Karen’s Opinion

Have you ever noticed that around the holidays we tend to hear music that fits with that season? Take for instance Christmas. We hear enough Christmas carols to fill our needs for ten years. Around Valentine’s Day, it is fun to listen to all the love songs. Have you noticed that there are not as many patriotic songs played during our patriotic holidays?

We can change that by downloading the 30 songs from the digital album, A Salute to America. For one day only, July 3rd, Amazon is reducing the normal price of an MP3 download, $9.49 to just $1.99 on this particular digital album.

The album is available now but by ordering on the 3rd, you can save on your purchase through their Amazon MP3 “Deal Of The Day.”

The album includes many of my favorites, which include The Star Spangled Banner, God Bless America, God Bless the USA, and America the Beautiful. Feel your heart swell with pride as you listen to this wonderful album. The music is played by the famous 100 Strings Orchestra, known for their lush, soothing sound qualities.

Get your patriotic cake baked, hang out your flag, don your red, white and blue t-shirt and listen to “A Salute To America!”

Every year around the fourth of July, I think I will make this cake. Perhaps, this will be the year! It sounds yummy.
Flag Cake
from the Barefoot Contessa
Ingredients

* 18 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
* 3 cups sugar
* 6 extra-large eggs at room temperature
* 1 cup sour cream at room temperature
* 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
* 3 cups flour
* 1/3 cup cornstarch
* 1 teaspoon kosher salt
* 1 teaspoon baking soda

For the icing:

* 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
* 1 1/2 pounds cream cheese at room temperature
* 1 pound confectioners’ sugar, sifted
* 1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

To assemble:

* 2 half-pints blueberries
* 3 half-pints raspberries

Directions

Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Butter and flour an 18 by 13 by 1 1/2-inch sheet pan.

Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on high speed, until light and fluffy. On medium speed, add the eggs, 2 at a time, then add the sour cream and vanilla. Scrape down the sides and stir until smooth.

Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just combined. Pour into the prepared pan. Smooth the top with a spatula. Bake in the center of the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool to room temperature.

For the icing, combine the butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mixing just until smooth.

Spread three-fourths of the icing on the top of the cooled sheet cake. Outline the flag on the top of the cake with a toothpick. Fill the upper left corner with blueberries. Place 2 rows of raspberries across the top of the cake like a red stripe. Put the remaining icing in a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and pipe two rows of white stripes below the raspberries. Alternate rows of raspberries and icing until the flag is completed. Pipe stars on top of the blueberries.

I serve this cake right in the pan. If you want to turn it out onto a board before frosting, use parchment paper when you grease and flour the pan.

A good friend of mine recently lost his job. I was blown away when I heard the news. He was a professor and taught for many years. To be without a job has caught him off guard. Many of us could find ourselves in his position. We live our lives, comfortable in our daily tasks and then whammo, we are without a job. It is not easy to find a well paying job especially when you are only trained in a particular field. We all need to take control of our success. To be prepared, it is important to have up to date training in fields that are hiring.

There is help available for those who are seeking skill improvement for a particular job profile. Learn.com provides online training courses in many fields. They also offer compliance courses that will have you in a skilled profession with the training of which you can rely and able to apply for jobs in that field.

Learn.com makes it easy to learn new job skills that will help you get back into the workforce or help you get a promotion. I was recently asked to review their site and was able to go through the motions of the choosing a course and checking out my skill score. A Skill score is calculated for each job profile based upon the completion and passing of exams for each course that is prepared for a specific job profile. The Skill score gives me, as well as a potential employer, the key to know if I have the qualifications or need training for a profession.

After I registered at their site, I chose from a list of job profiles. There is a whole library of job profiles covering jobs in business, management and administration as well as marketing, sales and service. I chose the business category since that is my field of expertise. I manage a business and wondered how I measured up in their executive secretaries and administrative assistants job profile.

The courses are varied from beginning math and grammar skills, of which I can certainly use a refresher course, to business ethics. Learn.com also offers accredited courses from some very exclusive online degrees from impressive universities. The College Network, George Washington University, Boston University, and eCornell are listed as part of an extensive list of universities with courses offered through Learn.com. There are telephone and written communication courses as well as computer use courses. I am excited to see all these subjects. These are things I have had to learn on my own. What a fabulous resource for those wanting a complete training course that they can do on their own time.

Okay, time to calm down and actually choose a course. I am choosing Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 Fundamentals. I am off to do some studying and will be back to tell you how I did.

To be continued….

Okay, I was taken through an easy to use program that taught me everything I needed to know about building a power point presentation. Now I have the confidence to check out the grammar and communication programs.

Everyone needs to refresh their minds or learn new information to keep up with today’s technology. It is important during these economic times when our jobs are not as stable as we once thought. Be prepared by taking control of your circumstances. Learn new things at Learn.com.

Oh no! My skimming got me into trouble again. The post below is for next weeks Heads or Tails. This week’s theme is Summertime Memory.

Since this is TAILS your summertime memory needs to be a real memory of yours. It can be a childhood memory, a memory from teens years or later. It can even be from last week.

One of my favorite summertime memories is making picnic lunches for my kids and letting them eat their lunch outside. I had old lunch boxes that I would pack with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and koolaid. We would put a blanket in the yard and eat our lunch. Something simple like that sure did make my kids happy.

Another memory I have of summertime is from when I was in the 7th grade. We lived with our grandmother in Washington state while my dad was in Vietnam. Many kids worked in the fields as their summer job. I picked cucumbers and strawberries. I felt rich at the end of summer!

Wait! Stop! Halt! Those of you who are participating in this weeks Heads or Tails Meme, Here is my summertime memory. This post is for next week. Bonk on my head!

Fun theme this week for Heads or Tails! The word of the day is tool. Make any kind of post using “Tool” as your theme/prompt. Click on the Heads or Tails button and join us. It is fun and an easy way to meet some fantastic bloggers.

Wait! Stop! Halt! Those of you who are participating in this weeks Heads or Tails Meme, Here is my summertime memory. This post is for next week. Bonk on my head!

My favorite tool:

A tool I would love to have:

Tools I use to play in the dirt:

Tools I should use so my nails didn’t look so dirty:

Tool my husband uses to install floors:

A tool I wish our plumber would fix so we had more than one in this house: