Easy Life Tips

December 23, 2006

Barbecue Tricks Part - 1

Barbecue Tricks PartAs the winter months send chills down your spine, they provide the perfect setting to organise a barbecue. PT gives you a few tips on how to plan a barbecue minus the stress factors

HAVE you ever had a barbecue at home, but felt exhausted before your guests arrive? With a little planning, your next party could be stressfree and actually fun! Follow these tips to barbecue success.

Everything tastes better outdoors. Many things taste better grilled over charcoal. Most people are satisfied with a simple hamburger or hot dog. Chicken, salami, kababs and corn on the cob are also favourites. Hot dogs can be cooked plain.

Provide the meat, and assign side dishes to those coming to the barbecue. Most people don’t like to come empty handed anyway, and feel more comfortable bringing something. If they don’t have the time or inclination to make something, they can just bring a bag of chips, cookies, or even a watermelon.

Make your own barbecue sauce. Don’t waste the juice from cans of fruit that you open. Save it, add a little ketchup, and you have the start of a great sauce.

Don’t use paper products. If you don’t have enough dishes, ask others to bring their own, or invest in some inexpensive dishes that you can use over and over. Big napkins to place over your lap when you are eating (if you don’t have a table) are most welcome. Buy some cloth and make them. If you don’t have a sewing machine, you can turn the edges over and sew by hand, or use iron on tape.

If you are short on chairs, have your company bring them. Most people have folding aluminum chairs or camp chairs that are easily transported.

If you have a lawn, consider sitting on blankets. Again, let people know in advance so they can bring their own. Children often enjoy this the most.

The week before, organise and tidy any messy areas of your home. Don’t leave this until the day of your gathering or you may find yourself running out of time.

Start thinking about what food you’re going to serve. How many guests are you expecting? If you have two more couples coming, ask one to bring a salad and the other to bring a dessert. That will leave you to provide appetisers, meats, and bread rolls.

Read Part Two

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December 22, 2006

Be a friend, not a fiend

Be a friend, not a fiendHere are some more things that a good friends will always do:

Good friends never say “I told you so”, even if they are right. They will laugh and cry and be silly and get drunk with you, but will not tell others about it. They do not make you feel that you have to spring-clean your house before they visit. Good friends are not jealous of your success or your nice, new boyfriend. They will not allow other people to say nasty things about you in their presence without defending you. They will encourage you to do adventurous new things, such as skydiving or trekking.

Good friends will laugh at your joke even if they have heard it six times before. They will take you out on your birthday, if you have nothing planned. Good friends don’t automatically expect you to agree with them on matters of sex, politics and religion. Good friends will fetch you, if your car breaks down even as late as two in the morning. They will go to the divorce court with you or visit you in hospital, if need be. If you don’t have friends who do these things for you, it might be because you are not doing these things for them. So, seize the opportunity to prove how much they mean to you. Very often, people don’t warm up to you unless you show how much you care.
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December 21, 2006

Tips for Breastfeeding While Pregnant

Tips for Breastfeeding While PregnantBeing pregnant doesn’t mean you have to halt breastfeeding your child. Long ago doctors believed it actually took food away from the baby inside you, even so that is not the case. Even today we have people that believe this and they will reason with you the entire time. Only you can determine if you should stop breastfeeding your toddler or not. Don’t let someone else make that conclusion for you.

Reasons to Stop
A few ground you might want to stop breastfeeding may be if you are feeling perpetually drained of energy. Or maybe your child has start out to bite. Sometimes your milk will just dry up, this is your body’s way of telling you that it has had sufficiency and to take a break. Mastitis could play a big part in making you stop instantly as well. Mastitis is an contagion in the breast when it isn’t expressed enough and gets congested.

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December 20, 2006

Feng Shui tips for doing up the living room

Feng Shui tips  for doing up the living roomWe will move into a new house in a few months. I would be grateful if you would tell me where to locate the living room and how to decorate it.

Locate your living room as close to the entrance as possible so that auspicious chi can enter this room and then find its way to the bedrooms. While arranging the sofas, chairs and other furniture in the living room, place them in an octagonal or square arrangement so that the chi can circulate freely. You can do up the living room with family photographs, wind chimes, small water fountains and Feng Shui friendly paintings. Keep in mind the right directions before placing these objects.

Avoid over-decorating the living room as this will prevent chi from circulating freely. Keep the centre of the living room devoid of heavy furniture as this is the meeting point for energy coming from different directions. A crystal light will enable you to activate the centre very well.

We are all very disturbed. My brother is going around with a girl who dislikes our family. She picks up unnecessary fights with my mother and me. She is very arrogant and rude. My brother cannot think beyond her, so it’s useless trying to make him understand. Could you please suggest a remedy to this problem?

I can empathize with what’s going on; it must be very disturbing. Well, let’s see what you can achieve through Feng Shui. If there is a toilet in the southwest, which is the universal relationship area, one could attract unsuitable partners. Also check to see if there is a toilet in your brother’s personal relationship area, as calculated according to his kua number.

Keep the toilet door closed and avoid over-decorating or energizing it. In the southwest of his room place two small glass bowls with salt. Remember to change the salt everyday. The salt will absorb all the negativity.

Hang or place crystals in the southwest to bring in fresh energy. Make sure that the northeast is not cluttered. Energize it with crystals flowers to bring mental peace into your household.

To strengthen family bonds, energise the east by placing photographs of your family taken in happy times. You could also keep fresh flowers in a green vase in the east.

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December 19, 2006

Baking tips for bars and cookies

Baking tips  for bars and cookies• Foil line pans for baking bars. Once bars have cooled, you can lift the foil right out and cut the bars cleanly. There’s an added bonus: The pans will need only a quick rinse and dry.

• Always bake bars on the middle rack in the oven and cookies on the top rack. If baking more than one pan at a time, place them at different angles on different racks to allow maximum circulation of heat. Alternate their placement on the racks halfway through the baking time.

• You should cool cookie sheets between batches to keep unbaked cookies from melting and thinning at the edges before they can be set by the heat of the oven.

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December 18, 2006

Cingular to offer MySpace on cellphones

The largest U.S. wireless phone carrier, Cingular will now offer a version of popular Internet social network site 'MySpace' on Cingular phones in an expansion of their partnership. Cingular is a joint venture of phone companies AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp

MySpace said Cingular's Version would be more expansive compare to the Myspace Feature offered by Cellphone Service Carrier Helios. MySpace is one of the fastest-growing Internet services and have more than 130 million user profiles.

Analysts have said that Media and other entertainment services are expected to be a major areas of growth for the wireless and media industries.

Users will have to download a Java software application to their cellphones. Atpresent online videos from MySpace will not be viewable on cellphones, but Cingular plans to offer this facility by some time in 2007.
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Microsoft, Google, Yahoo! coming together to Support Sitemaps

It is exciting news to hear that Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are coming together in support of the SiteMaps protocol. Sitemap protocol enables website owners everywhere to tell search engines about the content on their site instead of having to rely solely on crawl algorithms to find it. The main goal is to improve search results for customers around the world.

This kind of collaboration will help improve the search experience for all users. Read more about the Sitemaps protocol at the official website: http://www.sitemaps.org.

Once you have created the Sitemap file and placed it on your webserver, you submit it to search engines that support the Sitemaps protocol. You can also submit your Sitemap using an HTTP request (replace with the URL provided by the search engine):

Search Engine url /ping?sitemap=sitemap_url

Google Says: "The more Sitemaps eventually cover the entire web, the more we can revolutionize the way web crawlers interact with websites. In our view, the experiment is still underway"

Yahoo Says: "This should make is easier for web sites to provide search engines with content and metadata. And in turn, search engines can spend less time crawling unchanged pages and can update indexes faster as new content is discovered"

MSN Says: "why are we excited to work on this? Because by agreeing on a standard, we can provide site owners with one simple way to share information with every search engine."

Click Here to View Our Blog Html Sitemap

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December 17, 2006

What Alcohol does to your INTERNAL ORGANS

Action on the stomach.

The action of alcohol on the stomach is exceedingly dangerous that it becomes unable to produce the normal digestive fluid in enough quantity and also fails to absorb the food which it may imperfectly digest. A condition marked by the sense of nausea emptiness, prostration and distention will always be faced by an alcoholic. This results in a loathing for food and is teased with a longing for more drink. Thus there is engendered a permanent disorder which is called dyspepsia. The devastating forms of confirmed indigestion originate by this practice.
How the Kidneys deteriorate.

The Kidneys also suffer due to the excessive use of alcohol. The vessels of Kidneys lose flexibility and power of contraction. The minute structures in them go through fatty adjustment. Albumin from the blood simply passes through their membranes. This results in the body losing its power as if it were being run out of blood little by little.

Congestion of the lungs.

Alcohol relaxes the vessels of the lungs simply as they are most exposed to the fluctuations of heat and cold. When subjected to the effects of a rapid variation in atmospheric temperature, they get readily packed. During severe winter seasons, the rapidly fatal congestions of lungs easily affects an alcoholic.
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What to Avoid when using Web Templates

What to Avoid when using Web TemplatesTo whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and proper details and you're done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the common sense that you're creating a unique graphic, you're defying the very principle of using a web template -- saving time and effort.

However, on the reverse side, if a template you get is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site's theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the heading. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the important changes and don't redesign the whole template.

In some situation, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very prejudiced issue but you have to be cautious in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty, choose them because they hand out your purpose.
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Celebrate Your Newborn’s First Noel this way

Celebrate Your Newborn’s First Noel this wayEnjoy the eve. Spending Christmas Eve mutually at home allows you to focus on the quieter facet of the holiday and what really matters. Hang a stocking with care and fill it with an ornament for each member of the family. Put the family stocking at the top of next year’s list of must-do customs by surprising everyone with an ornament that reverberate something you’ve done together during the previous year.

Before heading off to bed, share the Christmas story by candlelight. As Dad reads the story and Mom nurses baby, you’ll experience a distinctive closeness and joy that you’ll want to recap again and again.

So, if the usual vacation havoc has you thinking your newly extended family will have to put the celebration on hold, think again. And make your newborn’s first Noel one you’ll all want to memorize for years to come.
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