Tips For Breaking Away From White Wall Paint
November 5, 2007
Paint is one of the most affordable and easiest ways to change a room. But choosing the right paint colors for your home can seem like an overwhelming task.
Paint, accessories, fabric, furniture, and flooring should all blend, so take a good look at the room you will be working on, preferably before you choose a paint color, and decide what will stay in the room, and what you may want to move out of the room.
The first thing you should do when choosing colors for your home, is look around at colors that make you feel good, happy, and relaxed.
These colors are probably already in your home. A few examples are the colors you love to look at in your flower garden, the colors in your jewelry, or pottery, or they can be found in the colors of the clothes in your closet.
The second thing you should do is go to your local paint store and pick up a color wheel, and or sample cards, pick the sample cards that really catch your eye, and don’t be afraid to get as many as you want. Take these cards home and look at them at different times of the day and night, to see how the color will look when the sun shines in on them, or at night when you have lamps turned on, or candles burning. Study this for several days. Be patient when deciding which color feels best to you.
Gardening During Hard Times or Emergencies - You Can Feed Yourself!
November 4, 2007
Do you ever worry about always having to rely on getting seeds and fertilizer from the store? What would you do in a survival situation, if you could not go to a store to purchase these things?
Let’s compare it to your food supply. What would you do about your store-purchased food? Many wise people buy more than they need of food items that store well, and create a “year’s supply” of the essentials in their basement or other cool, dry place. This is the biblical answer. As you may remember, Joseph in Egypt saved grain for 7 years and then fed the whole Egyptian nation, as well as his own family and others, during the next 7 years of famine.
The same approach will work even better for gardening ? with both seeds and fertilizers. For about $25 you can buy the triple-sealed Garden In A Can from Mountain Valley Seeds, with enough non-hybrid seeds to grow a 1/2-acre garden! If these are stored in a cool dry place they will remain viable for a very long time. The website is www.mvseeds.com, and I highly recommend you get a can, or the smaller Garden in a Pouch for about $12.
Are Your Ducts Making You Sick?
November 3, 2007
If you have a heating or cooling systems that uses air ducts, you could have a problem.
There are many duct systems that are poorly designed and installed that have the ability to bring pollutants into your home.
Some are ducts are located in wet or damp crawl spaces and basements.
I’ve seen some of these areas and some look like an open sewer.
Having ducts that are not properly sealed or insulated in these locations can draw moisture, mold, bacteria and even carbon monoxide into the building.
Unsealed ducts have the same effect as opening a hatch to these ares, the only difference is that you don’t see it and the fan from the heating or cooling appliance will force more of the pollutants into the living space at a much higher rate.
Ducts located in attics can bring in cold dry air in winter, and hot, humid air in summer, dust, dirt and fibers from the fiberglass insulation that is there to keep your house warm in the winter and cool in the summer.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
How to Paint Your Own Artwork - And Save Money
November 2, 2007
Everyone wants to save money. Don’t you? Well, painting your own, color matched art can be a lot easier than you might think!
Usually the picture that you want for your room will have an outrageous price. Or maybe you just can’t find anything that matches your new color scheme?
There is a simple way to paint your own pictures and save a fortune. Not only will you save money but you can exactly match your décor as well. Use this easy method and you can make your own unique pictures.
First decide what size of picture you want and buy a suitable stretched canvas. It needs to be suitable for acrylic paints which are water based. Some canvases are only suitable for oil based paints, and will not work for this project.
It will be easiest to choose an abstract theme. Abstract art will look good in most rooms. You can include shapes from any of the patterns in the furnishings. Use a basic shape rather than trying to copy the shape in detail. For example, just use a simple leaf outline rather than showing every vein in the leaf as it is depicted in the curtains.
Organic or Chemical Feeding of Plants - Whats Best
November 1, 2007
A fundamental question in vegetable gardening is - what is the proper use of organic and/or chemical materials? Let’s determine the truth of the matter, with four basic principles and a few brief examples from Dr. Jacob R. Mittleider’s worldwide experience.
I. First, let’s consider what plants need, and where and how they get it. Plants require 16 elements for healthy growth, and 95% of the plant is the result of photosynthesis using just 3 elements ? carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen - all of which it gets from the air without man’s intervention. The other 13 elements come from the soil and make up only 5% of the plant, but are nonetheless very important, for without them the plant will fail. Most importantly, the plant can only access these 13 nutrients as water-soluble minerals through its root system.
II. The next important principle to understand is that everything in this world is a chemical. Every element that makes up a plant, as well as everything in our bodies, and everything in the soil in which we grow is chemical. Therefore, we must not get carried away in refusing to use chemicals in the garden in favor of something else, because there is no something else!
Reuse Works for the Workshop
November 1, 2007
The workshop is a great place for reusing items formally destined for the landfill. Even if you do not have a shop or craft area you can always donate the items mentioned in the following paragraphs to friends, schools, shops, youth centers? The concept of reusing is as limitless as your imagination.
Screws, bolts, picture hooks, plant hangers, curtain hooks, and hinges are common hardware items used in most homes. Although not overly costly when purchased a few pieces at a time, they can add up over the years. Salvage any reusable hardware and parts from old cabinets, furniture or mechanical items before discarding. These can easily be organized and stored in plastic containers of different sizes. Shop with this in mind and purchase items like peanut butter or mayonnaise in clear plastic containers.
These are our favorite as they are recyclable, sturdy and you can easily determine the jar’s contents at a glance. When buying screws and bolts avoid the small plastic packages and try to find a store that sells these items out of bulk bins. You save money and packaging too.
