My sister is getting anxious to get her twin son’s bedroom redecorated as soon as possible, since it really isn’t set up to accommodate 2 kids. I’ve been helping her with the planning and decorating as much as possible. She seems happy with my suggestion of purchasing kids lockers to put in there. The lockers for kids these days have really come a long way and are a great way to help keep all the things organized and put away. With two boys sharing one room they are going to need all the help that they can get.

There are numerous childrens lockers out there in various shapes, sizes, colors, materials and price ranges. So I have been doing a bit of research on my own time trying to find the best match for her needs and wants, while on a tight budget. I love the look of this particular model. The dry erase paneled doors on it make a great way to communicate and it has 4 sections and 8 cubbies all in one. And it comes fully assembled, you just gotta love it.

So far I have purchased two items off of our area’s couple of virtual yard sale sties that I have found on Facebook. A play kitchen for my two year old niece that she really wanted for Christmas, but didn’t get and a futon mattress to replace the old mattress that got ruined several months back. I got good deals on both items, both items in good shape and the people were friendly enough during the whole process.

This is so much better than driving around all over town looking for yard sales.

Got home tonight to find a foot of water in my basement, had to find a basement waterproofing company that made late calls. The company that I found was a life saver they were priced better than the national companies, and were right in my neighborhood.

Budget Dry got right to the house and took care of my problem, the staff was very efficient and friendly, which is hard to find at 8 pm any time. Check out their website at http://www.budgetdry.com if you ever need budget basement waterproofing any time of day or night.

I was very happy with the service provided and will be pleased to recommend this great company to my friends and family.

Our old house is in dire need of some new lights to brighten it up and after searching a lot of web sites, we have decided to go on the up side of lighting fixtures to add to the resale value of our home and to make it more enjoyable to us now.

Fine art lamps are the thing we are looking to add to our home decor, we found a great selection on Farreys web site and wanted to share them with you. Their web site has a wonderful selection of very nice lighting fixtures, everything from fine art to serviceable utility lamps.

Among the lighting manufacturers that Ferrey’s has on their web site are Ambience, Maxim Lighting, Murray Feiss, Flos, George Kovacs, Hinkley Lighting, Fontana Arte, Kichler Lighting, Minka Lavery, Quoizel, and Sea Gull Lighting. I can not wait to get started installing this fine lighting and make our home shine again.

It is good to know that I can just jump online to find most of the things that I need now a days instead of having to run into town each time I discover that I need or want some thing. Today I found a great website that sells the hot tub filters that I need for the new hot tub that we got last year that I so enjoy soaking all of my aches and pains away in when ever I want in my own back yard.

At hottubspasupplies.com they have a great selection of discount hot tub and spa supplies, I even found that they are currently offering a great deal on the hot tub chemicals that all hot tubs require to keep them safe and clean. And the fact that they accept PayPal makes them even more appealing to online shoppers like myself that only use PayPal for online purchases, which I’m glad to hear more companies are finally coming around to realizing since more and more folks are using the Internet for a good amount of their shopping needs.

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of nice custom address plaques being used on a lot more homes these days. I’ve been urged by my BFF to get a new mailbox as well as one of the personalized address plaques that are out on today’s market, since I live out here alone and this old mailbox has seen better days. It seems that it would make it easier for the emergency personnel to find the place if needed, the pizza and Chinese food delivery person would benefit from it as well!

Now since I’ve been looking around for a new address sign a bit online I’ve really been noticing the address signs that are being used by many of my neighbors and the folks in town as well. I’m surprised to see as many of the whitehall address plaques that I’ve been eyeballing on the Internet. Guess I didn’t pay that much attention to what people were using until I started looking for one. When I buy the one for my use I want it to be original and nothing even close to what I’ve been seeing around here, unique is what I’m looking for because I’m a unique type of person. LOL

After the holidays are all over and done with I am going to have to look for some handyman services in northern virginia in order to get some of the issues taken care of around the place that I just don’t have the time or the tools or the experience to tend to.

If you are a home owner you well know how much time, effort and money it takes to keep the house up and running in so many ways, it just isn’t possible to get it all done on my own so a good quality northern virginia handyman will come in “handy” for most of my needs.

There are a few friends and family members that can and do come over on occasions to lend a hand with some projects but it seems that people are getting busier and busier these days and it isn’t always possible to impose on their time and talents. And now with the holidays and then the cold winter months ahead of us it will be more of a challenge so I’m just going to go ahead and pay a professional and get things moving.

It just really blows me away to find that so many more people are still using and depending on dial-up internet these days. I think that I would end up either pulling my hair out or tossing my computer out the window if I still used dial up. I’ve been using dsl for so long and have been accustomed to having the quick speed that is necessary for all the things that I do on computer on a daily basis.

I remember having dial up and just getting so impatient waiting for pages, documents, websites and attachments to download and you can just forget about playing any type of game using dial up, it’s just not worth the time and effort involved. I’ve always been an impatient son of a gun and I know that I’m not alone in that club.

I do understand that times are extremely rough right now and a lot of folks have had to cut back on numerous expenses so more people are forced to go back to dial up, which must really suck. I think that I would be looking at other options to cut back if I was faced with that task, but that is just me and it is easy to say when I’m not walking in their shoes.

Maybe I am totally way off base with this, maybe dial up internet service has come a long way since my dial up days and it could be running a lot faster than I’m giving it credit for, but I’m in not hurry to find out.

I’ve decided to go ahead with my first plan of buying my mother a spice rack for Christmas. Her old wall spice rack fell and broke into a million pieces a few months ago, what a mess that was! Now I don’t proclaim to know a whole heck of a lot about spice racks, but I’ve been taking a bit of time and looking around online and I’ve seen a few kitchen spice racks that I think she would welcome into her kitchen.

My mother is one of the best cooks around and she really depends on her spices. I’m not sure why she hasn’t replaced the broken one, except that maybe she knew it would be a good gift idea for someone to get for her for Christmas, much like I plan to do. My mother is a hard one to buy presents for, so this is the perfect opportunity for me to get her something that she really needs and hopefully will use for a very, very long time to come.

My sister that lives in Oklahoma has a very different motif in her home, her home is a log home that they have decorated in the western style, with saddles as chairs and old guns on the walls she also has western dinnerware. that is very attractive and very fun to use. You can see most of the items she has at her home at Western Cowboy Home Decor, check out their web site at westerncowboyhomedecor.com, a fun shopping site for people who love the west and western decor.

It seems that Judy’s hubby who she just recently married as is now living out in the boonies of Wisconsin, has gotten Judy into the remodeling mode for her own home. They have just recently moved into a house left to her by her late uncle, she fixed it up just enough so that they could move in to and now wants to go the next step further.

The first room is going to be her bath and she emailed some really cool pics and links that are just awesome. One site has a nice selection of hand painted porcelain sinks with just a splash of a little Mexican flair, that are just gorgeous, Judy and I both then fell in love with the glass tile products at another website as well and now she is definitely going for the beautiful glass mosaic tiles that we both agreed on there. It seems that I am involved with more of the choices then her hubby has been.  LOL

Judy’s mother had told her about Edenmosaictile.com, seems she had run across this website while she had been looking for some unique glass tiles for their outside pool area. Judy’s mom did have some lovely decorative ceramic tile work done that is so vibrant and beautifully colored, I’ve seen the pictures of course, thank goodness for the Internet so that we can share such goodies so easily.

This has been a horrible summer for Texas and the Western states. I have been reading about fires in Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado ever since March. These states have been suffering a long drought and hundreds of wildfires all summer.

The best thing that could happen to Texas is for one of the hurricanes down in the Gulf of Mexico to come ashore and drench the entire state for 2 or 3 days. It is critical now. Over 5,000 people have been evacuated from the Austin area and a record number of homes have been burned – almost 500 homes in just the past 3 days. This is horrific and my heart goes out to the good people of Texas.

When I was a kid, buying a vacuum was a big deal because they were very expensive. My mom bought an Electrolux canister vacuum and that machine was treated like gold. I think in today’s dollars it would have cost about $1,000 and she insisted on buying the very best.

When we got this house we bought a new vacuum because it has carpet in every room but the bathroom and the kitchen. Se we got a Hoover and spent almost $300 on that thing. It is self propelled and has all kinds of attachments.

So today, it quit working. I don’t know what the heck is wrong with it and I am trying to decide if I should even bother taking it to get repaired or just buy a  new one.

My sister told me in her phone call that she and her husband are looking to build a new home on the old family farm and I think they will really like the Schumacher Homes that they are looking at to build. I know we bought our Schumacher home in 2000 and really love the details and I watched them work I know it was built with care and above all skill. I know that Susan will choose well and get the most bang for their buck and buying a Schumacher Home is a huge step in the right direction.

Earlier this year we started remodeling our living room, and now we are at the stage that we need to decide what kind of new couches we want for our living room. The wife says that she wants two couches one for me to sleep on when I am in the dog house and one for the dogs. Leather Couches is what we have been looking for and we have found a great web site that has a beautiful selection of great leather couches. Buy Couches Online has a great deal right now they have free shipping through December 2008, this makes the leather couches on their site comparable to any I could find locally and the leather couches on this great site are better quality than any I could find at a Nashville store. The search for new sofas has been a long and tedious search for us, and I am so very glad that it is coming to a close with the purchase of two new leather couches from Buy Couches Online. Check out their fine web site at http://www.buycouchesonline.com to see if they have a new leather couch or other kind of sofa for your home. I love the selection on this great web site and I think you will be able to find your perfect couch on their site just like we did.