Top 5 Easy To Care for Indoor Plants

It can be challenging trying to get your child interested in gardening. To begin, gardening can be a great deal of work. If your child isn’t naturally inclined to see the pint of working on gardening, having to go outside could seem like a chore to him. In the beginning, to help your child grow a deeper connection to the earth, you need to start him off an easy project – like a few easy-to-care-for indoor plants.

What does a plant look like when it is easy to care for?

It can take a child a long time to learn to voluntarily give of his time so that a plant is healthy and taken care of. To start him off on baby steps, you need to look for plants that have a few specific qualities.

1.   To begin, the plant has to look interesting and feel interesting to the touch. A generic plant isn’t good enough.

2.  If your child forgets to water the plant one day or waters it three times as much on another, the plant shouldn’t die. That would break your child’s heart.

3. The plant needs to be resistant to being exposed to the wrong temperatures or being kept away from the sun for extended periods of time.

4.   Flowers and potted vegetables are unsuitable because they only last a season. Children need long-lived plants, instead.  If your child’s plants don’t seem to live long enough under his care, it could make him lose heart.

What kind of plant answers to this description?

Houseplants are an excellent idea for children. Many kinds of house plant answer every requirement above. Some, like the Aloe Vera, are interesting, they live long and are resilient.

Once you get your child started off on a few simple, hardy plants, you can extend his range and fill all the windowsills in the house.

The Aloe Vera: Children being can be very sensitive to how things feel to the touch, take to the Aloe Vera plant as soon as they see them. These plants, with their fun waxiness, can be fascinating to children. The Aloe Vera is so hardy that your child couldn’t go wrong with it if he tried. These plants flower, too – with white, pink and scarlet blooms.

Cactuses: If it is tactile fun that your child craves, cactuses can be hard to beat. These plants are especially interesting to children who see them a lot in comic books and cartoon plots. They make liberal use of situations involving people landing on cactuses and jumping up in a fright. Nearly any supermarket gardening section sells grafted cactuses. Children love these for their colorful blooms, their sharp thorns and the way they ask for very little care. Zebra cactuses can be ideal, too.

The African violet: While this isn’t the easiest plant to care for, isn’t hard.  Many people keep a little African violet in a pot on their desks and enjoy their startlingly rich violet flowers. These plants need to be watered with care and need a small amount of sunlight.

The spider plant: Spider plants are very common houseplants – not least because they have great air purifying qualities. Your child will love the long, slender and richly green leaves that sprout in every direction. These plants need nothing more than a bit of a regular watering with distilled water.

Avocado: For a really interesting introduction to real gardening, you could give your child an avocado pit. While it takes a little bit of care to get one to grow well, your child could delight in seeing a familiar seed grow into an actual plant.

Josh Hayward is considers himself a bit of a green-finger.  His articles mainly appear on homeowner blogs. Visit the FBD home insurance site, click on the link.

A Clear House A Clear Mind

As the chaos within our daily lives increases, work becomes more demanding and family pressures grow we all look for a place where we can get some much needed rest and relaxation and have an environment where we can escape everyday life and be completely ourselves in a place that we have created. The home provides the perfect opportunity to recover from a stressful day and one of the best features of a home is the ability to leave behind any nagging issues as soon as we have crossed the threshold.

The set up and design of our homes is typically reflective of personal taste and the spaces that we crave to ensure we have a restful and tranquil home that offers us our own little slice of personal heaven.

It is not simply the design elements that control the atmosphere within the home but also the way it is kept and maintained can have an impact on the way you feel when you are in the house. A home that is unorganised, chaotic and untidy will leave you feeling in much the same way. It is near to impossible to relax in an environment that is not soothing and if you are constantly surrounded by clutter and rooms full of a large amount of items then you too will feel overwhelmed and will lose the one place that offers you sanctuary.

It is so easy for us all to have areas within the home that are cluttered, with the rate we make purchases, the items we insist on owning and the way in which we have to position our homes due to space restrictions etc. clutter is common place.  It is all too important to have a home that we can feel relaxed within and can come home to and not feel bogged down by the way it looks and the way it makes us feel and the first way to turn this around is to make an effort to rid your home and yourself of the clutter that dominates rooms, floors and work spaces.

The De-Cluttering Begins…

There are multiple benefits to clearing up the spaces within your home, other than just the need to clear the home to clear your mind…

• Spaces will look significantly bigger and you will be surprised at the amount of room you actually have
• Rooms will be used appropriately
• After a chaotic day you will be able to come home to a restful environment
• A welcoming home will ease the stresses and strains of everyday life
• Clutter is usually a build up of items, sifting it through it will enable you to discover little treasures you didn’t know that you had
• You may be able to sell some items that you no longer use which will bring a much needed cash injection into the home
• You do not have to throw away any items just because you are not currently using them, storage Santa Monica can house the clutter until you are ready to incorporate any items back into the home

There is no reason to live in a home that appears to be overwhelmed with household items, paperwork and the little things that we seem to collect overtime. De-cluttering is a simple task that will transform the home, its look, feel and atmosphere and this will instantly alter the way you feel when you are in the house frantically trying to forget the chaos of the day that has passed.

Do It Yourself: the Perfect Finishing Touches

Making a house a home is all about adding the personal touches, the little things that show off what makes you, well, you. Anyone can go out and buy all kinds of things for a new house or as part of decorating a room in your current home to give it a new lease of life, but that still doesn’t necessarily show off your own personal taste and passion.

A lot of homeowners will bring in interior designers, if they have the disposable income, to help them turn their tired rooms into something much more vibrant through a new pair of curtains, maybe some different furniture, some elaborate lighting or some subtle touches here or there that might not jump out at you but really make an impact in the room itself.

DIY is another great way of adding a personal touch to your home. It’s a common misconception that personalizing your home is about putting up pictures of yourself, your family, or splattering bits of memorabilia around. In fact, it can be as simple as putting up a few shelves on an empty wall and filling them with books, maybe feature vases or lamps, or maybe just creating something a bit unusual using a bit of creativity, some timber and a few screws.

One great method of adding a personal touch is through some kind of metallic design. If you have a family Coat of Arms for instance, you could have this created through a process known as cold heading process and turned into a piece of art on your wall, maybe inside the front door or in the hall. Cold forming, for those unaware, is a process whereby metals are shaped without removing any of the material itself, thereby helping to maintain its strength and stability helping to create a really clean and stylish piece of metal.

Alternatively, if you want to stick with the artwork theme, then a family portrait is a great option. Either having it done by a professional artist using paint and a canvas, (although this is time consuming so you might want to consider this option if you have small children who get bored easily), or transforming a particular family photo onto a piece of canvas and mounting it to the wall can not just give you a real “family home” feel, but also enables you to add a touch of colour and style to your walls rather than traditional photographs in frames.

Approaching

  An ant and flower

The Weekend in Black and White

The Benefits of Having a Garden Office

Working from home is becoming more common in the UK. Employers are realising they don’t need to have everybody in the office at the same time. If you don’t have a separate place to work at home, a garden office is the answer. These offices provide so many benefits, in terms of well-being efficiency, and cost. Here are some of the main reasons why you should seriously consider thinking about investing in such an office.

Cost Considerations

It can cost over £10,000 to install a good office in your garden. This is a significant cost and cost many people will feel wary about. If you consider the costs of commuting to work each day, though, things change. In London, workers often spend around £2,000 to £4,000 a year on commuting. In just a few years, the cost of not commuting will make sure the office pays for itself.

In the long-term, you’ll actually be making a profit.

Work and Personal Life

Work life and personal life are difficult to separate for many people. One of the reasons for this is because in a home-based environment the office might double as the living room. It’s hard to resist the pull of the TV remote. And this applies even if you’ve managed to dedicate a room to work.

The office in the garden is different. It’s detached from the property and it requires effort for you to shirk from your work to go do something else. It keeps work and personal lives completely separate.

Well-Being

Surveys have shown people who work from home are generally much happier than those who commute to a place of work. Whilst there are exceptions to every rule, it’s easy to see why this is.

At home, you don’t have to start work at a certain time. You can afford to start later or get a head start on your work as there’s no commute. If you consider how the average commute takes an hour you’re saving a lot of time.

And then there’s the commute after work. You don’t get paid for this travelling time. This is an hour of your free time you’re giving up to go to work. A garden office allows you to simple get up and walk back to the house. This takes no longer than sixty seconds.

Your Way

You have little to no control of your workplace because you don’t own the building. All offices on your property are yours to do what you want with. You can chop and change it according to your whims. This increases your productivity as you’re happy with where you work.

Stress Free

Most people who commute to work find themselves grumbling over the weather, the time, and other people. It’s a stressful experience which you aren’t getting paid for. If you don’t have to leave your property to go to work there’s no reason why you should be stressed. This promotes healthy living and makes you actually want to go to work each day.

Tim Miller recommends that if you work from your home that you consider setting up a garden office.

Bathroom Renovations –Homeowner's Guide

After the purchase of a home, renovating the whole house or even just a part, is probably the next biggest investment a homeowner can make. Along with kitchen renovations, bathroom renovations are among the most common modifications done to a property. Sometimes, this is because the old bathroom is too small to accommodate the needs of a growing family. Sometimes, the style simply needs some updating. Or perhaps, some lingering structural issues need to be addressed before things go out of hand.

Bathroom renovations, most people should know, are not endeavours that a casual DIYer can easily take on. Rebuilding a bathroom entails the expertise of specialists in plumbing, painting and even carpentry. You might think that you can pull off this project by yourself, but you'll be saving a great deal of money and effort by letting an expert handle the job for you.

But how do you find specialists in bathroom renovations? Interested home owners may ask for the recommendations of relatives and friends who may have had their bathrooms rebuilt for them. Alternatively, if you do not know of anyone who can give you a recommendation, you can simply search online. As you browse for a bathroom specialist, make sure to view their online portfolio to have a glimpse of the quality of their final output. When available, look for testimonials, both those posted on the contractor’s website and those posted on third-party review sites.

In their search for a company specialising in bathroom renovations, Home owners can benefit from the company whose employees have the necessary licenses for their trades.

Almost every homeowner has a particular idea about the final look he has in mind for his newly-renovated bathroom. But unless you have an unlimited budget and superior aesthetic sense, you will do well to work with a bathroom specialist who is keen on collaborating with you for the best outcome for your bathroom.

With your own inputs as well as a fixed budget in mind, an expert bathroom contractor can push you towards the right direction in terms of choosing the best theme, design options and even choice of fixtures and fittings. Apart from experience and expertise, the bathroom renovations contractor you should get knows that the key to a successful project lies in his ability to listen to what his client has in mind.

A reliable bathroom renovation contractor is upfront and transparent about all the costs entailed in a project. He acknowledges that renovations can inconvenience the residents of the house. And as such, he works diligently to meet the agreed upon deadline for the turnover of the project without compromising workmanship and the quality of the final output. Finally, he makes sure that the house is clean, or even cleaner than before the project commenced.            

So when looking to run this kind of renovation project for your home, be sure to plan things ahead. You will need to consider your budget, find the right contractor and closely monitor the progress of your bathroom renovation project. It will be great to share a timeline with your contractor so both of you know if everything is running on schedule.

About The Author: Kenneth Lawrence is a crafty "handyman". His craft involves DIY concepts. He loves to share guidelines and tips about stuff on home improvement. He writes and reads almost anything that can hone DIY skills and increase knowledge about DIY concepts. Kenneth Recommends http://smartbathroomrenovations.com.au for specialized bathroom renovations that couldn’t just be handled by any DIY guy but requires professional and expert assistance.