Friday, July 25, 2008

Common small spaces mistakes

"Proportion and scale are vital. Custom upholstery is essential if you want to avoid burdening a room with furniture that looks like it's on steroids. You should have furniture made in the correct width, height, and depth for the scale of a room. For smaller rooms, I try to avoid anything over 36 inches deep. Better not to overpower a room with the steroid-injected, super-deep models made to fill titanic spaces in McMansions. Bigger is not always better." —TODD KLEIN

"Playing it safe. Instead, put a large-scale printed fabric or wallpaper on the walls and even the ceiling. It's easier, safer, and less expensive to be dramatic in a small space. You might get tired of a bold print in the main living area, but it can make a smaller, less-used room an exciting space to spend time." —VICTORIA NEALE

will continue...

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

50 things to Do to Go Green

Here is a series of 50 simple things, we are going to post them in a list of 10, that everyone can do in order to fight against and reduce the Global Warming phenomenon: some of them are at no cost, some other require a little investment but can help you save a lot of money, in the middle-long term! Previous Tips from 11 to 20

21. Choose products that come with little packaging and buy refills when you can
You will also cut down on waste production and energy use!

22. Reuse your shopping bag
When shopping, it saves energy and waste to use a reusable bag instead of accepting a disposable one in each shop. Waste not only discharges CO2 and methane into the atmosphere, it can also pollute the air, groundwater and soil.

23. Reduce waste
Most products we buy cause greenhouse gas emissions in one or another way, e.g. during production and distribution. By taking your lunch in a reusable lunch box instead of a disposable one, you save the energy needed to produce new lunch boxes.

24. Plant a tree
A single tree will absorb one ton of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Shade provided by trees can also reduce your air conditioning bill by 10 to 15%. The Arbor Day Foundation has information on planting and provides trees you can plant with membership.

25. Switch to green power
In many areas, you can switch to energy generated by clean, renewable sources such as wind and solar. The Green Power Network is a good place to start to figure out what’s available in your area.

26. Buy locally grown and produced foods
The average meal in the United States travels 1,200 miles from the farm to your plate. Buying locally will save fuel and keep money in your community.

27. Buy fresh foods instead of frozen
Frozen food uses 10 times more energy to produce.

28. Seek out and support local farmers markets
They reduce the amount of energy required to grow and transport the food to you by one fifth. You can find a farmer’s market in your area at the USDA website.

29. Buy organic foods as much as possible
Organic soils capture and store carbon dioxide at much higher levels than soils from conventional farms. If we grew all of our corn and soybeans organically, we’d remove 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere!

30. Eat less meat
Methane is the second most significant greenhouse gas and cows are one of the greatest methane emitters. Their grassy diet and multiple stomachs cause them to produce methane, which they exhale with every breath.

Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Me, Myself and "Yo"!

As you know I'm a happy mother of three beautiful girls and a handsome husband that I love a lot. He's a really help...but he's working most of the time...So I do most of the work in the house by myself...Now I'm helping my father and my brother in a FM Radio Show, I'm one of the producers of the program, Me? a producer? :P ...OMG never in my life!.

I'm like The Flash (you know the super hero), but in a feminine version, I have to do everything fast; clean the house, check my products online and work on it, prepare the food (Hold it right there) I have to think first what to cook?

OMG! Select the music daily and get the information for the radio show, by the way the name is "De PUERTA en PUERTA" from Monday to Thursday from 4pm to 6pm, then give the food to my girls and after that do the homework!, Done? I don't think so... got to go the web again and check the show, just in case any further information that they need, plus give them any suggestions (critiques), also I'm getting a report of the online viewers daily, by hour, and guess what? my hobby just arrived "Yo" take a break? not even in my sleep. :D