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Riding Out The Storm – The Vital Things To Keep In Your Storm Or Tornado Shelter

by Trish

If you live in an area where storms or tornadoes are a regular threat, and have created a storm shelter within your home, then you may think you’ve got everything covered. However, you need to make sure you have everything you need in your shelter to keep yourself and your family safe and well, as well as to allow you the best chance of leaving the shelter safely and beginning to deal with the aftermath of extreme weather.

Here are a few things you definitely need to make sure you have inside your storm shelter in advance, so you can get in there with minimal fuss when a storm strikes:

A Battery Powered Phone Charger – Plus Batteries

It’s bad enough losing battery on your phone at the best of times, but when you are in the middle of an emergency it is even more of a concern. Battery powered chargers are available for almost all modern phone models, and if you keep one of these and a supply of the correct sized batteries in your tornado shelter, you’ll be able to keep your phone on even when power fails. Your phone will, while signal is available, let you keep in touch with family and friends to check they’re safe, as well as access the internet to get any updates on what is going on outside. It can also help you stave off boredom by giving you something to play with if you’re down there for a long time!

Food for Your Family and Pets

Keep basic foods that will keep you going in your shelter, because you may have to spend hours or even days in there and will need a source of nourishment. Choose things that keep for a long time so you don’t need to replace them, and make sure you have things like a can opener and some forks in your shelter too. While you’re not going to be eating like you’re at a sophisticated dinner party, not being to be able to get into your food is going to be a big problem. Keep some pet food on hand too if you have animals. Bottled water is of course another essential, and keep a bowl so you can also give some of this to your pets.

Documents

Unless you have everything stored online (not on the hard drive of any given device), keep copies of all of your insurance documents in your storm shelter. This will give you the things you may need to start the process of sorting out any storm damage issues after the storm has passed easily to hand, and means that you’ll still have copies of important documents even if your house is flooded or damaged really badly and your originals are destroyed. If you have your documents stored online (something many insurers now offer), you can access them via your phone. However, you may want to keep copies of other important things like your passport and birth certificate in your shelter just in case.

By ensuring you equip your shelter with the things you need and make sure you replace anything that gets used, you will always have a safe, well prepared shelter with the minimum amount of maintenance.

Attached Images:
  •  License: Creative Commons image source
  •  License: Creative Commons image source
  •  License: Creative Commons image source
  •  License: Royalty Free or iStock source: http://pixabay.com/en/document-open-folder-reading-97576/

Today’s guest post is courtesy Eidur Johanson. He is a handyman by profession and has worked on many storm damaged houses. He has learnt a few tricks of overcoming such disasters and has discussed them in this article.

Filed Under: Home and family, House and Home Tagged With: Batteries, Battery Powered Phone Charger, Documents, family, food, home, Keep, pets, storm, storm shelter, Tornado Shelter, Vital Things

DIY Gift Ideas For Every Occasion

by Trish

Sacchetti saponosiHolidays, birthdays and every day celebrations can certainly be events to look forward to, but not when you have difficulty with finding the perfect gift to give. While some people were born to give gifts, the truth is, most of us aren’t very good at it. Rather than getting something for someone that is simply materialistic and not thoughtful, why not save your money and make something yourself. These DIY gift ideas are perfect for any occasion and are guaranteed to be a hit!

Pictures

A picture is worth a thousand words, right? What’s so great about giving a picture to someone is that it evokes memories and feelings of a previous event, whether they make you think back to when you were younger, someone who has passed or of people who you think about every single day.

Some creative DIY ideas around pictures:

  • Picture frame wreath – By gluing small frames from the dollar store to a wreath, you’ll have the opportunity to remind the gift recipient of why you care so much about them.
  • Picture magnet – Add an adhesive magnet to the back of a picture frame to make it magnetic and easy to move wherever you want it to go.
  • Canvas print – The idea of printing an image to a large canvas has grown to become very popular, and there’s good reason why. Canvas prints allow you to blow up a picture without having to really worry too much about the quality of the picture, and rather than paying a lot of money for a blown up picture and then having to frame it, a canvas print is just the image printed on the canvas, no frame necessary!

Coasters

While this gift might not come off as a personal or thoughtful gift, there are a lot of great DIY ideas that you can create for coasters. For example, if the gift is needed around Christmas time, you can visit local fresh Christmas tree farms to collect discarded tree rounds. After coating them with polyurethane to create round coasters, this gift is bumped up to awesome.

Some other great coaster ideas include:

  • Stamped tiles – Using inexpensive tiles from a home improvement store, you can stamp or etch whatever design you’d like to personalize these coasters.
  • Scrabble pieces glued together – Whether you have an old game of scrabble or you found one at the thrift store, these letters can easily be glued together for a set of fun word coasters.
  • Circular cork with old maps or jute – Cover circles of cork or thrift store coasters with jute or old maps using glue or mod podge for a creative set of coasters.

Bath and beauty products

For someone who needs some serious pampering, these gift ideas are absolutely perfect. While bath and beauty products have always been a go-to gift idea, think about how much more it will mean to the recipient when they find out that you made the item yourself.

Some bath and beauty gift ideas include:

  • Sugar scrubs
  • Lavendar sachets
  • Hand-carved soap
  • Lip gloss

Food

Edible gifts are usually a big hit, whether it’s the holidays or the middle of summer. What makes the DIY food gifts so special is the fact that you know the exact ingredients that are going into your gift, which allows you to decide how healthy you’d like it to be.

Here are some really unique DIY food ideas:

  • Edible wreath – Attach clothespins to a cardboard ring to create a colorful wreath. Clip tea bags, hot chocolate packets, spice packets, or even seed packets for a unique and useful gift.
  • Homemade vanilla – Mix good quality vodka with vanilla beans in a pretty glass bottle. Just keep in mind that “brewing” takes up to eight weeks!
  • Spice rubs – There are several recipes on the Internet that you can find for spice rubs. Combine spices in a pretty jar with a suggested use for a quick, yet thoughtful gift.
Attached Images:
  •  License: Creative Commons image source

Amy Richards is a freelance writer who loves to give custom gift baskets as presents to all her family and friends. She’s always determined to include at least one of her DIY projects, to really show how much she cares for those she’s giving gifts to.

Filed Under: Shopping, Womens World Tagged With: bath, Beauty, birthday, canvas, celebrations, coasters, DIY, food, gift ideas, holiday, memories, occasion, photos, picture frame, pictures

The Best Entres to Match Your Meal

by Trish



Entrees are not something that appears only when you invite guests for dinner. They can be a terrific way to try new flavours. When paired with your main meal, entrées can be a tasty way of satisfying hunger.


Steak – Prawns and Broccoli with Brew

Seafood and beef have always been a terrific combination. If you are thinking of serving steak, then this recipe will be the perfect entrée for your meal!

Serves: 6

Ingredients:

30 prawns, peeled and cleaned (five per serve)
5 clove of garlic, minced
1 shallot thinly diced
1 teaspoon minced ginger
1 cup of tea, brewed and cooled (use 2 teabags)
Pepper
1 broccoli cut into florets
3 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Method:

Combine 4 minced cloves of garlic, minced ginger, the cooled tea, pepper and diced shallot then add the prawns. Cover and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Mix together the olive oil, garlic and parmesan and coat the broccoli well. Place the broccoli onto a lightly greased tray and place it into a 350’F oven for 20 minutes.

Remove the prawns from the marinade and measure out ½ cup of the liquid. Take the broccoli from the oven, mix through the ½ cup of marinade and return to the oven for another 10 minutes.

While the broccoli bakes, grill the prawns quickly. When ready, toss the prawns together with the broccoli and serve.

Chicken – Chorizo Couscous

Any chicken dish will love this entrée. It is sure to have people wanting more!

Serves: 4

You Will Need:

2 chorizo sausages finely diced.
1 sliced onion
2 cups of French beans
1 diced tomato
½ cup pitted black olives (can be omitted)
A little olive oil
Couscous

Instructions:

Follow the direction on the packet for couscous and make enough to provide 2 servings.

Top and tail the fresh green beans and blanch for only a few minutes. Drain.

In a frying pan, heat a little olive oil and brown the chorizo sausage. Add the onion and stir until the chorizo is crispy, fragrant and falling apart and the onion is soft. Add the black olives and the tomato. Stir through. Add the green beans and warm through.

To serve, spoon couscous onto the center of a plate and pile the chorizo bean mix on top.

Seafood – Savoury Pancaked

These tasty savoury pancakes are surprisingly simple and will definitely be the perfect way to herald in your seafood main.

ingredients:

¼ of a cup of all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons of milk
1 egg
1 sliced onion
A little butter
A splash of olive oil
1 packet of smoked salmon
1 tub of crème fraiche
Dill or chives to garnish

Method:

Slice the onion finely and sauté until soft. In a bowl, combine the flour, salt, egg and milk to make a batter. Stir through the cooked onions.

Place a knob of butter in the frying pan and cook palm-sized pancakes. Put three pancakes on each plate.

Spread each with crème fraiche and top with a generous slice of smoked salmon and garnish with some dill or chives.

David is the manager of Flying Fish Restaurant in Sydney, Australia. David prepares the menu at Flying Fish each day with his head chefs, selecting dishes made with the freshest ingredients available, always making sure there is an entree to match the main meals on offer. For more information on Flying Fish, visit their website here: www.flyingfish.com.au

Filed Under: Cooking and Recipes, Food and Drink Tagged With: beef, chicken, chorizo, couscous, dinner, entrees, flavours, food, meals, pancakes, prawns, recipes, salmon, seafood, steak

Finally got rid of our renter!

by The Diva

I’ve been trying very hard to relax and get back into my regular routine all week. Our troublesome renter finally moved out late last Monday night. YEAH!!!!!

I’m so happy about that I almost dig a big happy dance right in front of him the night he moved out. I would have if it hadn’t been so late! Who moves out of a persons home at 11 o’clock at night after being out all day and arriving at the house by banging on the door furiously? Very odd.

We’d basically reached the point with our renter where we told him he pretty much had to move out. He moved in the last week or July and he was only supposed to stay for a week or two. We were just doing him a favor because he’d broken up with his girlfriend and he was supposed to just be staying at our house while he looked for another room to rent or an apartment .. but we should have known .. he’d waiting until he HAD to move out from his girlfriends place even though he’d known he needed to look for a place for about a month and of course once he moved in to our place he didn’t start looking for a new place. No … in fact, the first week he was with us he apparently even quit his job!

Yep .. he paid the rent late, ate our food even though we were only renting him a room, used my soaps and shampoos .. like really used them to the point that I have empty bottles of bathing products! Oh and if you read my last post about our house smelling like cigars .. well he’s a cigar smoker. He didn’t smoke in the house but ALL of his stuff was just saturated with the smell of cigars and it was so bad that it basically made my house smell of cigars. I’m very sensitive to scents so I could smell it. My husband who is a smoker couldn’t, but it was extremely strong to me.

Oh and this guy .. when he was still working worked an evening shift so he wouldn’t come home until about 1 am at first. That was ok as I’m a night owl .. but he started going out drinking with the “boys” after work and unbeknownst to us he put in his notice at work because he hated his job so I guess between being miserable over breaking up with his girlfriend and quitting or maybe even being fired from his job – hey we don’t know! – and as a result of this late night drinking he started coming in at three or four in the morning absolutely toasted!

Naturally this would totally disrupt the whole household as my dog would be barking when he came in. Sometimes i’d still be up sometimes not but I could never relax. He’d come in and start banging doors around, slamming the bathroom door or his bedroom door, run water like Niagara falls in the bathroom to fill his glass and walk back and forth and back and forth from his room to the bathroom several times. Then he’d always get up an hour or two later and make noise … and I think sometimes barf.

He just stunk and made so much noise. He was inconsiderate of everyone in the house. There’s more, lots of little things but those are the main things. I’m just happy he’s gone. He was one of the worst renters we ever had! Now he’s back living across the street “temporarily” with his girlfriend again. I have no idea how long that will last. Maybe they’ll get back together .. who knows.

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Filed Under: Home and family, House and Home, Womens World Tagged With: alcoholic, ate, banging doors, barking, bathroom, bedroom, board, broke up, cigars, crazy, dog, drinker, drinking, eat, favor, food, girlfriend, happy dance, house, inconsiderate, late, leave, month, move out, night, night owl, no rent, noisy, relax, renter, room, scent, shampoo, smell, soap, stressed, stunk, week

Too skinny?

by The Diva

Over the last month or so I’ve noticed that my husband has lost quite a bit of weight. Not that he really needed to lose weight. Oh sure just about everyone can stand to lose five or ten pounds, but about a month ago I started thinking .. geez he’s getting pretty skinny … I started to get worried that he was losing too much weight.

It’s not like he’s been trying to lose weight or that’s he’s found the best weight loss pill ever or anything … I think he’s just been walking a lot more lately and just eating a little less. Nothing too drastic – but it suddenly started to show – fast.

We were in a store earlier today and someone that worked with my husband at the hospital but hadn’t seen him in a while came up to us and made a big deal out of how skinny my husband looked. He actually said it made my husband look older … maybe that will make him eat a bit more? LOL

Anyway .. hopefully my husband doesn’t keep losing weight or I’m going to think something is seriously wrong with him.

Filed Under: Health and Fitness, Home and family, House and Home, Items to Try Tagged With: diet, eating, fast, food, friend, hospital, husband, loosing weight, losing weight, pounds, quick, skinny, work

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