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Archive for the ‘Home Living’ Category

Finally the house that I had bought last May was now ready for occupancy. That all the electrical wirings are all installed. Water system are properly arrange and all the lighting had been set up. By tomorrow we will be starting to move some of the furniture which are huge and needed a truck for transportation. Moving the pack things would be batch by batch that I can easily arrange the things before finally occupying the house. Unlike the last time we transfer we run out of time and have no choice but to transfer on a new place on just a day. Meaning that all of the things were pack that they and moved. That was really a stressful experience. That I didn’t even manage to organize the things. Now since the house is my own property I do not have to worry that I am just renting a house and I got limitation on the rights and time occupying the place.
I am planning to set the living room first, then the kitchen, the rooms and I am going to add benches on the front of the house facing the gate where I can sit and look at the people walking on our side walk. I had decided to have one when I browse on the internet about the shopping for the Bench online. I remember our old house where me and my mom use to spend the time on the afternoon at our outdoor benches while she was combing hair. I use to wait for this time, because mom is too busy on the morning and before lunch only at that time she can have a free time for relaxing. When I started going to school, I do my homework on the bench and enjoy the fresh air than doing the homework on my room. When I grow up, I prefer reading pocketbooks while laying on the bench or sitting so that I can have the brightest light on earth which was the sun. I need not to use electric fan for the air outside is enough. I can have the relaxation while helping my parents lessen their electrical expenses. When my boyfriend propose marriage to me, we were sitting on the same bench as the family reunion held. There are so many beautiful memories that bench have for me. But mother don’t want me bring it along with me when I transfer to a new house, because she also got sentimental value in it. I decided to online for the same style and design of the bench we had. Even if physically they are not the same but still the purpose and the memories lays on it.

There are so many things that I wanted to add on my newly renovated house. Detailed parts and even home necessity that I can easily shop online. Since I got the idea of the design of the house online, I also did ask for the home improvement service company to do the job for my house. I also had decided to buy all the things that I needed for the house. From the kitchen cabinet, closets, doors and the bathroom necessity. I am excited till the day of the renovation of the house was done. I am excited for I added the newest feature on the house that my friends never had on their life.
A hottub which I am sure that they will got jealous. A jacuzzi hot tubs right on my very own home where we can have the relaxation. If before we had to visit resorts and travel different places just to find the hot bath. Now I can have it anytime. I saw it on the internet one time that I am reading a reviews of a mother who had decided to add some bath tub on her house because it was summer time. Since she is too busy to bring her children on the pool everyday, she decided to have a portable spa which they all enjoy. I followed the link that she had provided on her reviews and found the site which offer the quality bath tubs. There are so many designs and tubs that you could choose from. I even took time on searching and browsing their site before I found the jacuzzi because their tubs are really beautiful. I even wonder if having a business of spa of my own because they have so many beautiful yet affordable tubs.
I bought the jacuzzi and it will be installed on my room, the master’s bedroom. I am really excited and cannot wait to have the bath in it.

The restroom is the place to relieve not only our bladders but our entire bodies—of tension, strain, and fatigue. Here we can study our naked form, practice different kinds of smiles, experiment with wild hair colors or styles, lavish every inch of skin with nourishing touch, and linger away from the maddening crowd. The bath has become, most deliciously, an excuse for getting in touch with ourselves once again.
What must it have been like before the bath “room” was invented? Did the stinky ol’ outhouse suffice as a place to linger just a bit? Did a woman ever get used to bathing in a galvanized kitchen tub surrounded by family? Was there a single space in her day for caressing her own face with sweet-smelling potions? Was she consigned to lugging water from the well house to soak her aching feet at the end of a grueling day?
My favorite scene in one of my favorite movies, Places in the Heart (starring Sally Fields), is where Edna at long last gets an opportunity to bathe at the end of a long, hot, cotton-pickin’ week. Interrupted accidentally by a blind boarder, Edna is shocked, then settles nervously into the knowledge that once he hears lapping of water in the tub, the embarrassment is his. What I love is the simplicity of that scene, where water itself—not a roomful of romantic products—is the heart of lavish relaxation.
One winter I had the privilege of spending an entire week with a friend who lived in a sixteenth-century cottage in Essex, England. Her home was a medieval structure through whose door I had to duck to keep from bumping my noggin. There was no central heating, only a coal fireplace in the corner of the small sitting room. So while our backsides froze, we sat in front of the fire drinking cups of tea made in a proper Royal Doulton teapot. Rain drizzled across crooked, misshapen windows. At bedtime Jane offered me her tiny chamber, once a sleeping loft, and introduced me to another Royal Doulton pot. Hand painted with an elaborate lid, it sat regally just under the bed. The pot was meant to save me the trouble of a midnight trip to the loo at “the other end of the garden.”

The fuzzy feel of the U-shaped rug under your bare toes on a chilly morning? The inviting lineup of pastel soaps on a pretty shelf above the sink? The feel of hot water pounding your back after a full day of work? Maybe you like saturating your clean skin with moisturizer and your clean hair with satiny conditioner.
My favorite part is tuning out the world in the rush and splash of a full-on shower. Working from a home office, I often take midday showers as a break from the shoulder and eye strain of sitting at a computer hour after hour. Sometimes I enjoy a shower just before a yoga class or before meeting a friend for dinner. At other times I shower in the morning as revitalization for another day of writing and editing or late at night to warm up before jumping into bed in a wintry cold room.
In any case, I never take bathing for granted. Surrounded by the warmth of a lovely room or in a cold-water concrete shower in a camp in the Middle East, bathing has been and will continue to be for me a special space in the day. The bathroom remains a place for me to be enchanted with my own body and a reminder of my connection to what the human race has always known—that cleanliness is relaxing and healing and that it purifies my soul as well as my flesh.

Smart. Understated. Forgiving. These are words some designers
use to describe interiors that maximize livability. How can you
create rituals at home that invite you and your family to rejuvenate
a holy sense of place? Here are some experts’ ideas to build on.
• Seek serendipity. Welcome unexpected experiences as Sarah welcomed strangers to her home.
• Attend to details that amplify ambiance. Spend time setting the scene to get people in the mood.
• Play down unnecessary drama, Ignore unwelcome intruders such as grumpy moods or overindulgent expectations.
• Define the cathedral quotient. What helps your family members feel loved by the others? Brainstorm ways to make those connections.
• Get the most bang from your “construction” buck Invest in rituals that improve with age. Go for what’s interesting over what’s traditional or trendy. Find out what your kids love and do it!
• Create a lavish focal point for limited time together Play it up with things you know will generate pleasure in the experience: games, food, physical interaction, ambiance.

You probably already have everything you need to create the look and feel of a house-becoming-home The rule of thumb in using what you have is this: See everything in a new way can the objects stuffed away in your closets be used for a different purpose, in a different place, or with a new disguise? Try on these ideas.
• Turn an object upside down or on its side. Try placing anything in an unusual setting and you’ll see marked changes.Things you may have grown tired of suddenly become eccentric bookends, candle holders, or conversation pieces.A vase you inherited, turned upside down, is a pedestal for a photo of the great aunt it belonged to. A garden angel, predictable on the front stoop, might be urban kitsch on your armoire. Books can be turned on their sides as bookends.
• Point things in various shades of white. Almost anything metal, wood, or plastic can be updated and freshened with a coat of cream or wash of pearl. Worn furniture or accessories look totally different with a whitewash. Update with a bowl of seashells in summer or a photo of last year’s ski trip in winter
• Mat, frame, and hang kids’ paintings in unexpected places: on a bathroom wall, beside a grand mirror beside school photos in the kitchen, inside the hall closet.
• Go sugar and spice when painting flea market finds. Mix bright reds with white and sand colors.Think Cajun and crème. Blend anything brass and bronze or copper for an earthy zest against neutral walls or fabrics.
• Modem family-friendly objects come into their own among inhented pieces pulled out of storage in the attic or basement. Mix country with urban!techno style to get a trendy eclectic appeal.

Powder your nose? Freshen up? Visit the restroom? Draw
your bubble bath? Take a shower? Isn’t this chamber we call the bathroom, necessary room, comfort station, or
water closet brimming with odd and eccentric images? It is the place of our most intimate daily or hourly rituals. Its symbolism embraces both our primal and civilized instincts. It is a place that may both enhance our personal sensuality and remind us that we cannot escape our physicality.
For the woman always seeking the aesthetic, the bathroom is a good clean challenge. It is the place where a girl looks herself in the eye first thing each morning and last thing at night, encompassing all that may mean. Here she may cast a critical glance at her body or lavish it with personal indulgences: soft plushy towels and hands-on caresses with scented oils, soaps, and lotions. For no other room is there more specialized, intriguing, and inviting ways to create the daily “spa—aah!” effect.
The spa—aah! effect is much more than rituals for hygienic feeling good or looking good. It’s an emotional and spiritual makeover too. The body and mind are things, after all, that every woman updates daily. She may begin with her morning bathing routine, but the spa—aah! effect expands as she moves through the different rooms in her house. The effect goes on to encompass the way a woman lives in the wide, wide world; it includes the visual impact she brings to other people, her sensuality; emotional bearing, and spiritual influence.
The spa—aah! effect is mystique from the inside out. A woman uses her mystique, her sense of personality and femininity; to touch and bless the people in her life. Creating the spa—aah! effect is to follow the wisdom of Christian Dior by remembering that zest is the secret of all beauty

The bathroom is the most enigmatic of rooms, riddled with ancient and contemporary ritual. It is connected with cultural superstitions as well. According to the Celts, for whom water represented a reunion with the womb, a few silver coins in the bath ensured good luck. Adding the first snow of winter to the bath brought good health. Sage wisdom has it that roses in the bath bring love; lavender, happiness; rosemary; creativity; peppermint, revivification; and eucalyptus, freedom from pain. A recipe for romance calls for oranges and fresh mint leaves added to the bath and rubbed on the body—then allowed to air-dry Do you want beauty? Would you be willing to go to the extremes Cleopatra did? She is said to have bathed regularly in asses’ milk.
Bathing involves a religious significance in many cultures. For Muslims and Jews it is associated with purification and holiness. The complex bathing rituals of the Japanese are meant to facilitate mental clarity. Instead of seeing bathing as just a way to get clean like we do in the West, Eastern cultures get clean in separate quarters so that they can bathe. For Native Americans sweat lodges are used to facilitate healing of illness (everything from influenza to pleurisy) as well as to revitalize racial identity In Finland the sauna is a national institution. It is said that prior to the 1990s there were more saunas than cars in that country.

In Russia the bania, or sauna, once included intimate family rituals. A bride, on the day before her wedding, was taken for a sweat bath. Her sweat was collected by pouring milk over her body and catching it in a bowl. The milk was mixed with flour to make a dough. The dough was plastered all over her while she completed her bath, then scraped off and kneaded to make bread for the marriage feast. Childbirth often took place in the bania as well. Following a funeral, families gathered not in the dining room for a meal together but in the bania to grieve.
In Scandinavia communal bathing in a sauna involves nudity that is as neighborly as a potluck supper. As an American living on a tiny out-of-the-way island in Denmark, the thought of bathing with the postman who lived down the street wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. But when the opportunity arose, I jumped right in with my friends just for the experience. Now that I live in Oregon, a hike to one of the many natural hot springs along theCascade mountain range can mean bathing nude without company.
My favorite bath of all time was around a large vat of muddy black clay at the Dead Sea. The salts and minerals in the clay bring a tingling sensation. I had plastered it on thick and relaxed in the sun—a multitude of chairs are available—allowing it to dry completely. The point is to take time rinsing off in one of the many outdoor showers because the sticky mud adheres between teeth, in hair, and under armpits. Trying to get it all off brings laughter to last a lifetime.
Back in downtown Jerusalem, I visited the Turkish baths more than once because the environment simply fascinated me. Here plump-and-proud-of-it naked women sit on long benches in a large, steamy, mist-filled room. Children in tow, the robust women scrub little ears and backsides and shampoo each other’s dark hair. Showers along the walls constantly turn on and off as women wash, gab, sweat, and shower again and again. The baths are a place to socialize and gossip, for here “the echo repeats every word thrice.”
Mikkel Aaland, an expert on cultural bathing rituals and history says Turkish baths recompensed Middle Eastern women for amusements enjoyed by proletarian European women. Historically the domain of Muslim men, they eventually became the social gathering place for wives.’