Image via Wikipedia

Home-owners have been constantly told that if they can’t afford to move then making improvements around the home, renovating the kitchen, redesigning the garden and knocking down the wall separating the lounge from the dining room, as examples, are the way to add value and make the home a better place to live in. But is that true?

Thanks to the static housing market then the truism that “if you can’t move, improve” seems to make perfect sense but rushing into home improvements could actually see you wasting your money, not only that, do a bad enough job and you could end up devaluing your property even more than if you had done nothing.

The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) took a poll of estate agents throughout the UK and found that about half felt that homeowners were considering remodelling rather than moving thanks to the sluggish housing market. Clearly the notion of remodelling rather than relocating was held most firmly in areas where the market was at its worst: 75% of agents in Northern Ireland and 71% of agents in the West Midlands reported that householders were staying put.

Read the rest of this entry »

When you take the kids out for a meal you want to give them something nutritious and wholesome, something that will fill them up with yummy yummy goodness providing for healthy development, both intellectually and physically. Funny then that all they seem to want is fried processed carbs, mechanically recovered meat and fizzy drinks on top!

So you visit one of the ubiquitous junk food restaurants where they can fill up on calories and starches and then burn them all off again as the fly around the ball pool screaming like banshees and having great larks and lorks a lordy. So there they are, happily fed and playing in a safe environment where you can leave them to duke it out by themselves for five minutes while you get to catch a glimpse of today’s paper.

But put that paper down for a moment and look at what your treasured mites are gadding about in. Dr Erin Carr-Jordan, who also happens to be a developmental psychologist did and she filmed what she saw. Not only that but after having not been able to get a response from the management she made it her pet project to investigate just how filthy the PlayPlaces and restrooms really were. (spoiler alert: VERY!) Erin’s research took her to more than 50 separate ball pools where she took samples which she then sent back to the lab to have analysed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Image via Wikipedia

Are you an environment conscious individual, who is constantly looking for ways to make a positive change in whatever little way possible? Or are you somebody who wants to make a change but doesn’t know where to start from? Here is your chance to learn a few tips to make green living a part of your life.

1. Sustainable eating

Sustainable eating might sound like a hard and complicated term at first but it really isn’t. The most important thing you have to remember is when shopping in a supermarket, avoid the middle aisles. The side aisles always contain what you are looking for: whole foods and ingredients that allow you to cook healthy meals from scratch. You should only consider visiting the middle aisles when looking for cleaning supplies, organic soaps, detergents and shampoos and other green products. Also remember that producing meat is damaging to the environment just like consuming it is damaging to your health, so try to stay clear of it and adopt a plant based diet.

2. Use non-toxic chemicals for cleaning

Non-toxic cleaning chemicals have plenty of advantages over the nasty chemical loaded cleaners that always make your nose each or your eyes tear. For once they are just as effective and as cheap as their toxic counterparts. You will also love that they are friendly both to the environment, your water ways and your skin as well. It might take you a while to get used to them but once you start giving them a chance non-toxic chemicals will be the only ones you use.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s going to be that time of year again where we will be wrapping our Christmas presents ready for Father Christmas to deliver to our loved ones, but, are you helping the environment and your pockets, by recycling you wrapping paper etc?

Christmas wrapping paper doesn’t have to be thrown away, it can be recycled, not only by putting it in the recycling bins instead of a normal trash bin, but it can also be used for girt wrapping again!

Ok this does sound cheap and something Scrooge would do, but with the way money is tight these days, more and more people are finding that reusing stuff is a vital way of saving a few pennies, specially at this time year.

One way of using the left over wrapping paper is for drawing paper for the kids, on the other side of the Christmas wrapping paper is usually white, instead of throwing it away, let the kids use it to draw pictures. If you’ve got a big enough piece of paper then use it to line your make up draw or even your underwear draw, to keep things fresh.

Another great way of doing your part is instead of using wrapping paper is to use gift bags, these are great as everyone can re-use these and give gifts to others in the bags you have given and you can do the same by giving others people’s presents in bags you’ve received, also it’s great if you’re terrible at wrapping

So remember with the way the world is at the moment and the way he landfills are getting to bursting point, try to recycle as much as you can

Related articles

• Wrap gifts with the planet in mind (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Recycled Alternatives to Holiday Gift Wrap (1800recycling.com)
• Green Holiday Guide: Green Your Wrapping (retrohousewifegoesgreen.com)

Those readers of my blog living in the UK will know of the winter weather we have been getting and November was the start of the snow that has spread cross the UK.

When I was young I remember that every Christmas was white and the fun of knowing that Father Christmas was on his way with wonderful presents and cosy nights in front of the fire with my parents, waiting for the next day to come only to go out playing in the snow and making snowmen, oh hang on do we have to say “snowpeople” now?

With all the snow that we have had with the recent November snowfall  it feels like Christmas already, that wonderful warmth as you walk through the front door after a day at work and the Christmas tree in the corner of the room, waiting for the presents to be placed gentle around the bottom of it under the glistening decorations, that have been passed down a few generations.

Glasses of mulled wine to keep us warm and wondering what to by those relatives that you never know what to get them each year, socks, jumper or even a gift voucher.

Now that it’s the first of December today, the question that is pondering on a lot of people’s thoughts is, “Will we get a white Christmas?”

It’s a question that I’m like to be yes, I know that there has been a lot of disruption through the end of November with the snow causing major problems in the North of the country and I dare say those that are living in Scotland and the surrounding areas are indeed sick of the snow, but remember how much you loved it when you were a child, don’t you think that children should have that same wonderful feeling as well

Ok, kids these days do seem to prefer to sit in the house and play on their games consoles or computers, but my message to them is, get out there and enjoy life, you’ll have plenty of time to sit in a chair in a room when you are old and frail, make the most of life before it passes you by.

And my message to those that have grown up too quickly is, find your inner child, believe me it keeps you young, mine loves to come out and play in the snow and have a laugh with life, we only get one chance at this wonderful life you know.

So come on everybody, let’s get in to the Christmas spirit and have a little fun with life

Related articles

• Is this the worst Christmas tree in Britain? Embarrassed villagers brand spindly fir a ‘feeble effort’ (dailymail.co.uk)
• First Snow Fall (cindyholman.wordpress.com)
• Brits will enjoy just seven white Christmas’ (newslite.tv)

EDF ENERGY and EDF launches “Energy TaskForce”, a serious game for young engineers who are passionate about energy!

“Energy TaskForce” is a serious game that will be played out over a 3-week period this coming January. If you’re an engineer, a student or a young graduate, and you think you know the various disciplines in the energy sector, you can already register in teams of 4 at http://energytaskforce.edf.com and visit the game’s Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/edf.energytaskforce.

Discover the trailer for this interactive adventure game that gets right to the heart of the economic and industrial issues facing EDF and the energy sector. Devising and producing tomorrow’s energy, and consuming it more efficiently – these are the Group’s aims, and your objectives within the game! Teams will get the chance to compare their skills and explore and solve puzzles, and each week they will tackle challenges designed to reflect the industrial issues tackled by EDF and the studies of the players. The game will provide them with the opportunity to develop their analytical capabilities, to apply their theoretical knowledge and to get to know the EDF Group better.

The operation will be carried out on a grand scale across 6 European countries (France, United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Italy and Belgium), the aim being to attract a wide range of skilled individuals with a game that is co-branded with the Group’s European subsidiaries: EDF Energy in the UK, Edison in Italy and EnBW in Germany.

The game will be played from 31 January to 19 February 2011. It’s well worth a shot: the winning team will enjoy a trip to Laos, including a visit to one of the largest dams in the world (Nam Theun).
So now’s the time to spread the word amongst your young engineer friends!

It may be something that we are all getting used to in this modern world. Information is always at hand, not only by the age-old methods such as newspapers or word of mouth, but now via TV, radio, the internet, mobile phones and much more.

So is the world heading to the point of a complete Information Overload, a point where there is that much information going around the airwaves that we can get so engulfed in it, that we are just glued to what is happening and how it is happening?

We see it everyday and recently it’s getting ever more popular with the intervention of the smartphones, people are walking around Tweeting, updating their Facebook status, emailing and so on.

Every last drop of information has to be passed around, I’ve read a few strange updates in my time, showing that everything can and will be passed to the worldwide web in some for or another.

But then again, Twitter in itself, has been the food for information, with most recently the Chilean Miners, with many Tweeters tweeting the latest on the situation as well as a few strange ones

Think you're having a bad day? Chilean miner Florencio Avalos was just told that he never clocked in

October 13, 2010 8:00 pm via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@jeejeebarlow

Gary Barlow

So are we sharing so much information that we are going to get immersed in its overpowering glory? And what would the world do if for no clear reason, everything just came to a halt and all electronics just stopped working, no phone, TV, not even machinery for the printing presses etc?

It’s a scary thought, that now we’ve got so set in our ways that we could probably fail miserably without our communication devices and information sources if this “Information Overload” did ever happen.

So are we prepared? I’m not! Do we even care? Probably not

Related articles

• Twitter will help Information Overload? (broadstuff.com)