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Reasons We Love To Dress Up Our Dogs

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Something that was once reserved for cold wintery days and perhaps Christmas-time is now a huge trend seen around the world every day – dressing up your pets.


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Whether it’s a reindeer, a fairy or Katy Perry, there is bound to be a variety of obscene outfits out there for your pooch.

Dogs already come with their own fur coats, so why do we feel the need to dress them up in all sorts of get-ups?

Weather

Winter coats for dogs are completely necessary when the temperatures outside drops extremely low. Although dogs have a layer of fat that adds insulation that is usually sufficient, sometimes they may need that extra bit of help. Each dog’s coat will vary depending on their breed, and it will shed or develop throughout the year.

Dogs that live in sub-zero temperatures, like sledge dogs and huskies, can deal with cold weather because their paws and coats have evolved to deal with it. However, the standard domestic dog cannot withstand very low temperatures, which is why there are coats and jumpers designed to help them.

There’s such a variety out there, including waterproof, knitted, down-filled jackets and actual raincoats.

However, it seems that the functional has now been replaced with the fashionable and the downright comedic at times.

Fashion

Since Paris Hilton was seen carrying her Chihuahua in her tote handbag, small dogs have been one of the must-have fashion accessories. And when the dressing up trend exploded, small dogs were the first ones to get put on the canine catwalk.

Dressing your pooch up in tiaras and jewels, as a cupcake or a cheerleader and having them by your side is the latest in haute couture and the cutest accessory that you’ll love forever.

Comedy

Initially, the odd Santa Claus outfit at Christmas was as funny as it got in terms of doggy dress-up. However, as the trend became more popular, the outfits got funnier and wackier.

You can now dress your dog up as a hamburger, an oompa loompa or a leprechaun to take along to your next fancy dress party with you – and let’s face it, they’ll probably outshine you and be the hit of the party.

Most dog costumes are made ensuring that the dog’s comfort is paramount. However, if you do sense that your dog is uncomfortable in any way, then do take it off them as you do not want an unhappy hound!

Becky loves dressing up her Chihuahua in cute costumes – she also spoils her with luxury dog beds from www.thestylishdogcompany.com

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How To Avoid Letting Your Wedding Drive You Apart

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The whole point of a wedding is union. The entire reason that you have spent all this money, done all this work, and put all this time in in the build up to your big day, is so that you can be bonded together permanently and never have to be apart.

That’s the idea anyway, but as we all know it doesn’t always turn out that way. What’s really surprising and unfortunate though, is when you don’t even make it that far and when you end up breaking up before you’ve even gotten the chance to stand before the congregation. The problem is, that while weddings are all about joining two people together – they sure do give you a lot of reasons to consider parting.

Here we will look at how you can ensure that doesn’t happen, and how you can avoid arguments with your partner.

Be Reasonable

The first thing to ensure if you’re going to avoid arguments is that you’re being fair and reasonable. When you’ve waited your whole life to get married, you of course want it to go your way – but remember that the most important aspect of that is that you get married to someone who still loves you. Ask yourself whether you’re giving them as many decisions as you’re taking for yourself, and whether you’d be happy if the roles were reverse. If you’re winning every dispute, then make sure that you give them something to compensate.

Promote Calmness

If you want to have a stress and argument free wedding, then you should plan it that way as much as possible right from the start. In other words, try to keep the costs down, make sure that there are lots of moments where everyone can just enjoy themselves rather than being rushed from one thing to the next. The more manageable your day is, the more chance there will be of it all going well.

Delegate

Here’s a quick way to make the planning less stressful – just don’t do all of it yourself. By hiring wedding planners, florists and other professionals, you can take a bit of the pressure off of yourself and you can introduce an objective third party to help make decisions and settle disputes. This makes a big difference, so don’t try to skip it in order to save money.

Divide Jobs

For the remaining small tasks, splitting up the things you have to do and having areas that you can work autonomously in can also help to avoid arguments. Give your partner invitations to send then for instance, and then just make sure that you aren’t always chipping in.

Find Things You Can Both Get Really Excited About

You might find a lot of things that you disagree on when you’re planning your big day, but of course there will always be those things that you’re both super excited about too. Try to focus on those things, and try to find more like them. That might mean riding in a wedding limousine, or it might be booking your amazing honeymoon. This is a wedding after all – there’s an awful lot to be excited about.

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This guest post is authored by Vanessa faith. She is a passionate blogger and her favourite topics are fashion and weddings. She is a fun loving person who likes to attend social gatherings and meet new people.

Tips For Keeping Your Home Tick-Free

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Ticks are very common pests. They can be found just about anywhere, especially if you live in a woodsy area. If you have pets and they are carrying ticks, then there is a higher likelihood that your home will also have some ticks hiding in the cracks and crevices of the building.

Ticks are pests, but if you consider them harmless, think again. They cause harm not only to your pets but to humans as well. Ticks carry deadly pathogenic organisms that can cause severe diseases in humans. They are carriers of Borrelia burgdorferi, a type of bacteria that causes Lyme Disease. Ticks are also known to cause Relapsing Fever as well as Colorado Tick Fever. They also cause allergic reactions that, in people with very weak immune system, could be very disastrous.

It is for these reasons that you need to keep your home tick-free. Below are some tips for keeping your home free from ticks.

Check Your Pets for Ticks

Your first-line of defense against a tick infestation is to see to it that your pets are tick-free. Dogs love to play outdoors and cats spend as much time as they can outside the house. Because they love exploring, it will be so easy for them to pick up ticks that crawl on the ground. These ticks can easily crawl off their hosts and invade your home.

To avoid this, you need to give your pets a thorough inspection for ticks. In addition to checking for ticks, you also need to give them regular grooming. Just be careful though when you are picking ticks from their bodies. Make sure that you wear protective gloves and use tweezers, too, to pick them up.

Clean Surroundings

Another way to prevent tick infestation is to maintain a clean home and garden. As mentioned earlier, ticks are can be found even on the ground, waiting for unsuspecting victims that they can hitch a ride on. They are hiding in tall grasses and bushes, and they are hiding in shady places, since they love humidity.

You can minimize tick population by making sure that your home and garden are always clean. See to it that there are no cracks in the foundations that ticks can crawl through, and see to it, too, that the grass is always cut short and the shrubberies are well-maintained so they will not have many hiding places. If you live in a woodsy area, make sure that there is a fence keeping wild animals out of your property. Remember, wild animals are also carriers of ticks as well as other parasitic and pathogenic organisms. You do not want them near your property, so you have to build a fence around your home.

Already Infested with Tick?

If your home is already infested with tick, the best thing that you can do to get rid of them is to call your local pest control company. Ask them if their products are green and organic, so the treatment will not pose any health risks to you and your pet. After the treatment, see to it that you always maintain a clean home and garden and that your pets are always tick-free.

Jennifer Dallman is a guest blogger for pest control blogs where she shares tips and advice to prevent pest infestation. If you have tick problems at home, she recommends you to visit Preventive Pest Control for consultation.

Top Tools That Will Help You Choose Your Real Estate

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Choosing real estate is one of the most important decisions you will ever make – probably just behind deciding on who you’re going to marry. Not only is this an incredibly expensive purchase and one that you hope will be a good investment, but it’s also a decision that will impact on your day-to-day life moreso than perhaps every other. The distance you travel to work, the options available for your entertainment in the evening, the comfort you feel when you relax in the evening… all will be dictated by your real estate.

Which is why you shouldn’t rely on just your instincts alone to choose your property. Of course you need a good estate agent and a good surveyor, but likewise you can also fall back on tools and gadgets that can help you too. Read on to see which devices will help the most and how you can take advantage of them.

Computer

The first job of a computer when choosing real estate is to help you browse the various homes available and to find an estate agent. Thanks to the marvels of the digital age, it’s no possible to replace ‘leg work’ with ‘finger work’ – you can have done the vast majority of your hunting before you have even left the house.

Phone

Your phone of course is also a crucial device, and the one you will use in order to call up and make bookings so that you can view various properties – as well as to hire all the other services you will use. If you have a smartphone (who doesn’t these days?) then you can even set reminders in your calendar to ensure that you never miss a viewing. What makes a phone most useful of all though, is almost undoubtedly the camera. This will allow you to take snapshots of the place you’re looking around to look back on later. This is a great strategy, because it will allow you to remember much more clearly what each place looked like and also to show it to friends and others who might be able to give you advice.

Tablet

If you want a bit more space to work with, then a tablet can be a useful device for running full-screen apps to let you plan layouts, take photos and schedule appointments. Plus they make you look and feel like a pro…

Notepad

It may not be particularly high tech, but the notepad should never be underestimated. Not only will it enable you to take notes on the places you are looking around, but you can also use it to write down questions that you want to ask your real estate agents. This way you can make sure that you don’t go to view the property with a million questions, only to come away realising that you haven’t actually asked any of them.

Meanwhile notepads can also be used in order to sketch things out, to take measurements, to write down phone numbers and more. A smartphone might be very handy then, but sometimes it’s the old fashioned gadgets that are the best…

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Kevin Preston, the author of this post, is a part time blogger and a real estate agent. He has many years of experience in the field and People consider him one of the best brains in the field of real estate. He likes swimming and playing football in his spare time.

Why There Is Damp In Your Home?

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Having damp in your property is a serious problem and one that most people underestimate. While it might not seem like the end of the world to have moisture on your windows in the morning, this can actually be a sign of much more severe problems and can lead to a number of other issues. Here we will look at why there might be damp in your home, where it comes from and what you can do about it.

Cold

One of the biggest causes of dampness in the home is cold. While the cold doesn’t actually attract moisture as such, it can cause it to condense in the air thus meaning that a slightly damp atmosphere can become wet walls and windows. In this form the moisture is much more noticeable and much more likely to cause problems – and it can quickly become a vicious cycle too as the moisture on the walls and windows begins to ‘steel’ heat energy from your property in a bid to evaporate.

If you want to reduce moisture in your home then, one of the most important things to do is to make sure that you are using your heating properly and not trying to save money by leaving it off for too long.

Integrity

The integrity of your property can also be the cause of moisture problems, and there are many ways that dampness can get in from outdoors. For instance, if you have a leak or some kind of seepage in any of the walls or ceilings, then this can of course allow water to directly enter your rooms where it can begin to cause damage.

If you have any such problems, then the best thing to do is to use a waterproofing service which will help you to stop such leaks and seepage. Note as well that certain aspects of your property might be making it more likely to develop leaks – for instance a flat roof can encourage water to collect and pool which can then create a lot of weight. Likewise single glazing is less effective at keeping out cold and water.

Steam

Not all the moisture in your property is necessarily coming from outside though – some of it may be coming from indoors and from the way that you are living. If you often have hot baths and showers for instance and don’t then open the windows or run an extractor fan, the steam created can settle all around your property.

Likewise you can also generate steam in a number of other ways – whether that’s boiling the kettle or even just breathing. This is why it’s so important to occasionally open the windows in order to allow your property to ‘air’. As you get some movement in the air you will find it helps to clear moist patches that form in ‘air pockets’, and that it prevents the formation of mould as well.

Make these changes and you should find that you start living in a drier property. If this doesn’t help, add a dehumidifier and consider calling in the experts.

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Daniel Lorenzo is a freelance writer and blogs about a number of home improvement techniques. He writes on behalf of City Wide Group, a leading waterproofing company and suggests that they are the most reliable companies in the field.  He likes to take part in different sports activities like football and rugby.

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