Hand painted furniture can add personality and style to any room in your home, and to help you find a piece you love, Meghan Carter of www.AsktheDecorator.com visited artist Heidi Shannon to learn how to select furniture to be painted and how to paint funiture. Whether you want to buy painted furniture or learn how to paint furniture, these tips will help.
Some of the more elderly members of the family will feel better about the aging process if someone takes responsibility for setting guidelines on Family Elder Care issues. Many families do not want to think about their parents getting old and passing away, and they certainly do not want to think about them being sick for years before their death occurs.
There are certain guidelines that can be established by many people to make the last years of life very peaceful. Many people are protective of their privacy and family members might not be aware that they have a family member with a terminal illness. The pointed remarks about getting old and bones are just wearing out might be just a way to disguise the symptoms of bone cancer.
With old age comes the chance for elderly members of the family to be afflicted with Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease or any other form of Cancer. When family members begin setting guidelines on family elder care responsibilities, they must consider what the wishes are of the family member that is afflicted with these maladies in their later years.
Some elderly people are quite adamant about how much information is known about their health and personal finances, and others simply might not want to become a burden to their children. Caring family members who might have to make life and death decisions one day might find it very helpful if they discuss all aspects of growing old with their family member and not wait until they are on their death bed to find out what to do after they have gone to a better place.
Many estate planners are quite capable of ironing out all of the details of how any individual might want to live during the last years of life. They may have taken the time to create a Last Will and Testament to guide family members after their death or the legal document can speak for them after the death has occurred. Elderly people have plenty of time to sort out their wishes and will usually keep their Last Will and Testament on file with their attorney of record.
Other people have strong feelings about how they want to be treated before and after death. They will establish a Living Will and make sure it is on file with the family attorney and the hospital where they receive their treatments. An elderly person of sound mind and body is quite capable of setting guidelines on Family Elder Care and making sure that their wishes are known to everyone in the family before they pass away.
They can prepare for their own future by setting guidelines on family elder care responsibilities that surround the use of their organs after death, and trust their family members to honor their wishes. They might leave a video record behind to take care of any conflicts that might occur instead of leaving it up to children to deal with other siblings that might have different views on life and death.
If you make your living as an interior designer or decorator the current economy has got to be hurting your business. When the economy is slow, many people who might otherwise hire an interior designer or decorator are forced to move such a ‘non-essential’ service to the bottom of their priority list. If you haven’t felt the pinch yet, brace yourself as your business could take a drastic nose-dive during an economic recession. Nobody really needs interior design services, especially in have-not times.
There’s also the fact that so many of your days are spent on the business-side of design; negotiating with contractors, waiting for deliveries to arrive, billing, gathering quotes, and so on. This is all time that doesn’t directly generate revenue for your interior design or decorating business, and when client billings are already meager, this can really hurt your financial situation.
Maybe you’re one of the many trained interior decorators who have ended up working in retail for a 100% commission. If the economy gets worse and you’re working purely on commission, where does that leave you? Even in good times, if you work for 100% commission you might as well be your own boss and have the freedom to market yourself to new clients rather than being tied to any one store.
When I decided to take the reigns of my life back and do something that would allow me to profit from my creativity, I considered a career in interior design. I struggled with that option countless times across a 20 year period when I was unsatisfied in my work. I researched, and even interviewed, many interior design schools in my “former life” but for some reason I never took the step to enroll. I decided with my BA, MBA and a couple decades of experience in business, being in a classroom for two to four years with kids 20 years my junior was not something I wanted to do.
Never mind tuition costs and the tremendous loss of income while you’re a student. Then who knows how many years of working experience as a designer or decorator would be needed after graduation to really start earning money. I wanted to unleash my creativity and love for decorating, but I definitely needed to start making money as soon as possible. So, I started my own home staging company.
As soon as my business was launched, the money was coming in. Within my second year as a home stager I was making up to $10,000 per month. Compare that to the median annual salary of $36,150 a year for an Interior Designer according to Salary.com this year. I’m very happy I trusted my instincts!
If you’re an interior designer or decorator and you aren’t making enough money, consider adding Home Staging to your service mix or switching to a more profitable career as a Home Stager altogether.
Here a few ways a home staging business can be more profitable than an interior design business:
• As a home stager you get the opportunity to work with different types of people than you would as an interior designer. Generally, only very high income individuals hire interior designers, which limits your target market. Home stagers work mostly with clients in the middle to upper income level which gives you a much larger percentage of the population to market to, and increases the number of projects available for you to work on.
• Home stagers enjoy a higher volume of projects than interior designers because each one is so short in nature. One interior design project might take months to complete (especially when you factor in the wait times to have upholstery done, or furniture delivered), but the average home staging project takes only a few hours or days. There’s no way I could have decorated hundreds of homes within a couple of years as a new interior designer, the way I did as a new home stager. With such quick projects, a home stager is able to complete (and get paid for) a significantly higher number of projects per year than an interior designer who often has client work on hold through no fault of their own.
• When the economy is slow, people eliminate the non-essentials. Interior design or decorating isn’t really high on the “essential items list” especially when choices need to be made about what to give up, and there’s no real deadline to redecorate or renovate a room. In uncertain times, interior design moves way down on the priority list, while home staging move up. No matter how slow the economy is or how much the real estate market has declined, there will always be people who absolutely have to sell and move by a certain date. Divorce, job relocation, job loss, mounting debts, a death in the family or a birth often get people to put their house on the market even if it isn’t the best time to sell. When a homeowner is desperate to sell their house, a home stager will often be involved since the seller stands to make a handsome profit from their services. When people have less time, less money or less equity in their house, they need a home stager so they can get whatever they can out of the sale of their home! As a home stager, your creativity and talent for decorating will serve you well in slow economic times and slow real estate markets.
I especially love the amount of creative freedom I get as a home stager. Because my clients know I’m decorating their home to sell and not for them to live in, I am able to execute my creative vision without their interference or taking their taste into consideration. I can’t imagine wasting hours sitting with a client who can’t decide which color they want for their bathroom, or which fabric to pick for their drapes. My clients don’t care what I choose as long as their house will sell quicker because of it. Besides that, my home staging business is extremely profitable which every entrepreneur wants.
If your interior design business isn’t doing as well as you hoped, it’s not too late to make a change towards living a more creatively fulfilling career that is also more profitable. Do some research into the home staging field. It’s a career that is virtually “recession-proof”.
This is my ABC appearance on Nov 13, 2007. I’ll show you how to make my raw food recipe for “All American Apple Pie” recipe. Gluten free, wheat free, sugar free, organic, dairy free and good for you!! Delicious. Visit my raw food blog for more raw food recipe ideas, more videos, and organic ingredients: www.AniPhyo.com
Have you ever considered installing a wireless camera for home security? There are all sorts of ways that you can beef up security in your home using burglar alarms and motion detection equipment; but using a wireless camera for home security is probably the most practical decision to make to protect your assets and the people living in your house. In fact, using a wireless camera for home security only reflects advantages on a security level.
It’s Not An Alarm
The wireless camera for home security does not make it an alarm. And this is probably just as well. Think about all the noise that a burglar alarm might make if an intruder enters your home. There are two possibilities. Either the culprit gets to escape and you will never know who he/she was; or the alarm just might provoke the intruder into doing something violent out of sheer panic. These are two possibilities that you do not want to encounter. With a wireless camera for home security, you can record all the activities in your house and stand a good chance at catching the culprit after the burglary by showing footage to the police. Also, you can have the camera trigger silent alarms that only you and the police will have knowledge of. This increases the possibility of the police getting to your house before the burglar even knows what’s going on.
Record and Report
The best feature of a wireless camera for home security is the fact that it records images and even sound (depending on the brand and make of the unit). This information is vital for any security outfit or even the police to be able to determine the next plan of action. Think about this: You are away from home on vacation with your family and your house gets burgled. With a wireless camera for home security recording everything happening, you increase the possibility of exposing the people responsible for the crime. So when you get back home, at least you will have evidence to give to the police and they can identify and arrest the people responsible. With the wireless camera for home security recording everything while you are away, you can relax knowing that you have everything in control; even the possible capture of the person(s) who might have burgled your home.
Keeping Close Watch
Another advantage that you have with a wireless camera for home security is that you can watch everything being recorded in real time through a computer or through a television that can capture the cameras signal. This is especially helpful when you are in your study or bedroom and you would like to see what is going on around the house without having to set foot outside the door. It’s safer to have this wireless camera for home security set up in this manner so that you can be warned of any dangerous elements that have entered your home and you can prepare yourself ahead of time or call the police.
If you still rely on the old burglar alarm or floodlight to protect your property and loved ones, it’s time to make a change and increase your security measures. Install a wireless camera for home security and don’t regret not having done so in the future.
Various gardening magazines are available in the market. But would you like to know which stands out from the rest? Here are a selection of gardening magazines that anyone in love with his or her garden will appreciate.
COUNTRY GARDENS often showcases the more unusual gardens around the country. It introduces wonderful new ways to enjoy garden sights and scents. It helps the avid gardener to create an eye-pleasing, fragrance – filled country garden.
This magazine has very useful advice on setting up and caring for your garden. Every issue contains profiles of fascinating people and their gardens, inspiration for gardens and detailed garden plans. Best of all, it’s a trusted source of information that’s easy to understand. Every season carries a vast harvest of ideas to delight, motivate and guide any gardener.
How about a gardening magazine for those who want to become a better gardener? FINE GARDENING MAGAZINE from The Taunton Press brings you amazing design ideas, beneficial techniques, and the know-how to get the best results from your gardening endeavors.
In each issue you’ll find eye-opening bits of advice from the experts, detailed information on all types of plants, effective techniques and time-saving tips, straightforward tool reviews from editors and readers and planting suggestions for specific regions.
But for more intensive information on how to maintain a garden packed with style and color, then you’ll want to read GARDEN DESIGN. This gardening magazine brings out eye-popping photos, illustrations and useful recommendations on how to create a picture-perfect garden. It is written and designed for those who are passionate about their homes and gardens. Garden Design is more than just a dig-in-the-dirt gardening magazine; it’s for people who enjoy bringing in more aesthetic value for their homes through their gardens.
Garden Design encourages you to create stylish outdoor living spaces and rare gardens through cultivating rare breeds of plants, with updates on the best tools and techniques. It contains magnificent photographs and articles that capture the imaginations of gardeners everywhere.
For passionate gardeners, HOLTICULTURE MAGAZINE is the ultimate guide to gardening. The authoritative voice of gardeners, Horticulture serves as an essential guide and trusted friend, and is a main resource for serious gardeners from every corner of the country.
These magazines aim to instruct, inform, and inspire serious home gardeners. There are gardening magazines for beginners and expert gardeners. Discover or develop your green thumb with their latest gardening techniques and garden design information.
For Australian readers, there is BURKE’S BACKYARD. Springing form a TV series of the same name, Burke’s Backyard focuses on gardening décor as well as the all-important garden makeovers that have become so popular.
YOUR GARDEN is another beauty, claiming the prestige of being Australia’s gardening magazine, it usually features two or three popular flowers and how best to grow them, with a wealth of tips and information on other plants, tools and products for the garden.
GARDENING AUSTRALIA springs from the ABC’s feature of that name it features many wonderful articles by gardening experts and often holds a free catalogue from one of the larger nurseries.
While the concept of pet astrology may seem odd to many people, there are many people who believe that the date of birth of your pet, related to astrological signs of the planets, the sun, and the stars, have a significant impact on the basic behavior and mood of their pets. There are particular character behaviors that are associated with each zodiac sign for pets. These include all of the following:
Aries: Aries pets are known to be very active and also hypersensitive to the environment around them.
Taurus: Taurus pets seem to have a passive nature normally, but if they are ever caught in a fight where they need to defend themselves or family members, they will not give up a fight.
Gemini: Gemini pets tend to be extremely intelligent, so they are usually very easy to train. But their intelligence also means that they can require a lot of attention, and always need to be in the company of their owners.
Cancer: Cancer pets are extremely sensitive. Because of this, when they get attached to a person, they are loyal to that person for life.
Leo: Leo pets tend to be very independent and almost always end up leading the pack. These pets will be more difficult to train, as they won’t want you to take the role of leader. Be persistent, and the Leo pet will eventually succumb.
Virgo: Virgo pets have a multitude of wonderful characteristics and behaviors that make them perfect human companions.
Libra: Libra pets tend to be extremely easygoing. This means they will make fantastic family pets for families that aren’t very active. Unfortunately this also means that Libra pets are typically somewhat lazy and eventually get overweight without being forced to exercise.
Scorpio: Scorpio pets are extremely possessive of their owners. While this typically makes for an extremely loyal pet, it can also become a problem if the pet believes their owner is being attacked and they aren’t. They can be overprotective at times.
Sagittarius: Sagittarius pets make great pets because they are both fun loving and very intelligent. However, their energy level can be difficult for families that aren’t used to active pets.
Capricorn: Capricorn pets tend to remain very young at heart, and remain very playful even into their old age.
Aquarius: Aquarius pets are extremely intelligent, but for some reason that intelligence can come across as a level of stubbornness that makes them appear ill-tempered and sometimes difficult to handle.
Pisces: Pisces pets are very introverted and extremely gentle. However, their sensitivity means that they can easily sense the moods of their owners. This pet is perfect for people who are naturally calm, but not so good for people who can be very emotional.
Astrology.com
The family section of astrology.com features a great section on pet astrology that lets you select your pets sign from a drop down list in order to get a detailed description of the personality of your pet, how to manage their personality and traits, and how to care for them while taking into account the natural inclinations that are a part of their personality because of their astrological sign.
This website also features fun quizzes, such as “What kind of dog would you be?” or “Are you a cat or dog person?” Additionally, you can find a “pet grid”, which rates several personality traits including “affectionate”, “energetic”, “friendly”, and “loyal” on a scale of 1 to 3 for each zodiac sign. This grid helps you to determine which traits your particular pet is likely to have. There is also a chart that helps you to determine what sign your pet is based on their birth date.
Express Your Pet’s Sign With a Portrait
When you fully educate yourself regarding your pet’s zodiac sign, it may be something that makes you very proud of your pet. You may wish to commemorate your pet and his or her zodiac sign through a painted pet portrait utilizing an astrology theme that integrates the pet’s zodiac sign.
Pet portraits are very popular and sweeping the country. Nikky Hughes, of Los Angeles, offers amazing pet portraits that utilize unique backgrounds and themes. She is always happy to do portraits on request, and a pet’s zodiac sign would easily fit into the creative and witty existing portfolio of pet portraits that are displayed at her website.
Nikky was classically trained at the Mission Renaissance art school, and she focuses on capturing not only the beauty, but the unique character of each animal. Pet astrology can provide a great deal of insight into the behaviors of your pet, but it also brings great pride in knowing how your pet fits into the cosmological universe. Feature your cat in a beautiful painted portrait that incorporates the zodiac, and you have an astrological masterpiece that will last a lifetime.
Nothing is more important to us than the safety and security of our families and our homes. It would be nice to think that we could always be around to keep an eye on things, but even if we had eyes in the backs of our heads we simply could not keep constant tabs on our loved ones and our home without some help. That is why a hidden home security camera is such a valuable asset.
A hidden home security camera has many valuable applications. A hidden home security camera can help secure your possessions in ways that a visible camera can not. While a visible camera may deter some thieves, others might disable the camera before robbing you of your possessions. Sadly, this scenario would leave you robbed and without an opportunity to catch and prosecute the thieves. A hidden home security camera is likely to give you the best opportunity to identify the guilty party and recover your property before it is too late.
A hidden home security camera can also help you solve acts of crime or vandalism that have already occurred. Sadly it is not uncommon for home owners to have recurring problems such as vandalism, trespassing, or even peeping toms. A hidden home security camera will not only help a home owner find the culprit, but the video tape can provide invaluable evidence for law enforcement.
A hidden home security camera has obvious uses when trying to secure our homes from strangers and intruders, but a hidden home security camera can also help protect us from people we know as well. A popular use for hidden home security cameras is to use them to monitor people who work in our homes such as nannies, housekeepers, or contractors. While it would be nice if we could have unconditional trust for people who we invite to work in our homes, the reality is that even a thorough background check is not enough to guarantee professional and legal conduct of our in-home employees. A hidden home security camera provides an additional layer of security and peace of mind when we hire someone to work in our homes.
A hidden home security camera also helps protect our families from things far more benign than intruders or unethical employees. A hidden home security camera is the perfect companion in a baby’s nursery. A hidden home security camera is an anxious new parent’s best friend because it gives them the freedom to take care of important tasks while still keeping a watchful eye on the new baby.
Today’s hidden home security cameras come in all shapes and sizes, and can even allow you to monitor your home from a remote location using the internet. From securing your home from strangers, to protecting your precious newborn, hidden home security cameras have a myriad of applications that can help nearly any homeowner add a new layer of security to their home, possessions, and loved ones.
This is pretty cool, a guy uses kitchen appliances to create some sweet beat box noises.
