Thursday, March 31, 2011

Scientist Create World’s First Artificial Leaf


Scientists have created the world’s first practical artificial leaf that can convert sunlight and water into energy, which they claim could pave the way for a cheaper source of power in developing countries like India.

A team at Massachusetts Institute of Technology says that the artificial leaf from silicon, electronics and a variety of catalysts which spur chemical reactions within the device, can use sunlight to break water into hydrogen and oxygen which can then be used to generate electricity in a separate fuel cell.

“A practical artificial leaf has been one of the Holy Grails of science for decades. We consider we have done it. And placed in a gallon of water and left in sun, these artificial leaves could provide a home in the developing world with essential electricity for a day,” Daniel Nocera, who led the team, said.

He added: “Our goal is to make each home its own power station. One can imagine villages in India and Africa not long from now purchasing an affordable basic power system based on this technology.”

For their research, the scientists recognized a set of low-priced, common catalysts with nickel and cobalt that get the job done with far less expense. And, in the laboratory their playing-card-sized leaves have worked constantly for 45 straight hours without a drop in output.

Though in laboratory, an artificial leaf prototype could operate constantly for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity, the scientists say that they will next try to improve both efficiency and lifespan of their photosynthetic material.

The conclusions were presented at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society.

Spring in a Box


I'm off work this week for Spring Break... and it's been one cold, dreary, and wet week.  Hard to believe it's the last day of March and it's 42 degrees out.  *shiver*

Went out to lunch with a long-time friend and then to her (and her hubby's) new 100 yr old house they're remodeling.  What fun to see the new addition and all the work that's been accomplished and talking about her decorating and gardening plans... so exciting!

There were tulips and daffodils and pansies throughout their new neighborhood.. so cheerful and spring-like... but it was drizzling rain and oh so chilly.  Driving home, I thought about what needed doing around the house and what I could do to brighten up such a dreary day.... to my surprise, a day-brightener was awaiting me on the front porch.

Yes, the mail carrier had left two packages for me!   And yes, I opened them right away!



And since we all know that fabric has to breathe, I just had to unwrap it... and touch it... and pat it...


An Amy Butler Soul Blossoms FQ bundle... and coordinating solids...  yes, indeed.  Suddenly, the day was MUCH brighter!

Princess Kate Middleton | Biography



Catherine Elizabeth "KateMiddleton (born 9 January 1982) is the fiancée of Prince William of Wales. Since their relationship began, Middleton has received widespread media attention and there was much speculation that they would eventually marry. On 16 November 2010, the office of the Prince of Wales at Clarence House announced their engagement. On 23 November, it was announced the wedding will take place on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey, with the day declared a bank holiday in the UK.
Middleton grew up in Berkshire and, after attending Marlborough College, went to the University of St Andrews, where she met Prince William, also studying there, in 2001. They started a relationship, followed by media attention, triggering complaints by Middleton that the media were harassing her. In April 2007, the press reported that William and Middleton had split up. They continued to be friends, and later in 2007 they reunited. Since then, Middleton has attended many high-profile royal events. She has been admired for her fashion sense and has been placed on numerous "best dressed" lists.








Easter Egg-citement!


Easter Egg-citement is right around the corner! This year we have added an extra weekend of our Easter celebration increasing the number of egg hunts that are taking place. Easter is one of my favorite times of year here at Eckerts. It starts off with a delicious breakfast in our Restaurant with the Easter Bunny. Join the Bunny for a hearty country meal to start the day off right, Breakfast with the Bunny will take place from 8am to 9:30am in our Restaurant. (Reservations are encouraged, please call 618-233-0513 to make reservations and to acquire more information). Every year when it is finally time for Easter Egg-citement to begin I get very excited because I know it means that spring is finally here and we get the chance to enjoy outdoor activities once again! We will be holding our annual Easter Egg Hunts they will take place April 9th & 10th, 16th & 17th, and 22nd & 23rd at 10am, 11am, 12pm, 1pm and 2pm.We will also have many other terrific spring activities. Baby Chicks and Bunnies will be making their annual appearance at our farm. It is always a sight to see those furry little things running around! There will be a face painting booth, and kids will get to plant their very own seed in our Garden Center to take home and watch grow. In our Country Store kids will get to create and enjoy their very own delicious Easter treat!



Hop on down the bunny trail and join us at Eckert's for this years Easter Celebration!

Organized?

So as some of you may remember, one of my 11 New Year's goals was to get Better Organized!  And although I will not say I have become any worse, my betterment on this particular goal hasn't been quite up to par!  So I am declaring today's post not only to my reader's enjoyment but also hopefully for some self inspiration!

Thanks to the Container Store, we can all get organized easily and "very cute-ly" if we just dig a little deeper in our pockets!  Yes, I admit they may not be as cheap as Walmart or Target but there ideas and products are pretty genius and if your like me convenience sometimes overlooks the price tags! 





Whether you work out of home or actually in your office, I highly recommend their products!! I am very lucky in the sense that my boss LOVES organization so my desk at the office does stay quite neat!  Although my home "office" or shall I say dresser/ desk/ junk area is not so much!  

When I just moved away from college I knew I needed to at least stay organized in my bills if nothing else..at this time I invested in a great portable filing container..meanwhile a year and half later things don't always get filed away as timely as I may of always intended..




Thanks to the blessings of having lived in apartments both having ridiculously LARGE walk in closets I have managed to keep mine pretty organized!  Especially now with a girl's DREAM shoe closet to match!

I will say that in the past months I have learned the importance of spending those few extra bucks and buying "nice" hangers!  I adore the "huggable" hangers they are PERFECT and your clothes will never see the ground again (well unless you forget to actually hang them)

I also love the multiple skirt hangers (all in one) these are any and every closets best friend for saving space!  Even with a large walk in there's always a need for more space!


well that's its for today!  Hopefully you all can become a little more organized, check out your nearest Container Store for shop at www.containerstore.com


Happy Thursday!!

Winnie The Pooh Bear Coloring Pages Part 2




Winnie The Pooh Cartoon Bear Coloring Pages
Simple coloring sheet disney winnie the pooh bear cartoon characters. Disney pooh bear coloring just for you which want draw by your own. Please enjoy this coloring sheet and i hope very usefull for you.Thanks. . .

Carlton, railway station, sunset (Theme Day: Edges)

This sunset is over the railway station in the southern suburb of Carlton. The view is from the edge of the concourse, down to the edges of the platform and the edges of the station buildings.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Forrest And Rose Become The World's Oldest Newlyweds


A 100-year-old man and a 93-year-old woman in the US are said to have turn out to be the world's oldest couple to tie the knot following a 28-year courtship.

Forrest Lunsway and Rose Pollard of California wed at the Dana Point Community Centre at a combined age of 193 - making them the world's oldest couple to marry on record.

The loved-up couple, who are both enthusiastic dancers, met on the dance floor of a community centre in 1983. They became dance partners and now 30 years after meeting they have tied the knot at last - on Forrest's 100th birthday.

Rose said she at first told him she'd never marry him but she finally succumbed when he had popped the question last year.


She said: "I told him up front I had no purpose of getting married. But then one day he asked me 'how come we never got married?' and I said 'because you never asked me'.

"So he got down on one knee and said 'Well I'm asking you now, just set the date'. I told him 'I'll marry you on your 100th birthday'. And I did."

Forrest added: "She never thought I'd ask her and I never thought she'd say yes, but here we are. We've got many happy years left as I propose to stick around until I'm at least 110. You've got to use it or lose it."

The wedding took place in front of the friends and family of the couple who have both been married previously.

They have now beaten the earlier record for oldest newlyweds held by Harry Corton and Edna Holford from Barnsley, England, who wed with a combined age of 183.

How Many Projects?

Despite two little girls underfoot for most of yesterday, I did manage to get a little sewing in.... made 116 HST blocks using Kaffe Fassett charm squares and 5" squares of Kona "Ash"...


I know, I know... no new projects til you finish the two you're working on now!  But I couldn't help myself...  *lol*

Auto Tattooing Machine

Auto Tattooing Machine - Chris Eckert introduced an invention for 2011 called Automatic Tattooing Machine. Now you can easily make a tattoo in your home as well. Have a look around some of the pictures of that machine








What To Wear Wednesday! (WTWW) White & Gray!

Although its more of a GRAY day then White, the gloomy-ness of this day inspired me for today's What To Wear!

As many of you know I am not only a fan of denim (for multiple reasons) but also am a very big fan of white especially during those few months I'm "allowed" to wear it!

Here's a ton of celebs whom have already caught onto the trend of the gray with white denim! Its easy, fresh and still can looked pulled together without much effort!




See even our newest royalty is sporting these look! Pair it with either a more casual ballet flat or spice things up with a nude heel, like Hilary!

Loving Michelle Williams tucked in look!  I love how this young mom, makes her looks easy and wearable but still very stylish! (extra love for the Ray Bans!!)



And for all my male readers, just when you thought I had given up.. here's some fun looks you may want to try this summer.. White denim for men..


Happy Wednesday my dears! 

Hope your feeling better than I am today..

Stormy Seas


The middle of chapter 8 of Matthew offers that great story of Jesus asleep in the boat during a great storm (Mt 8:18-27) Obviously it's a story about trust. Jesus' ability to sleep during the storm shows the depth of his trust in God, and challenges us to do the same in the midst of the storms of our lives.

But there's a lot more to it than that.  A good note in reading the Bible: any time you hear a story about seas, pay attention. "The sea" in scripture almost always represents the forces of chaos and disorder against which God is matched.  The Genesis 1 story of creation in fact, repeatedly describes the chaos out of which God creates everything as "the waters".

Now, an aside that is not an aside: In most ancient Near Eastern creation stories, creation occurs through a battle between two opposing gods or forces.

Marduk fights Tiamat in the ancient Babylonian story of creation. 

And the same is true in Genesis, it's just not much of a battle -- God is so much more powerful than the chaotic pre-creation seas, he doesn't even need to fight to vanquish it.  He just molds it to his will.

God creates the world. (Actual size of God much larger.)

And that complete control that God has over the seas shows him to be not only powerful, but more powerful than all the other gods of the  Near East.  Unlike them, he didn't even need to fight to create the universe!  (It's actually an amazingly bold claim, this tiny, tiny country in the world, proclaiming its God is way more powerful than all the mighty nations of the earth -- some of whom have invaded it!)

When seas are referred to later in scripture, they are almost always hearkening back to that creation claim, and showing yet again how entirely powerful God is.  So for instance in the Old Testament the parting of the Red Sea.  And here, the calming of the storm. But here, it's not God the Father doing the calming, it's Jesus.  Which is yet another way, and a very very bold way, of saying to Jews that Jesus is God.

I'm the king of the world! No, seriously!

An interesting further question about the seas...if they do represent the forces of chaos and evil in the universe, why doesn't God completely wipe them out right from the beginning? Why does he allow them to continue?

On the level of our human experience, that's a mystery, isn't it?  One of the speakers I heard at the Religious Ed Congress gave a talk called Where the Hell is God?, all about this issue. In the tough times that is so clearly our question.

On the level of the person who wrote Genesis 1, though, the answer is a little bit different (and maybe unsatisfying).  Genesis 1 is written during a time of terrible tragedy in Israel, Israel invaded, the people scattered in exile, all their beliefs seemingly dashed.  And so the writer keeps chaos around post-creation, because to do otherwise would be to ignore the pain of his (or her) people's current experience. We're living with the chaos, you scripture writer, you, so don't you dare tell us that it doesn't exist!

But by showing God as so entirely powerful over the chaos, the writer spits in the eye of the pain his people are enduring.  Come at us all you want, bad times, because in the end our God wins.

It's a funny thing to say, but the writer looks back to creation to encourage his or her present-day people to believe, this is not the way our story ends.

In the midst of our own world's tsunamis and other tragedies, that message of hope speaks even to us today. 

On a Rainy Wednesday

Knowing that today would be cold and wet, thus making errands a royal pain in the kazoo... I did the errands yesterday afternoon when it was sunny and warmer.  Warmer... not warm...

The plan was to clear out the left side of the closet in the sewing/computer room and GET ORGANIZED!  Somehow, the impetus to do the errands continued when I got home so, instead of waiting until today, I started yesterday.  Thankfully, the shelves fit perfectly... as in "not an inch wiggle room" once they were both in there.


Then, the first stages of organization began...


Looks good so far... but there is a ton o' stuff on the bed in the room next door that will need dealing with today.

I discovered that I had way more fabric than I thought...  yes, the fabrics were purchased for specific projects; however, looking at it all I realized that I need to stop planning projects and get these done!  Now that everything is together instead of some in this location and some in that location and... oh wait... there's more over here... everything is in one spot where I can find it... and I won't forget that I have it!

Did take a little time to make a couple of mug rugs as a pick-me-up...



Both will be gifts...


Sans Souci, cannon

This cannon barrel stands as a monument in Cook Park on the shore of the Georges River. It is located near the mouth of the river at Botany Bay, in the southern suburb of Sans Souci. The barrel came from the HMS Wolverine, flagship of the Australian Squadron 1876-1881. HMS Wolverine was built at Woolwich dock, England in 1863 as a three masted steam corvette with 21 guns and a flush deck. When it arrived in Sydney it served as a training ship for the naval brigade. It was sold off in 1895 and when it became unseaworthy ended up in Auckland, New Zealand. It was dismantled at Brick Bay, later renamed Stanley Bay.