Custom Wall Murals for Kids Rooms and the House
January 7, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Is it time to start a babies bedroom make over? One way to make your babies room really be unique is with custom kid’s murals. There is really no limit to the DIY design options now, since you can design special child’s full murals, removable murals and even decals and borders that will fully customize the bedroom and surround your kid in a world of wonder and help their imagination take off.
But how truly custom is custom murals and wall paper?
One way to find out is to try the custom wall coverings at our custom wallpaper site Who would have thought this level of custom wall covering design would be so good on the web? You will be able to create wallpaper designs your kids want for their rooms.
They could want giant dinosaurs, treasure seeking pirates or space and planet wall covering for boys and maybe girls. Or you may want a unicorn mural or a fairy castle decal for a girl that likes that kind of thing. Don’t forget about horse decals for girls and boys that want a horse of their own. There are sports themes, safari themes, truck decals, sports cars, surfing, world map murals, Tuscan villas and relaxing paradise murals or beach murals.
The fact is, you can design custom murals, decals and wallpaper for any room in the house and it will bring to life your entire house.
Think about a room transformed into a tropical paradise or a room that becomes a villa in Italy. Anything is possible with custom wall coverings where you can simply upload your vacation photos, art work or kids themes and create completely one of a kind creations for any room in the house. Consider nursery wall murals or childrens wall murals as ideas to begin your design.
And removable items will not hurt resale value. Many wall items are removable at any time so such as murals that will make the room yours, and remove the custom element to a more basic decor when you decide you want to sell your house.
This is the type of do it yourself redecorating that can really make a splash and give the home a style and feel all it’s own.
Replace Your 2nd Income with a Home Based Income
November 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Is a 2nd Cash Stream With an At Home Small Business What You Need?
It takes discipline and is not for everyone, but the benefits can be big.
Everyone is looking at different ways to make money these days. With the economy in trouble, people have to depend on their knowledge to see them through tough times. Taking back control of your life is the best thing in the world. Replace your secondary income with developing a home income to get you back on track and make you feel whole again.
Setting up your work from home company is fairly easy. There are hundreds of ideas and resources available to assist you get started. A work from home business lets you to make extra monthly income and still attend to your family needs. Walk the dog when you need to, take the children to the park, you will surely even work from home while you cook the family meal. Being a work at home parnet is a wonderful lifestyle.
And it is a great thing to give your kids. More of your time and availability can really help them be more successful. Plus, showing your kids entrepreneurship is a very positive experience.
One of the many ways to build your income is through residual income opportunities. It takes time to build this business type. However, once your residual business kicks in, you can sit back and let the business work itself. Residual money benefits will allow you to venture into other organizations that will run themselves over and over again.
There are lots of different kinds of residual income you can build. The key is to not get bogged down in developing extremely complex business strategies yourself. Instead, become involved with something you are certain you can sell and something that will allow you to build a reseller team below you, so you get residual income from your team members.
Once you replace your second job with a home based business, there are many great possibilities. You could set up a lifetime of new freedom. You can work your schedule if you want to. Never again will you have to listen to the manager tell you how to do your job. Be the boss of you.
Hudson Ohio Piano Classes
October 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment
Coming to Saturday group music classes in Hudson Ohio is sometimes difficult. After all, it is Saturday and sleeping in sounds pretty good.
But when you see your kids interacting with others within the music framework, you really are creating a new and great experience for them.
Our older daughter is in middle school and just for gun she took orchestra. Her background is in piano and guitar, do when she picked the bass for the orchastra it was a big change. But the background from the other instruments has made it rather smooth. She also says that while she is not great with the instrument after only 6 weeks, she does feel like she knows music in general better than average. So it might have really worked. Maybe all that money and time did just what we wanted and laid a great foundation for music of any type.
Family Horse Back Riding
October 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Our adventure for September was to go horseback riding. You might wonder how we did this, since as far as I know they do not make horse seats for little kids to ride in the back.
The challenge was to make sure our 3 year old got a chance to ride a horse and our experienced horse back riding 11 year old also enjoyed herself. We surfed the web and found a place that did trail rides as well as pony rides for younger kids. The did the pony ride before the main trail rides started, so we all walked along as Maya rode her smaller horse that was lead by hand by a guide. Since it was fairly steep in parts, I made sure I stayed close.
Then when that was over, I went on the trail ride along with our 11 year old for 45 minutes.
The disadvantage of this was that my wife ended up getting left out, but since neither she or I are really into adventure horse riding, she did not mind too much.
Total cost was about $71 dollars and it took up most of a very nice fall day. The kids really enjoyed this family adventure and Maya keeps talking about her horse every day. I think it made a lasting impression.
Pittsburgh Zoo
September 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
My goal is to write about one really cool thing we do each month. Usually it is something new and exciting, at least for us.
However, much like many of you we are experiencing, financially it has been tight and we are keeping our adventures smaller. We are in the Cleveland area, so going to the Pittsburgh Zoo is about a two hour trip for us and we made it our adventure in August.
It really is a nice zoo. You walk a big circle and get to see a bunch of stuff. The layout is better than many of the other zoos I have visited. By the end, we were all tired, so it seemed the length is about right.
My kids said the highlight was seeing the baby elephants and our 3 year old loved petting the deer.
The polar bears were not jumping into the water this time, which was dissappointing. The view in the glass tunnel of the polar bears is incredible.
Want more information on how to go to the zoo for almost free? Read Family Budget Travel.
Gardening with Kids 2
August 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Gardening with Kids
I hope you have read the article before this and have though about doing some gardening with your children. If not, I hope you get inspired to do an activity that will let your children be outdoors exploring and enjoying nature. Children need vitamin D for healthy bone development, what a better way for them to get this essential nutrient than from sunlight while gardening?
Gardening for my family is being together, talking and hoping one of the plants will truly make it and surprise us with some fruit or vegetable. It’s not difficult to garden. It’s difficult to get great results when you have two children as your helpers.
A solution for you is to enlist the help of a fertilizer that will truly help and make your plants grow. I have used many of those commercially available ones at gardening and retail stores and have stopped after the first use. Have you ever read the labels? Do you want your kid smelling and most likely inhaling those fumes?
Great Big Plants is a company that produces a fertilizer that will meet your expectations. It’s an organic liquid fertilizer that has been packaged beautifully and works incredibly. The most important thing though, it’s the ease of mind that you will get when using it. My 11 year old can help my 3 year old pour the fertilizer into the watering can without us thinking they’ll get cancer or other illness because they’re smelling fumes that they should not have.
The greatest thing for everybody is that we DO get results. Indoor plants that were slowly but surely dying came back to life within days and had flowers and new sprouts as well. Plants outside have grown twice as much as before with great results. The product DOES work and it’s easy to use. No fumes to smell, no worries and no wasting your money buying other products that will generate no results.
For you organically conscious people, this product is certified organic by the state of Washington. Finally, an organic product that gives you great results.
Article Submitted By: Neo M.
IMF Music Festival – Cleveland
August 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment
All over the world, there are in depth music institutes where kids can get advanced music opportunities, new experiences and interact with kids that are also serious about music. The kids also get to meet adults that have chosen careers in music.
This year we decided to see what these music institutes are all about. We attended the IMF Music Festival - http://www.intmusfest.org.
It is important to remember that we are a dedicated Suzuki family, which means we take music seriously and our older daughter has been performing since she was 4 years old. Suzuki is expensive though. We pay for individual piano lessons and group music lessons. We also pay for separate guitar and voice lessons. So we kept putting off participating in the music festival as well because of the additional cost.
We will be listing the good and bad things we found with the music festival. But the first question I want to answer is, will we do it again? Yes.
Ultimately, there were the benefits that made it well worth the $400+ cost.
- Our daughter got several chances to perform, including an honors program and playing with an orchestra. These were priceless opportunities that gave her confidence and experience.
- The talent show was anything goes, and our daughter played the guitar while our three year old danced. It got a roar of applause and was a good experience for both.
- Fencing – Yes, they had classes in other areas as well, and our daughter really enjoyed fencing.
- Great support – Some of the faculty and teachers spoke very highly of Alexandra and gave her a lot of pointers and praise. Some even said they would love to be her teacher if she ever moved to their area.
- Variety – We saw flute, harp, Indian and Persian instruments and singing as well as the expected violin, viola, cello and piano.
Finally, it was the attitude shift. After Alexandra saw other kids that were very talented as well, it motivated her to do more work and practice, because she wants to go back next year and be even better.
Was the International Music Festival good? Yes. Could it be better? Yes.
Here are the things we were not crazy about.
- Lots of things required additional expenses – We did not participate in anything that cost extra, and there were a lot of them. This left us with long dead times where people were out doing things. We ended up leaving early on the last day because we did not want to pay for 4 people to go on the Good Time Cruise or pay extra for the picnic.
- Too much information – It was hard to figure out exactly what to do at times. While there was a lot of published information, it was confusing at times and there was too much of it. People that had come in years past clearly had a better idea of what was going on.
- Cancellation of classes – because attendance was down, they canceled some of the classes, including the advanced piano class we signed up for. We would have liked to substitute guitar, but that was canceled too. The end result was less music instruction than we’d hoped for.
- Long breaks for commuters – We live about 1 hour from the institute, so we drove every day. However, we had a long break usually from 3:00 to 7:00 at night. Not fun for us to waste so much time, especially with a three year old. It seems better designed for those people staying close by in the hotel.
There were some other things from a marketing prospective I would change. They seemed to ask for donations a lot, but did not give an envelope where people could donate later and drop it someplace. I did not have cash or check with me, so I could not donate anything. Also, they made it hard to pay for things with a credit card. Supposedly, you could give Dr. Landers the credit card and he could process it, but no one seemed excited about that and I did not want to bother him, so we just did not pay for the extra trip we were considering going on.
Also, first time attendees did not seem to feel like they meshed well with the community. I would have had people working specifically with the first year people to make sure they met more people and understood everything. (They did a good job of answering questions, but more integration with the group would ensure more would return next year)
Lastly, I think there was a very noticeable amount of frustration on the part of the people running the event. Attendance was down and the way it was mentioned several times along with the complaining we overheard several times made me concerned that they may not even survive next year. I hope they do. I also home they hire a business/event manager to help market and run the event. The people that were there were great, but they are not event professionals and they did not seem to realize that they were performing even when standing in the hall and chatting.
So to summarize, I would recommend these kinds of festivals if you are serious about music and want your kids to be inspired. If you are running these kinds of events, make things easier, make sure people connect more and remind every instructor and volunteer that it is a five day performance.
Gardening and Kids
July 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Gardening and Kids
Summer is the perfect time to do activities with your children that otherwise you never have time to do during the school year.
Gardening with your children is not only beneficial in building character, but is a physical activity that they might enjoy as well. It gives them a sense of creating something, a sense of achievement that wasn’t difficult to attain.
Have you seen their faces when they’re picking that ripe tomato from the plant? Have you seen them smile when they are the first one to spot that red pepper? Gardening with your children can be a very rewarding experience for both of you, and could forge memories that may last a lifetime.
What a better way for them to learn about plants, their care and the problem of world hunger than when they are side by side gardening with you? A time that will help them form a stronger relationship with nature,you and the world around them
Be crazy…plant a garden and some memories at the same time.
Article Submitted By: Neo M.
Getting Kids to Eat Salads
July 25, 2008 | 1 Comment
Getting kids to eat salads can be very difficult.
Getting adults to eat salads can be difficult as well.
The funny thing about salads is that it really is a habit you have to form. Forcing down spinach or broccoli once in a while can be challenging. If you eat it every day, I guarantee that at some point you will start missing it if you skip a day.
Here are some tips to getting kids to eat salads regularly.
1) Start with a salad before other things are on the table.
2) Give kids SMALL salad portions and praise them for eating it.
3) Serve a salad every day. Eventually they will just expect it and it will become a non-issue.
4) Make the kids salad out of mostly things they already like. We do a small amount of spinach with carrots and cucumbers.
That is it. Don’t give up quickly and your kids will be eating salads in no time.
Daily Food for Ultimate Health
February 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
One of the most effective things you can do to have better health is to post in your kitchen a list of things you will eat every day. At each meal, I review this checklist to make sure I am getting all the great foods I want in my diet.
I made this list from combining things from Dr. Phil and other health reading I have done. Your list may not be the same, but all of these things are good for everyone to have regularly. Tweak this list for yourself, but be sure to print it out and try to get every food in your diet every day.
- Vegetables – Not corn or potato
- Fiber – Pinto Beans, Black Beans or Lentils
- Green Leaf – Spinach or Callard Greens
- Healthy Nut Mix – Including almonds and walnuts – not peanuts.
- Asprin
- Fish (Salmon at least 3 times a week)
- Water
- Low Fat Milk
- Coffee
- Cooked Tomato
- Low Fat Yougurt
- Sunflower Seeds
- Red Wine – 2 times per week or more.
This is my personal list, but it works very well for me. With the kids, we take out coffee, red wine, asprin and fish (vegetarian) and add things like flax seed, soy sauce, berries and bananas.
They key is to identify what you want in your diet and post a healthy checklist that everyone mentally checks every day. This works like a charm and is a great way to support each other.