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Wednesday, August 29, 2012
Toadies: Possum Kingdom [Video]
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Ideas for Baby Showers | The New Home Ec
We had a baby shower for my friend yesterday, and it?s one of the most fun parties I?ve ever planned. I co-hosted with some of my best friends in the world. We shared responsibilities, bounced ideas off one another, and had a lot of fun in the planning and prep.
The party itself was fun but went all too quickly! Which, I think is definitely the sign of a great event. The decor by Hoosier Party Girl was simply amazing. I had a blast planning the food, featuring a yummy chocolate fountain. And, the afternoon went smoothly with a great group of friends.
Here are a few photos from our party and my tips for hosting an awesome baby shower:
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Decorate Simply
Don't spend a lot of money on decorations you'll throw away after the party. Go with small bursts of color, simple decor, and items the mom can use later (like a diaper wreath!). For my sister's shower a few years ago, we featured table centerpieces like classic toys, teddy bears, and balls ? all things my nephew played with for years./the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#decorate-simply
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Serve in Baby Items
Cheesecake in a baby food jar, chip dip in a toddler bowl, and cupcakes served on baby blocks all make for a fun, creative way to serve party food.
/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#serve-in-baby-items
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Include Nursery Decor
If you know the theme of baby's nursery, see if you can feature it. Punkin 2.0 has a few owls in her nursery, so we used owls in our theme ? and now she has a few more!
/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#include-nursery-decor
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Skip the Games
Let's face it, baby shower games are kind of a waste of time. They're awkward, silly, and not fun at all. We had a few as a backup plan, but we spent our time crafting for baby instead ? with onesies, felt,double-sided iron-ons, and a few printed patterns as examples. (Jennifer clearly won crafting yesterday with this awesome shirt!)/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#skip-the-games
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Consider Mom's Cravings
Most of our menu was based on cravings or food the mom-to-be had tweeted about over the last few weeks. When her husband went out on a late night cheesecake run, I began searching for recipes. I found a recipe for cheesecake in a jar, and immediately knew I wanted to try baking them in baby food jars!/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#consider-moms-cravings
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Celebrate
A baby is a cause for celebration, and that just screams champagne. I had Perrier for Mom, but the rest of us enjoyed champagne over cotton candy ? a super fun party drink perfect for toasting mom-to-be! Fill a wine glass with pink or blue cotton candy, then pour champagne. It will instantly melt into a sweet, bubbly punch.
/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#celebrate
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Provide Inspiration
I see a baby shower as a way to support the mom-to-be ? to remind her that she has friends and a support network to turn to when the baby is home. Advice cards are a really common baby shower activity, but we chose to use the diapers leftover from the wreath craft to provide tips & funny sayings to keep her smiling through diaper changes in those first few, exhausting weeks.
/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#provide-inspiration
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Choose a Simple Favor
Each of our guests took home a bottle of pink nail polish on a cute owl printable ? a super simple thank you gift that matched the theme. I also love this idea from my cousin. For her son's 1st birthday, she filled baby food jars with blue & white M&Ms. Cute, simple, and inexpensive!
/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/#choose-a-simple-favor
How to Make a Diaper Wreath
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Source: http://blogs.babble.com/the-new-home-ec/2012/08/19/how-to-host-the-perfect-baby-shower/
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Monday, August 20, 2012
College Works Painting Wins Second Talk of the Town Award for ...
Achieving the highest customer satisfaction rating of 5 stars for the second straight year, College Works Painting has won its second consecutive CMUS Talk of the Town Customer Satisfaction Award in the Painting Contractors category.
The Talk of the Town Awards, presented by Talk of the Town News, Customer Care News magazine and Celebration Media U.S. (CMUS), honors companies and professionals that provide excellent customer service as reported by their customers through no-cost, user-review websites, blogs, social networks, business rating services, and other honors and accolades. This data is analyzed by a team of researchers who calculate a company?s CMUS Power Rating?. Only those that receive a 4-star to 5-star rating receive the CMUS Talk of the Town Customer Satisfaction Award.
College Works Painting hires more than 2,000 college students each year, providing painting services for more than 10,000 customers across the nation. Initially founded in 1996 in Southern California, the business has expanded to cover more than 25 states.
Customer service is key to the painting company?s core. Each year College Works Painting interviews more than 50,000 college students to find the 2,000 it will hire. These students are responsible for everything from marketing and selling their business to hiring their own workers and dealing one on one with their customers. ?They start a business from scratch,? says Jason Bay, Marketing Director for College Works Painting. ?The students are doing this to not only pay their way through school, but also to gain better business experience. They are truly doing this to learn how to serve customers better, not just to put food on the table.?
In addition, the company has a full-time office staff and the needed technology to support the students in the field. ?To us, ?the customer is always right? is not good enough,? says Bay. The company prides itself on resolving complaints within a one- to two-hour timeframe, and is able to do this thanks to a 24/7 answering service as well as its IT department. ?Our IT department has been key in giving us the ability to notify the field workers instantly of customer call-ins through text, email and through our in-house intranet system (MYNSG).?
According to Bay, poor customer service is not tolerated, which is demonstrated by the company?s consecutive Talk of the Town Awards for excellent customer satisfaction. ?We take customer service very seriously,? he says, noting that communication is very important and the goal is to return all customer calls within the hour. ?We also take a very personal approach when we paint someone?s home. We find it key that we keep the customer very involved in the project and informed of what we are doing on a daily basis.?
College Works Painting is headquartered in Irvine, California. For more information, call 888-450-9675 or go online to www.collegeworks.com.
About the Award and Sponsors:
This is the fourth year CMUS, Talk of the Town News and Customer Care News have honored companies for achieving high levels of customer satisfaction with the Talk of the Town Awards. Businesses eligible to receive the award include, but are not limited to, beauty salons, spas, restaurants, bakeries, dentists, auto repair facilities, veterinarians, home repair and improvement contractors, florists, hospitals, and physicians.
For more information about the award or its sponsors, please contact CMUS and Talk of the Town News at 877-498-6405 or go online to www.talkofthetownnews.com.
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German tax revenues up 9 percent on a year ago - The Local
Germany's state coffers are still bursting, despite the ongoing euro crisis, with tax revenues increasing by 8.6 percent over the past year, figures released on Monday show.
The German taxman received ?311.4 billion between January and July - five percent more than the same period last year, slightly more than the four percent increase forecast last year.
The tax bump is being put down to rising employment and increased income.
But tax income is not necessarily a reliable sign of economic health, since it often lags behind other indicators. Germany's economic growth slowed down in the second quarter of the year, which is likely to affect state finances next year, the government said.
"The whole picture painted by economic indicators suggests that the German economy could slow down during the rest of the year," a Finance Ministry statement said.
Exports, in particular would probably be affected by the recession in other eurozone countries, the statement added.
But there are more positive signs coming from consumption figures. "On the back of increasing employment and wages, which are reflected in the dynamic development of income tax revenue, it seems that the preconditions are there for a continuation of positive consumption development," the statement said.
But despite increasing riches, the German government is apparently planning to remain frugal next year. TheBild newspaper said on Monday that the government's 2013 budget was likely to spend ?302.2 billion - ?10.5 billion less than the current year.
The newspaper also said that Finance Minister Wolfgang Sch?uble was set to borrow ?18.8 billion in the new year - ?13.3 billion less than in 2012.
Next year's budget is not expected to be released until November.
The Local/DPA/bk
Source: http://www.thelocal.de/national/20120820-44463.html
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Every Auto Insurance Company Is Scared Of ... - Used Cars and More
Auto insurance can be one of those things that we spend a lot of money on but really don?t know just quite what we have bought. This article can help you understand what your auto insurance policy provides for you. Understanding your policy can help you to be able to save money by not buying benefits that you don?t need.
You shouldn?t buy a vehicle unless you check the insurance rates on it first. You may find the car you really want has higher insurance rates for many different reasons. It may have a high rate of being stolen or wrecked, which can cause your insurance to be higher and you will be paying more for it.
When you get a quote for your auto insurance don?t overvalue your vehicle. This will only cause your rates to be higher and cost you more money in the long run. In the case of an accident, you will only be paid for the market value of your car anyway.
If you have specialty vehicles such as motorcycles, recreational vehicles or off-road vehicles, make sure you have adequate coverage. Many auto insurance carriers offer specialty policies for these types of vehicles that are well worth the cost. Since the nature of most of these vehicles is recreational, the premium is frequently less because they are not used every day. However, should damages occur, you will be glad to have coverage.
Property damage liability covers you in the event that your vehicle hits someones property. It is a required coverage in all but 3 states.
Lower your car insurance premiums by taking a safe driver class. Many car insurance companies will offer a discount if you can provide proof of completion of a safety driving class. Taking, and passing, such a class gives the insurance company a good indication that you take your driving skills seriously and are a safe bet.
Car Insurance
Depending on what type of car one chooses to drive a person can end up paying different insurance rates. Driving a sports car can cost more than driving a regular sedan or minivan. Motorcycles can also have different rates. It is important to know these things when considering car insurance.
If you can, try taking public transportation to work or even car pooling.Almost every car insurance company is charging you according to the risk you pose, so a great way to save money is to come across as a low-risk driver to the insurer.
If you are willing to go to great lengths to save money on auto insurance, consider eliminating a car you do not use often. Any car insurance policy will be significantly cheaper for one vehicle than for two. While dropping a car is a fairly large lifestyle adjustment, the insurance savings can make the blow much softer.
As already put forth, auto insurance protects so much more than just your car. It can be the difference between being sued or having your insurance company take care of details like that for you. By using the information in this article and choosing the right insurance, you can protect your car, your passengers, and your assets.
Learn additional information on car insurance by getting instant auto quote and find out what things you need to learn.
Source: http://www.carsfort.com/auto-loans/every-auto-insurance-company-is-scared-of-these-tips
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Friday, August 3, 2012
Oceans, plants help put the brakes on global warming, study finds
Earth's oceans and plants are now absorbing more than twice the amount of carbon dioxide that they soaked up in 1960, helping to slow global warming, a new study has found.
This 2011 photo shows piles of coal at NRG Energy's W.A. Parish Electric Generating Station in Thompsons, Texas.
David J. Phillip/AP/File
EnlargeOceans and land have more than doubled the amount of greenhouse gases they absorb since 1960 in new evidence that nature is helping to brake global warming, a study showed on Wednesday.
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"Even though we have done very little to decrease our emissions, the Earth continues to lend us a helping hand," lead author Ashley Ballantyne of the University of Colorado told Reuters.
Carbon soaked up from the atmosphere by the seas and by plants and soil on land rose to an estimated 5 billion tonnes in 2010 from 2.4 billion in 1960, according to the findings by his team of U.S.-based scientists in the journal Nature.
Over the 50-year period, nature had soaked up 55 percent of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions that totalled 350 billion tonnes, mostly carbon dioxide (CO2) from burning fossil fuels, it said.
Knowing how nature reacts to rising concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases in the air is vital to understanding climate change, blamed for raising temperatures and more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising sea levels.
The figures were in line with data by the Global Carbon Project, grouping scientists around the world, which put nature's rising absorption at 5 billion tonnes of carbon in 2010, Corinne Le Quere, co-chair of the project, told Reuters.
Plants, both on land and in the seas, use carbon to grow. Ocean waters also absorb carbon dioxide.
"The Earth is pretty resilient," Ballantyne said. "The flip side is that if the Earth wasn't taking up all that CO2 we would be experiencing much more warming over the last 50 years than we have observed."
Declining carbon
The report said: "Several recent studies suggest that rates of carbon uptake by the land and ocean have remained constant or declined in recent decades. Other work, however, has called into question the reported decline.
"As of 2010 there is no empirical evidence that carbon uptake has started to diminish on the global scale."
While the uptake by the oceans and land has doubled, human emissions have quadrupled in the past 50 years. China, the United States, the European Union and India are top emitters.
Le Quere, also director of the Tyndall Center in Britain, said the main point of controversy was how far nature's "sinks", like the oceans and forests, would keep on soaking up carbon.
But she said the new study "doesn't go very far" towards answering the question of when nature would be saturated.
In a warmer world, changes in ocean chemistry or faster rotting of plants might stop overall carbon absorption. When that happens, heat-trapping emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere would stay there, accelerating warming.
Average world temperatures have risen by 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4 F) since the Industrial Revolution. The warmest 13 years since records began in the mid-19th century have been in the past 15, according to United Nations data.
Ballantyne said his findings focused on the rising uptake by the oceans and the land. Other recent studies "suggest that sinks will become saturated within the coming century, maybe in the next 30 to 50 years," he said.
And there were signs of big oscillations in carbon uptake by nature in the past 20 years, perhaps linked to an eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and a strong El Nino warming in the Pacific Ocean in 1998, the study said.
Ballantyne suggested the continued high rate of absorption could be a sign that some areas yet to be studied in detail, such as the Arctic, may be taking up more carbon. In the Arctic, summer sea ice is shrinking and permafrost is thawing.
(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
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Avoiding Olympic spoilers is a sport of its own
The United States' Mariel Zagunis asks for a ruling in her match against Japan's Seira Nakayama in the women's individual sabre fencing competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012, in London.(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
The United States' Mariel Zagunis asks for a ruling in her match against Japan's Seira Nakayama in the women's individual sabre fencing competition at the 2012 Summer Olympics, Wednesday, Aug. 1, 2012, in London.(AP Photo/Dmitry Lovetsky)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Mandy Hauck turned 25 on Wednesday, but she's avoiding Facebook and her happy birthday messages to steer clear of Olympic spoilers about her favorite sport, fencing.
Hauck has also deleted her iPhone apps for CNN and ESPN, opting for news from the London Games the old-fashioned way, via TV coverage that's time-delayed by NBC for prime time.
The network is making live streams of the action available in real time online. Hauck's hanging tough, though, in favor of doing actual work during the day as the marketing communications manager for a software company in Atlanta, a job that requires her to stay on Twitter while she attempts to stay away from its main page and trending topics.
"I enjoy the experience of sitting with my family and friends in front of the television and cheering for the athletes as if they were competing live," said Hauck, a former college fencer who has been following two-time American gold medalist Mariel Zagunis in London. "It's much more entertaining and enjoyable that way!"
It's also incredibly difficult with social media in full flower. Olympic spoilers have people turning off phone alerts, hiding their iPads and shushing co-workers in search of simpler times, when screaming at the TV during nail-biting competition was a sport unto itself.
Pervasive spoilers even solicited an apology from NBC's Olympics executive producer, Jim Bell. He tweeted a mea culpa for a Monday night gaffe, when the network ran a "Today" show teaser with swimmer Missy Franklin showing off her gold medal ? just before the network aired the race where she won it.
While angry tweeters have taken to ? yes, Twitter ? to grouse about spoilers, Paul Redfern at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania has entered what he calls "my Olympic dark period" on social media. That's not an easy thing when your job description includes overseeing social media engagement. He's also the dad of two young kids.
"Watching the prime-time broadcast is a family tradition," he said. "The Summer Olympics are almost always on for part of our vacation and we always gather as a family to watch each evening."
Redfern is leaving the tweeting on behalf of the college to another person in the office for the duration.
Lisa McTigue in Los Angeles is a former competitive swimmer who truly loves sitting down to soak up the Olympics on TV. Unfortunately, she's also an Internet marketing consultant who can't do her job without Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
"All the excitement I have felt for the Olympics in previous years is completely gone," she said. "In previous years, I felt inspired to get back in the pool. This year, that inspiration and excitement is ? meh."
Despite complaints, NBC's corporate owners said Wednesday that they expect to break even on the London games after once predicting they'd take a $200 million loss. On Tuesday night, 38.7 million people tuned in.
Count Rob Holliday among the Olympic traditionalists. He, too, has turned off push alerts and kept Twitter and Facebook use to a minimum. He's also avoiding major online news sites and turns off the radio and TV when anchors issue Olympic spoiler alerts.
"I thought it was a fairly airtight plan," he said. "After jumping through all those technological hoops, I walked in to my daughter's pediatrician's office only to hear a woman say, "'Guess what? Team USA won the gold in women's gymnastics!' Argh!!"
Graduate student Shraddha Sankhe, who's spending the summer in Washington, D.C., as a communications intern for a nonprofit, considers it mission impossible to avoid Olympic spoilers, so she's going with it.
She's been plugging in to social media big time to follow results and watching live feeds online. "It doesn't make sense to wait for the results to be 'seen' on network television a few hours later," Sankhe said. "Internet more than makes up for a cable subscription these days for students like me."
Sankhe caught the opening ceremony live via BBC One using a link forwarded by friends on Twitter.
Olympic purist Jennifer Chang in Saratoga, Calif., can't afford to go dark online due to her communications job for a medical research foundation. But she's curating the Twitter feeds she follows. She's temporarily dumping the ones that are spilling news without spoiler warnings in favor of those using the broadest terms possible to announce results while providing links to details within a tweet.
That, she said, leaves it up to her to link for further news while staying in touch online. "I appreciate that greatly."
Some Twitter fanatics are taking full advantage of filters available on Tweetdeck and other tools used to organize feeds.
Beth Laughlin, a former competitive gymnast, has gone dark on news feeds of all kinds as she intensely follows the sport. But her husband, Will Laughlin, turned out to be the spoiler.
"Halfway through my first cup of coffee, a New York Times alert popped up on my iPad: U.S. women win team gold. The words fell out of my mouth before I knew what they meant or could gulp them back down," he said.
"My wife cocked her head sideways in disgust and said, 'You just ruined it!' She still cheered and cried while watching the events unfold on TV, but it really wasn't the same."
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