The Splendor of a Sunflower

      Who among you doesn't know about Sunflower? Well, I guess most of us know even a little information about It. Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) possess a large group or cluster of flowers arranged on a stem that is composed of a main branch. The flower is actually refer as the head of numerous florets crowded together. This annual plants are native to the Americas (North and South America). The term "sunflower" is also used to refer to all plants of the genus Helianthus of which many are perennial plants.

      Sunflower is widely recognized in the world not only for its beauty but also as an important source of food. Its seeds are enjoyed as a healthy snack and you can add it as a nutritious ingredient to many of your foods, like salad for instance. Its oil also is valued as a healthy vegetable oil.

      I wanted to share this information because we bought a sunflower plant in a pot 4 days ago and I transplanted it yesterday to a vacant space where I mostly planted my vegetable plants. You may be wondering why I planted it where my vegetable plants are because I wanted to break the color of that area and besides in due time I can harvest its seeds and uses it in my salad. See, dual purpose.....as a flower which gives beauty and vibrant to our garden and as a food when appropriate time comes.

     I notice lately that bees and butterflies are roaming around the sunflower. It is indeed a good purchase.

Beautify Your Home With Your Captured Photographs

    

     We have a separate room that is not attach to our house which we called "Recreation or Studio Room". We called it recreation in the sense that we have television set, pool table, sound system and a computer. We mostly spend our time there watching movies we rented from NetFlix, playing pool and when I do my blogging activities. On the other hand, we called it studio room because my husband is a commercial photographer and whenever he had an outside clients, he will turn our recreation room into a studio room. He had all the basic equipments he can use to shoot products. 

  
     When you enter the room, you will notice framed photos. Those photos were taken by my most beloved spouse from different areas in the United States particularly the west part. Aside from being a commercial photographer, he also does landscape photography. He does it as a hobby and hoping that someday make money out from all his photos.

     There are about ten framed photographs hanging in our recreation room. It looks like a gallery with all those photos and it always attracts our guests' attention whenever they saw it and admired my husband's talent and creativity. Every time I come to that room, the aura seems different, as if I am close to nature and my hubby especially when he was not around.

     If you love photography like my hubby, you can frame your most favorite photos and hang it in the walls in your house. It will change the ambiance and add beauty to your home. It feels great when you do something different out from your talent and creativity.

DampRid

       Have you notice black spots in your bathroom ceiling and walls? It could be molds or mildew resulting from excess moisture in the air. When we took a warm bath or shower, steam from warm or hot water evaporates. If you don't have exhaust fan that sucks out  this moisture it will cause molds and mildew in due time. 

      I work in a store that sells thousands of items. I am a typical woman that is very curious about products that will help me ease or lessen the burden of cleaning.  I came across this product called DampRid. For me, I thought it just one of those products that promises you something and yet it's a total crap. But I wonder why we sold a lot of DampRid. I was intrigued and so I read the entire label and I was convinced to buy it. I wanted to try the product if it works or not and at the same time to have sufficient knowledge about it so that I can recommend this to our customers. It is easy to recommend something if you tried it yourself.

     DampRid is a moisture absorber. It eliminates excess moisture in the air, prevent stains and damage caused by mildews and molds. It will not harm your plants, furniture or household goods because it won't dry the air. You can use DampRid in your bathrooms, closets, bedrooms, offices, kitchen or anywhere where there's excess moisture. 

     I used Damprid only in our bathroom. We have exhaust fan but it seems like it's not strong enough in sucking out excess moisture in the air. I still notice black spots in our bathroom walls and ceiling but not as much as it was. I still need to clean our bathroom walls and ceilings but not as often as it was before I use DampRid.

      DampRid is easy to set up. All you have to do is remove the lid, pour the white crystals into the bucket and place it to the desired place you want. If the crystals start melting, it means that it's absorbing excess moisture in the air. Try and see it for yourself. Don't forget to follow the instruction, it is really very important.

Bamboo Plants

      We were planning to take out our pave driveway and replace it with the same tiles in our walkway that is going from our deck to our recreation room. We wanted to make our backyard look bigger by simply extending the tiles that we have right now. But we changed our mind because it's expensive to replace our driveway and it's still in good shape. We were thinking of something that makes our backyard nicer instead of extending its look.  One option we had was putting short fence as a boundary between our driveway and our backyard but we were doubtful because we needed something to hold it on and we did not want to put holes on the ground and destroy part of our driveway nor our tile walkway. Instead, we decided to buy plants and put it on a big pots to distinguish where our driveway and backyard ends. We ended up buying four pots of bamboo plants at Lowes and four light-green big pots at Home Depot. It's still expensive and yet we were happy with the result.

     Not only we like the bamboo plants where we put it now but once in a while we saw small birds chirping and gathering dead leaves probably to make their nest in the nearby trees. We did not realize when we first got the bamboo that it needs a lot of water. Every other day we needed to water it because the leaves are wilting especially  we're in summer season and it's very hot once in a while. Bamboo really makes a good border if you choose the right kind. There are two growth habits of bamboo namely: Clump and Running. Clump means the roots will stay near the base of the bamboo plants while Running spread out its roots all over the place reaching up to few feet. 

  

Decorate your Home

     Last year me and my hubby went to Santa Barbara, California to attend a surprise birthday party of our close friend, Linda. The party was held in a Winery somewhere in Santa Barbara. As we entered the reception area, I was mesmerized and stunned by the decorations on the table particularly a glass with water, stones and orchid flower floating on the water. Won't you believed that all the decoration was done by Linda's son? He's brilliant in terms of decorating something (he is not a gay in fairness).

     It has been for awhile now that I wanted to imitate the floating flower on a glass. Here's how I did my version: A drinking or any glass that's not tall enough; pebbles (you can grab some in your garden if you have, like what I am doing); water; a flower of your choice and flower food (optional).

Here's the result:

      It is indeed nice, do you agree? You can place your creation anywhere in your house. Add color to a room with this floating flower on a glass. It's easy, fun and yet a beauty.

Our house

     Choosing a right paint and color for your house is not an easy decision. It requires patience, time and money. Most people I assumed chose base on looking the color of somebody's house, magazines, TV and even suggestions from friends and relatives. Many may think that if a particular color looks wonderful in a two-story house, do not conclude that it will look great in your one-story house. This assumption is what happened to us. Honestly, I like the color of our house after the painters painted it but my husband was kinda disappointed about it. He was thinking to change the color of our house even before we met and got married but when the time came for him to decide, we picked the "wrong color". He thought it was too yellow.

     But before we decided to have the color that we had, we tried it in a small area in front of our house to make sure that we will like it both. But it wasn't enough I guess, because everything has changed when our entire house was painted. As what the adage goes on......Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... My husband did not like it but I do love it.

(The first color we chose.)

     

     According to my hubby, we needed to break the yellow color. So what he did was painted almost the entire area of the left front side of our house with white and he did it by himself. In order to make everybody happy, I agreed to my hubby's suggestion. I was not mistaken because the result was fantastic. 

(The current color of our house)

Another addition to our Collection

    We bought three more colored glasses which are an addition to our collection. As you can remember, we changed a bare area in our kitchen into shelves with different colored glasses . We bought the tall, purple glass at Ross and the other two small glasses at a garage sale. We just love collecting them because they add color to our kitchen.

     We decided to put the purple glass  in a small area in our kitchen which  is adjacent to where we put our colored glasses. It's just too tall compared to the rest of our collection. We put the brown colored glass in front of our sink together with some of the other colored glasses that almost have the same height and shape. The red one we decided to put with the rest of our collection in order to break up some of the colors that are currently there.

Bona for Hardwood floors

     Our floor is made of hardwood except the one we have in our kitchen and bathroom. There are areas in our house where we put rugs to protect our floor from scratching especially from furniture legs. Hardwood floor is really nice when it's clean and shiny. It needs constant care like any other kinds of floor.

      Our floor is probably more than thirty years old. Although my husband got our house more than 10 years ago but because he and the previous owners took care of it, it's still look nice and in good shape. Since it is expensive to replace hardwood floor nowadays with the kind that we have. We are very meticulous when it comes to cleaning products to be used for  our hardwood floor. It's been quite sometimes since we use Bona products for our floor. After vacuuming and cleaning our floor from dirt, we use Bona hardwood floor cleaner in full-strength and wait until it's totally dry before we apply the Bona hardwood refresher . We're impress and happy with the result. We use this two Bona products at least 3 times a year. It will depend though because if our floor show signs of dull, worn and scratch that's the time we need to apply Bona. If you are not currently satisfied with your hardwood floor cleaner, try Bona and see it for yourself. Don't forget to follow the direction and instruction.