What better way to make your home feel warm, inviting and homey than to use personal photos when decorating. Photos of family, friends, scenery from trips, attractions, etc. set an ambience and bring a family feel to any home, whether they are from the last roll or from a time long past.

Here are a few tips to help you get started:

Not Too Close - but not too far apart either. If you hang pictures too close together, they can look cluttered. But if you hang photos too far apart, you can lose any continuity you were trying to achieve.

Start with the Picture – but don’t agonize over which photo looks best where. That’s because it’s the frame and matting that make a photo ‘fit’ into a room’s décor.

Subject Matter – When grouping photos on a wall, using a similar theme can work well. Try numerous shots of the same person at different ages. Or hang snaps of family and friends at the cottage together as a group.

Frames – It’s not necessary that they are a true match to other wood in the décor or the flooring. But frames should be compatible with the décor, and if your grouping photos, frames should also be of like colour and overall appearance.

Size Matters! – Your photo arrangements can be in groups or singles, depending on the size of the wall space and the size of the photo. When grouping, don’t simply place matching frames in a row. Be more creative in your positioning by using different sizes of frames and photos. 

Computer Effects – If you use a digital camera or can scan photos into a file format that can be manipulated on a computer, there are a myriad of software packages available that allow you to apply all sorts of effects, change to black and white, enhance colour or even erase or distort some of the image. Applying the same effect to a group of photos can make for a very interesting look.

For many Canadians, particularly those in rural areas, the local fair is a much anticipated community event - not to be missed! While most occur in the fall, some communities choose July and August to hold their fair. Whenever they occur, you can be sure they are packed with all sorts of fun, interesting things to do and see. That’s why they have been around for so long. Some fairs are even older than Canada itself!

Originally, fairs were an agricultural affair, with livestock, baking, canning/preserving, quilting, tractor-pulls and such. But over the years, as towns grew and technology and lifestyles changed, fairs now include a wide variety of attractions; smash-up derbies, digital photography, computer-generated art, painting, school contest winners, and more. And many communities take the opportunity to ensure that First Nations’ artwork and traditional crafts are also displayed, making their Fall Fair a truly harmonious cultural event.

The Internet is a wonderful place to learn more about the fairs in your area and dates for each. Check out these two sites, then make plans to go ‘fairing’ this fall:
http://www.rural.gc.ca/cris/fairs_e.phtml
http://www.canadian-fairs.ca/fairfacts/fairdates05.htm

Backdoor – Catching both the turn and river card to make a drawing hand. For instance, suppose you have Kh & 6h. The flop comes Ad-7c-4h. You bet and are called. The turn is the 10h, which everybody checks, and then the river is the Jh, completing your backdoor flush.
Family Pot - A pot in which all or most of the players call before the flop.
Kicker - An unpaired card used to determine the better of two near-equivalent hands. For instance, suppose you have AJ and your opponent has A9. If the flop has an ace in it, you both have a pair of aces, but you have a higher hand because your Jack kicker beats their nine. Out - A card that will make your hand win. Normally heard in the plural, such as, "Any club will complete my flush, so I have eight outs."
Rainbow - A flop that contains three different suits, thus no flush can be made on the turn. Can also mean a complete five-card board that has no more than two of any suit, thus no flush is possible.
Short Stack - A number of chips that is not very many compared to the other players at the table. If you have $50 in front of you, and everybody else at the table has over $150, you are playing with the short stack.
Suited – A starting hand in which the two cards are the same suit.

Give the keyboard a boost. Open the Control Panel (under "Settings'' in the Start Menu) and double click on the Keyboard icon. Slide the "Repeat Delay'' and "Repeat Rate'' controls all the way to the right. This will make the keyboard much faster, and it even speeds up scrolling with the mouse.

It’s that time of year again, when children across the country climb aboard the ‘yellow rocket’ on their way to school or to a class outing. And every year children are injured, or worse, because of an unsafe move around a bus. Encourage your children to take extra care around school buses and to be ever mindful of the School Bus Danger Zone!

The School Bus Danger Zone is an area 3 meters (10 feet) on all four sides of the bus. The bus driver has very limited vision within this area. Children should stay clear of the danger zone unless they are getting on or off the bus, which should only be when the bus has come to a full stop. If students drop something near or under the school bus, they should never attempt to retrieve it without the driver's permission.

When waiting for a bus, your child should stay on the sidewalk. If students must cross the street, they should always cross in front of the school bus but only after establishing eye contact with the school bus driver.

Please also remember that all drivers can help make buses safer for children by applying extra care whenever we see buses or children waiting to board one.

Cool Sites for Kids

Match the Shapes
Sanjiv, age 6, says, “My Mother and I played this game many times and I usually get them right. Some are tricky, though.”

Half Blood Prince Quiz
Monika, age 13, says, “I love the Harry Potter books, especially the Half Blood Prince. But I still got a few wrong. Maybe I’d better read it again.”

The Amazing Spiro
Mac, age 9, says, “My friends and I took turns creating shapes and saving them. I’m going to ask my dad how to use my favourite one as a screen saver.”

Homework Helper
Whitney, age 11, says, “I don’t want to think it about it yet, but I know I’ll be using this site sometime soon. This one has a whole lot of useful homework stuff.”

• Bottled water may be represented as "spring" or "mineral" water only if it originates from an underground source that is not part of a community water supply.
• Bottled water that is not labelled as "spring" or "mineral" must be identified by one of three terms; distilled, demineralized or carbonated.
• Distilled water is when the treatment includes distillation (vaporization and condensation).
• Demineralized water is water treated to reduce the mineral content to less than 10 parts per million.
• Carbonated water is water that has added carbon dioxide, making it bubbly.
• Some bottled waters such as "distilled" or "demineralized" water may be simple tap water that has undergone a treatment process.
• Bottled water is not a sterile product. Like most foods, bottled water may contain naturally occurring bacteria. However, it is required to be free of disease causing organisms.
• Most bottled water manufacturers indicate that their product has a two-year shelf life.
• People who drink bottled water as their primary source of water could be missing the decay preventive effects of optimally fluoridated water available from their community water supply.
• After oxygen, water is the most important nutrient for life.
• More than two-thirds of the human body is water.
• Your brain is almost 85% water.

Any golfer will tell you that golf was born in Scotland. So it only makes sense that the original names for clubs came from the Scots. Before gold clubs began being produced in factories in the U.S. in the 1920’s and the present day numeric system for naming clubs (2 through 9 iron) was applied, clubs were known by a colourful collection of Scottish names:
Brassie – 2 wood.
Spoon - 3 wood.
Cleek – 1 iron, or any one of many narrow-bladed iron clubs used for long shots. Also, a shallower faced lofted wooden club, like a 4 wood.
Mid-iron – 2 iron.
Jigger – 4 iron. (Also a great little pub to the right of the 17th fairway at St. Andrews.)
Mashie – 5 iron.
Mashie-niblick – 7 iron.
Niblick – 9 iron.

Need to store unused paint? Try using glass jars! That way you can always see the colour of paint inside and they aren’t likely to leak or let air in that will dry the paint out.

And to make sure you’ll be able to open the jar when you need it next, run a couple layers of Teflon tape around the jars threads before putting the lid on.