10 Spring Cleaning Tips For Your Kitchen
May 31, 2008
The words “spring cleaning” can make the neatest person cringe. They mean more work. As if cleaning all year long wasn’t enough. Spring cleaning is more than just cleaning…it is deep cleaning. Something that most people do not have time for all year long. Since my expertise is cooking, I have decided to focus on spring cleaning and dirt build up prevention tips for the kitchen….
Baking soda or club soda will clean and shine stainless steel sinks easily. Simply apply directly to surface and scrub a dub dub.
To Remove stubborn water spots from a stainless sink scrub with a cloth dampened with rubbing alcohol or vinegar.
To freshen up your “white” porcelain sinks, place paper towels across the bottom of your sink and saturate with bleach. Let sit over night and rinse.
After you’ve cleaned your refrigerator and freezer place an open box of baking soda in the back of each to help absorb odors for about a month.
A few drops vanilla extract on a piece of cotton placed in the refrigerator will also help eliminate odors.
Wipe refrigerator with vinegar after cleaning to help prevent mildew.
Butterfly Gardening
May 30, 2008
Butterfly gardening is not only a joy, it is one way that you can help restore declining butterfly populations. Simply adding a few new plants to your backyard may attract dozens of different butterflies, according to landscape designers at the University of Guelph.
Butterflies, like honeybees, are excellent pollinators and will help increase your flower, fruit and vegetable production if you provide them with a variety of flowers and shrubs. They are also beautiful to watch, and are sometimes called “flowers on the wing.”
- Begin by seeding part of your yard with a wildflower or butterfly seed mix, available through seed catalogues and garden centers. Wildflowers are a good food source for butterflies and their caterpillars.
- Choose simple flowers over double hybrids. They offer an easy-to-reach nectar source.
- Provide a broad range of flower colors. Some butterflies like oranges, reds and yellows while others are drawn toward white, purple or blue flowers.
- Arrange wildflowers and cultivated plants in clumps to make it easier for butterflies to identify them as a source of nectar.
- If caterpillars are destroying favorite plants, transfer them by hand to another food source. Avoid the use of pesticides, which can kill butterflies and other beneficial insects.
How to Get the Most Out of Your Home Theater ? Without Spending a Fortune
May 29, 2008
So you’ve scraped and saved, now you’ve finally gotten together a semi-respectable home theater system. You want even more, but the idea of spending another few thousand on new front speakers doesn’t cut it. What can you do?
There are ways to get the most out of what you have without breaking the bank. There are several areas you can look at to ensure your theater is set up correctly and performing at its best.
Cables and Interconnects ? It’s imperative the signals are transferred from your source components to your speakers, going through various components along the way, with the least amount of degradation. Make sure your audio, video and speaker cables are all of good quality and that none are old and corroded. You can use contact enhancer to be sure the connection is really good. If you need any quality cables, check here: http://1touchmovie.com/blockbuster/BetterCables.html Make sure to use the highest level of A/V connection your system supports. i.e. if you can use a component or DVI video connection from your DVD to your display device then do it.
Hydrogen Cell Generator For The Home
May 29, 2008
A Hydrogen Cell generator in your house could power up all the appliances and components and even charge your car and at peak times sell energy back to the grid. Imagine being your own power company and getting a check in the mail, from someone other than Enron of course. Otherwise you could use the check to play your friends in racket ball. As many of you know I am a fan of this and other such energy technologies. Making Electricity from Hydrogen and oxygen is easy really. The by products of this process are heat and water. Heat can be used to heat your house and cook food, while the purified water sure beats anything coming out of the tap.
Where do we get the Hydrogen? From Natural Gas, CH4. One Carbon for every 4 hydrogen. With Platinum very inexpensive these days generally everything you need to make a hydrogen cell machine is easily available. GE makes a real cool unit that costs about $7,500 about the same price as a quiet generator producing enough to easily run our Command Center 4-7Kilowatts. There are many companies in the market who now produce these units.
Energy Partners in FL;
Housing and Smart Houses; Energy Self Sufficient Possibilities
May 28, 2008
Housing and smart houses. I believe that we could have avoided this upcoming Natural Gas Shortage by building smarter and more efficient homes. For instance by using small devises which are simple such as using the idea of mini-hydro pumps, reflective energy boosting solar efficiency by 2.5 from a water pond (with 1-2 inches of water covered by a polymer substance of a couple of molecules and a reflective bottom surface), condensation and gravity. These small things can improve the energy efficiency by 10-fold. Here are a few things; this is how I propose which could be done.
Put in a pond which has a reflective ceramic bottom and is filled with water of 2-3 inches depth out side of the house on the East side. The sun comes up and reflects off the water onto a side of the house which has a convex/concave lenses shaped glass window facing 30 degrees as an over hang off the house. On the other side of the lens enclosed is a shaft where the air is heated.
The Science of Architecture
May 27, 2008
You’re told to take vitamins, drink plenty of water, get a good night’s sleep and exercise, but has anyone ever told you that the design of your home and office can impact your health? You wouldn’t be alone in raising an eyebrow and questioning how this could be so, but thousands of years ago, the ancient seers of India spent entire lifetimes observing how man-made structures impact humans beings. Their findings were compiled into a body of knowledge called Vastu Shastra.
In Sanskrit, Vastu means science and Shastra means architecture. It is from this environmental science that some of the worlds’ most enduring structures were created.
According to Vastu, all five elements in nature (earth, water, fire, air and space) are in perfect balance. When we build, this delicate balance is disrupted, which can cause a wide range of physical problems from poor sleep to major illnesses.
You might have experienced this if you’ve ever remodeled or moved into a new home and suddenly your health got worse for no apparent reason. If you work with the natural laws inherent in the universe rather than against them, you can align these five elements to your advantage. This is what Vastu Shastra is all about, and the affects on your health and well-being can be dramatic.
Security Alarm System Motion Detectors
May 26, 2008
Passive Infrared Motion Detectors- These detectors are also known as PIR detectors. The technology they utilize is "passive infrared". The device is mounted on a wall or in the corner of a room. It sends invisible fingers out into the covered area in several layers. The top layer goes the furthest and averages about 60 feet straight ahead and 35 feet on the sides.
The center layer of beams spreads the area about mid way and the bottom layer sweeps the room closest to the detector. These beams individually measure the infrared temperature of what ever they land on and look for a clash of temperature against that point. For example if a beam lands on your couch and knows what temperature it is, when you walk in front of the couch your temperature is different and causes a violation. You would be hard pressed to match the temperature of everything in your home as you walk about and that makes motion detectors hard to compromise.
Passive motion detectors have a microchip in them that will adjust the device for slow and methodical temperature changes. This way as your room warms up and cools down during an armed alarm period, you will not get a false alarm.
Feeding the Hummingbirds
May 25, 2008
Early in May here in west central Wisconsin, I can count on seeing a Ruby Throated Hummingbird hovering in front of my kitchen window, flitting back and forth, as if to say, “there was a hummingbird feeder RIGHT HERE last year. Where is it?”
And then I know it is time to put out hummingbird nectar. I feed a 3-to-1 mixture of water and sugar (3 cups of water and 1 cup of sugar brought to a boil and cooled to room temperature). After the hummingbirds’ long trip from South America, they are thin and hungry.
The general rule-of-thumb is a 4-to-1 mixture, but to start out in early spring I always use a 3-to-1 mixture. Later on in the summer, when there are more flowers available, I switch to a 4-to-1 mixture.
I know it is important to wash the hummingbird feeder when I fill it to clean out any mold. I know it is also important to thoroughly rinse the hummingbird feeder when I am finished cleaning it to remove any soap or other chemicals.
Fire Hazard Alert - Is Your Dryer Ready to Ignite
May 24, 2008
In recent years there has been many stories about dryers catching on fire. Should we be concerned? Yes of course. We should take seriously anything that may put our family at risk.
Was the problem the dryer? Rarely. After investigating it is usually determined to have been the venting within the home catching on fire, and not the dryer.
Obviously appliance manufacturers are concerned about the possibility of any dryer related fires. They have made it a policy to advise both service companies and consumers that the use of plastic venting is prohibited. They have also begun issuing cautions not to exceed suggested maximums for venting length. Let me try to explain the details of this problem.
The drying process
When clothes are being dried inside your family dryer there are two processes happening. Firstly, heat is applied to the air inside the dryer drum as it turns. This raises its internal temperature to approximately 175 Fahrenheit causing moisture to be driven out of the clothes by evaporation. Secondly, large amounts of air is passed through the clothes. Surprisingly, the real trick to efficiently dry clothes is not the heat, but rather this vast volume of air.
Ridding Your Home of Geopathic Stress
May 24, 2008
Just as there are solar magnetic stresses that come from the sun and the galactic "soup" that supports the universe, there are geomagnetic stresses that come from within the earth. The field of geobiology, or geopathology, is a science that has its roots in Europe and has slowly gained popularity in the United States over the past 25 years.
Research and proven modalities of detecting internal earth stresses has been extensive in Europe. Much of the research available today has come from the scientific and medical communities in countries like Germany, Austria, France and England.
Natural radiation that is inherent within in the earth can be distorted by natural and man-made influences such as mineral concentrations, fault lines, underground streams and underground public utilities. When imbalances affect the earth’s magnetic field, there are distortions that affect humans.
Illnesses of a chronic nature come from detrimental environmental imbalances that affect the physiology. Dr. Otto Bergsmann, a professor at the University of Vienna reported changes in serum values of calcium, zinc and serotonin in humans after short-term exposure to non-life supporting earth radiation sites. Even this limited exposure undermined the immune systems when exposed to these negative forces. Spending longer periods of time in unhealthy environments can gradually deteriorate the health.
