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Making A Home Your Family Will Love

When it comes to creating a gorgeous interior space, your home will only be as beautiful as your family allows it to be. If your children don't respect the space, your home will quickly fall back into disrepair, which is why I started focusing more and more on home and garden a few years ago. I was committed to creating a great space that was just as clean and gorgeous as it was functional, and I was really surprised to see how much of a difference my efforts made. Within a few short years, my place really seemed a lot more open, airy, and inviting. Check out this blog for great ideas on making a family-oriented home.

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Making A Home Your Family Will Love

Home Garden

Tips For Getting An Orchid To Grow Well Indoors
Orchids are notorious for being really picky plants. If you just stick them in a pot and set them on the windowsill like you would any other type of plant, they may not do well. However, it is entirely possible to grow beautiful orchids indoors if you follow the tips below. Choose a pot that seems almost too large Orchids do not like having their roots suffocated. The roots need to be able to get oxygen and air, which is why orchid roots tend to grow out of the holes in the bottoms of pots so often.

Bought A New Home With A Wood Burning Fireplace? 2 Tips To Keep The Fireplace Maintained
If you purchased a new home and it has a fireplace you need to learn how to keep the fireplace maintained. This is because a fireplace can be dangerous if not taken care of in the right way. Keep reading for two tips so your fireplace will stay in great condition.  Keep it Clean One of the most important things you can do is to keep the fireplace clean. Each time you use your fireplace, remove the ashes when you take the fire out.

How A Solar Windmill Enhances Your Backyard Garden Space
When it comes to curb appeal, most homeowners can agree they want something that adds attractiveness to the yard. While a stunning flower bed and symmetrical shrubbery is a good start, the right yard art can make a huge difference as well. A windmill can do more than just add some ambiance to the yard; it has other attributes as well. Here is how to enhance your backyard garden space with an eye-catching solar-powered windmill.

Three Benefits Of Using A Hammock Stand
When you're in need of some rest and relaxation, you don't necessarily need to book a vacation or a spa appointment. Instead, think about enjoying some well-earned downtime in your own backyard. One way to do so is in a hammock. You can use the hammock to read a book, listen to some music, or take a nap whenever you feel like it. When you buy a hammock, you'll often see models that come with stands.

Enclosure Screen Repairs To Keep Your Pool Areas Safe And Clean
If you have invested in a pool screen enclosure, sometimes the screen materials can be damaged. They are essential to help keep the pool area safe and clean during the summer months. Therefore, you might need to have damaged pool screens repaired. The following enclosure screen repairs will keep your pool areas safe and clean during this summer: Repairing Structural Damage to the Enclosure Frame If the damage to your screen enclosure was caused by a storm or debris like tree branches, there might be damage to the structural framework.

4 Reasons To Add A Bay Window To Your Forever Home
Once you decide that the home you are living in is where you will stay forever, you may start to look at things such as additions and improvements differently. Getting professional help to install a bay window inside your living room is worth doing in a permanent home for multiple reasons. Seating A major perk of this particular addition is that you can get a sizable seating area right in front of the window.

Keeping On Top Of Weed Control Tactics
If you own a home and have a property that tends to become overgrown with weeds during warmer times of the year, you likely want to reverse this situation. When weeds start to take control of a lawn and its surrounding landscape, the problem usually intensifies quickly. Here are tips to keep on top of weed control in your yard. Consider Barriers To Stop Weeds From Growing If you have flowers, shrubs, or small foliage in your yard, protect them with the installation of barriers to help keep weed growth from happening.

Complete A Project That Will Protect And Beautify Your Rose Garden
If you work hard to care for your rose garden, you may be conscious of keeping your plant beds safe. If the bushes are located in a high traffic area, use a combination of paving materials and mulch to protect the plants and beautify the land that surrounds each bush. Choose Pavers And A Mulch Product Pavers consist of concrete blocks, bricks, slabs, and interlockable hardscaping materials that are designed to create a patterned surface, and can be used to create a border and a surface that can be walked upon.

Four Tips for Designing a Functional Kitchen
If you are redoing your kitchen, you have the opportunity to create a kitchen layout that works for your specific needs. Planning the layout of a kitchen can be both a lot of fun and a little overwhelming. Below are four tips to keep your goals in focus and create the ideal kitchen for yourself. Inventory Your Kitchen Items Over the years, it's easy to accumulate a lot of kitchen gadgets you don't use.

Five Benefits Of Granite Countertops
When looking for a new countertop, look no further than granite slab counters. These attractive stone countertops aren't just timeless in appearance, they also offer many other benefits. The following are just five of the reasons why you should consider granite for your kitchen or bathroom. 1. Unique A major draw of granite is that each piece is unique. The exact color, striations, and patterns will vary, even in slabs taken from the same vein.

How To Organize Your Closet: Tips For You
If you are struggling with organization in your closet, you are not alone. Many people struggle to organize and control their closet space. However, this does not mean that it is impossible to get your closet in order. In fact, get to know a few tips to help you out in the closet organization process. Then, you can start your organizing project off on the right foot.  Take Everything Out and Pile It on the Bed

5 Step Guide to Restoring Old Windows With New Glass and Films for Energy Efficient Improvements
If you have older windows that have wood frames that you love, but the glass is old and outdated, it is time to start looking at options to restore them. Replacement glass can often be installed to upgrade old windows without completely replacing them. If you are replacing the glass in older windows and doors, you may also want to add glass films for more energy benefits. The following guide will help walk you through the steps to replace the glass and install films on the old windows in your home:

Fixing Unstable Landscape Issues
Is something destructive going on under the surface of your yard, driveway and patio area? Maybe there are large cracks forming on your sidewalk, or your driveway is buckling rapidly. What could the problem be, and who should you call first? Having a landscaping pro or contractor come out to your house for an evaluation is a good first step to take. Here are some things they may look for so they can pinpoint the problem and come up with a viable solution.

Signs You Need To Upgrade Your Electrical Box
The electrical box that houses your fuses has a big job to do. It has all of the electricity in your home running through those fuses, and the electrical box holds onto all of this power and electricity. Your electrical box over time may have had a few extra additions since the house was first built. Previous owners (or yourself) may have given it an upgrade or made changes here and there, but your electrical box may still need some extra work or upgrades.

4 Tips To Help Deal With Contemporary Flat Roof Designs For Homes And Dealing With Drainage Problems
Modern contemporary homes often have flat roofs, which may include usable space. These areas can also be the source of drainage problems and need repairs. Creating sloped areas and installing drains are some of the ways that you can deal with water on your roof. You are also going to need to do regular maintenance to ensure there are not any problems that could lead to leaks. The following tips will help you deal with contemporary designs and problems with drainage on flat roofs.

Update Your Bathroom With These Tips
Your bathroom is one room of your house that sees a lot of use. Everyone in your family needs to visit the bathroom at least once a day. It's where you shower, groom, and take care of personal business. If your bathroom has looked the same since you moved into your home, it might be time to update it. Making a few minor adjustments can make your bathroom seem brand new.

Tips To Prepare Your RV Or Camp Trailer For Your Residence During Winter Conditions
When you are living full-time in your camp trailer, or just staying in it during the fall and winter, there are some extra steps and additional preparation to make the experience as comfortable as possible. Along with hooking up to the electrical, sewer, and water or using solar power with dry camping, you need to make sure the interior stays free of pests and freezing temperatures. Here are some tips to help you prepare your camp trailer for winter conditions.

Decorative Stone For Your Yard: How To Order It And What It Will Cover
Decorative stone quarried from within your state produces lots of rock you can use in your landscaping. Various colors of rock and types are available. They may be for sale direct from the quarry, too. If you choose to purchase your decorative stone from a quarry, they sell it by the ton or fractional ton. If you are not sure how much you will need, the following info can act as a guide for your stone purchase.

Run A Retail Store? 4 Reasons To Make An Appointment For Carpet Cleaning
Running a successful retail store is a lot of work, especially because you need to pay attention to so many things to become successful in the first place. Then, you must consistently work on providing the best service and products while improving the shop at every opportunity. Part of satisfying and impressing customers is making sure you always provide them with a clean store. While you can invest in carpet cleaning service at time, you will benefit most from knowing when to get professional help to get the results that you need at the time.

3 Reasons To Have A Smart Irrigation System Installed
If you're like the majority of modern homeowners, you're always open to new strategies designed to help you save money on utility costs. You may have also noticed that water rates have been rising steadily over the past several years. Many homeowners are fighting back against skyrocketing water costs by limiting or completely eliminating traditional lawns and other notoriously thirsty landscaping elements, while others are simply letting their lawns die back during the warm season — fortunately, lawn grass is extremely resilient and can be dry and brown for months but spring back to life a day or so after a good rainstorm.

How To Know If Your Stone Needs To Be Sealed?
If you have natural stone in your home such as marble or granite, it is going to need to be sealed. Whether your stone is a floor or a counter, it needs to be sealed. The sealer helps protect your stone and prevents discoloring or stains caused by spills, water or other things. If you aren't sure if your stone needs to be sealed, there are ways to tell. Read on for tips to help you know if your stone needs to be sealed as well as instructions to seal your stone.

Mistakes To Avoid When Applying Fertilizer To Your Lawn
If you are planning to fertilize the grass in your yard, you may think that you simply need to spread it around and wait for it to nourish your lawn. However, if you make any of the mistakes below, you will probably not have the green, lush lawn that you are hoping for. Selecting the Wrong Type of Fertilizer When you go to the store to pick out your fertilizer, you may feel that one is as good as another and simply pick up the nearest bag.

Mistakes to Avoid When Sowing Wildflower Seeds in Your Yard
If you have decided that you wish to grow plots of wildflowers in your yard, you may believe that you only need to scatter them and let nature take care of the rest. However, there are certain mistakes that you should avoid when sowing your wildflower seeds if you want the greatest chance for success. Sowing the Seeds on Untilled Soil When it comes time to sow your wildflowers seeds, you may think you can simply start throwing them in an area of grass without doing anything special to the soil.

Insight For Boosting The Security And Safety Of Your New Home
Buying a new home is an exciting time and a new beginning in your life, but you want to make sure your new home is kept safe from burglars and prowlers. Although you are in a new neighborhood, there can still be threats to your home and your family's safety. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take with your new home to boost its security. Here are some tips you can use in and around your newly-purchased home to keep it, you, and your family safe.

Install Copper Rain Chains To Protect Your Home While You're On Vacation
Everybody deserves a little vacation time every year, but staying away from home for a few weeks during the summer and spring could leave your roof open to damage from rain. However, installing copper rain chains can keep your roof safe. Pooling Rain Can Damage A Home When you go away on vacation, it's easy to forget about cleaning out your rain gutters. Unfortunately, this problem is likely to cause pooling rain on your roof that is difficult to manage.

The Importance of Sump Pump Maintenance & Installation
If you have a basement in your home, you should also have a sump pump. If you currently do not have one, you should get one. If you do have one, you should maintain it properly. A sump pump is one of the best tools you have to keep water out of your basement, and you can hire a plumbing company to install one or help you know what types of maintenance to perform on yours.

Tips For Choosing A New Dining Set For A Small Room
The dining room table is an important part of your house. It's where you entertain guests and gather for family discussions during dinner. It's where you host holiday meals that make lifetime memories. If you have a small dining room or if the dining room table needs to share space with the living room, then you'll be challenged when you go shopping at a furniture store. Here are a few tips for buying a dining room table when you don't have much space for one.

4 Techniques To Help You Achieve A Weed Free Garden
As a homeowner, maintaining your yard is one of the most important ways to maintain the overall curb appeal of your home. One way to achieve this is to keep the lawn weed free, which is always easier said than done. Luckily, it can be achieved with the help of these four simple techniques: Keep the Ground Covered: Weeds thrive in areas where there is open soil. This allows weeds to push through, grow, and spread easily.

Planting And Caring For 3 Appealing Trees For Small Backyards
As a homeowner, you probably already understand how good landscape design can improve your home's look and value. However, certain trees that produce shade and add color may be too large for your backyard. If you want to enhance your landscape design without making your smaller backyard area feel cramped and untidy, here are a few appealing trees to consider. Crabapple The Crabapple tree is one of the best additions for your backyard because it not only creates texture and color with its elegant flowering blooms, but some varieties also produce apples that can be enjoyable for you and your family.

Break These Habits And You Will Cook A Better BBQ
If you want your barbecue to turn out perfect every time, you will want to make sure you don't make certain mistakes. Otherwise, your meat will be dry, not have the right flavor, or be too tough to easily eat. Barbecuing takes time to perfect, so you should take the time to do it right by following a barbecue grill guide. Not Keeping It Clean A great barbecue begins with a regular cleaning.

Create A Hand-Decorated Birdhouse And Feeders

If you recently found garden decor birdhouses for sale to hang outdoors, you may now want to add a hand-decorated birdhouse and feeders to the mix to provide birds on your property with plenty of space to perch, rest, and eat. Complete the project below to create the new additions. Materials To make the birdhouse, you will need the following wooden birdhouse pebbles small leaves acorn tops emery cloth damp sponge towel non-toxic craft glue spool of twine scissors To make the feeders, you will need the following:

Two Reasons A Standby Generator Is The Ideal Choice For A Backup Power Supply
The electrical grid is old in many places and that means it can easily break down during a storm or other natural disaster. Being without power for a short time is bad enough, but if the outage extends for days or even longer, your life can quickly become miserable. You can even sustain a financial loss if you lose all the food in your freezer and refrigerator. Even worse, your health could be affected during a power failure in very hot or cold weather.

Check If Your Awning Installer Can Perform These Maintenance Services For You
Awnings can add style and function to your business, whether you run a restaurant with a patio or any type of business that wants your location to look inviting to customers as they approach it. When you buy your awnings, you'll likely be meticulous about their color and style, and you may even want to get your company's name written on them. As you confer with the vendor, you want to ensure that you select a company that will perform any necessary maintenance tasks on the awnings after they're installed.

Steps For Getting Comfortable When Using A Standing Desk
If you spend long stretches of time sitting at your desk, you should be concerned about the health repercussions of doing so. Remaining sitting for much of the workday can lead to back pain and a host of other health issues that you don't want to deal with. A simple solution is to invest in an adjustable height desk that will allow you to stand for a portion of the workday.

Various Ways To Incorporate Natural Stone Around Your Home
If you have always wanted to incorporate natural stone around your home, but you were not sure where to get started, you will want to keep reading. Whether you make use of all of the suggestions or a few of them, you are bound to have a better idea of how you would like to transform your home. Retaining Wall  When you need to replace an old retaining wall or want to excavate some of your property, you will need to think about the material you will use for that new wall.

Protection And Care For Exterior Stone Countertops
Exterior living spaces affordably increase the amount of square footage available for entertaining, but they also increase the chores that need to be completed around the home. The constant exposure to outside elements requires homeowners to wipe down and maintain their outdoor kitchens regularly even if they have not been in use for weeks. This is true for furnishings and appliances, but also for the stone counter tops to protect the material and keep it looking beautiful for countless summers.

How To Decide If Glass Or Iron Ornamental Fencing Is The Best Option
Ornamental railings are used for both safety and aesthetic reasons. There are many options to choose from but the materials that draw the most interest are glass railing systems and iron ornamental railings. Here are three examples of when a glass fence is the most flattering and beautiful option available and three occasions when ornamental iron rails may be a better choice.  When to Use Glass Railing Systems Reason #1. Use glass when an unimpeded view is desired.

3 Problems To Avoid In Choosing An Awning
Retractable awnings provide the protection needed from direct sunlight without being an inconvenience. Ideally, homeowners should get professional help with selecting and installing the awnings, but sometimes they do not. Occasionally, this can result in problems. To help you avoid those same problems, here are some of the mistakes other homeowners have made with their retractable awnings.   Selecting the Wrong Type of Awning  Even though you have settled on a retractable awning, you still had to decide the material from which it is made.

3 Important Things To Check Before Buying A Used Water Heater For Your Home
If the water heater you currently have in your home goes out unexpectedly, you may find yourself struggling to come up with the money to buy a brand new appliance on such short notice. In these situations, buying a used water heater can seem like a good idea. Occasionally, you will find a used water heater for sale when a homeowner makes an upgrade or replacement. While buying used can seem like a logical financial decision in the moment, you really do have to be careful with buying this used appliance.

Several Tips For Caring For Your Mirrors
Your mirrors can be essential tools for allowing you to ensure that you always look your best before leaving your house. However, it is a reality that high-quality mirrors can be relatively major investments, and you will need to be mindful of the steps for caring for mirrors in order to keep it free of scratches, cracks and discoloration.   Be Careful With The Type Of Cloth You Use To Clean The Mirror

5 Benefits Of Metal Roofing
When deciding to replace your roof, you have many options, including common roofing material like asphalt shingles and clay tiles. When researching various roofing options, you may want to pay special attention to metal roofing, which offers homebuyers many advantages over other roofing materials, including durability and energy efficiency. Here are five of the biggest benefits of metal roofing: Metal Roofing Offers Unbeatable Longevity Metal roofing can be on the more expensive side when you first purchase your roof and have it installed, but a metal roof will ultimately pay for itself by lasting practically forever.

The Best Flowers To Plant In July
If you plan on creating a flower nursery of your own right now, you might be looking for a flower that will be ready for planting in July. While summer is often not the most popular time to plant flowers, there are actually plenty of options that you can plant in July with beautiful results. This guide will show you which flowers you should consider. 1. Pansies Many people use flowers like pansies, which are short-season annuals, to fill in holes as their springtime flowers die.

4 Tips That Will Ensure That Your Rain Gutters Work As Effectively As Possible
When having new rain gutters installed at your business, here are a few tips to ensure that they work as effectively as possible and stand the test of time. #1 Reduce The Number Of Welds In order to ensure that your gutters work as effectively as possible, you are going to want to reduce the number of welds within your gutter system. Welds are the most vulnerable part of your gutter, and where failure is most likely to happen.

3 Factors To Consider When Using A Commercial Paper Cutter
Having access to a commercial paper cutter can make it easier to complete any large cutting job. Rather than having to cut each individual piece of paper by hand, you can access uniform cuts by utilizing a commercial cutter. In order to ensure that the cutter you are using is equipped to meet your needs, here are three factors that should be taken into consideration when using a commercial paper cutter in the future.

Merchant Grain Beetle: Keep This Pesky Pest Out Of Your Pantry
If you find small brown bugs inside the boxes and bags of your pantry items, you may wonder if you have a serious problem on your hands. Those pesky little bugs are called merchant grain beetles. Unlike other types of beetles that feed on fabrics, merchant grain beetles infest stored food. The pests can invade bakery mixes, bags of rice, and even your favorite chocolate bars. Here's more information about merchant grain beetles and what you can do to get them out of your pantry for good.