This secret is great for garages, basements, crawlspaces and outdoor spaces — where you can always use more light.

This is a cheap and easy way to give you a light boost without installing extra light sockets.

Now, it’s no secret that the beautifully spiraled compact fluorescent (CF) lights use less energy than their incandescent counterparts, which saves you money and ultimately reduces our energy demand. But, even if you don’t care about saving electricity, CF lights may still benefit you.

When you replace an old bulb with a CF, take a close look at the socket. There is usually a silver sticker that indicates the maximum wattage light that can be used in that socket. Typical light sockets will be limited to 40, 60 or 100 watts.

You can replace a 100 watt incandescent bulb with a 26 watt fluorescent bulb, which gives you the same amount of light while using 25% of the energy the old bulb used. But, if you use a 42 watt compact fluorescent, you’ll still be well below the 100 watt max and the light will output the equivalent to a 150 watt bulb. Because the compact fluorescent produces more light per watt, you’ve got a much brighter room.

I use two of these lights in my garage light sockets and it makes a huge difference when I’m working out there. I also have one in my basement, which makes a big difference compared to the 100 watt incandescent it replaced — especially since there are no windows in the area.

I’ll remind you that it is extremely important to check the socket or fixture maximum and be sure the compact fluorescent bulb’s consumption is equal or lower (although the “equivalent” wattage will likely be higher, giving you more light).

BrokenSecrets.com

I can just imagine mom and pop waiting for the kids and grandkids coming in for Christmas.

© 2009 D L Ennis, All rights reserved.

NOTE: Permission for the use of my images is granted for personal websites and blogs but is to include a link back to this site and proper credit given to me, D L Ennis. Link to be used…(Visual Thoughts http://dlennis.wordpress.com/)

NOTE: Commercial use, and the creation of prints, must be purchased! For more information you can contact me here.

Image : http://www.flickr.com

Your driveway, with the front of the property, is a very prominent part of your landscape. It is very visual from the street. It is an entry into your home. Moreover, it is the main thing is that people are seeking when they come to your home. There are a few important things to think about when companies a driveway design.

1. Easier access to your garage (or parking) is required. If you make a turn, your garage or parking lot, you create a proper turning radius sothat it is not too narrow for a turn. A bow with a ten to fifteen feet radius works well. The depth of your garage door on the driveway edge, like you should get out a minimum of ten meters.

2. Driveways should also apply to guests who come to your door to function. Create a walk from the driveway to your front door entry, the wide and inviting. The bridge design should go wide enough for two people side by side. Four feet is the minimum of comfort. However, widerSidewalks will be even nicer if they are straight or curved.

3. Many people ignore extra parking or turning areas. As you pull out your garage or parking lot, try the area again, so you take us in the direction of the street can create. This room can also provide additional parking. When you design a roundabout, making it far enough in the vicinity of the front door, so that a car, while a parked car can pass. The entire width of the circle are not at thiswide. However, should the wide outside diameter seventy meters. You are probably thinking that this is also broad, but I assure you it does not.

4. If your property is suitable for a court at the parking area at the front door, make sure that the dimensions agree. Many people do not know how far they actually have to be for the court to function properly. Parking courts are generally square. Fifty five meters in width and depth are good to use dimensions.

5. How wide should have aDriveway will be? I prefer driveways, rather narrow, somewhere nine to eleven feet in width. Why create more hardscape than necessary? Although an access road is to be beautifully done, take the driveway pavement away from plantations and other garden amenities. In addition, driveways create runoff into the environment, so that the less hardscape square footage, the better. However, if your garage is in front of the house and shelter is not a long distance, the width of the driveway oftwo cars.

6. Think of entry driveway landscaping ideas. A beautifully landscaped entry is inviting. The planting design should blend with the rest of the landscape.
If your property is informal, the entry may wither somewhat different side, but balanced. On the other hand, if your house and the landscape more formal, you might want the same type of design at the driveway entry, create such an avenue of trees.

7. You can also dress up driveway entry bydecorative paving material presented. For example, a nice entry can be dropped pavers look nice with the balance of the driveway constructed of asphalt or loose stones. The driver entry is fifteen to twenty feet long and as wide as the ramp itself. The driver section can be a soldier, of course, defined as edges.

I hope I did think of you a few things that will be helpful when talking about the ramp design. I've written about these and other elements of drivewaysuch as pavement type, borders and landscape the entrance at the bottom of my website page.

diyinhome.blogspot.com

This afternoon, hanging with my son and a friend of his, I look out and see a bobcat walking down the driveway. It had come out of the woods and walked down to the end. It sat there for a bit and then dashed into the tall grass to hide when a car came down the road. It was way cool, although I was more into it than the boys. I guess others have seen a bobcat, maybe the same one, not too far from here. I guess now would not be the time to get those chickens…

Walking Down the Driveway

Still Walking

Bobcat Tracks After it Disappeared

Monday, December 21, Day 8, Act 134:

After our big snow was finished this weekend, the driveway, sidewalk, and steps were covered. I got up early on my first day completely off from work and went out to shovel the driveway, walkway, and steps.  I wanted to make sure that the no one would have any trouble walking or driving in the driveway to our house.  Besides, I would hate to be sued on Christmas from my mailman or even my wife, after me neglecting to shovel snow and clear an easily accessible path. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

This pic was taken early this morning, the last day of fall 2009, from my driveway after a record 23 inches of snow in one day in December snowfall yesterday.
© 2009 D L Ennis, All rights reserved.

NOTE: Permission for the use of my images is granted for personal websites and blogs but is to include a link back to this site and proper credit given to me, D L Ennis. Link to be used…(Visual Thoughts http://dlennis.wordpress.com/)

NOTE: Commercial use, and the creation of prints, must be purchased! For more information you can contact me here.

I was laying on the back of my favourite chair thinking that I was getting hungry, when I saw a familiar car pull up into the driveway.

After hearing it stop and hearing the car door shut, I knew the hunt was on and did what I usually do, which is to jump down and go to the door to great one of my people. 

I arrived just as I heard the key noise and the handle turning noise.

Then I felt it.

I was suddenly hit by the cold artic air from outside, which caught me by surprise.  The man, who the kids call Daddy walked in carrying several bags and quickly closed the door. I was relieved because the cold was making my wiskers twitch.

Now I know that the man that they call Daddy is not my real dad, but I like him anyway. I like him because he always says “Hi” to me and usually spends a couple of moments petting me, before he moves on to other things.

Today he was carrying a few plastic bags. I love bags, because you can make cool sounds with them. Which comes in handy when I am trying to get one of my people’s attention. I also like to stick my head in a bags and see what is in it.

The sadder the look the better

Anyway, the neat thing about these bags were that they carry food. I love food!!! But only cat food.  And after exploring in the bags, I discovered no cat food:(

Luckily, he had some left in the big wooden thing with doors on it where they keep things… like catfood.

And in order to communicate, I used my usual approach, which is to sit and stare at my kitty bowl and water bowl and then give a look that says, “Hey look at that It’s empty”. Now the key is to look sad and hungry. Think of a dirty little boy on the street corner with his hand out begging for food. The more sad you look the more effective this technique will be.

If that doesn’t work I either give a sharp meow, or if they are being really good at ignoring me I may have to nip at their ankles. But I only use that as a last resort.

Today the looking sad approach was successful and I got my fresh food and water.

Well since the hunt is over, that’s enough for now… I feeling sleepy.

If you know that your home’s curb appeal makes a great first impression to potential homebuyers, why not do all you can to give them the best first impression ever with low-cost improvements by adding decorative concrete curb appeal?

Graceful and appealing front entrances are a huge eye catcher.  And, now homeowners can easily have the most beautiful driveways and walkways in the neighborhood.

Transform your walkway with stain and patterns.  You already have an existing walkway right? Why not dress it up a little and make it look like stepping-stones or a brick pathway?  It really is that easy to turn your walkway into an architectural connection between your driveway and front-door.

Driveways can be boring and unappealing too because of the vast size.  So, there hundreds of designs that can be added to your driveway to make it the most appealing driveway in town.  Sport your favorite team logo, add your family name, create a decorative entrance with a brick pathway, or create your own decoration.

The sky is the limit when it comes to concrete staining and engraving.

Apparently the magic fairy dust that always seemed to follow Barry Hussein on the campaign trail has rubbed off.

I mean what else can one say about Obama’s determination to be on every single cover of every single magazine biting him right in his private parts but: Hahahahahaha.  BWAH HAH HAH HAH!!!

Let’s see.  What tips can Obama take from Tiger?  My own list, in no particular order:

10. Don’t leave your gold clubs laying around for your wife to grab as she chases you down the driveway.

9. You should probably keep your eyes on the road rather than constantly looking back at your wife chasing you down the driveway.

8. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea to give your wife golf lessons and teach her how to swing a club, after all.

7. Petite little blond women might be a lot tougher than they look.  Maybe you should think about that while you’re attacking Fox News.

6. You should probably take some boxing lessons or something just in case your wife finds out about your adulteries.

6. Bill Clinton can tell you all about the danger of stained dresses.   I can tell you all about the danger of tainted voice mails.

5. It might be a good idea to clear the White House driveway of any obstructions – you know, things like trees and fire hydrants – that could interfere with your getaway from your wife.

4. Your chickens coming home to roost may take the form of your wife’s nails roosting right across your face.

3. $300 million dollar sex can leave you strangely unfulfilled.

2. If your wife finds out about your affairs and tells you she wants to go “clubbing,” get out of Dodge FAST.

1. You might want to quit doing to the economy what I’ve been doing to Jaimee Grubbs, Rachel Uchitel, Kalika Moquin, etc. etc.  Payback is hell on wheels.

In addition to golf pointers, Tiger could have told Obama how to earn his own money rather than taxing it from everybody else.  But in any event, they’re both pissing fortunes away at rather incredible rates.

I think the timing of this magazine cover is God’s way of telling you something, Barry.

IN ANOTHER LIFE, I might have been having lunch at Balthazar. In this life, I am sculpting with leaves.

Using a hose or rope to lay out the curve of a path hasn’t worked for me. They just didn’t stay put, or make the kind of curve I wanted. I tried neon paint; that was a disaster. The line I managed to draw bore no relationship to the sweeping, natural curve I had in mind.

So I’ve been working a kind of negative space thing, building up future planting beds on either side of a projected flagstone path — which will run from my future parking court to the front door, then onward to the back, a distance of about sixty feet — with piles of scavenged oak leaves, leaving bare what will be the path. (The leaves, I hope, will be the basis for soil by next spring. I know I’ll have to add loads of amendments.)

Not having many leaves left on my own property, I’ve been dragging a tarp and stealing from my neighbors’ roadside piles, left out for the town to pick up (luckily, not for another 10 days). I dump them roughly where I want them, then fine-tune the line with a rake, contemplatively, like a Zen monk.

Amazingly, the leaves stay more or less where I put them, through wind and rain.

TODAY I BROUGHT in from outside a few tender garden plants I think might survive the winter in a corner of my unheated porch, above. I have an old storm window and plastic sheeting at the ready if the temperature really drops.

That variegated vinca vine has been known to survive in Brooklyn window boxes, and I got so much pleasure out of that annual grass I bought at the Amagansett Farmer Market, below in August, I might as well give it a try.

Hilltops, Views and privacy come with long driveways. Although there was an existing driveway when we bought the property, after a long winter of snow and ice, we had to face it – We needed to rebuild the driveway. We needed longer curves to slow the pitch. This makes a road less steep, slowing water velocity and reducing erosion. A longer, but more durable drive. It also makes it easier to walk or drive up the hill.

verio birdnest

We called in some excavators and the job seemed easy enough. Move the entry to a softer angle and extend a curve connecting with the existing driveway further up the hill. However, the property is full of shale which seemed to expand as it was dug. What was one scoop in the ground quickly swelled in size, exponentially.  As the hillside was dug out a bit and the drive repositioned somewhat, the excavator could hardly maneuver, there was so much material.  And we had to keep moving further out on the steep bank.

Driveway

As Ken worked his way up the driveway, drainage areas were included at various points to prevent future washouts and a drain pipe installed at the bottom of the driveway. Trucks had to be brought in to take the shale away. Fortunately, there was a place nearby down the road where they could use the material.

As should have been expected, it was all more than we expected. Soon the entire driveway was re-graded. At the top we discovered a Verio bird nest, and that Ken was a bird photographer.

In the end, we love the driveway with its curves and views slowly revealing the site, and it has held up wonderfully through one of the wettest years ever.

This morning, I woke up to scattered little clumps of snow on the grass. The air was crisp and cold, even as a hint of warmer air threatened to melt every last crystallized flake.

At the grocery store yesterday, I overheard so many people loudly exclaiming, “They would love for it to snow” Then continuing on with their seasonally induced amnesia.  “It would be so festive, ‘especially’ for the holidays.”

 I still have nightmares over last years snow fall.

 In December it showed almost every other day.  At one point, the snow came down so fast and heavy my snow thrower broke. I didn’t panic…I walked right in the house peeled off layers clothes and called the repairman.  I was told that I would need a specific part they didn’t have, and even if I got it, the repair guy couldn’t come out until the middle of January …maybe.

I didn’t panic. Instead I pulled out a rope with red flags and roped off the driveway.

Five feet of packed snow that was so solid I could stand on it, with three other people and not sink.  Nope, sorry I am not looking forward to snow. If Mother Nature could please hold off until January, I would be grateful.

 It might be too late, but I need to knock on wood fast!

My mail box was hit twice last year. The temporary mailbox, set in a bucket of cement, was also hit-twice. The second time it exploded.

Don’t get me wrong, I love snow.

 But, … last years snows were a little over the top.

If you add in my dog Zeus, ten and half, sweet heart of a dog, was hit by a car during a snow storm. An eighty pound black dog, in a white snow storm…

Please drive carefully this holiday season.

A brochure is an easy way to spread the word about your business. In your absence, it serves as your business handshake. If you’re there to hand one out, it solidifies the connection by giving your prospects an informative, take-home guide with all your necessary contact info. (It’s amazing how many people forget to put their contact info on their brochure. Place yours in a conspicuous area.)

Have your designer convert your brochure into a PDF format, so you can not only print it out to hand out in person or to use as a direct-mail piece, but can also attach the file to e-mails or embed it on your Web site to make it available electronically.

Here are 5 tips to consider when creating a brochure:

1) Know Your Audience. The colors, the fonts, the amount of text, the diction, the layout and the use of testimonials or photos will all depend on the age, education level, taste, habits and needs of your target market — all good points to consider in preparation for your meeting with your copywriter and designer.

2) Know How to Hold ‘Em, Know How to Fold ‘Em … Customers and clients may hold and open your brochure a myriad of ways. Fold yours so that it opens correctly when unfolded (with the text right-side up), and place teaser copy on the outside to make your readers want to open it and learn more.

3) Know Your Ps from Your Qs. Enlist an experienced set of eyes to proofread your brochure for spelling and grammar missteps, but keep in mind that your audience dictates the style. For example, if yours is a more casual target audience, you can be more relaxed on the grammar. Typos, however, are an entirely different story — be on the lookout for those!

4) Know When to Say When. Sure, that unusual font you found for your headers makes your brochure look really unique, but try to balance it out by keeping your body copy relatively neutral. The main thing to keep in mind is readability: You want to make your message easily digestible, so aim for balance between the amount of text and number of photos, between the use of bolding and italics, and so on. Simplicity is often your most effective tool, so you may find you can do without a whole lot of extras.

5) Know It Like the Back of Your Hand. Your customers may reference your brochure months down the line. It’s important that you know every photo used, for example, so that when someone says, “I want my driveway to look like the one on page 3 of your brochure,” you know exactly what that potential customer is seeing. You can easily accomplish this by keeping a copy of your brochure in your work station for reference when you’re taking phone calls, and tuck one in your bag when you’re out and about in case you have to take a client call on your cell.

Did you know that Saidandsung writes brochure copy with a marketer’s eye? I can also connect you with my design partner if you require a designer for your brochure project. It saves you the step of having to hunt for your own, and we work seamlessly together!

E-mail me or check out my site.

NOT LONG AGO, my driveway looked like this, a straight run from road to house:

For the past couple of weeks, an hour here, an hour there, I’ve been laying the groundwork, literally, for a walking path from my future parking court — a gravel square approximately 25′ x 25′, yet to be built — to the front door.

My plan is to replace the straight-ahead dirt driveway with a gradual, curving, S-shaped path of cut flagstone. And since the path will be only 4′ wide, and the existing driveway is roughly 10′ wide, that leaves lots of room on either side for generous planting beds.

Because there was nothing but compacted, sandy dirt where I hope to grow a variety of cottage garden perennials next spring, I’ve been moving leaf mold — chopped leaves piled in the woods behind my house by the tree man who recently took down several large oaks — wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow (and then, when the wheelbarrow’s axle broke, by garbage can on hand truck) from the pile in the woods to the front of the property, where I’m using the partially decomposed leaf mold to sculpt curvaceous new beds. Essentially, I’m composing on the spot.

Looking toward road from backyard, late November

I was inspired by an article in an organic gardening magazine that said if you pile chopped leaves and other organic matter in fall and let it break down over the winter. come spring — voila! Lovely planting medium.

I’ve run out of chopped leaves, and am now using whole fallen leaves, less desirable because they take longer to decompose. While my neighbors rake their leaves to the roadside for the town to pick up, I’m hoarding mine (and coveting theirs) to add to my newly sculpted beds-to-be.

Submitted by: Cody, Stillwater via Submit a Kludge!

Favorite Comment: Fixer Titania says, “We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Odd.
We hear he is a whiz of a wiz of ever a wiz there was.
If ever a whiz of a wiz there was,
The Wizard of Odd is one because,
Because, because, because, because, becaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuse,
Because of the kludgerful things he does!
We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Odd…”

Blessing Hill Drive, originally uploaded by BeeRealty.

Blessing Hill Drive, Waxhaw, NC.
Photo Taken 11/20/2009 with little i-phone camera.

But I love it.

If you have seen one driveway, chances are you seen them all. This is not the case when you hire our Creative Concrete company. We incorporate custom stamped and stenciled concrete to meet your custom design to coincide with the look of your landscape. Not only that, we can place inlayed lighting around your driveway. Communication is key with our Creative Concrete company to ensure absolute satisfaction between contractor and customer.

We thrive on the opprotunity to create and install the custom driveway of your dreams that is unique and unlike any other typical driveway. We are licensed, bonded and insured.

Complete your unique look and style of your home by visiting our top notch custom Creative Driveway Concrete web site today.

There is a tree in my mom’s driveway that is up against the neighbors fence. This tree has wound itself through the neighbor’s fence many times over to get to sunlight. Its fighting for its survival and doing whatever it takes to make it. That made me smile this morning because it’s exactly where I want to be and what I should be doing. Fighting for my survival. Just my smiling thought for the day.