These clear film strip frames are helpful to easily display fun memories! However, when buying these frames, check the size measurements so you’re certain your photo will fit. These frames are affordable as well! The one in the photo was only $1.00!
Photo String Lights
Use creativity to bring light and pictures to your space. All you need are string lights, clothespins, and push pins to make a spread like the one below!
Photo Pages
This is a super fun way to display photos! You can interchange them without taking them out of the frame. It’s super easy and practical!
Cooking can be one of the most challenging tasks, but it can simultaneously be fun as well! For me, cooking helps me to relax. Doing it from home can save you money, and it tastes so much better than fast food!
Texas Sheet Cake
This dessert is by far one of the easiest, quickest, and most delicious desserts ever. This chocolate cake will leave you craving for more. This recipe makes about 22-24 slices. This is a great dessert to bring to any family function or friend get-together. Enjoy!
What you need:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter
2 heaping tbsp cocoa powder
1 cup Coca-Cola
Directions for the cake:
Put your two sticks of butter in a saucepan with the coke and the cocoa powder, and bring to a boil. Let this cool before adding it to the dry ingredients
In a mixing bowl combine your flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda
In another saucepan heat the eggs and sour cream and add it to the cooled cocoa mixture
Heat oven to 350 degrees
Combine the wet and dry ingredients
Pour cake batter into a greased 17x11x1inch pan
Bake for 20-30 min
Directions for the icing:
Bring 4 tbsp of cocoa powder, 1/2 stick of butter, and 6 tbsp of coke to a boil and let cool
Add that mixture to 4 cups confectioners sugar or powdered sugar, 1 tsp of vanilla, and 1 cup chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Enjoy this delicious recipe!
Crunchy Beef Bake
You have to have something savory to go with your dessert! This is the perfect casserole that is so easy to make, and so delicious. It is perfect for any occasion, and your friends and family will love it. This recipe serves about 8 people and is one of my favorite recipes ever. It is so easy to make and will leave your family and friends in awe.
What you need:
1 medium chopped onion
1 medium chopped bell pepper
1 Ib. ground beef
2 cups of uncooked corkscrew macaroni
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 can of petite diced tomatoes
3/4 tsp seasoning salt
1 cup grated cheese
1 can of french-fried onions
Directions:
Cook and drain the macaroni
Cook the ground beef, onions, and bell peppers until the meat is brown and the onions are transparent
Combine the meat, onions, and bell peppers with all the other ingredients except the french-fried onions
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees
Pour into a sprayed casserole dish
Cover and bake for 30 min
After it is done baking uncover and top with the french-fried onions and enjoy
With it raining almost every day this week, people are not really able to go enjoy the great outdoors much. Staying inside all week can make you feel stifled and bored, and you can even get stressed out by the smallest things.
Instead of just sleeping all day or playing a video game by yourself, take this time to spend with your family or friends! If you do not like just watching a movie, play some card games, board games, or charades.
Sometimes, it is good to play board games that help one to grow closer to family and friends. I know of one board game that lists off different phobias on cards called “Your Worst Nightmare”. You have to rank the cards in order, from which one you fear the most to which one you fear the least while other people have to guess the order you put the phobias in. It’s definitely fun and it helps one to connect to his/her family and friends on a deeper level.
Personally, I do not like extremely competitive games. If you are like me, I would suggest playing a more laid-back game, like the board game “Life”! It’s a classic board game that takes an extensive amount of time, with only a little competitiveness.
If you do not like board games, try helping your parents out around the house or in the kitchen! Helping your parents out without them asking you to do anything makes them feel cared about. Helping them out can improve your relationship overall!
Lastly, try doing some karaoke! Singing with the people that you are close to is one of the most fun things to do, in my opinion. However, even if you are singing for fun, do not strain your voice! It can damage your vocal chords and make singing or even talking tough to do.
Conducted by researchers Miraj U. Desai, Larry Davidson, APS Fellow John F. Dovidio (Yale University), Nadika Paranamana (University of Hartford), and Victoria Stanhope (New York University), the study reveals how organizational-level biases affect how patients and even providers are viewed—and in ways that can produce racial and ethnic inequities.
The authors specifically focused on mental health organizations, detailing how they may systematically transmit bias and racism through common bureaucratic processes and, in some cases, through staff merely doing their job.
In an equally disturbing finding, the study revealed that staff often remain unaware of this transmission process and perpetuate it simply by meeting their work requirements—a process that the authors termed “bureaucra-think.”
Over time, this can lead to care becoming “system-centered” rather than person-centered, let alone equitable, the researchers concluded.
“We hope that this study aids community members, providers, and policymakers vying for greater equity in healthcare,” said Desai, assistant professor of psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine and the paper’s first author. “At the same time, while the study focused on health settings, we firmly believe that it has direct relevance for institutions and systems outside of healthcare—offering concrete evidence and novel concepts to address how inequity can flourish in very hidden ways.”
The study carries implications for healthcare and other organizations and suggests novel structural targets for intervention. It also signals a paradigm shift for psychological science, as it demonstrates how structural bias and racism partly depend on collective psychological processes, which psychological science has typically neglected in favor of individualist or internalist accounts. The study thus offers a robust scientific and practical framework to help psychology, healthcare, and related fields address structural bias and racism.
Funding for the study was provided by the National Institutes of Health and the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation.
Measuring things like honey or syrup can be a huge hassle. When measuring sticky ingredients, you can never get everything out of the measuring cup. This is a hack I will guarantee you will want to use. First, grab some cooking spray such as canola oil spray. Then, grab your measuring cup and spray it with your cooking spray. Finally, you can measure your sticky ingredient and most, if not all, will come out.
Do You Ever Want Potato Chips But Don’t Want To Go To The Store?
Good news! You can make potato chips in your microwave. The first thing you need to do is slice your potatoes as thin as possible. Then, put some parchment paper down and lay the sliced potatoes flat; do not stack them. Next, spray them with canola oil, or any oil. After that spice them with your desired spices, such as salt and pepper. Cook them in the microwave for five to seven minutes or your desired crispiness. Make sure to lay all your potatoes flat in the microwave for the best result.
How to Keep Fruits and Veggies from Going Bad so Fast
One of the most frustrating things is when your fruits or veggies spoil right when you need them. Here are just a few tips to keep your fruits and veggies from spoiling so fast. For bananas, try wrapping the stem, where all the bananas are connected, with plastic wrap, to keep air from getting in. When storing tomatoes, store them with the stem pointing down.
An Easy Way to Peel veggies
Peeling can be one of the most tedious tasks but you can make it easier. How? Well first, you’re going to need to boil the veggie for three or four minutes. While the veggie is boiling, get a large bowl and fill it with ice water, making sure that the ice is not completely melted. After the veggies are done boiling, quickly transfer them into the ice bath. Let them rest for four to five minutes, then take them out and watch the peeling magically fall off with little to no effort
In the summer of 2022, I went on a student life mission trip with Living Stones Church (LSC) in Katy. At first, I was slightly nervous about going because that was the first time I had ever gone on a trip like that. I heard from many people that student life mission trips are bad and that they are not real mission trips. Nonetheless, I went there anyways because I felt God telling me I should go and I could not ignore Him. That was one of the best decisions I’ve made to this day.
On the mission trip, we did not necessarily do evangelism, however, by going to different nursing homes and retirement homes, we were still spreading the love and kindness that Jesus has for us.
During the time that we were there, I had such an amazing time. I grew closer with the other youth and volunteers. We worshipped, had bible studies, played around, all while maintaining the goal, which was to show the love of Jesus to the elderly.
Something that really stuck with me while I was there was a conversation I had with my youth pastor at the time. As we were talking, he asked how I was, and I replied with a simple, “I’m alright.” Usually, when people ask this in a conversation it’s more of a habitual thing to ask or they’ll ask and then the conversation will move on. However, instead of the conversation stopping or moving on from that, he suddenly asked me why. It caught me off guard and even left me a little speechless for a brief moment. After we talked a little longer, he said that he challenged all of the guys of the youth to be intentional, and that he chose to lead by example. The challenge was to not just ask someone “how are you” on a surface level, but to further ask them why they say that they’re feeling good, bad, or alright.
Most people will say they are good or okay out of habit, even if those people aren’t, and not expect the conversation to go any further especially if they are only passing by. I know it may seem small or it may not seem like it would do anything, however for me, asking the question of why I was alright caught me off guard in a good way, making me feel genuinely cared about. It even changed my outlook of the day and how I now interact with people on a day-to-day basis. Even if I don’t ask why all the time, I still try to ask often because not only does it make you feel like the person you’re talking with cares about you, it could also give someone a chance to talk about their day and what happened regardless if it was good or bad.
At the ending of each of the last two days, all of the junior high and high school students would gather around outside and form a group. The reason for this was to share our “God moments” with the entire group. The youth pastor on the trip explained that these were moments in the past week that when we were there, God was working or that He was there, or just moments that really impacted each of us. Unfortunately, social anxiety got the best of me so I wasn’t able to share my God moments with all of them and I still regret not sharing with them today.
I went to LSC for a long time while I lived in Katy and I can honestly say that the people of that church are absolutely amazing and I could tell that every person there has the Holy Spirit overflowing in them. All of them were very accepting and would include others, new or not, in conversations and activities.
The Día de los Muertos Festival is exactly six months away from this date. Learn how to decorate your house or altars (ofrendas) in anticipation of this event. We’ll be making Catrina-related crafts.
There are not many crops that are fit to grow in the bitter cold. Usually, summer and spring crops are grown and stored for the winter, to ensure that families don’t starve. But there are crops, mainly vegetables, that one can grow even during the cold times, that will prevent shortage of food.
Kale
Space kale 18 to 24 inches apart in an area with full sun and well-drained, fertile soil with a pH of 6.5 to 6.8. Improve native soil by mixing in several inches of aged compost or other rich organic matter. Kale is a fast grower, so keep the soil by giving it 1 to 1.5 inches of water each week.
Broccoli
Fresh cut broccoli that makes a pattern
Plant broccoli where it will get at least 6 hours of sun daily and has fertile, well-drained, moist soil with plenty of organic matter. Mulch will help keep the ground cool and moist. The soil pH should be between 6.0 and 7.0 for best growth and to discourage clubroot disease.
Carrots
Fertilize the soil with one cup of 10-20-10 for every 10 feet of row you plant. You can use a rake to mix the soil and fertilizer. Planting your carrots in rows that are one to two feet apart is the best way to grow carrots. Seeds should be planted about a half inch deep and one to two inches apart.
To keep these vegetables from rotting, put them in a cool, dry, dark, well-ventilated location. You can use a wooden crate or shallow cardboard box. Or place these crops into plastic bags as if you were storing them in the fridge, and monitor the temperature to make sure it stays above freezing but below 50 degrees. Other vegetables you can grow during the winter are lettuce, asparagus, spinach, and squash.
