When Jo and I buy our next home (a fixer upper, I’m sure), Jo’s said that he would love to have a nice outdoor barbecue area. His idea of “nice” would include a covered area with a grill, nice cabinets, counter space and likely a sitting area. Something like one of those outdoor kitchens. We plan to do a lot of outdoor entertaining, well, when weather permits it! One thing that will be a must is something that can withstand moisture. We will be living on the coast of Newfoundland and there are times when it can be really rainy, and of course there is the snow. Werever outdoor products uses a marine grade polymer, which will withstand moisture and other harsh environments. Their cabinets are not going to rot, crack, peel or even fade if they are exposed to things like the rain, sun, snow and even salt water.

I do not know about you, but I am sold!

Jo and I have been trying to come up with some gift ideas for his grandmother. She has been sick for a few months, off and on. In recent years, she has also battled cancer a couple of times. Since we are moving to be closer to family, including her, we figured we should bring a little gift to her. Nan loves birds and collects little candy dishes (she does not always use them for candies, sometimes it’s just for show). I have just been browsing through Crystallia.com, where I have found a beautiful Lalique Crystal bowl which features two sparrows. Sparrows are her favorite birds. I would love to get her something like this. To be honest, there are so many dishes in this collection that I would love to buy for myself, for instance the Alize bowl. It is absolutely gorgeous and has a great price of only $265.50.

I have also found some really great pieces in the Evolution collection by Waterford Crystal. These pieces are so unique in style, shapes and are bursting with lovely coloring. I really love the “Deep Blue Sea Platter”. You have to have a look at that piece. The greens and blues really do remind me of the sea, which is the one place that makes me feel at peace - the reason I am looking forward to moving back to the east coast of Newfoundland.

The beauty does not stop there though. Fine China Dinnerware can also be purchased at Crystallia.com. The Florentine Turquoise Classic Fine Bone China By Wedgwood is my favorite set. I really love the blue, floral pattern. It looks great against the white.

Crystallia.com has been in business since 1979 but has been an online retailer of Lalique Crystal products since 1996. They offer a wide variety of products - Collectibles, Dinnerware, Crystal, Glassware and Housewares, to name a few.

I think I will spend a little more time browsing around. I am getting some really great gift ideas for the holidays.

I love the idea of having hardwood floors throughout the majority of my home. I also love the idea of having gorgeous tiles in my kitchen and bathrooms. My dad has carpet through the vanity area of his upstairs bathroom and for as long as I can remember, I hated it. I’ve never liked carpeting in any part of a bathroom. I think this is what encouraged me to use tile. I was looking through some of the tiles in the Edge flooring section at Floormall.com and found a tile I absolutely love. It’s the Rattan Porcelain tile of the Synergy collection. I love earthy tones and this has really beautiful earthy coloring, which I know would warm up a kitchen and bathroom quite nicely. I plan on having white cabinetry in my new home, similar to what we had in our previous home and this would be the perfect tile to match up with that. It would also allow us to use a variety of colors on the walls and in decor - reds, yellows, oranges and even greens or blues.

I’m not sure if we’re going to use the same tile in both the kitchen and bathrooms or if we’ll switch it up but either way, FloorMall.com has such a great selection of Edge flooring tile that we wouldn’t be able to go wrong. Even if we tried!

We’re all set for out move to Newfoundland. Jo will complete his last session of physiotherapy on October 9th, so we’re looking to leave sometime before that weekend.

We’ve been checking out some of the real estate agents in and around the area we will be in, searching for a home. We’re thinking that a fixer upper is going to be the best route for us. Not only will the property be less expensive, but his dad is a craftsman (cabinetry and such) so he’ll be helping us I’m sure. Plus, I would hate to buy a house that’s already been renovated, only to change the features to suit our own taste and style. One of the big things we’re looking forward to is the flooring part. We both love hardwood floors and while the floors in our apartment are beautiful, we would love a dark hardwood. Our living room furniture is going to be white (either stark white or antique white), so the darker wood is going to really make it pop. Something like what you’re seeing in the image to the left, which is from the Armstrong Global Exotics collection at FloorMall.com. This is the exact style / color that my husband and I picture having in our home. Can’t you just imagine how beautiful that dark would is going to look against the contrasting white shades of the fabric we’ll have? I know I can!

I was browsing through some of the other selections at FloorMall.com’s “floor gallery” and found a photo of “Brazilian Cherry”. I love the richness of this floor, so something like that would also be a candidate for us because it’s still on the darker side. The thing about using something in a cherry tone is that would could also swap out our furniture (I do this pretty often because I’m so fickle) with a wider variety of colors and patterns. It’s definitely something to keep in mind when we start shopping for flooring.

I’m pretty excited about the whole thing. We purchased our last house brand new and didn’t make any huge changes to it. It’ll be nice to put some of the finishing touches on our next home, with colors and styles we actually like!

I love do it yourself projects. I grew up in a house where DIY was important. My dad is one of those people who wants to try everything himself first, before hiring someone to do it. Before moving, he asked my husband Jo to give him a hand with some of his projects. One of the projects involved replacing the siding on his house. The house was built in the 80’s and the contractor used masonite, which isn’t so great to start with. Well, the guys installed the siding wrong, putting the nails in the wrong place and that damaged the skin of the siding. So when it would rain, the moisture would seep down into it and cause the siding to swell up and in most places, mold.

So after putting it off for a couple of months, he finally hired my husband to help. Now neither of them had replaced siding, though my husband worked in construction for years. My dad and Jo made several mistakes during the process. For instance, they somehow managed to put up one piece backwards. By that I mean, the outside of the siding was inside. Overall, it turned OK. I hope my dad doesn’t read this, but I think they could have done a better job by taking the time to learn and understand what they were doing.

When Jo and I decide where we plan to be permanently, we plan to
buy fixer upper house, so we will definitely be doing a lot of do it yourself projects. I actually prefer it this way because I enjoy putting my personal touches into a place, and style.

Doityourself.com is a community with over thousands of articles and over 100 active forums on man do it yourself, home improvement topics. This will help people like us, that enjoy doing those DIY projects. You know what they say, “knowledge is power”.

We are in serious need of furniture. We decided that we would not purchase many pieces for this apartment because we will be moving soon. We live on the fourth floor, so moving things would be some kind of chore.

Well, our lease will be up soon and we have been browsing the internet for home furniture. I found myself at Greatpricedfurniture.com - a luxury furniture store. Searching for furniture is easy! I can choose from the categories - by room, type or even collections, or I can search for specific pieces by entering keywords or a product number into the search box.

My husband and I really need a new bed, so I decided to see what Greatpricedfurniture.com has to offer. I am impressed with how many different styles and pieces they have. They have the more traditional styles but also modern pieces. We really miss our sleigh bed and figured we might as well just buy another one similar to the one we had. I found one that I love: Translation Low Profile Sleigh Bed. This is the style that my husband and I both love.

I love being able to shop online, in the comfort of my own home. I take my time and browse through pieces, without being chased around by floor salesmen/women.

It’s been such a long time since I’ve had the chance to actually decorate my place. You may recall my previously mentioning (some months ago) that we are unhappy with our current apartment and because of that, my husband and I mutually agreed that we wouldn’t be putting in too much of an effort to spruce this place up. That’s because our intentions are to find a new place (which we are currently in the process of doing). We thought it would be pointless if we purchased our decor for this place, not knowing what our next place would look like.

Thankfully our lease will be up at the end of this month. There have been a few items that I have actually purchased (mostly appliances and a few prints) for our new place but overall, I just haven’t found the things I really want. For instance; I’ve been looking for some metal wall art, so I’ve been browsing around some of the local decor (some provide unique items, though again not what I’m looking for) but I’ve had no success in finding that perfect piece. My husband is really into Asian culture and would love if we incorporated a few pieces that will cater to that.

I was just browsing through some of metal wall sculptures over at Walldecorandhomeaccents.com and found the perfect piece for our living room. It’s the Vantania Metal Wall Plaque, which has a beautiful Asian style cherry blossom tree design which I love. This is absolutely fitting with the colors (chocolate, antique white and tan) we will be using in our living room and dining room, so it would actually work in both rooms. I really love that this piece is broken into 4 sections - I’ve always loved that divided look, especially for those bulkier pieces of wall art.

If you are looking for unique and affordable metal or iron wall art and/or sculptures, you have to check out the pieces Walldecorandhomeaccents.com has available.

The ceiling light fixture in our foyer area looks awful. This apartment it more on the modern side and that fixture just does not fit the rest of the fixtures in this place. It is sort of borderline country, so it sticks out like a sore thumb. We have been thinking about replacing it but were told that any fixtures we swap out will have to stay when we move out. I would rather not have to pay for something like that, only to have to leave it here when we leave. I guess we will just have to continue to look at it until we do move, or until they swap it out - whichever comes first.

Since moving into our apartment, we’ve spent quite a bit of money on office furniture. We originally purchased two desks (one for myself, one for my husband), two office chairs and a book shelf. Just a few weeks back, my husband decided he needed a new office chair, so he bought it. The previous chair was very uncomfortable for his back, which he’s been having a lot of trouble with lately. I was a little upset that we’d spent nearly $100 on the first chair and ended up replacing it with another for a little more but my chair was on clearance, so in a way it kind of evened out. Jo also recently purchased a desk lamp, which has me itching to get one for myself. It beats keeping the living room and dinning room lights on!

I have relatives scattered all across North America. One of my cousins, who’s currently living in Montreal, is considering a move to Florida (talk about a change). She recently started looking into the Orlando real estate market. She’s married and has two children, so she’s looking for at least a 3 or 4 bedroom house. Though she’d prefer a house, she’s also opening herself up to the idea of a townhouse (something I would personally rather have). They’re planning on making the move sometime early next year and once they’re settled in, they’ve invited us to come visit. I’m not really fond of the southern heat, so we’ll probably plan our “visit” for sometime in the winter months!

I grew up in the deep south, in a city that was 90 miles southwest of the Georgia coastline and about 25 miles north of a nuclear power plant. Preparing for things like hurricanes was pretty normal and planning evacuations in the event it came down to that seemed rather simple for us - we’d be given enough time to head to higher ground if the need was there. When it comes to the nuclear power plant - that was an entirely different ballgame because you may only have a second to process what has happened and put your plan into action.

My family always had a plan though, in the event we actually needed one. We always had an emergency kit, which had things like - a first aid kit, non-perishable foods, bottles of water, blankets, clothing and various other things. When it came to dealing with the weather from hurricanes, we also made arrangements in the event our house suffered any damage - we made a video, which detailed every room in our home, noting personal belongings and what have you.

We also had a plan for things like house fires. Our house was two stories, so my father had ropes in my bedroom, as well as my sister’s. In the event we had a fire, we could let ourselves down through one of our windows and meet my parents in the front yard (our designated “meeting” spot).

I recently found out about AxcessPoints, which is a wonderful disaster planning resource and realized that even though we have made plans, we are not fully prepared. For instance - our families may not know how to access our emergency plan and critical personal, financial information and other important documents. I decided to join because it’s free for the first 30 days and signing up was very easy. Now I can create an emergency plan, be it for an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, flood or even fire. AxcessPoints.comprovides a unique emergency toolkit that will calculate the correct amount of supplies and other items that are necessary during an emergency by factoring in - gender, age, animals and even disabilities. You can even take thie quiz to see if you really are prepared for an emergency.

One of the great things about their disaster planning tools, is that members can share sections of their plan with other family members or those that they trust, if they choose to. With my husband and I being over 3,000 miles away from our families, this is wonderful. In the event something happened here, our families would have access to our information and our emergency plan.

Having an emergency plan is important because an emergency can occur at any time, with little to no warning. AxcessPoints.com provides you with the tools to plan and prepare, while also giving you the ability to share your emergency plan with your relatives or anyone else who may need to know that information.

Having cats, shopping for window blinds has become pretty regular. My cats have this thing called otherside-itis. This basically means that they have to know what’s behind everything - a closed door, a piece of furniture, the shower curtain and of course, the blinds. They’re both pretty rough when they leap behind the blinds, which puts a lot of wear and tear on them. It’s basically come down to us buying blinds at least every couple of months, which can be expensive.

I recently heard about a new site, Freeblinds.com, which allows customers to share referral codes with other people. When those people use that referral code to purchase something, the customer who referred them gets 20% of the purchase price. What this means is over time, you’ll be able to get your blinds for free! I don’t know about you but I love anything that’s free and having to buy blinds so often, this would awesome.

Shop for Free Window Blinds at Freeblinds.com, with their patent-pending rewards program.

FREEblinds.com Debuts Patent-Pending Shopping Concept

June 20, 2007
St. Augustine, Florida

FREEblinds.com, Inc. (www.freeblinds.com) announced today the launch of their FREEblinds.com website, a Next-Generation Internet shopping site offering an extensive variety of window coverings with the ability to earn back 100% of their product purchase price. It’s just the first of many websites providing customers the opportunity to get their products for FREE through the patent-pending FREEshopping.com Rewards Program.
With the look and feel of other consumer websites, FREEblinds.com operates in similar fashion. First you shop from a vast array of products offered at some of the lowest prices to be found on the Internet; you make your selection; then submit your order. It’s at checkout where the similarity to all other sites ends. Upon conclusion of checkout, the customer is assigned a unique code, and presented with the option to share that code with others interested in purchasing window coverings. Then each time a referred customer’s order has been completed, 20% of the referred customer’s product purchase amount is Rewarded (via a check refund) to the original referring customer. This process continues for each referred order until 100% of the original customer’s product purchase amount has been returned. Customers have a full FIVE years to earn back their product costs. And, every referred customer has the same opportunity to earn back their total purchase amount through the Rewards Program.

The process of “Totally Free Products” was created by FREEblinds.com and FREEshopping.com founder Joe Mehm. A pioneer in online retailing, Mehm asks, “Why shop anywhere else? What’s better than free?” And, since we sell our products at the most competitive prices on the Internet, even if you don’t earn a single Reward, you will still save money.” he asserts. “That’s reason enough to shop at FREEblinds.com. Then giving customers the opportunity to earn back 100% of their product cost, is just icing on the cake!” Mehm concludes.

The process making this concept possible is so distinct, so unique that Mehm has been awarded Patent Pending Status by the United States Patent Office.

Simply put, the customer rewards are offset by savings realized from reduced expenditures of conventional Internet advertising. FREEblinds.com pays past customers to bring in new customers. While it might be said that one expense just replaces the other, this process does much more than that. Internet advertising costs, as with other conventional advertising costs, are not tied to results. Therefore, one pays for advertising whether business is created from that advertising or not. With the FREEshopping process, advertising is only paid after sales are made, for revenue already generated. And, like a gift that keeps on giving, satisfied, fully Rewarded customers are naturally going to continue to tell others how smart they were to shop FreeBlinds.com, now creating business free from any advertising expense.

To make it easy for customers to get their referrals started, FREEblinds.com has positioned valuable tools at the end of order checkout to help automate the referral process. Customers can easily print a sheet of referral cards formatted with their name and referral code. Another feature allows the customer to enter the names and email addresses of friends and family, so that an automated link explaining the program is forwarded to them along with the referrer’s code. And, for those customers with their own website, MySpace site, etc., a section of copy and paste text is available for pasting a small banner on their site. Once pasted on their site, any purchase made through that link, embedded with their referral code, automatically posts a credit to the customer’s account. It then becomes possible for a customer to receive all of their money back without ever having to refer someone personally.

FREEblinds.com…the first of an exclusive group of fine merchants offering consumers quality products along with the process to receive back 100% of the cost of their product purchases. Next-Generation shopping is here today!

Contact Information:
Media Relations Director:
Robert (Rewards Rob) Till at (866) 254-6314 ext 10.
RewardsRob@FREEshopping.com
www.freeblinds.com

FREEshopping.com vendor program:
Joe Mehm at (866) 254-6314 ext 18.
Joe@FREEshopping.com
www.freeshopping.com

My good friend Helen recently purchased a new dining room suit, which has given me the itch to do the same. We currently lack a dining room suit because we knew we wouldn’t be in this apartment very long. We didn’t want to buy a lot of furniture, only to have to move it down 4 flights of stairs and into a new place.

Now that our lease is almost up, I’ve been looking around in some of the local stores. This is rarely fun for me because I hate being pestered when I’m trying to make decisions and let’s face it, buying furniture is a big decision. I have a hard enough time choosing styles and colors, so it can get really frustrating trying to choose those things when a floor salesman/woman is following me around.

I’m glad there’s a stress-free alternative. I can shop for dining room furniture, or any furniture at that, without being hassled into buying something I really don’t like or something extra, that I really don’t need. Plus, I can do it in the comfort of my own home, whether it’s day or night, rain or shine.

This is the kind of shopping I love to do, stress-free.

A friend and I were talking about how expensive homes are in California recently. I know at one point I thought I wanted to live there but honestly, I doubt it’s something I could ever come close to affording. I did, however, decide to look at the California mortgage rate for a couple of townhouses a couple of years back. I actually think the rates were lower then.

I have another friend living who also lives in California. She says even the rental rates are outrageous there. I guess it really depends on the area you are in though, like most places but it just seems like either way, it’s pretty costly.

My mom recently started adding some personal touches around her house. She actually did this once before, when she first bought the place but after my grandmother moved it - decorating took a seat on the back burner. One of her goals has always been sprucing up the light fixtures (she and I share that passion). An unattractive ceiling fan originally hung over the dinning room table. I hate to say it was unattractive because it wasn’t that bad but it didn’t suit the elegance of the dinning room. She made the decision a few months back to replace it with a chandelier - she’s always loved the idea of having chandeliers in dinning rooms verses regular lighting or ceiling fans, as I’m sure most people do.

We’re heading back to Georgia next month and I cannot wait to see the changes she’s made, especially with the dinning room.