eastereggs

Eastereggs are a treat for most of us.
I'm sure you like some better than others.

Keep those you don't like apart and use them in dishes.

Children love to find an easteregg at the bottom of their dessert.

Many people love chocolate in ice. Crush your eggs and use them to make your ice look expensive.

A boring normal undecorated cake looks perfect with icing and eastereggs.

Melt the chocolate and dip strawberries in them. Pieces of apple are OK too.

Have fun!

be prepared....

Many autistic people experience problems with understanding jokes.
They take language literally, and they experience difficulties in "reading faces".

For themapril 1, or april fool's day, is a difficult day, because they might get involved in an april joke and act with full sincerity, only to discover that someone else has used them to play a game.

When you experience those problems be aware that everything which is not part of your daily routine and which is unusual might be an april 1 joke.

It helps to look well at the context of the issue you're faced with and to consider if the issue is not normal for the other person either.

Good luck!

cleaning windows

Now spring peeks through the window it's time to clean your windows.

Some people say there's no need, but when you won't they'll get dirty faster.

Even a closed heating system causes dustparticles to circle and adhere to the windows, creating a thin sticky film.

So clean your windows and enjoy a better sight.

dealing with change to summertime

Some people have trouble with getting in the new rhythm after the change to summertime.

When it's possible you can move your bedtime each day with 10 minutes.

Because your internal rhythm not only depends on inner signals, but also on outer signals like noises, light and smells, you can fool yourself by taking melatonine and putting on the radio to close out some sounds (from the birds, for instance).

Don't forget to change the time on clocks, timers, your mobile phone and other equipment.

Good luck!

online newsletters

When you have just a limited amount of money to spend on food and other necessities, you'd better have a good look around before buying.

Many shops have a site and most of them issue a newsletter which is either put at the site or brought into your mailbox... when you subscribe.

Do!

Some shops have even special discounts for the weekends.

Good luck!

Putting winterclothes away

When you want to put your winterclothes away, always save one thick cardigan (at least) for the holidays.

Only put clean clothes away, otherwise insects will be attracted. As you know moths eat your clothes when they're not clean.

Take care that the clothes are dry, because they're otherwise a great livingplace for fungi.

Old or new seeds

At this time many shops sell seeds.

Aleways read the experation date at the package, because today I almost bought an old package.

It shouldn't make much difference to use a package of last year for some seeds, but others are old when they're past date.
The seeds won't germ and your money will disappear in the air.

Infantino recalls 2 babyslings

Infantino recalls 2 babyslings: 'Infantino SlingRider' en 'Wendy Bellissimo Sling'.

During the past 20 years 14 babies have died from suffocation.

It's the 8th recall of the firm.

Their slogan is: we think like babies.

Maybe time to change that slogan to:
adult responsibility for small babies.

remove heel marks

Some shoes leave nasty marks on the floor.
Don't worry.
Just take a pencil eraser and use the soft side to rub the mark away.

I've done this so many times, that I've stopped counting and it always worked.

Allergy

It's the time for allergies again.

Don't rub in your eyes, because it will make matters worse.

I'll provide you a link ::here:: to Allergy UK.
You'll find lots of info there.

time to sow

It's time to sow your gardenplants and flowers.

You can sow best in a wooden box.
Take new, good soil and sow the seeds according the guidelines on the package.
Spread some water and cover with a glass panel or plastic foil.
Leave a space for air to enter.

In a dark space most sprouts will grow thin and tall, but it's better to make them grow slow and firm.

Sowing herbs will make them available for you all summer.

It's fun for children to sow some seeds a an old yoghurt pot or something like that.

check your site's ads

Many sites display advertisements.
When you accept one, it has a certain look and a certain script.
You put the script on your site and conveniently forget it.

Don't!!!

Some images are changed after a while. And not all the changes were for the better.

I've even seen that visitors of sites were confronted with pop-ups and pop-unders the owner did know nothing about.

So make it a habit to visit your own site regularly.

Clay pot chicken

Some people are not afraid to try something new.
In the past I had a go at an unknown way of cooking.

Cooking in a clay pot.

It takes a long time, but oh...it's so delicious.

OK. Here we go.

Emerge the clay pot in clean water.

If you don't have a clay pot, use a crockpot or something else.


Slice chicken (without the bones and skin) and carrots in cubes of about 2 cm and put them in a bowl.
Add 1 green bell pepper (green paprika) chopped in 1 cm small pieces.
When you don't like cooked bell pepper, save it until later.
Chop fresh ginger root into small pieces. About 2 tablespoons will do.
Add 0,5 cup of water or chicken brew.
Also add 0,5 tablespoon of allspice (Pimenta Dioica).
And a bit of pepper.

Mix it well and take the clay pot out of the water. Shake off the water.
Put the mix in and put it on a low fire for 7 to 8 hours, or until the chicken is OK.

When it's ready, take an 8 oz. can of pinapple chunks.
Mix the juice with 2 tablespoons of cornstarch. When it's mixed well add it to the crockpot while stirring.
Add the pinapple pieces and the bell pepper.

Put it on the fire again and heat it on a higher fire until it's thickened. That's after about 15 to 20 minutes, maybe a bit more.

Check schoolresults

Students should check their results at school carefully.
And their parents should do the same.

Schoolresults should reflect increase in knowledge and subject related skills.

There are teachers who lower the results when they regard the behaviour of the student unwanted.

They shouldn't do that.

Check water level of heating

Check the waterlevel of your heater a couple of times a year.

The past time we've had a lot of cold days and the waterlevel might be low or too low.

To check, turn the heater to 12 degrees celcious.
Wait until the panels don't feel hot anymore.
Check the meter.

If necessary add water. but not precisely to the 100% level, but to about 85 to 90%.
When the water gets warm it needs more space.

Close the heater and turn it to about 18 to 22 degrees and wait.

Release air if needed. When the heating ticks there's still air in the system.

Colcannon

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!

To honor the Irish a recipe which is a real traditional.

And it's easy.

Main ingredients of Colcannon is traditionally: mashed potatoes, kale or cabbage, butter, salt, and pepper.
Other ingredients such as milk, cream, leeks, onions, chives, garlic, boiled ham or Irish bacon, can be added.

Just boil the potatoes in salted water.
Mash them.
Add butter, salt and pepper and when you like some nutmeg.

Add the sliced cabbage to the hot mash and serve.

protect your bicycle from rain

To protect your bicycle from rain is impossible.

But you can prevent rust.

Use a wellknown brand of carwax on all the parts of the bicycle and it will live longer without the nasty brown spots.

cleaning suede

Always be careful when you wear suede.
When you hang a suede coat or blouse away, hang it free, so it won't wrinkle.
When you can't hang it free, drape a silk or satin drape around it.

Cleaning suede can best be done with a bit of fine sandpaper.
Carefully scrub the stain, light and a small part at the time.
In most cases you'll be able to get rid of the stain.

check the buttons

Before wearing blouses, coats and other clothes with buttons: check the buttons first.

Some are sown with just three small threats and that's not enough.

Buttons on coats need to have space between the fabric and the button to allow the other side of the coat to be buttoned down.
But they need to be well attached.

volunteer

It's a good idea to volunteer.

Don't think that working as a volunteer is a waste of time, because it never is.

You're doing something for someone else, who is supported by your work, and this always makes you feel better.

Chosing your work as volunteer strategically may also result in a paid job.
Ever considered that?

collecting newspaper articles

When you've got the habit of cutting out newspaper articles, don't throw them on a pile, because you'll never find that single one back when you need it.

Take boxes or maps and create subjects to file your articles under.

Finding an article will be much easier and you will be able to replace old ones if necessary, so you can keep your subjects updated.

Here comes the sun...

Finally..the sun!

Even though you need a coat, get the sun on your skin.
It stimilates all sorts of processes in your body, including bonegrowth.

Be careful though with plants in the windowsil.
Even though it's early in the year, the sun has a lot of strength, and through the glass this can lead to burning leaves.

So read about how much sun your plant can deal with.

expensive certificates

Sometimes you need expensive certificates.
For instance, when you subscribe at a school you need proof that you're born and that you're living in that town.
The council provides certificates stating that.
Obtaining them is expensive.

Used in the regular way you add them to the other forms, and they'll end up in a file.
And they are destroyed when the file is destroyed.

You can use your money far better.

When submitting your form, ask the secretary to make a copy and let her sign on the copy that she has seen the original.

And take the original home.

Save it with the other important paperwork.

fire escape

When living in an apartment building you know where the signs are for the fire escape.
But have you ever considered the fact that you won't be able to see them when there's smoke in the building?

And in a one family home... do you know the fire escape?

No matter where you are it's important to know what you need to do when there's fire and/or smoke.

So write down your own fire escape plan.

Made the plan available for anyone who visits you. Discuss it.

It might seem strange, but it isn't.

Every life saved is a life.

Going the whole way of the fire escape is a good way to see where tricky situations might develop.
On top of stairs, near doors...

Report them to the home owner and mark them in your head, with the solutions.

no bandaid?

Sometimes there's no bandaid available and you need something desinfected to cover a wound.

Do you know that ironing a washed towel and handkerchief makes them desinfected too?
Use lots of steam.

When you put them in a desinfected box you have the perfect material to cover wounds, even very large ones.

improvised tarte something

We call it "tarte something".

It's a great way to create a meal that's different, quick and uses your left overs.

Make a dough of
- 250gr of flour
- equal parts of lukewarm water and olive oil until you've created a souple dough.

Put it in a cakeform and then add whatever you want on top.
Tomatoes and cheese,
spinach, bacon and cheese,
pineapple, chickenpieces and peppers,
the left overs of the former day..

Just use your imagination.

Put it in a hot oven at 180ºc for 20 mins.
Be aware that some ingredients may require a bit longer (you can prebake them), or less. So keep a close watch.

Enjoy!!

one of our commenters wrote to us... Here's our reply.

Writing a blog in another language isn't easy.
It's a challenge, but to be able to communicate with people across the borders makes it very worthwhile.

Especially on the subject of autism it's important to work together with all parents and professionals all over the world, and I'm very proud to say that we manage to find each other, help each other and improve care.

Because the English language is a vehicle, and each person uses a personal vehicle, there are differences in fluency and writing skills.
Some native languages are far apart from the english language, both in grammar and in phonetics.
Some went to school almost 50 years ago, when English was not the same language as it is now.
But we don't care.
Like cars can get a flat tyre, a broken window, etc, we all write typos, constructions that reveal the grammar of the native language and we even translate words too literally or just plainly wrong.

As long as we're able to communicate and help each other to make life a little bit easier it's well worth the effort.

Until a few days ago I've met only respect for the fact that we all try to communicate with each other, and we've enjoyed writing this blog.

"We", as we are a group of women and 1 man from different countries and different languages.

And "until a few days ago", because at that date we found a comment.
This comment:

You need to proofread your posts. I don't know what you have against punctuation but you should at least check for typos.

Because it was Ava's shift she went to the site of the commenter and found a post about a 1,000 comments challenge, and she gave this reply.

Thank you for your com­ment at my site.
It’s fine you’re so good at punc­tu­a­tion. It’s always a happy event to deal with per­fect people.

I hope you can write my lan­guage 1% as good as I wrote your lan­guage.
Eng­lish is not my first language.

Well, that’s one com­ment more towards your 1000 com­ments.
What a nice way to reach that amount.

Thank you.

Today I found this comment:

At our site:

Dear Ava,

I’m Cana­dian. I spent years in school learn­ing French, writ­ing and speak­ing it. I also lived in a Span­ish speak­ing coun­try for sev­eral months and picked up some of that lan­guage too. I don’t know what lan­guage you speak. How­ever, I have yet to see a lan­guage where using cap­i­tal let­ters in titles and proof­read­ing for your own typos was as dra­matic as you make it out to be. Don’t use a sec­ond lan­guage as an excuse for sloppy writ­ing. The typos I caught were words you had spelled right in other places. You may post to my blog again, if you can learn to have some respect for peo­ple who have taken some time to give con­struc­tive feed­back to you. If you can’t han­dle that I will not post any future com­ments from you.

And at her site she replied to Ava's reply:

Using cap­i­tal let­ters to start a title isn’t hard in any lan­guage. I think it’s pretty stan­dard around the world. Glad I could give you the chance to rant at some­one. Thanks for the spew.

In case you want to read it yourself: this is the site.

The whole issue raised my eyebrows quite a lot.
We all have the freedom to do at our blogs what we want to do and to write the way we want.
Neelie Kroes hasn't called for a mission against typos on the www, and Blogger hasn't issued a rule against the lack of capital letters in the title of blogposts.
So I don't feel the need to comment on the individual writers at this blog at all.

In fact I want to compliment them on finding a tip/an advice every day so young autistic people have the oppertunity to improve their way of living on all sorts of subjects.

I do understand AVA's comment and I completely agree.

The way the comment was put on our blog was unkind.
And I also had the feeling that the intention was to lure people to her site so she would get her 1000 comments. I don't think that's the way Harriet intended the march comment challenge to be. But hej, who am I?

Ava's comment in no way deserved the reply it got.
She didn't rant at that Laura. To me it looks more that that Laura had a bad day and took it out on Ava.

I myself speak 8 languages more or less: Dutch, German, French, Swedish, Swahili, English, South-African and a bit of Japanese, and I'm sure I've made lots of mistakes, but all I've encountered was respect for the fact that I crossed the bridge and took the effort to communicate in the language of the other person.
Oh yes, I've been offered kindly some help when I asked for corrections.
But I've never ever had someone look down on me or others the way this person does.

I wondered why a person wants to push her own vision on such a rude way upon others.
It feels like bullying on the web.
We're not writing a Harlequin Romance here for women who've already played the housekeeper's role and had to find a new life as divorcee, and we sure are not writing for someone who mistakes rude comments for constructive comments.
There's a huge difference between those.

The way you dealt with this issue gives the impression you consider yourself better than others.
I guess you need that.
No problem with that. We're used to people struggling with their identity, and we respect the lack of self reflection some people have. It's a shame they have to learn about life the hard way.

It's a pity we've seen the worst side of you, and not the one you advert: One polite Canadian bent on World Domination, in a nice way.

So let us make our own mistakes as long as we don't hurt people.
Because, in fact, we're the real nice ones, who take our time to work for a good cause each day.

Thank you for your attention for this blog.


Laane

stockings and pantyhouses

A tip for ladies who wear stockings or pantyhoses.

You can make them a bit stronger to resist rupture by putting them in the freezer before wearing them.
A night will do the trick.

When you're frugal you should hang them outside during the winter. :)

recycling

Do you know you can still use your empty inhaler disks?


You can remove the darker part with a bit of force.

You can use them as a holder, for peanuts for example, or sweets for children.

When you remove the paper you'll see a hole, which can be used to hang the half bowl.
Great for hairpins, lipcares near the computer, and other small things.

I have made a coupe of the bowl together with double sided tape and I've put them in a drawer. For each kind of coin a bowl, for my rings, earpins, etc.

Have fun!

Take notes during meetings

It's quite normal to take notes during meetings of organisations and official meetings.
But taking notes at less planned meetings is often forgotten.

Keep a small notebook and a pen in your pocket and whenever someone who forgets his appointments and agreements tells you something, write it down.

At the end of the conversation you can repeat what is written and ask the person if he or she agrees.
It's a great way to remember things and to be able to tell people they have to stick to what they've said.

voting at the local elections

It's important to vote, because it's a way to influence the way your town will be run.

Don't think that your vote won't make a difference, because that's not the case.
Each vote counts towards a final result.

When you don't know in which party you want to vote, make a list of what you see as most important for your town.

Take subjects as education,
Care for the handicapped and elderly,
accessibility by bus, train and car,
parkingspace for bicycles
etc.

This time there's a call to wear something over your hair to protest against the discrimination of the right wing party.

Good luck!

Topdroppers of february

Don't you feel welcomed when there's someone at the door, reaching out a hand?

Well, I love sites where the entrecard widget is on top. It feels like I'm welcome. Especially when I visit every day.

Well, not all of the droppers on my list are that welcoming, but some sure pay a visit to the site here.

I want to thank you all.

Here are the topdroppers:

The Sewing Mom
Crimsonsparkle.net
The Ad Master
My gypsygoods
Ruth's Creations
Funky Town Disco Music
Random Ramblings
The Way I See It
Melissas Homeschool
Laane on the World

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