DIY Corner Bookmarks

I got bored of the traditional bookmarks so I decided to make a few corner ones! Here’s how to make your own:

Step 1: Draw three 6 cm squares and draw the diagonal lines like below:

 

Step 2: Cut it out like so…

 

Step 3: Glue one of the triangles and overlap the two

Step 4: Get creative!

 

A Chain of Fictional Restaurants Part 1

Wouldn’t it be great if there were restaurants that match your mood, featuring dishes that mirror exactly what you feel like?  Just imagine the chef designing dishes and meals that cater to your emotions, aimed at alleviating the customers distress and ensuring that they actually leave the place happy.It’d also be nice if these hypothetical restaurants were affordable, the items priced really low! In a perfect world this would be true 🙂

I see food as a great pick-me-up after a bad day, something that changes your whole mood. That’s what inspired this post. I started daydreaming about these fictional restaurants in class and decided to make menus for each one of them and it’s going to be a really creative and fun project now that I’ve got so much free time to work on it 🙂

Here is the first of the fictional chain, a cafe whose customers are primarily night owls, the ones who enjoy staying up late into the night and have a really rough time getting up in the morning as I often experience when I’ve got early morning classes.

Before going to college or to work, you could just spend a little while getting a cup of coffee or a muffin here in the morning and it’s perfectly acceptable to be cranky or quiet since you’re surrounded by people who understand exactly how you feel.

This menu basically sums up everything I feel in the morning so if you’re anything like me, I’m sure you’ll get where I’m coming from 🙂

6 Ways Music Influences You

In John Dryden’s ode to music Alexander’s Feast, Alexander the Great returns to his kingdom after defeating his enemy King Darius and at the celebration feast his bard, Timotheus sings his praises and in the end inspires the victor to burn down his Persian palace. How? Well that’s just the power of music.

Now here are 6 ways music influences YOU:

1. It  influences your shopping tendencies. According to a few employees, supermarkets tend to play music slower than a human heart beat so that customers linger around for more time and this causes them to buy more items than they initially wanted to. It’s advised that you go shopping listening to your own music with the help of headphones and preferably up beat fast-paced music so that you buy what you want and leave.
2. It influences your emotions and mood. Obviously listening to happy music makes you happy which has been effectively proved whenever Meredith and Christina on Grey’s Anatomy dance away their problems. But negative music can also help those coping with a major loss like the death of a loved one or the end of a relationship  while frustrated people tend to listen to angry music.
3. It influences your health. Did you know that certain types of music can boost your immunity? It can also reduce blood pressure and intensity of head aches. Patients in hospitals find music therapy to be incredibly effective in their recovery because it provides them with a distraction, gives them a sense of control and music can possibly result in the production of endorphins (feel-good hormones).
4. It influences your performance. Ever been so mind-numbingly bored by a task that you put it off till the last minute? Try finishing bit by bit by listening to music as you do. Listening to up beat music not only quickens your grocery shopping but also speeds up your performance in disinterested activities by fighting fatigue. Athletes also listen to motivating tunes to get in the zone and helps improve their physical performance.
5. It influences your personality. Psychologists say that your music preferences say a lot about who you are and they are definitely onto something when they say your playlists are more revealing than you think.If you love those Top 40 hits, chances are that you are an extroverted and honest person. If indie is more your style, then you’re likely to be introverted and creative. Rock and roll lovers are surprisingly more gentle than  expected.
6. It influences your learning.  if your parents ever tell you to switch off your iPod and get started on your work, then remind them that listening to music can enhance intelligence and learning. it certainly helped when I worked on my trigonometry and no wonder, since it particularly helps in learning math.

So don’t ever think that listening to music is a waste of time because it’s actually symphonic catharsis!