially if it is fictional.
10. Facial expressions.  It is not always easy to keep a calm façade when lying. Look out for any small give-aways in the person’s face that could indicate true feelings behind his or her mask of deceit.

            Hopefully, you will now be able to catch a liar. Don’t be fooled by those who want to deceive you!

You never know what's out in the world wide web! (Image Credit: myamplifiers.com)

The world wide web is a great resource for lots of things—information for research papers, communicating with friends, and of course, cat videos. There is no doubt that teenagers spend large amounts of their day online. Though there are no real rules of the Internet, there are certainly some decisions that are frowned upon; this is my list of the ten unwritten rules of the Internet.

1. No weird email usernames. Most people have at least one of these in their lifetime, whether it’s supacutegurL@email.com or hunkymonkeybanana@email.com. These usernames don’t give off the greatest first impression, so get rid of yours ASAP!

2. Do not view inappropriate websites in public places. This should be obvious—be respectful of others and your surroundings.

3. If you do something illegal, DO NOT post it online. Most people won’t care anyway and it will likely come back to haunt you later on. This includes all types of online mediums: status updates, blog posts, photographs, as well as videos.

4. No excessive changing of profile pictures. Unless you went through some intensive surgery, you probably don’t look that different in a picture compared to another taken just last week. You may even be judged as being a narcissistic and someone who cares too much about looks.

5. Do not send chain mails. It may seem tempting, but seriously, not sending that email to fifty of your friends does not guarantee that you will not be murdered by “Little Charlie” tonight at 3:00 a.m. Chain mail is annoying to most people, so steer clear of them.

6. No poking. I don’t like being poked constantly in real life, so I don’t really want to be “poked” online on a social networking website.

7. Do not “like” your own posts. If you are one to like your own posts, you probably like about another thirty pages a day (on average), too. This is equivalent to repeatedly laughing out loud to your own jokes.

8. Tone down the volume. Whether you’re watching a video on YouTube or listening to an online radio station, be respectful of your environment and wear headphones if needed. Even then, make sure others can’t hear the sounds coming out of your headphones.

9. Type normally. Do not type IN ALL CAPS; IT’S JUST LIKE SHOUTING IN SOMEONE’S FACE. Similarly, try to avoid other awkward styles such as capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Single Word Like This, or using symbols as w0rd$ 1ik3 th1$. It only make reading whatever you’re typing harder.

10. Remember, “lol” makes everything better. Tried asking a girl out on a date online and didn’t get a quick answer back? Toss in a “lol” (laugh out loud) to make it seem like you weren’t as serious as you were. Friend asks your honest opinion of her horrible barf-colored Prom dress? Tell her the truth, but add a “lol” at the end for good measure.

Which one of these unwritten rules of the Internet are you guilty of not following?

The San Francisco Giants are back in town and ready to play! The 2010 World Series champions returned to the scenic Bay Area after some tough losses away from home against the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Colorado Rockies. The Giants played their home opener game at the beautiful AT&T Park last Friday the 13^th against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The exciting game began with a poignant moment in which Tyler Stow, the son of an injured Bryan Stow (an avid and loyal Giants fan almost beat to death last year), threw the first pitch. Fans felt inspired by Stow’s strength and admiration for the Giants, which led to a very welcoming and jovial atmosphere. The heart-touching start of the game was followed by favorable innings led by the legendary Matt Cain on the mound who successfully shutout the Pirates with a score of 5-0. The Giants’ first win at home hints the beginning of another great season for the beloved San Francisco Giants.