Thousands of keen skiers will presently be finding their ski gear and dashing off in search of the heaviest snow conditions.
And beyond question the impact from your carbon footprint will be close to as far down the list of holiday musts as a xmas tree after Christmas.
Just last Christmas, a slow snowfall made the the broadsheets and holidaymakers were panicky about the bits of snow dissolving almost as soon as they put down.
Ski holiday business Chalet1802, based at the foot of Mount Blanc in Chamonix the French Alps, is one of the only autonomous businesses to go carbon neutral and give snowboarders an environmentally friendly selection while booking their skiing trip.
Chalet1802 proprietor AILANI stated: Last winter was quite a shock with the warmest winter in 60 yrs in the French Alps. Skiing ski fields like Flaine, Samoens and Montroc has difficulty.It was temperate and the snowfall didnt last so a lot of the early season skiing season in the mountains was limited. We selected to go carbon neutral to help preserve the ski resort.
AILANI said: We are not assaying to dictate to guests only we think it is of import to provide them the choice without augmenting the cost of the ski holiday. If the guest book with us they can more than off set their carbon footprint and we absorb the additional costs. Naturally we still have a sauna and a hot tub - guests desire opulence but not at the expense of the alps mountains, so we considered ways of diminishing the affect of a guest traveling over here for a winter holiday.”
It just seems like yesterday…you vowed for a lifetime of love together and now you are awaiting your first wedding anniversary. It is a beautiful feeling, celebrating that special day for the first time, rather than an ordinary gift a romantic first anniversary gift would be ideal. There are several romantic gift ideas that would touch a chord in your beloved’s heart. You could gift a message in the bottle, you could check out different ones, the scroll would be a personalized message…quite passionate and romantic. Another romantic gift is the last rolo…could be a gold or silver one beautifully packaged, if you write poems you can get a beautiful poem with your wedding photograph elegantly framed for your love.
You have a music lover as your beloved then try presenting personalized gold discs with dedication plate and your special song. You can choose the colors, the words on the dedication plate, your sweetheart would be thrilled. Name a star packages are a well known romantic first anniversary gift and come with complete star gazer guide, you can name your star and view it in a clear night sky, you can learn all you need to know about stars, constellations and the beautiful night sky…your beloved would treasure this gift for eternity. Love is the key, choose your gift romantically and you can see the blush on her lovely face.
Quilting is already a fun hobby but did you know that their are thousands of other quilters out there just like you with an undying passion to quilt and learn about new techniques and patterns? What if I told you that you could get free quilting patterns online as well as connect with some incredible quilters? On this site I found you can do all of this and this is one powerful tool because it makes quilting a lot more fun than you were already having! Imagine sharing your ideas, concepts, quilt pictures and even patterns, with other enthusiastic quilter? I’m glad I joined!
Just about every hobby has its own corresponding social networking site such as forums, groups on the big five social networks and web 2.0 sites and even chat rooms. What would you say to a membership site dedicated strictly to quilters with all the bells and whistles of any social networking site? What if I told you this site had free quilting patterns, advanced communication tools like video chat, voice chat, and much more? You’d probably say where do I sign up right? I know that’s what I said when I saw this site in a Google search for my quilt patch, while looking for patterns by private users on the web. I found much more than I ever thought was possible!
I hear the questions again and again: “How do I get my child to
…
…quit whining?”
…do their homework?”
…clean their room?”
…do the dishes?”
And I hear all kinds of answers for each situation. Here is my
proposal, rather than handle each situation as an isolated
event, let’s look at them in light of what we know about human
behavior.
Events that appear to be random, isolated behaviors actually fit
into predictable patterns for most children. If you understand
the patterns, you’ll know what to do in most situations. I’ve
developed the five B’s to reduce these patterns to five easy to
remember and apply principles.
So, let’s get started…
1. Be Positive
People — including children — do things for one of two
reasons: to avoid pain or to pursue pleasure. As a parent, you
constantly work between these two options. If you use lots of
negatives — like punishments — to drive behavior, your child
will do just enough to avoid the pain. Rewarding good behaviors
rather than punishing bad ones, improves the chance that you’ll
get cooperation and not conflict from your child.
Noticing unacceptable behaviors and stopping them with a
punishment is easy. It takes effort to recognize good behaviors
and praise them. You’ll need to do both; but the more you
recognize the good, the less likely you are to see the bad.
2. Be Specific
Make sure you speak to your child about specific behaviors.
Whether you administer discipline or offer praise, the more
specific you make your words the better.
Let’s say your child interrupts you. Many people get angry and
tell their children to “stop being rude and inconsiderate.”
Well, “rude” and “inconsiderate” are interpretations of
behavior, not behaviors. A better statement would be, “I don’t
appreciate it when you interrupt and challenge me. I see those
behaviors as rude and inconsiderate. The next time you speak to
me, I expect you to wait your turn to speak.” Depending on the
situation, you might even take a further disciplinary action
based on the rules of your household. Whether you take further
action or not, focus on specific behaviors and not
interpretations.
Here are some examples:
- Good girl (or boy), bad girl (or boy), rude, inconsiderate,
disrespectful, arrogant, obnoxious, flighty, unfocused, smart
aleck, and pushy are interpretations. - Interrupting, rolling
eyes, speaking loudly (or softly), shrugging shoulders, looking
away, walking away, tone of voice, and slamming the door are
specific behaviors.
3. Be Certain
People act based on what they expect to happen to them in the
future. Whether it’s avoiding pain or pursuing pleasure, it’s
still about expectations. Your child needs to know — without a
doubt — what to expect from you based on their actions.
We use pre-defined family rules and behavioral expectations as a
tool to improve certainty. Children need to know the rules. They
need to know what to expect when they follow the rules — and
when they don’t.
We put a list of five family rules and a list of both acceptable
and unacceptable behaviors on our refrigerator. We never have to
discuss what is or is not appropriate in our household. We
defined it together and wrote it down. As parents, we then
enforce the pre-agreed upon rules.
4. Be Consistent
Consistency works in close partnership with Certainty. It is
Certainty’s twin in the daily struggle to raise happy, healthy,
respectful, well-behaved kids. Your children will never develop
a sense of certainty if you don’t consistently apply your
household rules.
For example, if whining and complaining are inappropriate today,
they had better be inappropriate tomorrow. If you give in to the
behavior to get them to stop whining, you just taught them that
whining is okay. Unacceptable behaviors should never give your
child their desired result. If it is unacceptable, it is always
unacceptable. Even the glimmer of hope that it might work for
them is enough for them to give it a try. They have to know what
to expect from you each and every day.
For me, consistency is tougher than certainty. I’m great at
setting the rules and communicating them to my kids. I’m not
always so great at fair and consistent application. But, I
realize, easy or difficult is not the issue — appropriate or
not appropriate is. So, my wife and I constantly strive for
consistency when we enforce the rules in our house.
5. Be Immediate
Act now. When your children do something worthy of praise — do
it now. When your children do something that needs correction –
do it now. Delayed consequences have very little impact on
behavior.
Let’s look at our adult behaviors to illustrate the point. I
like cheesecake. Eating cheesecake offers me both immediate and
future consequences. The future consequence is negative — I
could develop a weight or blood pressure problem. The immediate
consequence is positive — it tastes good and gives me pleasure.
When I have the opportunity to get cheesecake, I find it
difficult to resist. Why? The immediate, certain positive tends
to overshadow the future, possible negative.
The definition of immediate can change depending on your child’s
age. For example, your ten-year old might respond to a
disciplinary action that happens 15 minutes after the event.
With a four-year old, you had better correct the behavior on the
spot — even if other people are around. To a four-year old, 15
minutes is a virtual eternity.
Acting immediately has an added benefit for you when the
behavior is inappropriate. If it continues without correction,
you are likely to get angrier every time you see it. As you get
angrier, you will probably have more difficulty keeping your
response proportional to the behavior (i.e. - not blowing your
stack). Act now and you’ll probably maintain control.
There you have it — five simple principles to guide a wide
range of parenting situations.
As I sit writing this article, I can think of times when I
haven’t done it right. Nonetheless, I offer the 5 B’s in an
effort to help all of us become better parents. Collecting my
thoughts on this topic reminds me of the right way to work with
my children. Writing them down helps me to stay on track.
Some or all of these ideas may be completely new to you — but
maybe not. It’s more likely that you’ve heard some of this
information before. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but
you’ve heard it. If this is new to you, I hope it helps you as a
parent. If it’s old-hat, I hope it serves as a reminder to help
you stay on track as well.
You may use this article for electronic distribution if you will
include all contact information with live links back to the
author. Notification of use is not required, but I would
appreciate it. Please contact the author prior to use in printed
media.
“Big Things Come In Small Packages” We’re all familiar with
this quote, it’s normally associated with gifts not home
decorating, but it should be.
A one or two bedroom house, apartment, condo or townhouse can be
just as impressive and grand as something with fifteen
bathrooms, Wow, imaging having to clean all those, I have enough
trouble with two.
One interesting thing I have found from past experience is that
decorating a smaller place is actually easier, not to mention
less expensive.
Whether your currently living in a small space or downsizing -
that’s another one of those trendy “buzz” words, which simply
means your moving into something smaller - planning how your
going to decorate or redecorate is a good idea.
You may think because it’s smaller, having large pieces is out
of the question. Not true, having oversized furniture is not
going to make your rooms appear smaller, what it will do is give
a warm inviting feeling. Of course the layout and size of a room
will determine how many pieces can comfortably go into it. After
all, you may be looking for drama and comfort, but you still
need to be able to maneuver around.
This also applies to accessories, it’s better to have a few
large dramatic pieces as opposed to a lot of small items, which
can tend to turn into clutter and dust collectors. The exception
to this would be with collections. But again you want to have
places to showcase them like glass front hutches, cabinets,
bookcases or shelves.
Another decorating challenge can be in warming up your new
place. This normally can easily be achieved by adding color with
paint. Now that’s all fine and good unless you happen to be
renting and your landlord say’s “Paint, oh no”. That’s ok; color
can be added in a number of other ways. Several examples:
Window treatments Furniture fabric Accent pillows Area rugs
Wall art Plants & Flowers
Storage can be another issue in a smaller space, there just
never seems to be enough. If you’re buying new furniture or
deciding on which pieces to bring from your current home, look
for ones that can perform double duty.
For example:
Instead of the standard coffee table, look for one with a flip
top or shelves underneath. Cedar chests, blanket chests or
trunks can also be substituted.
Place an armoire intended for the bedroom in the living room
it’s the perfect storage place for remotes, magazines, extra
bedding, kitchen linen or any of those pesky little things you
just can’t seem to find a place for. A small floor cabinet you
might have used in a bathroom can become an end table. Most of
these come with drawers, shelves or both. Decorative stacking
boxes or even old suitcases not only make for great storage, but
they also become terrific accessories.
Plastic storage boxes come in a variety of sizes, colors and
are inexpensive. They can be stacked on shelves in a closet or
cabinet, even into drawers. Clear smaller sizes are perfect
storage for shoes, winter gloves, pictures or how about
extension cords, nails, packages of hooks or hand tools. Larger
sizes can keep extra winter coats, blankets, odd season clothes
or seasonal decorations neat and in one place. Baskets and
hampers are another option.
Kids rooms are always in need of extra places for all their
treasures, plastic milk crates are perfect for them. They come
in many bright brilliant colors. One suggestion, if you are
planning on stacking the crates and have small children it would
be beneficial to secure them to the wall. Plastic shelving
units, which can be found in most discount stores, are perfect
for mounting on the backs of doors or on the wall in closets.
These come in especially handy in the kitchen for holding extra
soda bottles, canned goods, paper towel etc.
Well, I think you’ve gotten the idea, look around and use your
imagination, you will be surprised with what you can come up
with.
Moving into and decorating a small space can be challenging, but
with a little planning it can be just as beautiful as any large
house. And in the end size really doesn’t matter, if it’s filled
with the people and things you love, then you have successfully
created a home.
What is the most important aspect of getting your finances in
order? In past articles I’ve written about how important
discipline, organization and sacrifice are to solving your money
problems, but this all comes later.
For years I would write my bills down, figure my income and
subtract the bills from my paycheck to see what was left. It was
a real good start but by payday it was either forgotten or
something would happen to mess it up.
It finally dawned on me that the way I was going about this
wasn’t going to work. I needed a different plan. Something that
would make me understand the problem and help me come up with a
solution.
What I came up with was a little surprising, at least to me. I
had been trying to solve my problems without being willing to
make some major changes that needed to be made. I really wasn’t
serious about fixing the problem.
After several years of counseling a lot of people about their
finances, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is what keeps
many people from overcoming their financial woes. There are
exceptions of course. In some cases there isn’t much that can be
done short of bankruptcy.
Before you sit down and try to develop a budget or decide what
your future plans are, you need to decide if you are willing to
follow it through to the end. If you aren’t, you will be just
spinning your wheels. Here are few questions you need to ask
yourself:
~~Are you willing to do without the joys of what those credit
cards can buy? ~~Are you willing to have your family sacrifice
as much as you do? ~~Can you make the hard decisions that will
be necessary?
Remember, this is only the first step, however, this is
absolutely the most important. If you can’t cross this hurdle
then going to the next step is futile.
On the brighter site, if you are determined to get your finances
in order, the rest is relatively simple. You first have to
decide what it is that you want. Set your long and short term
goals. Do you want to retire early, buy a house, send the kids
to college? Will you need a new car in the near future? This
will take money and it is absolutely necessary that you start
saving as early as possible for these goals.
You next step is to set up a simple and workable budget. For
many people living on a budget is like serving a life sentence
in a maximum security prison. It doesn’t have to be that way.
The worst thing you can do is develop a budget that takes hours
every day to manage.
While you are developing your budget you need to look for every
way possible to cut corners but you have to be realistic. If you
try to budget $400 a month for groceries then you need to make
sure that you can make it on $400. If you can’t then you have to
set aside more.
Being organized is also an important aspect of money management.
Assign one member of the family to manage the budget and bill
paying. Setup your files so that you can quickly lay your hands
on the bills, receipts, contracts, etc.
Deciding you have the willingness to get control of your money,
setting your goals and developing a budget will all take an
enormous amount of discipline to carry it out. I believe that if
everybody applied the same discipline to their finances that
they use to get up in the morning, go to work, take care of the
kids and all of the other things we have to do everyday, money
management wouldn’t be such a struggle for some people.
Today, you don’t have to do this alone. The internet has
thousands of web sites that are designed to help. Most of them
won’t cost you a cent. However, it is going to be up to you to
decide if you are ready.