Hello, Readers

Hooray, it’s March! This means that flowers will soon be blooming and birds will be back in our yards again. While I enjoy the beginning of every season, spring is the one I truly love. I’m ready to start playing in the dirt again!

In between your own gardening and spring-cleaning, take a break from time to time and spend a few minutes browsing my website. Here are some of the things you’ll find:

Table of Contents:
Home and Garden
Christian Living
Book News
Education
Your Comments

Home and Garden
Have you ever thought about decorating your ceiling? Stenciling, wallpaper, pressed tin, trompe l’oeil designs and even wood laminate (adhered with a nail gun) all make great design statements when used on a ceiling. Plus, they make a focal point of an ordinarily mundane area.

Ceilings are one of the topics I covered recently in my home and garden column. To get other tips and suggestions, click on the “home and garden ideas” link. There you’ll find the beginning of my current article as well as a link to the remainder of it and all my other articles on home and garden ideas.

By the way, if you live in the Atlanta area, check out my series on the best home décor shops. Focused on Acworth, Kennesaw and Woodstock, these articles spotlight the stores that I like best in this part of the metro area. If you visit any of the shops, let me know what you think.

Christian Living
Have you ever watched a baby play? Babies extract pure joy from the most ordinary event. For instance, hide your face behind your hands in a game of Peek-a-boo and you’ll hear her shriek with laughter. Or repeatedly pick up the item that he continues to hurl out of his crib and he’ll fall over in gales of laughter. Babies are so easily entertained!

But, somehow, as we grow older we seem to develop the notion that fun and laughter, just for the sake of it, are foolish and childish. Perhaps we’d all be better off if we learned to rejoice from time to time. And since “Rejoice!” is the title of this month’s Christian Living article, I hope you’ll read it and let me know some of the things that make you happy.

Book News
The Social Studies Helper: Creative Assignments for Exam Success will be available for sale in June 2010. For reasons that remain unknown to me, there never seem to be any books with projects and activities for high school social studies teachers. So, I decided to write one.

The wonderful part for me is that a publisher decided to publish it! So, if you’re a teacher or know someone who is, I hope you’ll check out my book when it becomes available in June.

Education
Should we continue to celebrate Black History Month every February? Or should we work toward including African Americans as part of the overall curriculum throughout the year? Would creating a Black Literature class as a core course rather than an elective, be a helpful step in that direction?

And, on a completely different topic, did you know that the number of homeless 18-year-olds is on the rise? Yet, many of these teens continue striving toward graduation, despite the severe hardships.

We discussed these topics in February’s weekly blogs. If they intrigue you, please stop by each week to find out what else we’re discussing. Because, if it’s educational and interesting, we want to talk about it.

Your Comments
I love receiving your responses to this website. They let me know what touches people, what interests you and what makes you smile. So, whether you leave comments, participate in the blogs or send me e-mails, just keep talking to me.

Denise Fawcett Facey
www.denisefawcettfacey.com