New York Hotels

Planning a getaway to New York to recharge yourself is a little easier with the New York Hotels website. The search results pages feature Google Maps that let you see where the hotels that you chose are located via satellite views, even see the traffic flow and other important details to help you discover more about the area your chosen hotel is located.

And the New York Hotels website allows you to use a variety of methods to select your hotel that goes beyond price and star ratings. Search for hotels either by name, address or even by descriptions such as "pet friendly" and "historic".

Visit the New York Hotels website to discover all of the various resources they offer, including information on attractions such as museums, parks, art galleries, and performing arts.

Escape and Renew

Alternately, and sometimes much more necessary, is a true escape. Getting out and away from the responsibilities of being a caregiver and going on vacation to a beach or on a cruise or just out to spend the night in a motel and paper yourself. It may seem selfish, but remember - you can not take care of someone else if you are too burned out to be able to even care for yourself.

The Importance of "me" time

Family caregivers burn out, there are no two ways about it - we burn out. While this may not be a preventable thing, it can at least be made a little less crushing by making sure that we make some time for ourselves. Don't feel bad about leaving your loved one in someone's care while you just lounge in the bath or go out to work in the garden. Just as important as getting out of the house and away from responsibility can be staying home and not being "on-call". If you can get a friend or family member to take care of things for a few hours, then do so and go out to work in your garden or relax with a magazine and enjoy not having to keep one ear out for someone to need your assistance. It can recharge you as well or better than going somewhere away from home.

Flowers

Beyond Blossoms has set out to fulfill a simple goal. To provide the freshest flowers and best designs at the lowest prices. With flowers imported directly from flower farms around the world, Beyond Blossoms saves their customers money and an automatic rewards system that lets customers earn flowers just by shopping with Beyond Blossoms.

Creating European style arrangements of a complementary mix of flowers and greens, Beyond Blossoms gives their customers a sophisticated style arrangement that highlights the splendor of each flower in the arrangement. The Beyond Blossoms website features special details such as a section on the history and meaning of flowers, flower picture contests, and flower quotes.

Make your own Mother's Day gift basket

It is almost April, which means that May is not that far away. Time to start thinking about Mother's Day. This year I am going to make my mother a gift basket. It is a wonderful gift that can be personalized to the recipient. Teas or gardening tools, books, movies, candies and flowers. By creating your own personalized Mother's Day gift basket you can design it to be extra special for your extra special mother.

It is actually very easy to create a lovely gift basket. Just follow a few basic steps.

1. Buy a basket of a desired size and pleasing shape

2. Decorate the basket with any painting or embellishments you might desire

3. Fill basket with some kind of filler - you could place some of the shredded paper or other things they sell for such things, but how about being a little creative? Is the basket filled with DVDs of her favorite movies? How about a bag of popped popcorn in the bottom? Is it a tea or coffee selection? Tuck a pretty table cloth or teapot and teapot cozy into the basket for filler. Are you giving her some books? How about a lap quilt as a filler?

4. Add in the main theme item and some small space fillers. Some suggestions for small fillers: DVD Movies basket - how about small fillers of theater-style candy that she can enjoy such as Malted Milk Balls? A tea or coffee basket? You would probably put in a cup and saucer with boxes of tea or coffee, so how about small fillers of spoons, samples of other hot drinks, small bags of cookies that go well with tea or coffee maybe a small vase with a rose and baby's breath? Is the basket filled with books? Small fillers that would be good include a magnifier if she might need one, bookmarks, bookplates, and maybe a pen set if you have included a journal or date book in the basket.

5. Wrapping the basket with cellophane is an optional but nice looking step, if you do wrap in cellophane gather it and tie with a beautiful satin bow.

There are, of course, a lot of variations and additional things you can do. So this will just get you started and give you ideas for creating your own Mother's Day gift basket.

Wedding Scrapbooking

I was talking to a friend of mine the other night about making scrapbooking pages. I think that a scrapbook would make a natural wedding album. Think about it, you can have pressed flowers from the bridal bouquet and strips of ribbon from the decorations. The pages that show the gifts being opened can all be decorated with paper and ribbon from the gifts. You can even place out scrapbook pages at the reception that the guests can decorate and personalize for the bride and groom.

WedingChannel.com

Since 1997 the WeddingChannel.com has been helping brides and grooms find the information they need to get inspiration for creating the wedding of their dreams. From inspirational pictures to expert advice for the bride and groom, WeddingChannel.com can help to make your wedding day a little more stress free. From a patented online registry system to a local vendor guide they have the tools you need to plan the perfect wedding.

Rather you are planning a wedding for yourself or for your best friend you can find inspiration and planning tools at WeddingChannel.com. Visit the website at the link above to find out more about the resources and tools available to help you plan your wedding.

Summer weddings are around the corner

Summer is drawing closer, and with that comes things such as the summer wedding with all of the beauty and splendor that goes hand in hand with satin gowns and fragrant flowers decorating a garden wedding. When I get married someday (yeah right, who am I kidding?)... *IF* I ever get married, I want my wedding to be in a garden setting with a lovely rose and ivy draped gazebo and lilacs and wisteria draping down from everywhere.

Importance of saving for the future

Family caregivers can tell you better than perhaps anyone else that it id very important to save for the future. We can see the costs that are associated with just trying to make it day to day. The problem with that is that the family caregiver is also the least likely to be able to afford to save for the future. Indeed, chances are that the family caregiver is drawing out of what savings they had just to make it from day to day and help their loved one. There has to be something that can change that. I keep hoping that something will happen and bills for family caregivers will get more attention in congress, but that does not seem to be very likely.

Investing in gold

Gold is known for being of long term value, which is why the 50th anniversary is the golden anniversary. I have always known that when I am able to invest in my future by building an investment portfolio, the first thing I will be buying is gold. It is such a lovely metal to hold, and being an Alaskan I most definitely have a love for the color of gold, but I think it will probably never be something I can go out and spend my time panning out of the streams. So, instead, I will one day buy gold coin to be set away in a bank or depository until I need it for my retirement.

The company that I have been watching as the one that I will be using when I have the chance is the Monex Deposit Company. They have been in business for many years and have built a reputation as America's trusted source for precious metals investing.

Pumpkins for the garden

I started some pumpkin seed about a week ago by carefully stripping the outer hull away and placing them in a folded sheet of damp paper towel on the top of the refrigerator. They were starting to show the starts of roots within three days so I planted them and now I have little pumpkin plant seedlings in Jiffy Pots here on the end of the dining room table. I am hoping that I will be able to have some nice little 5 or 7 pound small sugar pumpkins from my own garden for Halloween and Thanksgiving this year.

Icy Spring Conditions

The snow is starting to melt off, but it is still rather dangerous out there for trying to get outside and work. This is an aggravating time of year, because me and my parents want to work on the yard and get it ready for the summer, but it is too icy out there to be getting the garden ready for planting.