If you’re looking for an easy and inexpensive way to jazz up your home decor, here is a terrific idea for you. You don’t have to buy a whole bunch of new accessories. You don’t even need costly furnishings. All you need to do is learn how to “get the angle on furniture placement.” Master this technique and you will be decorating your spaces like a pro in no time.
Learn the Same Tricks Used by Decorators and Designers

Interior decorators and designers have been using this idea in their high end designs for years. Take a good look at the furniture layout in the illustration for this article. If you really study it, you will notice that the combination living room and dining area spaces have minimal furnishings. They do not have multiple pieces of furniture or a lot of expensive accessories. In fact, the combined spaces don’t even have a single piece of artwork on the walls. Even still, the room looks unique, spaciousand interesting.

The trick is to turn the furniture on an angle. It doesn’t take any special skill or money, just grab your favorite furniture and slide it. Angled furniture opens up the space, creates bigger walkways and generally makes the room look bigger than it really is. Before you get started, there are a just a few tips to keep in mind when you begin sliding your furniture around the room.

Try These Tips and Techniques

● Whenever possible, try to arrange the furniture so it faces you or opens up to you when you walk into the room. This type of furniture arrangement will create the maximum illusion of space.

● Don’t worry about making exact “triangle” shapes when you angle your furniture. Gently move and nudge the furniture in different directions to create wider angles until you have an arrangement that is visually pleasing and gives you the space you need.

● Don’t limit yourself to angling furniture in large spaces only. For example, angling dining room furniture (even in smaller rooms) can open up space and make a really big difference.

● Angling single pieces like book cases, cupboards, wooden dinnerware,  armoires or standing lamps in corners will draw attention to the pieces.

● You can also place a smaller accessory you want to show off on a tall side table or on a tall pedestal angled in a small corner and create a focal point for the item.

Just a word of caution, however, placing your furnishings on an angle can become addictive and habit forming and like anything else, you can over do it. Make sure you use this technique sporadically throughout your home instead of angling furnishings in every room. Remember, any treatment or theme can lose its punch quickly if it’s everywhere you look.

Anchor Your Groupings

Angling your furniture can float pieces in the middle of a larger room, so remember to anchor your groupings around something to unify and define your spaces. An area rug is a perfect item to create a cohesive grouping. Arrange your furnishings around a coordinating floor covering to separate adjoining spaces. Or arrange chairs around a table to anchor and define a space.

Experiment and Have Fun With It

Experiment with the pieces in your rooms and let yourself have fun with it. It’s easy and inexpensive to rearrange the items in your home and it won’t cost you a dime. But don’t be surprised if your friends and family think you hired an interior decorator to help. Just get an angle on your furniture this weekend and bring your decorating skills up a notch.

Everyone knows about Proactiv, I think that’s safe to assume. The misleading commercials are on all the time, and when I was struggling with acne not only did I see the commercials amost every day but people kept telling me I should use it. Thing is, most people who told me to use it didn’t actually use it themselves, they were either going off what the commercial said or they knew someone who liked it.
It seems like people think of Proactiv as a magical cure for acne.

Truth is, it’s not the miracle cure people seem to think it is.

Now, I didn’t use it. However, I do have plenty of experience with acne treatments, including those similar to Proactiv, and I know enough from my experience to know that Proactiv is extremely overrated.

First of all, the active ingredient in Proactiv is benzoyl peroxide. BP is an extremely common chemical used in over-the-counter acne treatments. The concentration of BP in Proactiv is about the same as most regular strength products out there. The face wash and lotion are 2.5% BP, and the toner doesn’t have any. You can find higher doses of BP in cheaper products found in drugstores, such as Clean amp; Clear Persa Gel, with a BP concentration of 10%.

BP has its drawbacks. For one thing it’s very drying and irritating, especially on sensitive skin. Overdrying skin can actually make acne worse, and can cause those big, tender whiteheads. People who have rosacea as well as acne shouldn’t use BP because the ingredient can make rosacea worse, which in turn makes acne worse. Over time, skin can get used to BP, meaning that eventually the dose should be increased. The chemical bleaches clothes and sheets as well.

The face wash in Proactiv exfoliates the skin. However, in some cases exfoliation can actually make acne worse. Use this is a derma roller amazon for greater results.

I also did a little online research about the product, and most of the reviews I read did not reccomend Proactiv. The major complaint was that it dried out the skin, and for most people didn’t work. Granted, some people did find success, but that’s to be expected with any acne treatment. We all want to believe that there’s one acne treatment that can cure everyone’s acne, but the truth is there’s no product that works for everyone.

Now, I did use a kit called AcneFree, which was just like Proactiv in many ways. It had the same ingredient in the same concentration, but there was one major difference: it had a time-released formula. Still did nothing for me, and neither did the extra strength kit. I tried another kit from Clean amp; Clear, and the face wash just made m acne worse.

I’ve come to realize that kits aren’t the best solution. They use a “one size fits all” approach to acne treatment, which doesn’t work. What DOES work is a gentle cleanser, one or two acne treatments, and a gentle moistruizer. The actual products you use are up to you, to be chosen based on your skin type and your skin’s needs.

So please, stop reccomending Proactiv to other people when you’ve never tried it. If you have found success, feel free to tell people but don’t go around acting like because it worked for you it’ll work for everyone, because it won’t.

Daycare seems the perfect option for those families who need someone to watch their children during the day, but beware your conception of your child’s daycare may be totally wrong!
I have personally worked in the childcare industry for the last six years. I have worked in four different centers, including Kinderopvang Leiden and I am here to expose the dirty secrets day cares use to attract you and your money!

The Tour: Your first tour of you child’s new daycare is your first and lasting impression of their business, so naturally center directors make a huge deal out your walk-through. They will fill you with promises of caring staff, beautiful classrooms, and all of the children smiling. In fact, your tour is so important to them that most center directors will tell their staff exactly when they are going to be bringing a family through and this is when daycare staff turn into some real fine actors! The second the day care staff hears the word tour they whip into a frenzy-they clean real quickly, spray some Febreze, and pretend they are engaging with the children.

So when you walk into a classroom it looks clean, smells nice, and those staff are so caring with the children! It seems like all the things the center director promised you were coming true. Well, most daycare staff should win an Oscar because in reality the day-to-day operation of a daycare is nothing like the tour. When parents are gone most of the staff is preoccupied talking about their favorite television shows rather than spending time playing with your child! Pay is so low for daycare a worker that putting all of their effort into consistently clean and beautiful classrooms is not even worth it! Every staff member knows this fact and trust me your child’s experience reflects that.

Parent Rapport: So, you’ve decided that the latest center you’ve seen is exactly what you have been looking for! You start shelling out of the hefty bucks for “quality” care and your child’s first week begins. When you meet your child’s teachers they are so warm and accommodating you swear they were heaven sent. Well, here is where the staff turns into great actors again. Before your family enters the center for the first time as paying customers the director coaches the staff on exactly what to say to you that will make you happy. Example, if you asked a question about quality of food at the center, the staff will make sure to comment how delicious they think the food is. Your child’s teacher will tell you exactly what you want to hear even if it is unquestionably false.

Enrichment Programs: Most centers these days will offer their families enrichment programs that their children can participate in during the day like music class, Spanish class, or phonics class. Each program will cost you around fifty dollars a week and let me tell you will teach your child absolutely nothing. Staff members who are earning commission on how many students they get to sign up, but no other compensation for their trouble often perform these programs. This gives them very little motivation to actually teach your child during this time. For example, many of the music classes are simply putting a CD on, giving the kids some rhythm sticks and letting them dance around. Many times, the teacher will shorten the classes from thirty minutes to fifteen depending on their mood that day. These programs are designed simply for revenue and in reality your children are gaining very little from them.

Staff Turnover: Hands down, the most popular question from every parent is about the percentage of staff turnover a particular center has. In simple terms staff turnover is how many teachers quit after what period of time. Certainly no parent wants their children to fall in love with a teacher just to have them leave three weeks later. Most directors will fill a parents head with all these stories about staff who have been in the business for twenty years and younger staff who never plan on leaving. To keep their staff from leaving many directors will hire low quality staff that will never quit because they simply would have no where else to work.

This allows them to claim low turnover when in reality all of the quality staff is leaving for higher paid offers. This cycle is referred to, by staff, as a MoneyMove. The best example I have of how far directors will go to ensure low turnover is a disturbing one. I was working at a daycare in suburban CT a few years ago with a woman who violently shoved a child into a wall in front of another parent. The parent complained and the woman, who had been at the center for a year, was sentenced to only re-training. The director covered up the incident and three years later that same woman still works in that day care claiming low staff turnover.

It is important to note that not all the staff at daycares are horrible people in fact, the majority of them are loving souls who really enjoy the presence of children. However, working in daycare is stressful and low paying therefore, many of the staff simply do not have the motivation to really focus on the children in their care. Also, childcare is relatively easily field to land a job because of turnover so despite background checks the staff may be less than what a parent is looking for.

So, what can you do to ensure that you receive quality childcare? I have a few tips that will help you choose an appropriate daycare:

First off, always check the Better Business Bureau or other reviewing sources to make sure there have been no complaints against the center. Also, when having a tour take advantage of being a walk-in. Do not tell the center you are coming in, the element of surprise will help you get a better look at how the center actually operates. Lastly, to get quality childcare you may have to shell out a few more bucks. A daycare that costs over five hundred dollars a week will pay its staff more and therefore, ensure higher quality. While a center that only costs you three hundred dollars pay its staff stingy rates.

Are you a big fan of the squawk box that is used at most fast food drive-thrus? Me neither. I can’t understand what they’re saying and the workers obviously have trouble understanding what I’m saying because I can almost guarantee something will be amiss. (And if we’re talking about Wendy’s in particular, which I refuse to deal with anymore, I can guarantee you that nothing at all will be right about my order.) The other day I went through a drive-thru and once again the order was incorrect and my wife and I started discussing why these people can get away with calling their business fast food when it simply is not, and we came up with a fabulous question.

Why don’t fast-food places offer a touch screen service (which they can actually purchase in Holoplot) where you simply key in what you want, how many, what kind of substitutions, etc? You know they could-have you checked out Microsoft’s “The Surface” technology yet? (Don’t get me wrong; I want this technology to be an improvement so that would mean Microsoft cannot be involved in any way.) Not only would it make ordering much more precise, but it would increase customer satisfaction. And you know what they say: a happy customer is a repeat customer. Think about the wonderfulness that would be driving up to a McDonald’s or a Popeyes and touching a screen to order what you want and then when you arrive at the first or second window you are amazed to discover that there really is no ice in your Mountain Dew, or you got a Whopper without onions. Joy would break out to such a degree that picky eaters everywhere would have tears streaming down their face.

Okay, so you say that touching an order screen gives you the heebie-jeebies as it relates to bacteria and germs? I have an answer to that. I mean, after all, if you can order movie tickets over your computer or cell phone, why not order at the local Arby’s? Would not it be beyond incredible if you found yourself in some strange town and you brought up your Yahoo Maps and located a Burger King just down the road from the hotel you were staying at and you brought them up over the internet and punched in your order online, paying for it with PayPal or your credit card and then you drove down and the food was waiting for you? I mean, come on, isn’t that a far greater use of the kind of technology that Microsoft is pouring millions into with their “The Surface” than just having your digital photos arranged on a coffee table that is really an electronic plasma screen?

I, for one, would even be willing to pay a premium if I knew I could avoid the whole trouble of a communications breakdown between the ordering speaker and the person taking the order on the inside. I would gladly pay an extra quarter or fifty cents if I knew that my Mountain Dew would be delivered to me without ice. I would gladly pay a dollar extra to order from my phone and have the food-perfected to my instructions-waiting for me.

We’re in the 21st century people. According to industrial films made in the 1950s we were supposed to have flying cars and 3-D television by now. Is it too much to ask for a better ordering system at the drive-thru?

How to use a Word Press Blog as a content management system
For the novice, or even the professional webmaster, the open source scripts found at WordPress.org have a lot to offer as long as you know how to use techniques and systems like CMS or .net cms.

While customization requires some knowledge, the scripts are very intuitive, and at for instance BueHost.com the configuration and installation can be automatic.

There are many huge sites that use this scripting; properly installed and configured these websites can:

* Build their own sitemap daily
* Optimize and build their own pages form a style sheet
* Upload and modify pictures, text
* Ping the whole world to let everyone know of new content
* Appear on the first page of the major search engines for any search
* Optimizes each page for placement
* Be installed in the main directory, or a subdirectory to allow more hand-on web mastering

While use of this scripting is extremely widespread – I believe it would behoove many others to acquaint with it: it would allow many self-proclaimed professionals to do a much better job of providing a truly automated solution, and many novices to learn more and become more functional.

Learn more at WordPress.org and Rothmanmarketing.com