Have you ever felt the necessity to organize your room and to make it look pretty at the same time? Recycling is important and also an affordable way to create decorations for your bedroom. As teenagers we tend to leave stuff everywhere around our rooms, but there’s a way to combine creativity, organization, and our cute chic items that we leave lying around. Here are some easy eco-friendly ideas to spice up your room:

Makeup brush holder

This is a really simple organizational project that you can make with minimal tools. You will need a big empty candle jar or a jam jar. First you need to clean the jar and remove the left over product and any labels on the jar. Once the jar is clean you can fill it with coffee beans, rice or beads. Fill up about ¼ of the jar with the content of your choice. This will keep your make up brushes in place. To decorate the jar you can add a colorful bow to the front of the jar. Then insert your makeup brushes into the jar and enjoy your accessible makeup brush holder!

Makeup palette organization storage

If you are a makeup junkie and you do not know how to store your make up palettes, here is a simple and reusable project. Everybody has a plastic CD or DVD holder which can also turn into makeup palette storage. You can spray paint the plastic CD holder so that it will match your room and to make it more unique.

Ring and Earring Storage

A simple and inexpensive way to keep your jewelry organized by using plastic ice cube trays. You can paint the tray with different colors and patterns to make it look more colorful. In each slot you can put a pair of earrings or rings. Another way you can organize your earrings and rings is by using an egg carton that you can easily paint with watercolors or acrylic paint. It is an easy way to reuse objects that you have at home.

Jewelry Holder

Here are some tips for making healthy after-school snacks that are tasty and good for you.

Veggie Wrap

Ingredients:

• Whole wheat tortilla
• Spinach
• Avocado
• Shredded cheddar cheese
• Mushroom
• Tomato
• Ham

Procedure:
Place ham, spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes inside a whole wheat tortilla. Put the shredded cheese and avocado on it. Put as many ingredients as you wish. 

Celery & Peanut Butter

Ingredients:

• Celery
• Peanut butter
• Raisins or dried cranberries

Procedure:
Spread peanut butter on celery and top with raisins or dried cranberries.

Yogurt Parfait

Ingredients:

• Plain yogurt
• Fruit
• Strawberries
• Blueberries
• Raspberries
• Bananas
• Almonds
• Granola  

Procedure:
In a cup (16 oz.), fill plain yogurt, add granola, almonds and as much fruit as you wish.

It is an experience to be able to listen to a grandma, aunt, or mother tell a famous “cuento” (story) like” caperucita roja” or red riding hood in Spanish. Often through literal translation much of the beauty that is Spanish is lost. It seems today that more and more Latinos and Latinas are not being taught Spanish or do not want to learn Spanish. This kind of attitude from both parents and children could be detrimental to the language and our culture. There are a few simple ways to learn a bit of Spanish every day.

Find a Buddy
It is much easier to learn and really stick to something you when you have a partner learning with you. Find a friend who wants to learn Spanish too. Partners can provide support for each other, because sometimes learning something new can be frustrating.

Try Spanish hour with friends
If you have friends who speak Spanish, ask them to once a day only speak Spanish to you for an hour or at least thirty minutes. Constantly carrying an English to Spanish dictionary could come in handy during Spanish hour. The bilingual dictionary is especially helpful if you don’t have friends who speak Spanish fluently. If your phone can download apps, there is also a free Dictionary.com app that works as a translator as well.

Take a class at your local community college
Most community colleges offer courses in languages that are open to the public and are not expensive. They are more common during the summer and could also be a great way to make new friends!

Watch a Telenovela
Getting involved in a melodramatic television show could help give you motivation to learn Spanish. Below is a link to Univision, a television station, and the lineup of novelas. http://novelasyseries.univision.com/novelas-y-series-a-z/novelas-del-momento

Challenge yourself
Read a novel in Spanish. This may seem a bit difficult, but could be a truly rewarding accomplishment. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is a very good book and could make your first reading experience a bit easier. It is a very short novel and has pictures almost like a children’s book for adults. It will be much easier to read a novel you already know and love.

Learning Spanish could also benefit you by making you much more of an asset to the business world. More and more employers are hiring bilingual applicants. Spanish could give you an extra edge over the competition. You can also communicate with older generations of your family that may only speak Spanish or speak to members of your community that only speak Spanish. Spanish is a large part of our heritage and could help you feel more connected to your roots. It is important to learn Spanish and with our many traditions keep our culture alive.

February 2011

My favorite part of Halloween is getting all of my friends and family together for a pumpkin carving night! I love to see all of the simple and intricate designs that everyone comes up with. It is something that you can do to have a good time, and it is a fun bonding experience. Here are the materials that you need and a few easy steps to follow:

Materials:
Pumpkin
Paper/Stencil (it can be something printed off the Internet or get creative and design it yourself!)
Pumpkin poker or small nail
Pumpkin saw or serrated knife
Pumpkin scoop or a spoon
Tea light or artificial lights (i.e. battery operated light or glow sticks)

Instructions:
Step 1: Carve a hole at the top of the pumpkin around the stem. Make sure you carve it at an angle so that the top doesn’t fall into the pumpkin.

Step 2: Clean out your pumpkin! This is the fun part, but it can also be really messy. Use the pumpkin scoop or a large spoon to scoop out the seeds inside the pumpkin. Make sure that you lay out newspaper under your pumpkin so that you can clean up easily.

Step 3: Mark your design. Tape or pin the paper with your design on it to the pumpkin. Make point marks using the pumpkin poker, or small nail, to outline your design on your pumpkin.

Step 4: Cut out your design. Use the pumpkin saw or knife to carve out your design. Be careful that you carve out what you want to see when you light your pumpkin. Everything that you don’t cut out will remain unlit.

Step 5: Light your pumpkin! You can place a tea light in your pumpkin, but just make sure that you never leave a lit candle unsupervised. Using artificial lights such as battery-operated pumpkin lights or glow sticks are safer options to consider.

Once all of the pumpkins are lit, it’s always fun to turn off the lights in the room and look at all of the neat designs. Happy Halloween!

October 2009