The winds and rain blew through midweek. It’s foggy outside right now, but still looking to be a beautiful weekend. Here’s this week’s edition of Friday’s Fresh Five.
# 1 – A Market Tip From Bob (my dad, a former supermarket owner)
Eggplants come in a variety of colors such as ivory, white, lavender, variegated lavender, dark purple, pale green, and even bright orange. It’s the end of the season for locally grown eggplants, but they’ll still be available year-round in the markets. Select eggplants that have smooth and shiny skins. Look for ones that are firm and heavy in weight with no wrinkles. Also, choose eggplants with an even color all the way to the stem. There should be no green. This reflects the maturity or ripeness of this vegetable.
#2 – A Quote from Mother Teresa
In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.
# 3 – A Good Deed
From now on, how about putting a few extra nonperishable items in your shopping cart each time you go grocery shopping? When you get home put these extra items into designated grocery bags. After you’ve filled a few bags, take them over to a local food bank or donate them to an organization collecting items for a food drive. In these sad economic times, there are more families than ever in need of this food.
# 4 – A Recycling Tip
Reuse those baby wipe pop-up-type containers (cylindrical with a hole at the top) to dispense skeins of yarn, balls of string, or spools of ribbon. The containers will prevent the yarn, string, or ribbon from becoming tangled. Wash the containers out first, especially if you are using ones that held household disinfectant wipes.
# 5 – A Style Tip
When putting together an outfit, many women have the notion that different patterns can’t be mixed. This is basically incorrect, depending on the exact patterns. Taking a fashion cue from men, who often wear pinstriped suits with checkered shirts and geometric patterned ties all in one outfit, women should feel they can mix it up, too. Style experts Clinton Kelly and Stacy London say, “It’s fine to mix patterns as long as they aren’t all competing for attention.” Their example is illustrated by a woman wearing a small print black polka-dot silk blouse, charcoal gray glen plaid trousers and a light-colored argyle sweater vest. Clearly only the boldest pattern can be in the driver’s seat and the others have to take a back seat!
This weekend I may be making a Mr. Potato Head costume for my 25-year-old son. What are your plans for the weekend?
Here’s another example. What usually happens to photographs that are misprinted for one reason or another? Most people throw them away, but, of course, I do not. I save them for reasons unknown. Then one day I was making a birthday card for a neighbor and thought wouldn’t it be great if I cut up these colorful, but imperfect photos, and make a design with them? I took out scissors and paper punches and became engrossed with the bits of color and shapes as my design came into being.
What about this? 
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