The next time you enjoy a good meal, good health or a good time, chances are you can thank a chemist. This vital science plays an important part in nutrition, medicine and just about everything around you.

One way to show your gratitude may be to encourage kids to appreciate how much fun chemistry can be. To help, the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society, has come up with a couple of clever publications.

One, ChemMatters, is a magazine for high school students and it’s available at www.acs.org/ chemmatters.
The other, Chemistry: Our Health, Our Future, is a newspaper for elementary school students available at www.acs.org/ncw, ­featuring many hands-on activities that highlight:

• Why eating well and staying active is important at any age;
• How medicines are created and how they work in your body;
• Why washing your hands properly is so important and how it can help you and others around you stay healthy.

This website also features fun and simple experiments children can do at home or in the classroom, including measuring how much sugar is in soda. Here’s how:

Materials:
1 empty soda bottle or can with a “Nutrition Facts” label (8 or 12 oz., not diet soda)
1 kitchen or postal balance with a gram scale
1 box of sugar cubes or sugar packets
Tongs

Procedure:
Read the “Nutrition Facts” label on the soda bottle to see the number of servings in the bottle and how many grams (g) of sugar are in each serving. Put the balance on a sturdy table or desk. Use the tongs to add sugar cubes or packets to the weighing pan of the balance one by one. Watch the scale on the balance and keep adding sugar cubes until the reading on the balance is equal to the number of grams of sugar in one serving of soda. You’ll see just how much sugar is in each glass of soda you drink.

Learn More
For more information about chemistry, free resources and other activities, visit www.acs.org/ncw or call (800) 227-5558.

You and your kids can have fun learning chemistry—and about its important role in everyday life.

Note to Editors: While National Chemistry Week this year is October 16 to 22, this article can be useful to your readers at any time

Even in these economic times, nearly eight out of 10 Americans want to keep up the tradition of giving to charity during the holiday season. The good news is that it is getting easier to support the cause of your choice with new options like online fundraising.

For example, one organization called Razoo.com provides anyone looking to create a fundraiser or donate to a charity with user-friendly online tools that encourage giving and make it easy to do. The site is revolutionizing philanthropy by helping donors and fundraisers alike experience the joy of giving and by making it easier for everyone to share their stories and their passions and raise money along the way.

By using the resources available on its website, you can set up a fundraiser in less than two minutes and, because there are no setup or monthly subscription fees, more of every dollar donated will go to charity.

Here are some hints to help you get started:

• Start early in the season to give your fundraiser time to gain momentum.
• Create seasonally themed events.
• Choose a cause to which friends and family can relate.
• Create excitement and in­volvement with regular updates and reminders.
• Do a traditional giving fund­raiser or create your own custom one.

Holiday Fundraising
There are a number of ways to raise money for your favorite charity. For example, on Razoo you can offer to dye your hair pink for the yearly family photo if family members help you raise money for breast cancer research. Gather a group to host a gift-wrapping event for a new piece of playground equipment for school. Or challenge co-workers to a cookie-baking contest to support a food bank.
Donating Made Simple

If you’d rather donate to a cause, check out the more than a million officially registered nonprofit organizations at Razoo.com.
There, you can find and re­search nonprofit organizations, donate online, keep up to date about the world of giving and activism and manage your charitable portfolio online. All donations go through a registered 501(c)(3) entity and are tax de­ductible to the extent of the law. So far, the site has sent over $49 million to more than 7,000 projects, making a difference in lives and building a better world.

Learn More

You can find further information at www.razoo.com, www.facebook.com/RazooGiving, http://twitter.com#!/razoo and (866) 437-1952.

Raising money for a favorite charity can be a fun and easy way to bring friends and family together.

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The next time you see a bright blue sky, a vivid red sweater, a flowing lavender curtain or any color you wish you could take home—you can. A new mobile phone tool lets you photograph, match and preview paint colors on the go.
With a free download of an easy-to-use and convenient tool now for Android and iPhone, you can match, coordinate and preview beautiful colors for all your paint projects.

With a range of unique features, such as the capability to decorate a room image digitally with touch-and-tap technology and preview color on walls, trim and accents, the application lets you become your own color expert and act on whatever color inspires you in the moment.

Creating a color palette for your home can be simple, fun and personally satisfying. A coordinated color palette unifies your space, creating an environment that is beautifully harmonious. Cool colors impart a calm, serene effect, while warm colors bring an invigorating, energizing feel to a room. Therefore, a room set aside for peace and quiet is enhanced with the calm and cool shades of green or blue. If, on the other hand, you want your space to be uplifting and high-spirited, try decorating with warm colors such as yellow or orange.

Incorporating the color selection, coordination and preview features from ColorSmart by Behr online at behr.com, the Color-Smart by Behr Mobile application has many easy-to-use features for selecting the right color palette for you, including:

• Explore Color—Browse over 2,000 colors by color families or color name or number. Once you find a shade you like, you can preview it in a room image.

• Photo Match—Take a photo or select an existing photo. Tap on an area in the photo and the application will pull up the three closest matching paint colors.

• Preview Colors—Access interior and exterior images in a variety of styles to test your color choices on the walls, trims and accents. Zoom in to see details of the photo or remove a color and add another for the color combination you want. You can then share your color selections with friends and family by posting them on Twitter and Facebook. The color se­lections can also be saved to behr.com.

• Favorites and More— Favorites lets you save favorite colors, coordinated palettes and room images. In addition, it has a handy paint calculator to help you figure out how much paint you’ll need and a store locator to provide directions to the nearest The Home Depot store.

The ColorSmart by Behr ­Mobile application is available for Android and iPhone and is a free download in both the Android Market and Apple iTunes App Store.

For more information about the application and how to use it, visit behr.com/colorsmartmobile. You can also “like” the paint company on facebook.com/behrpaint and ­follow it on twitter.com/behrpaint.

Your phone can now become an on-the-go platform to find the right colors for any home decorating project at the touch of a finger.

Take a photo of a color you like and select a room image. Then combine them with a tap on your phone.

by Sharon Naylor, bridal expert with more than 35 published
wedding and bridal shower books to date

This year, 2.1 million brides will create their dream wedding by threading together a collection of wedding images and inspirations. With all these ideas floating around, brides need to be organized. Research shows that being disorganized leads to overspending and miscalculations, ending in wedding waste. With the average U.S. wedding costing $23,000, brides need every dollar to count.

The organized bride needs a single place to coordinate the wedding party, search for the perfect dress, track guest responses, monitor the budget and decide on a venue. In the 21st century, a binder full of papers won’t do! A digital solution is better suited to capture and coordinate details.

Microsoft OneNote 2010 offers a digital solution that brides can count on—complete with a downloadable wedding-planning template. Couples can copy and paste images that inspire them during wedding planning—right into their custom notebook—and the program will automatically in­clude the image’s URL. Plus, if the bride and groom don’t have OneNote 2010 on their computer, they can download a free, fully functional trial copy for 60 days. Here are some tips and tricks for how to use online organizers to help ease the stress of planning:

• Allow the groom to help with planning. Don’t forget the groom! In most weddings, grooms are full planning partners. Keeping the wedding plans in one easy-to-access location makes sharing the task easier. Asking the groom to take an interest in wedding plans is a perfect start to working as a team in the marriage.

• Connect the wedding party early. Often, a favorite cousin or sister doesn’t live in the same state as the bride. Online wedding planning can span the miles between members of the wedding party. Brides can now spend less time answering repetitive e-mails and phone calls, because online wedding planning allows them to create a unified place for the wedding party to communicate details, such as tux sizes, dress orders and travel details.

• Track the budget’s every move. With 60 percent of brides and grooms paying for the wedding themselves, it is important to track the budget every step of the way. Brides and grooms can scan images of receipts into their digital organizer as deposits are paid and use the budget tool to do simple math equations, showing where the budget stands.

• Plan the honeymoon separately. Planning the honeymoon can be just as time consuming as planning the wedding. Ensure sanity by creating a separate notebook for the honeymoon. OneNote 2010 has you covered with a downloadable travel template, which is full of prompts for details that could easily be forgotten, such as digital copies of your passports. Start planning now. Download the free OneNote 2010 wedding template at http://www.office.com/ onenote wedding.

Naylor

Wedding planning can be easier with help from an online template.

This year, hope is pink and it sparkles.

That’s because a leading de­sign­er and producer of fashion jewelry and crystal objects has introduced a collection of glittering pink jewelry that will benefit breast cancer patients and survivors.

Swarovski introduced its Pink Hope Collection to celebrate its support of The Libby Ross Breast Cancer Foundation and its Pose for Pink Yoga Program, which offers free yoga classes that enrich the lives of women recovering from breast cancer.

The breast cancer awareness collection includes the Pink Hope pin (retail $55), the Pink Hope charm (retail $55) and the Pink Hope pendant (retail $65). All the pink products will be available at the company’s 240-plus boutiques nationwide this October.

The company first partnered with The Libby Ross Breast Cancer Foundation in 2003. The organization’s free yoga classes are designed to address the specific needs and physical restrictions of breast ­cancer patients and survivors.
For more information, please visit www.swarovski.com or www.thelibbyrossfoundation.com.

This glittering pink pin symbolizes hope for breast cancer survivors.