Even the most elegant bathroom can use a facelift from time to time. Start the New Year by freshening up your bathroom with an inexpensive facelift. Nothing major, just a few small updates designed for maximum impact with minimum effort (and cash). Check out the simple, yet effective suggestions below; some simple purchases, others small weekend projects:

Accessorize ~ Bed-and-bath stores have a wide selection of colours, styles and prices on toothbrush holders, soap dishes, wastebaskets, etc. Wicker baskets and trays are also great for displaying rolled-up towels or facecloths.

New Fabrics ~ Buy colourful hand towels, matching facecloths and bath towels; nothing cheers up a bathroom faster and more easily. Or consider contrasting shades. Add a matching bathmat.

Shower Curtain ~ They tend to get grubby looking after a while, anyway. A wide selection allows you to match just about any décor and budget. Matching curtain rings and an elegant tie-back with tassel are nice finishing touches.

New Knobs ~ You usually only need a few, so take advantage of the amazing options; from wacky to traditional, from plastic to pewter. Matching drawer handles are available, too. And if you’re changing the faucet (see below) at the same time, match the metals used!

Paint It ~ The bathroom is often the simplest room in your house to paint, since it can be easily cleared out and the wall area is generally small. It should only require a litre (quart) or two to change the wall colour. Use painter's tape and drop cloths to tape off fixtures and floor.

Change the Faucet ~ It’s a lot easier than you think. Many building supply stores have information and even video demos to help you. Lots of styles for well under under $100.

Add Art ~ While the high humidity in a bathroom leaves it out as an ideal place to hang your expensive artwork and favoured original photos, bathrooms are a wonderful location for pictures and inexpensive prints. The scale of the room means small, simply-framed pieces work best – or a collection of similar ‘themed’ pictures. Black and whites look great in bathrooms.

Detail your Bathroom ~ Even the most impeccably maintained bathroom can harbour hidden grime. Be ruthless! Take an old toothbrush and scrub around faucets, whirlpool jets, tile grout. Throw out those unused shampoo bottles, makeup containers and expired medicines. Finish with a really good, overall cleaning.

When you cozy up next to a crackling fire on a cold winter day, you probably don't realize that your fireplace is one of the most inefficient heat sources you can possibly use. It literally sends your energy dollars right up the chimney along with volumes of warm air. A roaring fire can exhaust as much as 680 cubic meters (24,000 cubic feet) of air per hour to the outside, which must be replaced by cold air coming into the house from the outside. Your heating system must warm up this air, only to have it exhausted through your chimney again. What a waste!

If you use your conventional fireplace in seasons when your central heating system is on, these tips can help reduce energy losses:

• Keep your fireplace damper closed unless a fire is going. Keeping the damper open is like keeping a 3.4 m (4 ft) window wide open during the winter.
• Check the seal on the flue damper and make it as snug as possible.
• Add approved caulking around the fireplace hearth to seal up cracks.
• When you use the fireplace, reduce heat loss by opening dampers in the bottom of the firebox (if provided) or open the nearest window slightly and close doors leading into the room.
• While the fire is roaring, lower the thermostat setting to between 10° and 13°C (50° and 55°F).
• Use grates made of C-shaped metal tubes to draw cool room air into the fireplace and circulate warm air back into the room.
• Install tempered glass doors and a heat-air exchange system that blows warmed air back into the room.
• If you never use your fireplace, plug and seal the chimney flue.

“You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.”

 Brian Tracy

Diet Danger Zones! - Dieters beware! It’s a minefield out there. They’re lurking at nearly every street corner - waiting to lure you in. Exposing cream filled delights, juicy cuts of meat, savory sauces, and sweet nibbles designed to rip the heart out of any diet pledge you made to yourself. They are Fast Food Joints, dressed to kill with something to please any appetite. Don’t let them get you. Arm yourself … with knowledge. It’s supposed to be the best weapon, isn’t it? Well if that is true, then consider the following information as ‘ammunition’ for dieters battling to stay on course:

• A 10 oz. size of Tim Horton’s French Vanilla Cappuccino has 250 calories and a surprising 240 mg of sodium. Their Old Fashion Glazed Donut has 320 calories, 9 g of saturated fat and 230 mg of sodium.
• Starbuck’s Blackberry Green Tea Frappuccino Blended Crème (no whip) contains 430 cal, 0 saturated fats and 320 mg of sodium. Adding whipped cream will boost those numbers to 560 cal, 9 g of saturated fats and 330 mg of sodium.
• Wendy’s Chicken BLT Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing has 620 cal, 13 g of saturated fat and 1250 mg sodium. Their Big Bacon Classic has 590 cal, 12 g of saturated fat and 1310 mg of sodium – and that’s without fries!
• The signature Big Mac at McDonald’s weighs in with 540 cal, 10 g of saturated fat and 1020 mg of sodium. Their Sausage, Egg & Cheese McGRIDDLES sandwich will add 530 cal, 12 g of saturated fats and 1400 mg of sodium to the start of your day.
• Burger King’s Original WHOPPER Sandwich contains 650 cal, 10 g of saturated fat and 930 mg of sodium. Their Large Fries will add 500 cal, 7 g of saturated fat and 510 mg of sodium to your order.
• An order of KFC’s Crispy Chicken Strips (4 pc.) has 470 cal, 6 g of saturated fats and 1410 mg of sodium. Add an individual serving of fries and that will jump the total up to 900 cal, 9 g of saturated fats and 2260 mg sodium.
• You might consider Harvey’s Original Cheeseburger a ‘beautiful thing’ with 440 cal, 10 g of saturated fats and 995 mg of sodium. Then there’s Poutine, with 640 cal, 12 g of saturated fat and 1260 mg of sodium.
• Three slices of a medium-size Canadian Eh! pizza at Pizza Pizza adds up to 690 cal, 9 g of saturated fat and 2070 mg of sodium. Dipping the crusts in some Creamy Garlic Dipping Sauce will add 311 cal and 250 mg of sodium.
• Dairy Queen’s DQ Bacon Double Cheeseburger will include 610 cal, 17 g of saturated fats and 890 mg of sodium, while a medium undipped cone will tack on 340 cal, 8 g saturated fat and 130 mg of sodium.

The above figures were found on each company’s respective website. Click the company names for their full nutritional information. 

Ever find yourself waiting in line for a coffee or other some fast food at the drive-thru and wonder why it’s taking so long? Ever get stuck behind someone destined to drive you and the umpteen cars behind you to drink – and I’m not talking coffee! We’ve all seen the ones who hold up the line due to a lack of planning and a lack of appreciation for those behind them. They just don’t know the Top 10 Rules for Drive-Thru Ordering:

1. Be polite!
2. Know what you want before you get to the speaker. Don’t order or add to your order at the payment or pick-up windows.
3. Don’t place separate orders - one order per vehicle.
4. Don’t shout. A normal speaking voice will suffice for most ordering systems.
5. Get off of your cell phone. If it rings while placing your order, ask the caller to wait a few seconds.
6. Don’t smoke at the windows. If you must keep a cigarette lit, put it in the ashtray while at the window.
7. Try to have the money before you get to the window – cash if possible.
8. Don’t throw trash out of your window or empty leftover drinks out the car door.
9. If your vehicle can’t pass an emissions test, go inside to order.
10. Don’t forget to say Thanks!

With the introduction of MS’s IE7, all major browsers now support tabbed browsing. This feature has some very useful benefits when surfing the net. All browsers keep track of pages visited, and clicking Back and Forward moves through them. However, after a long period of surfing the net, the pages you most want to revisit are often interspersed between a bunch of others. Tabbed browsing creates multiple browsing sessions within the same browser window, allowing you to easily switch back and forth between different sites you wish to view. When you're done surfing, you only have to close one browser window even though you are viewing multiple web sites.

Below are various tips to improve your browsing using tabs:
1. Clicking on any link with your middle mouse button or wheel will open that link in a new tab. (In IE and Firefox, you can also do this by holding down the CTRL key when you click a link.)
2. Clicking on an open tab with your middle mouse button will close just that tab.
3. In IE and Firefox, Ctrl +W closes the tab you are currently viewing.
4. Firefox users can middle-click the back button to open a previous page in a new tab.
5. Pressing CTRL + T will open a new tab in IE, Firefox, and Opera.
6. Firefox and IE users can hold down CTRL and press 1 through 0 on their keyboard to open that respected tab.
7. Right-clicking the active tab will give you an option to close all other non-active tabs.

Opening multiple browser windows has always been and still is an alternative to tabbed browsing. Users with large monitors and dual monitors often prefer two or more pages on screen at the same time.

The recent announcement that Ellesmere Island's Ayles Ice Shelf has broken away from the island high in Canada’s arctic is being viewed by most global warming activists as clear indication that the dire forecasts and expected impact from the earth’s temperature increase are not to be taken lightly. The ancient ice shelf, estimated to be 3,000 to 4,500 years old, actually broke up 16 months ago, in August 2005, but no one was there to see it. The now free-floating ice island is an enormous 66 sq km (25 sq mi) in size, about 37 m (121 ft) thick and measures roughly 15 km (9 mi) by 5 km (3 mi) - the size of a small city, or larger than 11,000 football fields!

There are many facts and figures about the effect global warming is already having on our world – particularly in countries like Canada that are closer to the poles. If there is still room for a late addition to your new year’s resolutions list, make it to be more aware of energy and how we use it, because the following facts don’t lie:

• The arctic ice shelves are 90 percent smaller than they were when Arctic explorer Robert Peary crossed them in 1906.
• The multinational Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) report recently concluded that in Alaska, western Canada, and eastern Russia, average temperatures have increased as much as 3 to 4° C (4 to 7° F) in the past 50 years.
• Since 1978, Arctic sea ice area has shrunk by some 9 percent per decade, and thinned as well.
• ACIA projects that at least half of the Arctic's summer sea ice will melt by century's end.
• Average global sea level has risen by 10 to 20 cm (4 to 8 in) over the past century according to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
• Greenland's massive ice sheet holds enough melt water to raise sea level by about 7 m (23 ft). ACIA climate models project significant melting of the sheet throughout the 21st century.
• The IPCC's 2001 report projects that sea level could rise between 10 to 89 cm (4 and 35 in) by century's end.
• The spring ice thaw in the Northern Hemisphere occurs 9 days earlier than it did 150 years ago, and the fall freeze now typically starts 10 days later.
• Summer sea ice breakup in Hudson Bay already occurs two to three weeks earlier than it did half a century ago.

Cool Sites

Math Doodles
Susie, age 11, says, “There are all sorts of demos that you can try on this ste that are really fun to play. Mom thinks it’s making me smarter at math, too. But I play because I like the games – especially Hydro Maze.”

Cranky Crabs
Kyle, age 10, says, “I like this game because you get to shoot your yoyo at these crabs on the beach and get points for hitting them. But you have to jump all the stuff that comes at you before it knocks you out.”

Snowboard Racer
Erik, age 11 says, “This one is pretty easy, but I like the way you can jump over the rocks and speed up. I race my friends to see who is fastest. I don’t usually win, but I don’t usually come last, either.”

Game Goo
Bradley, age 8, says, “These games are a lot of fun to play. There are a lot of different ones to play but I like Wizards and Pigs Poetry Pickle best of all.”

“Hair of the Dog (that bit you)”

Meaning – When you wake up after a night of drinking, another drink of alcohol will make you feel better.

Example – “I felt so bad when I work up New Year’s morning that I just had to have some hair of the dog to ease my pain.”

Origin - This expression is rooted in the old belief that the hair of a dog that bites someone can serve as an antidote against possible infection from the bite. By extension, another drink or two after a drinking binge would serve as a cure for a hangover. The first mention of the phrase in reference to hangovers is in John Heywood's Proverbs (1546); "I pray thee leat me and my fellow have a heare of the dog that bote us last night and bitten were we both to the braine aright".

There is actually scientific reasoning behind having a drink to cure a hangover. A hangover is due partly to poisoning by alcohol (production of toxins) and other components of the drink, and partly to the body's reaction to withdrawal from alcohol. Medically, consuming alcohol may help deal with the headache of a hangover by depressing the central nervous system, and may ease some of the symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. But alcohol is not medically recommended for hangovers. Drinking more alcohol may seem to lessen the symptoms at first, but it will only aggravate the symptoms by adding to the toxins the body has to deal with.

With all the ‘chop’ saws (aka Miter or Cut-off saws) on the market these days, circular saws are not used as often as they once were. But they are still the answer for many wood-cutting jobs, and they are still one of the most misused tools for the average home handymen. While circular saw dangers come in many forms, here is one very common mistake to avoid; cutting on the wrong side. 

Whenever you use a circular saw, the wider portion of the flat base of the saw should rest on the piece of the wood that is NOT getting cut off. Sawing with the wider part of the sole plate on the piece being cut-off can result in injury, binding of the blade, damage to the wood and/or blade, not to mention an uneven cut line.

“Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it.” ~ Moses Hadas

“I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it.” ~ Groucho Marx

“A modest little person, with much to be modest about.” ~ Winston Churchill

“May all your troubles last as long as your New Year's resolutions!” ~ Joey Adams