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Staying Young

/ Dee / 3 Comments

1. Enjoy the simple things

2.Laugh often, enjoy your life

3.If  you are wrong, admit it

4. Tears happen but you WILL endure

5. Keep learning new things don’t let your brain get idle, keep it working

6. Look after yourself, eat sensibly, exercise regularly

7. Tell the ones you love that you love them, every chance you get

8. Only keep friends who are cheerful – you don’t need the miserable ones

9. Don’t envy others – you have all you need

10. Love yourself, if you do, others will too

Life is not a dress rehearsal, seize it with both hands and enjoy it

To tweet or not to tweet, that is the question……..

/ Dee / 2 Comments

Why would you want to send out little tweets to people you don’t know and probably never will know, is it in the hope that you will get lots of followers and so think you are a mini celebrity?  Or is it that you are so frustrated with your life, that you want to invent a new you, that could be anything you wanted it to be. Or is it that you have things to say that need saying and Twitter is the only place you can get your voice heard? Whatever the reason, there are millions of twitterers out there, sending millions of tweets every hour.

I started tweeting a few months ago to see what it was all about and found, to my surprise, that within a few days a lot of people were following me.  I had no idea how this came about and still don’t, but then I found that I too was following people and I haven’t a clue how that works either.  Some of these people are just blatantly selling themselves or their business and it all seemed to be about self promotion. Not many want to comment on what’s happening in the world, if they aren’t telling me about what they can do, they seem quite happy to retweet others’ comments or links to articles in the press. 

 Perhaps I am missing the point, or expecting too much. I do exchange regular tweets with some great people who are in the same time zone as me.  We send tweets on all sort of things, but the time difference means I miss a lot of what happens from my followers and followees on the other side of the world.  That said, I have found that even though I am not sure how it all happens, I do enjoy tweeting and probably that’s what it is all about, so I shall carry on and hopefully one day I will find out how it all works

Halloween or Hallowe’en

/ Dee / Leave a comment

Well the clocks have gone back one hour, so I guess that summer has offically ended and that is where, according to history, Halloween has its’ origins. It is from the old celtic festival know as “Samhain” which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly “summers end”

All sorts of celebrations have taken place down the ages at this time of year. The ancient Celts for instance, belived that the borders between this world and the Other World were particularly “thin” at this time of year and the spirits, both harmless and harmful, could pass back through. The family ancestors were honoured and welcome, but harmful spririts were warded off, it is thought, by wearing masks and strange costumes. It was also a time to take stock of food supplies for the coming winter and celebrate the harvest.

The name Halloween or Hallowe’en is shortened from All Hallows Eve which is the night before All Saints Day on 1 November. All sorts of traditions have been handed down through the ages, but nowadays most involve dressing up in scary costumes and masks, carrying lanterns made out of pumkins with faces carved on them and enjoying time eating and drinking with family and friends. Orange and black seem to be the colours associated with Halloween and you see lots of different shaped cookies and cakes iced in this way

A lot of sweetstuff and candy are eaten at  Halloween and I have a couple of family recipes to share – mainly for the children:

Toffe (Candy) Apples

12 ripe eating apples

400g granulated sugar

100g butter

30ml water

oil for greasing

12 wooden skewers

Wash and dry the apples and push a large wooden skewer through the centre of each one. Put the sugar, butter and water into a heavy based saucepan and dissolve the sugar very slowly over a low heat. Once dissolved, bring to a fast boil and continue to boil until the small crack stage (140 degC)  Dip apples one at a time into the toffee and place on a greased plate and leave to set.  Red apples look wonderful coated with shiny toffee, you can also sprinkle them with coconut or crushed nuts before the toffee sets

Treacle Toffee (Bonfire toffee)

Oil for greasing

100g butter

100 black treacle

150g soft brown sugar

30ml water

Pinch of Cream of Tartar

Grease a 15cm square tin, Put the butter, treacle, sugar and water into a heavy based saucepan and let the sugar dissolve over a low hest. Add cream of tartar, bring to the boil and boil to hard ball stage (120degC).  Pour the toffee into the prepared tin and, when beginning to set, score the surface deeply making squares.  When set, break up, wrap in waxed paper and store in an airtight tin. (Cooking time approx 20 minutes)

Hope you all have a great time celebrating with friends and family!

Healthy Eating

/ Dee / Leave a comment

After talking to friends and reading countless articles on the subject of losing weight, I have come to the conclusion, perhaps a bit late in the day, that only I can change MY lifestyle and I have to WANT to do it.

If you have excess weight and really want to get rid of it, the most important thing you can do is to understand why you put weight on in the first place. Think about your lifestyle, what you eat and the amount of exercise that you do each day. Once you do this, you will find the reasons for the excess weight and only then can you take the steps to make a change.

Deep down inside we all know what we should be doing, we don’t need expensive books and celebrities to tell us what to eat and which exercises to do. We are all individuals and as such have different needs, we can work out an eating and exercise plan for ourselves. I think we have been so brainwashed into believing that there is a “fast fix” for losing weight that common sense goes out of the window and we rush to spend our cash on anything that has the words “Diet” or “Fast Weight Loss” plastered all over it.

The truth is, if we take in more calories than we spend, we will always, always put weight on. Once you know and accept this as fact, you can start making changes straight away. Involve your friends and family; tell them what you are doing and they will be your support group.

Friends Reunited

/ Dee / Leave a comment

Just heard the news that ITV has sold Friends Reunited to the company who owns findmypast.com, so the Genes Reunited part will fit in alongside that quite well. Friends Reunited was one of the first social networking sites, but seems to have lost ground to newer sites such as Facebook and certainly got to look a bit old fashioned in my opinion.

It was a brilliant idea and I certainly used it to find my old school friends, to see what they were up to and where they had ended up. It produced a lot of memories and it was good to catch up with people who had meant so much, when we were all starting out on the road to becoming an adult. I hope it continues and, perhaps like me, it just needs a revamp!!