Roasted Italian Cauliflower: Love this recipe, and so delicious!!

Ingredients
1 small head cauliflower, cut into medium-size florets (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup grape tomatoes, halved
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon drained capers
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1/4 lemon
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Adjust an oven rack to the top position and preheat the oven to 475 degrees F. Toss together the cauliflower, tomatoes, olive oil, capers, 1/2 teaspoon salt, a few grinds of pepper and the garlic on a baking sheet. Roast until the cauliflower browns in some spots and is tender, tossing about halfway through, about 20 minutes. Toss with a squeeze of lemon and the parsley. Serve warm.

From Food Network Kitchens

Chess as we all know is a two player board game played on a chess board, a checkered game board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. How delightful to have your King and Queen, not to mention Rook, Pawn, Knight and Bishop adorned with white and black diamonds. I can certainly say it would heighten this abstract strategy game!

Charles Hollander Chess Set Price: $600,000

Charles Hollander: With 320 carats of black and white diamonds only seven of these luxury chess sets have ever been created. Although another set known as the Jewel Royale has been rumored by some websites to be the most expensive in the world at $9.8 million it was never actually created and remains little more than a concept.

Royal Diamond Chess Set

“The Royal Diamond Chess” entirely hand-made in 14-carat white gold, set with approximately 9900 black and white diamonds, is an extraordinary luxurious version of the classic chess-set. Designed by the renowned French artist, designer and master of jewelry, Bernard Maquin, and as part of the Charles Hollander Collection, “The Royal Diamond Chess” is a rare and precious work of fine art jewelry. This entirely hand-made creation is an expression of meticulous artisanship. With a harmonic combination of aesthetics, functional is and beauty.

La Case de L’ Isle:

You can’t top the view or the service at this waterfront restaurant at the renowned Cheval Blanc St-Barth Isle de France, and at night there is no more romantic spot on the island. Lightened traditional French fare is served. At lunch you can have your toes in the sand while enjoying a composed salad or club sandwich. For dinner, choose from tender suckling lamb with sweet-pepper creamy polenta or flambéed local lobster fricassee. Amazing desserts include pistachio-raspberry panna cotta with fresh red fruits and a crispy grilled pistachio crêpe. Occasional fashion shows featuring the lovely beachwear from the on-site boutique are a fun diversion.

*Reservations Essential

Hotel Saint Barth Isle de France

Situated by the beach “La Case de l’Isle”, the restaurant of the hotel Isle de France, serves light and elegant French cuisine: frozen tomato soup with orange flavor, risotto of the day, lobster and crab in crust, beef tenderloin or local sea bream… Located by the hotel swimming pool, the restaurant looks over the beach, but if you prefer, you can settle down in “la cabane” (the hut), and enjoy the same menu with your feet in the sand.

Main contact

La Case de L’ Isle
tel +590 (0)590 27 58 68 / 27 61 81
fax +590 (0)590 27 86 83
reception.stbarth@chevalblanc.com
Website: www.isle-de.france

Address:
Cheval Blac St. Barth
Isle de France, Flamands Beach
Anse des Flamands, St. Barthelemy

The late philanthropist and musician William H. Scheide has donated thousands of rare manuscripts and documents to Princeton University, the Ivy League academic institution announced Monday.

Scheide, who passed away at 100 in November, made the largest gift in Princeton’s history when the 1936 grad left the school his library of 2,500 historic books, papers and records carrying an appraised value of $300 million, Princeton officials said.

Scheide had displayed the collection, which includes documents like the 1455 Gutenberg Bible, the original printing of the Declaration of Independence and an autographed 1856 Abraham Lincoln speech about slavery, at the university’s Firestone Library since 1959.

But the donation will allow university officials to continue digitizing the documents for public inspection in its online library and preparing for a new display room for them at the renovated library, they said.

COURTESY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Scheide shows students the collection’s copy of Darwin’s The Origin of Species in March 2000.

“Through Bill Scheide’s generosity, one of the greatest collections of rare books and manuscripts in the world today will have a permanent home here,” said Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber.

Scheide’s collection, which his oil executive grandfather began amassing in 1865, also contains three other 15th century Bibles in the only complete set of all four of the first editions outside of Europe, a signed Beethoven sketchbook, a Magna Carta dating to the 1300s and the poet Emily Dickinson’s chocolate pudding recipe, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Scheide grew up in Titusville, Pa, where his father, a fellow Princeton man, built the first formal display of the historical rarities, but he later relocated them to the university following the death of his mother and reviewed Princeton officials’ plan for the new space that will house them, Princeton officials said.

“This collection is the fulfillment of the dreams of three generations of Scheide book men,” said Sheide’s wife, Judy McCartin Scheide. “Having it reside permanently at Princeton is a testament to the joy Bill took in sharing the books, papers, manuscripts, letters, music and posters with others — those were some of his happiest times.”

Scheide, who recalled being fascinated by his father’s documents as a child at the house in Titusville, founded the renowned Bach Aria Group in 1946 and helped provide the ensemble with material by culling through the full 47 volumes of the master composer’s work, the New York Times reported in his obituary last year.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, where Scheide provided future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall with financial backing to help pursue the landmark Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case, also recognizes Scheide as its largest individual donor, according to the organization.

Contrary to popular belief, Christmas is an ideal time to buy, with properties left on the market in the lead up to the festive season and less potential buyers trawling real estate sites.

Agents say end-of-year vendors get to the point where they just want to sell, but realize people are on holidays. The result is they’ll flip their house for less.

That’s good news for potential home buyers repeatedly outbid by cashed-up investors this year in capital cities where auction clearance rates have clocked record highs.

TV real estate expert Bryce Holdaway says savvy buyers go against the trend and house hunt when the others aren’t looking – that’s this month and January.

“As the buyer, you generally hold all the cards at this time,” says Mr Holdaway, host of Location Location Location.

“Once December rolls around, the competition is thinking more about Christmas approaching than they are about embarking on a major decision like a property purchase. And this is where you can take advantage.

“Buyers tend to get reluctant to buy close to Christmas … they’ll deal with it, along with the other new year resolutions, next year. Understandably, the vendor can become quite desperate to secure a deal.”

Even in Sydney where auction clearance rates have nudged 90 per cent this year, there will be bargains in the next few weeks.

Properties are going to auction right up until the weekend before Christmas, when the crowds of competitive buyers are sure to diminish.

You won’t have to contend with the massive auction crowds in December and January. Source: News Limited

“People are keen to sell before the New Year and capitalize on the active market that we’re currently in,” Roger Agha, principal of Devine Real Estate said.

What’s more, a recent investor sell-off in some prime Sydney suburbs could spook vendors into quick sales, with fears of the market slowing in 2014 making them more open to negotiations in the coming weeks.

It can be more difficult to sell in January with professionals required to finalize contracts often on holidays, further motivating vendors.

January also is generally a slow month for builders and contractors. With most people on holidays and factories closed for the break, this makes it a good time to negotiate fees on new homes.

Xmas cheer for buyers

Less people looking equals less competition, which means greater flexibility in negotiations and a better chance at securing a bargain.

Another great outcome of buying at this time of year is that settlement will often be in January or February – peak rental time.

Holidays will potentially increase condition and settlement times and the longer you control a property in a rising market without actually owning it the better.

A top time to sell?

On the flipside, real estate expert Andrew Winter says the festive season can also be the optimum time to sell.

“Demand however, can vary from area to area. Inner city and urban areas may close down as residents disappear to the coast,” Mr Winter says.

“Coastal areas, the country, even the outer burbs can shine during this festive season as numbers swell with visitors who can be tempted by the dream of a lifestyle change.

Mr Winter, host of Selling Houses Australia, advises vendors to consider their situation carefully at this time of year.

“Just adding days to your listing time is pointless and can have a negative impact on buyer’s perception of your home if the area shuts down.

“There’s also school holiday syndrome to consider if with time off, the kids want to turn the living room into a massive sleep out zone.

“Plus the detritus of Christmas wrapping ensuring your home looks like Myer at the end of the first day of the sales.”

Buyers looking for properties during the holidays are usually serious about purchasing and this could lead to a quick sale.

Most buyers want to be able to move in before a new year begins.

If you’re in an area that has an increased holiday population, competition between buyers may increase, this could lead to offers that are higher than your original asking price.

Santa at the Macy’s Herald Square Santa Land (Photo: John Minchillo / AP Images for Macy’s)

Macy’s:
The Store is a standard bearer for Santa experiences in the city. Visiting the Herald Square flagship’s Santaland can involve a long wait and being herded through a line that snakes through the store’s eighth floor. But the payoff is worth it: The journey to Santa’s workshop takes visitors through a train “ride” (the floor vibrates along with bells clanging) and into the 13,000 square foot Christmas village. Santaland is open daily from Nov. 28 to Dec. 24 until 9pm. Opening times vary between 7am and 9am; go to the Santaland website to see the full schedule.  Should you not want to wait on line for longer than it would take to actually watch Miracle on 34th Street, make an advance reservation via kiosks in the cellar or on the 9th floor (only 20 are allowed per hour). Advance reservations are also available online 30 minutes to 48 hours in advance, beginning Nov. 26. 151 W 34th St., visitmacysnewyork.com

Bloomingdale’s:
The eighth-floor children’s department at the Bloomingdale’s on 59th Street (at Lexington Ave.) is another popular place to see Santa, Nov. 28–Dec. 23 (11am-6pm weekdays, 10am-6pm weekends). Though the scene at the department store’s flagship location isn’t as elaborate as the one at Macy’s, fewer frills mean shorter lines — which can be the difference between Johnny smiling and crying by the time he poses for a picture with the world’s most popular reindeer driver. 1000 Third Ave., bloomingdales.com

Rockefeller Center:
If you want something more elaborate than just snapping a picture, two of the restaurants at Rockefeller Center host a Breakfast with Santa during the holiday season: The Sea Grill and Rock Center Café. Both packages include breakfast with Santa and carolers and ice skating on the famed Rockefeller Center ice skating rink, plus keepsakes like an ornament, photo frame and gifts for the kids. In 2014, the breakfasts will be held Nov. 28-30, Dec. 7, 13-14 and daily  Dec. 19-24. Breakfast at the Sea Grill is $110 for adults and $75 for children, while the Rock Center Café packages start at $80 for adults and $50 for children. Be sure to make reservations in advance — the breakfasts do sell out. rockefellercenter.com

ABC Carpet & Home:
As has been a holiday tradition for more than 20 years, the Santa at ABC Carpet & Home is available for photo opportunities in the Union Square neighborhood 11am–3pm Nov. 28–30 and Dec. 6, 13 and 20. The scene is apropos of a home-furnishings store, featuring an elaborate Victorian-style sitting area draped in velvet and filled with housewares. The wait here is also shorter than almost any other place you’ll visit in the city. 888 Broadway; abchome.com

Brookfield Place:
Santa, elves and reindeer are on hand at Santa’s Winter Garden at Brookfield Place in lower Manhattan. A professional photographer is on hand for photos (packages start at $20), and all proceeds go to Dancing Classrooms. The Battery Park City garden hosts Santa Dec. 5-7 9am-1:30pm and 3-6pm. Lines can be long, and are capped if staff thinks not everyone will be accommodated, so be sure to arrive early. 220 Vesey St.

New York City Fire Museum:
Visit the New York City Fire Museum on Dec. 7 at 11:30am for an unusual Santa-sighting. The museum’s annual Santa Rescue is more theater than a traditional visit, but it’s worth the watching: Saint Nick gets stuck on the roof and firefighters get out their hook-and-ladder to save him from peril. After families watch the rescue, they can head inside to sip hot cocoa at a holiday party and enjoy music from John Clacher’s Firehouse Band. Buy tickets in advance ($8 adults, $5 kids under 12) to ensure you’ll get in (tickets guarantee you’ll be sitting inside with Santa); as it is, the event is crowded every year, so in any case you’ll need to brace yourself for some jostling. 278 Spring St; nycfiremuseum.org

” What do the Holidays mean to you, and what should they mean to the world.”

We are thrilled to have Laura Bounin join us this Holiday Season….. Laura grew up in Paris and attended the prestigious boarding School, Le Rosey. She is currently studying at Regents University in London for a Bachelor of Arts in Public Relations and Journalism. She speaks and writes three fluent languages …French, Romanian and English. In the Springtime she will be graduating, year 2016. We here at Old Fashioned Mom Magazine are proud to introduce Laura Bounin!

Ah! It is that time of the year, the Christmas bells are ringing, you can smell the flavor of the Christmas Turkey and admire the marvelous presents underneath the Christmas tree, though it is not the time to open them just yet…

As the Christmas Holidays are approaching it is a great time of year to be next to your loved ones and enjoy quality moments, as there is nothing more important than family traditions! It is also a great time for you to invest more in yourself and to start doing all these little things you never made time for throughout the year. Holidays are the chance for you to finally go out of your daily routine. Go ahead and read this book that has been sitting on your shelf for so long, go sign up to this yoga class, learn a new language, call up that old friend of yours you haven’t talked to in so long. Holidays are a good time of the year to reconnect with your inner self.

Though, holidays are also about traveling! For my part I think there is no greater time of the year to go out and explore the world! There is a dazzling amount of opportunities on our doorstep; it is time to release the hidden Christopher Columbus hiding inside each of us and to go explore the treasures of the world. There are so many ways in which one can enjoy a holiday, whether you prefer savoring a cocktail on a beautiful beach in Bali while admiring a wonderful sunset, going for a trek on the Himalaya Mountains, visiting an old Maya temple in Mexico, or going skiing to the French Alps. You get my point, holidays are really for everyone, the lazy, the adventurous, the athletes. Holidays don’t put anyone aside. We travel in the purpose of discovering other lives, other souls, other cultures and to find ourselves speechless in front of the beauty of the world!

There is no such luxury and treasure as the one a holiday can bring, culture, knowledge and memories come together and become one. Sometimes all we need is a beautiful place, with beautiful souls far away from home just to rest and remove all sort of negativity from our lives. We will never truly know all the surprises a holiday can bring, it might be a new lover, a new friend, a new job. We should go places we’ve never seen before, and travel the whole world with people we love. Holidays are a great opportunity to fill your life with experiences and stories to tell. Rich is the man who has the chance to marvel at small thing and fill his heart of the world’s beauty.

So let’s embrace the luck of this wealth, and let’s travel and create our memories for tomorrow with the people closest to your hearts and souls, let’s allow ourselves to feel experiences as they are, only focusing on the present moment, because now is all we have and everything in this life is ephemeral except the memories we make.

St. Augustine said it himself : « The world is a book and those who don’t travel only read one page » .

We are the sole writers of your book so let’s go explore the unknown and create a story worth reading for this new Holiday season!

By Laura Bounin

Recipe courtesy of Paula Deen.

Old–Fashioned Holiday Glazed Ham

Total Time: 2 Hours
Prep: 1 hour and 30 minutes
Cook: 30 minutes

Hand-raising is a quick, cost-effective, time-tested technique for gauging student knowledge and progress, but it may not give an accurate picture of students’ grasp of a subject. A new Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) faculty working paper co-authored by Senior Lecturer Dan Levy, doctoral student Joshua Yardley and Professor Richard Zeckhauser examines the biases and challenges that result from hand-raising and the potential solutions offered by the use of “clickers” in the classroom.

“Since student satisfaction often correlates imperfectly with student learning, it is important to explore the ways in which clickers may impact learning specifically, in addition to the positive reviews they are getting from users,” the authors explain in the paper’s introduction.

Richard Zeckhauser, Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy (L) and Dan Levy, Senior Lecturer (R) Clickers, the researchers argue, may be beneficial in allowing students to complete the learning process (thinking through their own independent responses to a question) and thus giving teachers a clearer picture of their students’ learning

The paper examines the possible benefits of clickers, chief among them anonymity – eliminating the usual “herding” behavior that can result when students are asked to raise their hands. Using a clicker, students are denied the opportunity to mimic other students, and are freed from the embarrassment or peer pressures that would promote certain choices. They can only choose independently.

The researchers conducted experiments in 22 different university classrooms, working with more than 1100 total respondents. Each classroom was divided into two groups: one with hand raising and the other with clickers. The response results differed significantly between the two groups. The hand-raising results were generally more clustered, consistent with the researchers’ theories on herding behavior.

“Those providing erroneous answers love company,” the authors note. But students may also “cluster” toward the responses of their classmates who are known to be knowledgeable about a topic, even if those answers are in the minority. For certain types of questions, the authors found that “clustering with others may also be helpful when there is no single right answer.”

While herding does sometimes push more students toward the correct answer to a question, the students may simply be following the crowd instead of arriving at the correct answer on their own. Clickers, the researchers argue, may be beneficial in allowing students to complete the learning process (thinking through their own independent responses to a question) and thus giving teachers a clearer picture of their students’ learning. Clickers also enable students to comfortably express minority or unpopular political views.

Besides allowing students to engage with questions on their own, clicked responses “can be an important source of feedback for teachers,” the authors explain. Yardley adds, “Clicker data that more accurately reflect student knowledge can help teachers make better informed real-time decisions regarding pacing and focus.” For example, Yardley says, “If clicker data suggest that students understand a particular concept, the teacher moves on, whereas if the data reveal student confusion, the teacher may decide to stay with the topic longer.”

“It seems likely that clicker responses give the teacher a better picture of where the students actually are in understanding a given concept or question,” the authors conclude. The study provides compelling evidence that hand-raising and clicker responses differ significantly from one another, and raises interesting questions about the potential use of both techniques in classrooms of the future.

Dan Levy is senior lecturer in public policy and Faculty Chair of the Kennedy School’s SLATE (Strengthening Learning and Teaching Excellence) Initiative. He teaches courses in quantitative methods and program evaluation. He recently directed impact evaluations of girl-friendly school construction programs in Burkina Faso and Niger.

Joshua Yardley is a Ph.D. candidate in Public Policy at Harvard University, with a focus on research in development economics and education.

Richard Zeckhauser is the Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School. His contributions to decision theory and behavioral economics include the concepts of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), status quo bias, betrayal aversion, and ignorance (states of the world unknown) as a complement to the categories of risk and uncertainty. Many of his policy investigations explore ways to promote the health of human beings, to help markets work more effectively, and to foster informed and appropriate choices by individuals and government agencies.

Written By Katie Gibson