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Landscaping adds value to your home and gives you extra living space

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I’ve noticed lately that the value of homes in our area has been going up and up. We’ve only lived in our house for six years and already and going by the price similar homes in our area have sold for, our house has gone up in price by more than $250,000 making homes in our area $450K +.

Don’t be fooled. There’s nothing particularly special about the homes in our area. It’s a nice neighborhood, but it’s not a gated community or anything. Housing prices have just been going up.

The odd thing is, I find many of the homes rather plain Jane. For all I know they’ve been gutted and completely renovated inside, but from the outside they don’t look like anything special.

That’s where we are different. We are renovating the inside of our home, but we began our indoor renovations at the same time as our outdoor landscaping. Luckily we finished the outdoor landscaping the same year we started. The indoor renovations are ongoing much to my dismay.

We have no plans to sell our home, but I’ve always figured that all the work we’ve done landscaping our yard and caring for our lovely garden has added value to our home.

My suspicions were confirmed when I read an article on Plant-Care.com that states that a study cited in Smart Money magazine states that consumers value a landscaped home up to 11.3% higher than it’s base price. I’m pleased with that report since our home is the only one on the whole block that really has any landscaping. We’ve added value to our home. It’s confirmed!

The article that I found that information in was one that discussed a number of unique backyard landscape ideas. If you’ve considered landscaping your front and or backyard and would like some great ideas you should go read the article. There are links within the article that lead to other articles with more in depth information about each particular type of landscaping discussed within the main article.

We don’t have a pool and we never will because our backyard is just too small to have a pool, but if you’ve thought of putting a pool in your yard or perhaps have one, but haven’t done much else to the yard you should read the section on pool and landscaping around the pool area. Certainly if you’ve watched any of the programs on TLC you know that you can landscape a pool area in many different styles and your yard could go from a recreation area to a true living area with a little landscaping.

As many of you know our landscaped backyard includes raised garden beds along the perimeter of the yard and a lovely patio for entertaining. There are some great deck and patio landscaping ideas discussed in the above mentioned article. If you’ve thought of putting in a patio or deck, but you aren’t sure where to start or what materials to use you’ll get some great starter suggestions by reading the articles linked to the landscaping write up.

Some simple, and economical ways to landscape your yard, whether you already have a fully landscaped backyard or just a flowerbed or two is to add some garden lighting. Outdoor lighting, electric or solar, can be used to light a garden path or highlight plants or other features with a garden or backyard. We use solar outdoor lighting and it makes our yard look quite lovely at night. It also makes it pleasant to sit outdoors in the evening in the dimly lit garden.

We used interlocking easy stone to create our raised garden beds, but we could have used layered rocks, or we could have brought in some larger rocks and made landscape features out of them. The above mentioned article discusses the use of rocks in the landscape and how to create a natural look using rocks.

One thing that my husband in particular wants to add to our garden is landscape speakers. There are some speakers that are made to look like rocks that you can place within your garden and hook up to your indoor stereo system which would allow you to have music in your yard yet maintain a natural look and feel. I’m pretty sure that, that is one of the ideas that we’ll use ourselves that’s mentioned in the landscaping article.

I’ve actually visited the Plant-care.com website several times in the past when I’ve been looking up plant care information. I know I visited this site when I was looking up information on Aglaonemas – Chinese evergreens a couple of years ago. They had several articles about these easy to care for plants so they kept coming up in my Google searches. I actually think that’s how I discovered the site in the first place.

To close this long post I’d just like to get back to my original idea. if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know I get quite a bit of pleasure out of my landscaped backyard. I love it and visitors adore it. If you haven’t yet landscaped I would strongly encourage you to do so. You’ll get extra living space that I’m certain you’ll enjoy and it appears you’ll also increase the value of your home.

Take a look at the landscaping article. I’m sure you’ll get some great ideas for your own backyard landscaping.






Top quality espresso and coffee machines

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Do you enjoy coffee? Espresso? I do. Sometimes I think I live on coffee.

Like most people, I think my favorite coffee is the first one of the day. Sometimes, if it’s a nice day, I’ll take my coffee outside and sit at the patio table and admire my garden. Coffee and blooms, a perfect match.

If you enjoy coffee as much as I do you might be interested in visiting the website 1st in coffee.

1st in Coffee specializes in offering top quality espresso machines and coffee makers. There’s a wide selection of top of the line products. I’ve gazed longingly at many of the espresso machines that that are being sold at 1st in Coffee while in department stores. One day I will get get myself a nice espresso machine.

The website itself is very easy to navigate. The main page of the site lists all of the stores Super Specials. Just click on the image of an espresso machine, coffee maker, grinder or coffee product and you’ll be taken to a page that describes the product in detail.

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I’m actually impressed by how much information is listed for most of the espresso machines that I viewed. You’ll find a short summary of the products features, an itemized detailed description of the products features, and information about the products specifications – size, weight, how much power it uses and even warranty information.

All of the products sold by 1st in Coffee have some form of description, although not all contain as much detail as I described above. I did notice that some of the product descriptions even contained videos.

It’s easy to find whatever items for which you might be shopping. On the left side of the page you’ll find a menu that allows you to browse the stores items by product type or by brand name. The lower portion of the menu has listings for four brands of specialized coffee.

At the bottom of each page you’ll find buttons that you can click that will take you to top selling products, favorites and Best under $500. There’s also a button marked “We can Help” which takes you to a page that lists the companies phone number and email address.

1st in Coffee has a price match guarantee, a 30 day guarantee and for all but those in New Jersey there is not sales tax on purchases. In addition to these policies, 1st in Coffee also offers free shipping on all purchases over $50 within the lower 48 contiguous United States.

It’s obvious that the company has taken care to select the best products and to create a website that highlights their quality products nicely. When a company takes this much care in their presentation you know you’re in good hands.

Get a warranty from SquareTrade

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Have you ever purchased something online from eBay or even a retail store and then later wished that you’d purchased a warranty for the item? Or perhaps you are like my husband and I and you purchased an item but the extra warranty offered by the store was just so expensive that you balked at paying such a high price for coverage that you might not ever use?

That’s right. Chris and I purchased an HD video camera and a Digital SLR camera from Best Buy this past Sunday. The two items and accessories cost us well over $3000. We were offered extended warranties for both items, but do you know how much those extended warranties would have cost us if we’d purchased them? Close to $800! That’s almost a quarter of the price that we paid in total for the two electronic items! Geez! We could get a new washer, dryer or even a desktop computer for that price!

This is where Square Trade comes in. SquareTrade offers warranties on electronics and appliances at 30 to 50% below retail. It doesn’t matter if you purchased your electronic item or appliance online or in a retail store you can get a warranty for the item.

Now if Best Buy had offered their extended warranty at half the price that I just told you about we might have purchased it. It’s there loss I suppose. Now that I know about SquareTrade I’ve looked into the warranties that they offer for the two items that we purchased and the warranty prices really are about half the price of what we were offered at the retail store on Sunday.

The website states that warranty claims are served within five days and that they do not charge for deductibles. You can also cancel or trade your warranty at any time.

The site looks pretty easy to use. Go to the main page of the site and click on the “Get a Care Plan” button, or the “Get a warranty” button at the top of the page.

There are two columns on the page that you are brought. One if for an item purchased from a retail store and the other is for an item purchased from eBay. Pick the correct button and begin filling out information as to what product you purchased as well as the purchase price and date if you bought from a retail store, or simply fill in the eBay product number if you bought from eBay.

Once you fill out your information you’ll be offered a warranty for the item. Once you’ve read the information on what you are being offered you can purchase the warranty.

If you do purchase warranties through SquareTrade you’ll be able to manage your warranties and any claims you make towards those warranties online via the SquareTrade system.

SquareTrade covers items purchased from online and offline stores such as Amazon, Dell, Sears, BestBuy, Circuit City and many more. Plus, you can buy warranties for any times that you purchased in 2007. It doesn’t have to be a recent purchase as far as I can tell.

Warranties are only available to buyers in the USA at this time. Being in Canada I won’t get to try out the SquareTrade service, but if you are a US resident you might want to take a look at what they have to offer and decide if purchasing a warranty via SquareTrade is right for you.

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