Five Tips for Keeping Your Home Safe while on Holidays

If you are planning on going on holidays it is important that you plan ahead and put in place methods of keeping your home secure. There would be nothing worse than coming back from your lovely relaxing holiday to find your home broken into, property stolen or damaged and your home vandalised. Get organised before you go and follow a few simple tips to keep your home safe while you are on your holiday. Install security doors, an alarm and even security screens.

Have your neighbour keep on eye out

Ask your neighbour to keep on eye on your property while you are away. Let them know that you are going away and let them know when you will be back. If someone enters your property when they are home they will most likely notice if they have been alerted to the fact that you are away. Get them to collect your mail for you too so it doesn't look so obvious that you are away, and it will also stop your mail getting damaged by the rain. It can also help if they park one of their cars in your driveway.

Security alarm

If you don't have a security alarm this would be a good time to have one installed. A security alarm will go off if it senses any movement within the house. A siren will sound, and often there is a flashing light that will go off too which is attached to the front of your house. As well as alerting the neighbours your alarm is connected to the security company's system in their head office and they will send somebody around to check out the problem.

Security doors and screens

Have security doors and even screens put on your windows for added safety. These are great to have even when you are not away. A security door will give you the flexibility of being able to open up your front door and let the breeze through on a hot day, without having your home open and unlocked. You can also answer the front door when someone comes knocking without having to open your security door at all. You can see through and still talk to the person without putting yourself potentially at risk. Thieves often break into houses through windows. Having security screens will stop this problem.

Keep the house tidy

If you are planning on being away for an extended period of time, for example you might be taking a trip overseas, then make sure you keep the front of your house maintained so from the street it looks like someone is currently living there. Pay a gardening service to come by every few weeks, depending on the season, and mow the lawn, tidy the garden and sweep up any leaves. It might cost you a little bit but it is worth not having your house broken into, plus you will come back to a home with a tidy front garden.

House sitter

If you don't want to leave your home vacant while you go on holidays then why not get a house sitter. You may know a friend or family member who would be happy to do it. They can also look after any pets while they are there, which will save you a lot of money in kennel or cattery fees. This is ideal if you are going away overseas for an extended period of time.

Home Decoration Ideas

If you are crafty enough, you surely love Do-It-Yourself projects. Here are some inspirations for you :

Layered Planters

It’s lovely, right? This creative planter is made by Lucy Ancheta-Atkins.

Pallet Headboard

Do you like this kind of headboard? If you still have some left pallets, you can make this. Recreate the natural dark look by painting them with drift-wood stain or using a wire brush.

Herringbone Drawer Shelves

Julie Petrella gives you the idea. Do you have old drawers? If you don’t, it’s easy to discover it at yard sales or on the side of the road left out for trash. Cut it down before painting if it’s too deep for your wall.

Bedside Table

If you need a tall enough bedside table, you can imitate this unique table which created by Katie Steuernagle. Well, you can put your lamp, candles, glasses, and books on it!

Snowlake Curtain

If you love making paper snowflakes, create it become into a lovely curtain.

Polaroid Magnets

Jennifer Kirk offers this idea. I guess lots of you like putting on photos on the fridge. To protect the photos and display them beautifully; you can use Polaroid magnets. Not only to expose your pics, you can also apply the magnets to tack up other things like your kids schedules, paintings and letters.

source:ivillage.com

Tumpeng Rice

Happy Monday, everyone! Yesterday we attended our nephew’s circumcision celebration. Her mother prepared tumpeng rice for our lunch together. All aunts and uncles were coming. It’s a special celebration for only close family. The bigger celebration will be held later, if my nephew’s pexxx has recovered totally.

Tumpeng rice is a ceremonial dish of yellow rice served in a cone shape. When it served in any special occasion, it will be completed with other various kinds of food. Tumpeng rice will also be decorated beautifully. It’s very inviting, right?

Rental Properties Basics Managing Light and Heat and Improving Your ROI

If you own a rental property, you may well be aware of the “interesting” issues which light and heat can cause in any house or apartment. The heat can practically renovate the building from inside and out. The thermodynamics of buildings can be very complex, and it’s often a matter of “find a solution or face the costs”. Fortunately for landlords and tenants alike, new sunscreen blinds, window screens exterior screens and awnings are coming to the rescue.

The Problems, Explained
Heat can demolish buildings. Constant expansion and contraction can quite literally take a building apart. Different materials heat differently and expand and contract at different temperatures. The result is chaos, and if you’ve ever wondered why your rental property has that sad look about it, this is “normal wear and tear”, but in a different and sometimes dangerous form.

The interior is also subjected to heat effects. The interior does the same thing, to a lesser extent in most cases, but that just means a separate problem. If the interior has rising damp or mold, the heat triggers growth and corrupts surfaces. Expansion and contraction of buildings can also affect wiring and plumbing.

A building can literally pull itself apart with expansion and contraction, unless these things are managed. Gaps and cracks don’t just happen. If you’ve seen one of those mysterious new gaps around a window frame, (always in some nice, semi-accessible place, of course) the usual suspects are heat or water, but heat can do this without any help. Any sort of problem of this sort has another trick to play- It can become progressively more of a problem, and in a hurry. A small gap or crack can turn itself into a cost base overnight, or over the course of a hot season.

The Solution – Blinds and AwningsThe safest, and definitely the simplest approach to these problems is mercifully simple- External screens, retractable awnings and similar straightforward fixes. The exterior screens block heat before it makes contact with building surfaces. That effectively stops the problem before it happens.

Even the exterior of old buildings gets a boost, because the outer faces of the building are spared the ravages of heat. This cuts down on costs for everything from painting to just holding the building together. Window frames aren’t heated to egg-frying temperatures, either.

Tenants appreciate the improvements, and the old buildings get a new lease of life, literally in one sense, because the heat effects inside are minimized. Carpets don’t get bleached, and the interior of the building isn’t subjected to heat-based expansion and contraction.

Best of all, you can get customized, tailored blinds, screens and awnings to deal with the problems on a case by case basis if necessary. You can arrange for a consultation to protect your valuable property and talk through the options, finding a good working solution to any situation.

Check out the options, and you will find solutions.

Windows

These are windows of Saung Dolken (Dolken House), a rented wooden villa. The villa located inside a fishing place area. It takes only ten minutes car ride to reach the place. I've never yet rented the villa, as it's too big for only one family.

The Weekend in Black and White

Installing a New Shower Rose

Is the shower rose in your bathroom old fashioned? Is it too low? Does it leak or use too much water? What about the shower taps-have they almost achieved antique status?

A quick way for you to take years off your bathroom is to replace these ancient fittings with new, good looking modern ones. They can, in most cases, simply be screwed onto the existing wall outlets.

Shower roses come in a variety of shapes and finishes. Many have specific uses. For example, by varying the number of holes in the shower rose and their diameter, some shower roses cut down water consumption. This is useful if water and heating bills are excessive or if water pressure is low.

The bubble-stream shower rose is a clever little innovation worth considering; it mixes air with the water to give the illusion of a fast-running shower.

Other roses are pulsating and according to the manufacturers, they are therapeutic as well stimulating! These types meter the water out in spurts of varying intensity and volume, and can also be adjusted to give a normal spray.

image:google