Backpack fashion

Here's what's hot in backpacks:

•iPod holders. Most packs now have them. Many also have portals that ear buds can fit through so students can use their iPods while wearing their packs.

•Cellphone pockets. Manufacturers have had to shrink the size of these pockets as cellphones have shrunk. Some companies, including North Face and Tumi, are placing cellphone holders on a strap for easy access.

•Padded sleeves for laptops. Students want better protection for their laptops. "If you dropped a backpack on the ground in the past, there was just a book inside," says Alex Parra, buyer for the University of Utah student bookstore. "Now it needs to protect your laptop."

•Techno tricks. Want to answer your cellphone while listening to your iPod, without opening your backpack? Skullcandy's Link packs let folks do that by touching a button on the strap. Other buttons on the strap can control iPods.

•Beverage berths. Originally designed for athletes and outdoor enthusiasts, bags with built-in "hydration bladders" or attachments for sports bottles are becoming more common. JanSport introduced its $50 Big Squirt this season with a straw-like tube that'll screw onto anything from small-mouth water bottles to wide-mouth sports drink bottles.

•Packs for women. North Face's idea of a woman's pack used to be to make it pink. Now it has the $69 Isabella pack designed to fit the narrower shoulders and waist and wider hips of a woman's torso.

•Air cushioning. Nike is putting the same air technology used in its sneakers into backpack straps. The straps of several of its Edge Elite packs have air-filled chambers to make them more comfortable. Price: up to $90.

•Artsy looks. JanSport has figured out how to get its bags into trendy Urban Outfitters (URBN) stores: Hire street artists to design them. Its Artist series targets teens with cool illustrations etched into limited edition bags. Price: $45.

•Eco-friendly packs. A Juice Bag, priced at up to $300, is made from recycled soda bottles and has a solar panel to charge cellphones and iPods. "We give students the power to stay connected while they roam," says Henry Gentenaar of bag maker Reware.

•Packs with wheels. They're big among schoolchildren ages 7 to 10, says Pam Jones, senior pack developer at L.L. Bean. But beware: Some schools ban them for fear of damage to floors. The wheel systems can save on lifting, but they add weight to the packs.

•"Full disclosure" packs. For security reasons, some schools require see-through bags such as JanSport's $35 Mesh Pack to show what students are packing.

•The messenger look. These shoulder bags with fold-over flaps are big among some fashion worshipers. Tumi's hot-seller is its $175 messenger. Timbuk2 sells a $95, blank canvas messenger for artsy students to customize.

•Personalized bags. L.L. Bean has sold packs personalized with embroidered lettering for more than a decade. Its advertising used to show packs with kids' names on them, but examples now show only monogrammed initials. It still will embroider a name if a buyer wants it, but it stopped promoting the idea two years ago because of safety concerns about revealing kids' names to strangers.

Save on supplies

With the slumping economy and budget woes, you may not have much extra cash on hand for school supplies.
Here are some tips on how you can save money when shopping for the essentials.

(Sun-sentinel)

• Get a supply list from your child's school. Local stores like Wal-Mart and Target often display school supply lists.

• Shop smart. Take advantage of back-to-school sales and visit retailers' Web sites to print out coupons.

• Re-use what you can from last year. There's no reason to buy a new backpack or lunchbox every year. Do an inventory of what can be salvaged before you head to the store.

• To save money on gas, consider doing your back-to-school shopping in a single trip and carpool with other parents also tackling seasonal shopping.

• It also helps to talk to your neighbors. If your child's teacher is asking every student to buy a box of tissues or crayons, buy in bulk and split the cost among other parents.

• Hit the clearance sales. Some stores stop back-to-school sales within a week or two of students starting school.

• Buy in bulk, if the price is right.

• Check the dollar store. There's no need for brand names on basics like folders and paper.

Doin' lunch

Brown Baggin' It With Kid Friendly Lunches

(CBS4)

The start of a new school year is just a few weeks away and along with new clothes and shiny new school supplies it's time to start thinking about healthy kid friendly lunches.

Wednesday the Y-M-C-A of Greater Miami hosted a "Brown Bag It" event at Hialeah Elementary to teach kids and their parents how to make delicious lunches with kid-approved foods. YMCA nutritionist Gabriela Garcia put a group of seventy children through their paces as they learned to craft delicious, healthy, kid-tested lunches.

According to recent studies, most children consume 1/3 of their calories, vitamins and minerals during lunch.

Garcia says a simple way to make child's lunch more healthy is to replace handi-packs of chips or cookies with fruit, cut up veggies, cheese sticks or yogurt.


Brown Bag Lunch #1: Pinwheel Sandwich Lunch

1 Pinwheel sandwich
1 carton of 100% fruit juice
A handful of grapes
A small bag of pretzels

Ingredients:

1 slice of low-fat cheese
2 slices of turkey
1 whole wheat wrap
Cut-up Romaine lettuce
Directions:

Place turkey, cheese, and lettuce on top of wrap.
Roll up sandwich jelly roll style.
Enjoy!

In a rut?

8 Marriage Ruts: Are You In One?

Whether you've been married for three months or three years, here's how to get out of routines that hurt your relationship.

By The Nest Editors

Rut #1: Watching TV During Dinner
Why it's bad: Having dinner together offers valuable face time with your partner. Turning on the tube competes for attention and cuts in on your time to catch up and connect after so many hours spent apart.
How to stop: Set aside 30 to 45 minutes of one-on-one talk time with the TV off every night. This shows your spouse that when you're not at work, you're devoted to your home and family. During this time, ignore your phone and leave the BlackBerry in another room. You'll feel closer within days.

Rut #2: Going Too Long Without Sex
Why it's bad: If the amount of sex you're used to having starts to slide, your body and brain can get used to the decreased intimacy, causing you to go even longer without wanting that closeness.
How to stop: Don't wait until you feel like doing it. Initiate sex when you're open to doing it, rather than when you have the desire. This will jump-start your feelings so you'll crave it more often.

Rut #3: Going a Whole Workday Without Talking to Your Sweetheart
Why it's bad: You'll start growing apart emotionally after subconsciously feeling like the other person doesn't think about you (and your needs) during the day.
How to stop: Initiate daily contact by sending a quick "How's your day?" email. And make the effort to do something nice every day (pick up his fave dessert, call from the store to see if she needs something). It shows forethought and consideration for your partner's needs.

Rut #4: Tuning Each Other Out
Why it's bad: You're disengaging from each other.
How to stop: Make an effort to do small things such as kissing before saying good-bye, making eye contact when talking, and complimenting each other frequently throughout the week. Does he not seem to hear you talking during certain times (ahem, when ESPN is on)? Don't try to make conversation while the TV is on. If it's important, press mute; otherwise, save conversations for dinner or your bedroom, where you're less likely to be interrupted.

Rut #5: Not Fighting
Why it's bad: Disagreements are good in a marriage because you're expressing your individuality. Talking about issues when they first happen makes them easier to fix than if you wait until after they've festered.
How to stop: Bring up what's on your mind in a way that shows your admiration and respect for each other's thoughts and feelings. Like, "It hurts my feelings when ______. I was hoping we could figure out a new way to handle the situation together." This will set the tone of the conversation as loving and calm, but you both have to compromise to keep it that way.

Rut #6: Going out More with Friends Than with Your SpouseWhy it's bad: It sends the message that your friends are more worthy of your time.
How to stop: Schedule nights out with your crew a few times a month, but make sure to let your partner know in advance. It's important to have these friendships as long as they don't make your married time sparse. And it's always best that these friends are people your partner knows and trusts, so there's less reason to worry.

Rut #7: Being Too Close
Why it's bad: As much as you think burping, scratching, picking, or farting is funny or cute, it can backfire and cross the line. It may be a reflection of your closeness, but there should be a limit. Otherwise, you're leaving your partner with a very unsexy image of you.
How to stop: Start a new rule. If you wouldn't do it in front of your work friends, don't do it in front of your honey. To get your mate to refrain, say: "I know we're close, and we can share everything, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave the room, or leave me out, when you do that. It's not very sexy, and I don't want anything that makes you less sexy to me."

Rut #8: Sharing Too Much with Your Parents or In-laws
Why it's bad: This shows a lack of loyalty to your spouse. Your parents shouldn't have any information that your spouse doesn't have. And they shouldn't know anything he wouldn't want them to know.
How to stop: Be loyal to your spouse even when she's not present. If you wouldn't say something in front of her, don't say it at all. You would want the same in return.

Beyond books

5 Lessons the Teacher Can't Give Your Kids
Article provided by Tutor.com.
At some point, your kids are going to outgrow the need for your help with their homework. With the kitchen sink full of dishes, bills to pay and to-do lists to conquer, chances are that's just fine with you -- especially if your kids are taking classes that weren't even offered when you were in school.
But that doesn't mean you don't play a critical role in your children's education in other ways. Here are five beyond-the-books life skills to teach your kids that they may not learn in school.

Money matters
It's never too soon to give a financial lesson. If you haven't already, open a bank account for your children. Build on the math skills they learn in school and talk to them about how a savings account can grow and what it means if they overdraw the account.
Use real-life examples to show where financial pitfalls occur. For example, those “No payments for a year” ads might make you skeptical, but to kids, it may it look like a good deal. Teach them how to read the fine-print details and to be on the hunt for those sneaky asterisks.

With college comes a deluge of credit card offers and if your child doesn't understand the consequences of accumulating a large balance on a high interest-rate card, they could be paying down that debt well beyond their 20s.

Responsibility rules
With students having to report to class on time and meet deadlines with homework and other school assignments, the stage is already set for this lesson.
If they miss an assignment or get up late, they're not going to get fired from school -- and you know that doesn't relate well to the real world. So when they make a misstep, give them the real scoop about what it means to be late for work or to miss a deadline.


Sitting in detention is one thing -- but missing out on bonuses and the corner office might hit home a little harder. Bad habits in the classroom can predict bad habits in the workplace.


Good manners count
Little things like forgetting to hold a door open or even being too informal in a business e-mail can hinder landing a dream job.
If you've ever watched your kids goofing off at the mall, you probably know that good manners -- and good grammar for that matter -- often go by the wayside.

You don't have to rain on their parade, but you can illustrate the differences between how they behave now with how they'll need to behave in the future.

Take them to work with you when they have a day off from school, or attend a local school board or city council meeting so they can observe how adults communicate in a business setting.

Household chores aren't optional
While you probably already assign a few, you might want to offer up a real lesson in housework.
By college, your child should know how to wash clothes, cook up a quick meal -- besides ramen noodles -- and keep things in (relatively) good order.

You might even want to show them how to sew on a button and iron a shirt. Then let them take over for a weekend, while you sit back and enjoy the results.

Work on career skills
Homework leaves little time for a paying job. But kids can learn how the skills they're learning can apply to a career.
Have your child visit job sites on the Web and read job descriptions for careers that interest them.

Encourage your kids to think about their career goals and craft a résumé that includes teams they've played on, clubs they've belonged to or volunteer jobs they've held. This résumé can help immensely when your child is looking for that first summer job.

Your child may not think playing soccer relates to a dream of becoming a lawyer, but competition and teamwork are skills that translate from the field to the courtroom.

Do you believe?

Our home galaxy, the Milky Way, is a pretty big place. It harbors 200 to 400 billion stars and spans roughly 100,000 light-years from one edge to the other. (To put it in perspective, Earth is only about 8.3 light-minutes from our own star, the sun.) This is one reason why some scientists feel that alien civilizations are common in the galaxy, possibly numbering in the tens of thousands, and why a small band of astronomers have devoted themselves to the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Yet other scientists think we humans are the only creatures in this vast neighborhood with the smarts and technology to communicate across space.

What do you think? Are there aliens in the Milky Way capable of communicating with us?


Aliens are out there, says former Nasa astronaut
A Nasa astronaut who has walked on the moon has claimed that UFOs are real and aliens have visited the earth.

By Laura Clout



Although there is no shortage of subscribers to theories that 'we are not alone’, the fact that Edgar Mitchell, who holds the joint record for the longest moon walk, is among them will come as a surprise to many.

Dr Mitchell, who holds two Bachelor of Science degrees and a doctorate in aeronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made his comments during an interview with a UK radio station this week.

Asked whether he believed there was life on other planets, he replied: “Oh yes. There’s not much question at all that there is life throughout the universe. I’m totally sure we are not alone.”

The presenter for Birmingham-based Kerrang! Radio could be heard to inhale sharply, before Dr Mitchell continued that he had intelligence “that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real - though it’s been covered up by governments for the last 60 years or so.”

Dr Mitchell spent nine hours on the moon on February 9 1971 as part of the Apollo 14 mission.

Although he has referred to the existence of extra-terrestrial before, this is the first time the former astronaut has given so much detail about his beliefs.

In a statement, Nasa said: “Nasa does not track UFOs. Dr Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinion on this issue.”

Cut food costs

Smart shopping strategies can cut food cost to a minimum while still providing a nutritious and varied diet.
Food costs can be a drain on any budget. Careful planning strategies, however, can make this necessary expenditure less expensive. Here are ten ways to significantly reduce food costs and get more out of a grocery budget.

(1) Planning menus for a week in advance will help to save money by giving an exact picture of what items are needed. This list of items can be compared against weekly grocery circulars for the best buys on food items. Center menu ideas around items that are on special for the week.

(2) Cut food waste. Buying food in volume only to have to throw out part of it saves no money. Consider investing in a freezer to store food until it is needed. When storing food in a freezer, divide into individual servings. This will save when having to prepare a meal for only a few family members or one person. Also invest in proper storage containers for foods to cut waste when buying in large quantities.


(3) Always take a list when shopping for groceries. Impulse buying can destroy a budget. Post a list where other family members can add items as they are needed. This will eliminate running out of items. If frequently-used items are on sale and can be stored easily, consider buying several at the low price. This way the item will likely last until it is on special again.


(4) Never assume that an item is a great buy just because it is listed in a weekly circular. Many advertised prices have actually been increased and mixed-in with lower priced items. Comparison shop to make sure.


(5) Use coupons. These little pieces of paper are real money and can significantly reduce the total cost of groceries by 50% or more. Learn to collect and organize coupons so that they can be matched to on-sale items for even more savings. Coupon shopping allows families to buy more expensive and better quality items at a lower price than generics.


(6) If possible, shop without children in tow and at hours when stores are not crowded. This helps to eliminate rushed shopping and possible impulse buying. Never shop when hungry for the same reasons.


(7) If you find a great buy on some item in bulk but find that it is more than you can use or store, consider joining with a friend to make the purchase. You will still get the bargain price without the waste.


(8) Forget about store loyalty. Shop where you can find the best bargains for what you need. Traveling a little further or to more than one store will not deplete your food savings. No store runs everything on sale at one time. When Store A runs a special on meat, Store B might be running a sale on canned foods or some other items. Making all purchases at one store could cost you more than you think.


(9) Keep purchases of packaged foods like tv dinners and frozen pizza at a minimum. It takes more time to prepare foods yourself but it is healthier and more economical. Use more fresh fruits and vegetables in daily menus. Try using fruit drinks and fresh juices more often as an alternative to soft drinks. Over time, this will save a great many budget dollars.


(10) Be sure to check your cash register receipt before leaving the store or on the parking lot. Cashiers often make honest mistakes that can cost you money. If you find that you have been overcharged for an item, you are more likely to return for a refund (and more likely to receive it) if you are still at the store or closeby.