Quotes about Winter

Winter comes whether we want it to or not. Enjoy the following quotes. The photo to your left, was found at the Antarctic division of the Australian Government's website. Another outstanding photography blog called Outstanding Shots has some wonderful winter photos. Honestly, it's truthfully titled... every single one is truly an outstanding shot. I have no affiliation with the blog, just think the photography at it is marvelous.

There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you.... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself. ~Ruth Stout

The tendinous part of the mind, so to speak, is more developed in winter; the fleshy, in summer. I should say winter had given the bone and sinew to literature, summer the tissues and the blood. ~John Burroughs

Winter is the time of promise because there is so little to do - or because you can now and then permit yourself the luxury of thinking so. ~Stanley Crawford

To shorten winter, borrow some money due in spring. ~W.J. Vogel
Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home. ~Edith Sitwell

Winter is the season in which people try to keep the house as warm as it was in the summer, when they complained about the heat. ~Author Unknown

I like these cold, gray winter days. Days like these let you savor a bad mood. ~Bill Watterson

Every mile is two in winter. ~George Herbert

Snowflakes are one of nature’s most fragile things, but just look what they do when they stick together. ~Verna M. Kelly

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome. ~Anne Bradstreet

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show. ~Andrew Wyeth

Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Have a Horrible Halloween!

Well, on purpose of course...

I'm sharing these Halloween tips and recipes that were posted earlier at one of my other blogs. You might still be able to manage a few last minute ideas if you hurry.


Treats


Serving up frightening fare is easier than you think. Below are links to some awesome recipes that will help you have the most talked about party around.

Creepy, gross, scary, spooky Halloween treats thumbnails

A. Witches Brooms and Hats Recipe
B. Bleeding Human Heart Recipe
C. Butterfinger Eyeballs Recipe
D. Witch Finger Cookies
E. Spooky Spider Cookies

More Recipes for spooky party treats can be found here, here and here.

Decor


The following are ideas to help make your party the spookiest!


  • Fill a plastic or latex glove with water you've tinted with red food coloring. When frozen, float in your punch for a ghoulish effect.

  • Scoop out oranges as though they were pumpkins. Save the oranges and chop them up for use in a fruit salad, or cook them up with a bag of fresh cranberries and a cup of sugar for an awesome cracker spread that looks like bloody hell. Carve little jack-o-lantern faces in the oranges and use them to serve chocolate ice cream.

  • Cut open large black garbage bags as tablecloths, draped haphazardly across the table or hung from your ceiling. If hanging, tear and shred the edges for an even better effect.

  • Use the fake spiderwebby stuff to abundance. It's one of the most inexpensive ways to create atmosphere. Check your local dollar-type store for the best deals.

  • Whip up some fake blood using some of these great recipes. Be careful and mindful of surfaces that might stain from food coloring though.

  • A bowlful of dried cranberries (or cherries) labeled 'scabs' will creep everyone out.

  • Scoop out miniature pumpkins and use them as votive candleholders. Insert (4 per side) black pipecleaners bent to look like spider legs and voila... creepy spider candles!

  • Serving beverages in a bowl with a ladle allows you to place a larger bowl with some dry ice and a bit of water underneath, thus creating a fog billowing out. (Be extremely careful handling dry ice, doing so only with proper gloves as it will burn your skin.)

  • Keep it dim or dark, and replace your lamps with black-light bulbs, or a red or green bulb. No one looks good in green light!



Pumpkin Carving


These sites ask for a small membership fee to allow you access to all the patterns, or they charge a small fee by the pattern. I receive no compensation from any of them and am listing them only to give you an idea of what's possible. Sites offering free patterns are listed below these. Please check the free sites out thoroughly, since some have better patterns than others, and though free, there are some truly good templates available for free.


The following, are some sites offering free templates to help you carve that extra-special Halloween Jack-o-lantern this year!


Click the black cat to say thank you for this monster load of Halloween funI hope you've found something of value here, something that's saved you some money on your Halloween celebration this year.

If so, and you'd like to make a small donation to help fraccers keep putting out posts like this, you may do so by clicking the cat.

I thank you.

Fracas

In the heavens... this week

I've always been fascinated by those NASA images and shots from the Hubble telescope. Perhaps that's why shows like Star Trek (and yes, Jean Luc Picard is better than James T. Kirk, are you kidding me) have always held my interest.

I'd like to begin by sharing with you, a fascinating photo from the heavens each week. Perhaps it will inspire you (as me) to think about what's out there, perhaps you'll just enjoy the beauty of it all, but I do hope you enjoy them.

Collection: NASA Spitzer Space Telescope Collection
Title: Rings Around the Galaxy
Link to Full Image: Here
Description: Three newly-discovered streams arcing high over the Milky Way Galaxy are remnants of cannibalized galaxies and star clusters. The streams are between 13,000 and 130,000 light-years distant from Earth and extend over much of the northern sky.

Two of the newly discovered streams are almost certainly the remains of ancient star clusters. Known to astronomers as globular clusters, these giant stellar cities contain between tens of thousands and millions of stars. Though only about 150 globular clusters orbit the Milky Way today, they may once have numbered in the thousands. Over billions of years, the relentless gravitational stresses inflicted on them by our galaxy have slowly torn them apart, leaving behind long, thin streams of stars. Once crowded so closely together that they could sometimes actually collide, these stars are now separated by many light-years, trailing one another at half a million miles an hour through the dark and lonely reaches of the galactic halo.

The third stream is spread over a much larger region of the sky, and is most likely the scattered remains of a dwarf galaxy. Such dwarf galaxies may contain up to 100 million stars, along with sometimes substantial amounts of mysterious "dark matter." While the Milky Way galaxy currently hosts a family of 20 or so known dwarf galaxies, scientists who study the growth of galaxies in the early universe have long been puzzled as to why we don't see hundreds of them.

Infant Mortality Rates by Country

The CDC's latest estimates for international rankings are based on 2004 data. But as of 2005, the numbers haven't changed much since 2000. For more explanation as to what these numbers mean,read the full article over at Web MD

1. Singapore 2.0
2. Hong Kong 2.5
3. Japan 2.8
4. Sweden 3.1
5. Norway 3.2
6. Finland 3.3
7. Spain 3.5
8. Czech Republic 3.7
9. France 3.9
10. Portugal 4.0
11. Germany 4.1
12. Greece 4.1
13. Italy 4.1
14. Netherlands 4.1
15. Switzerland 4.2
16. Belgium 4.3
11. Germany 4.1
17. Denmark 4.4
18. Austria 4.5
18. Israel 4.5
20. Australia 4.7
21. Ireland 4.9
21. Scotland 4.9
23. England and Wales 5.0
24. Canada 5.3
25. Northern Ireland 5.5
26. New Zealand 5.7
27. Cuba 5.8
28. Hungary 6.6
29. Poland 6.9
29. Slovakia 6.9
29. United States 6.9
32. Puerto Rico 8.1
33. Chile 8.4
34. Costa Rica 9.0
35. Russian Federation 11.5
36. Bulgaria 11.7
37. Romania 16.8