Once, the television was part of the living room and still is, in many cases. But people who want a better experience when watching movies like to design their own home theatre. This is just what Sam Sorgiovanni has done with the design of the superyacht Amara – there is a cinema room that seats 16 people on that yacht, incorporated into all the other luxury fittings such as pools, saunas and elegant dining rooms.

There is no reason for an upmarket home to have anything less, albeit you may not want yours to seat 16; then again, if you entertain it would be good to have a room large enough to seat that many people in comfort – or more. Most people enjoy watching a good movie and this is one way to ensure they can get the most out of it, especially with surround sound and no distractions from the rest of the house.

It’s also a wonderful way to show off those pictures and movies from your last overseas holiday. And if you have guests staying over the weekend or longer, watching a movie can be a great way to finish off the day’s activities, especially in winter when it may be too cold to spend much evening time outdoors.

It is not that difficult to convert a spare room into a home theatre, but if you are building your own home it’s much better to have it designed especially right from the start. That way you can make sure it is comfortable, soundproofed and has all the fittings in the correct places for when you get your new television and surround sound gear.

Many people put off making a Will until it is too late, while others don’t think they need one. However, if you have property – and this includes superannuation – you need to refer to a lawyer’s list and go and organise a Will to ensure it is distributed properly after your death. Dying without a Will or consulting a Perth Wills Lawyer only makes thing more difficult for your family and it costs a lot to have the court decide who should benefit from your assets. This cost will be taken out of your assets, so your family will get much less than otherwise.

The trouble with an old Will

You may have made a Will years ago and think that is the end of the matter, but just like many things in this life, a Will may need to be upgraded or rewritten. If you divorce and/or remarry, your current Will is no longer of any use as it is not considered valid. At least, that’s how it is in Western Australia. So a new Will must be made to take into consideration your new circumstances. Then again, if your Will was made when you were younger and you now have more children or grandchildren that have not been mentioned, you may want to rewrite your will to include them.

What every woman dreams of is a modern kitchen that is smart, functional and looks amazing. Unfortunately, people with older homes are unlikely to have this unless they get a professional kitchen designer like Kitchen Professionals in to completely renovate this important room. With the advent of open floor plans, the kitchen is in full view of everyone, so it simply must look its best.

If you are thinking of making renovations on your kitchen, don’t settle for less than the best. Even new pre-made cupboards and appliances won’t do the job you expect. Once the excitement wears off you’ll realise that your kitchen is really just another kitchen and it most likely still has some design faults, albeit not the same ones –hopefully – that it had before.

What you really need for a modern kitchen

To truly bring that kitchen out of the dark ages what you need is a professional kitchen designer. And if they also supply the materials and install the kitchen, so much the better. It can be very difficult to tee up three different companies to do the work that is needed when you fully renovate a kitchen. Having one company do everything will certainly reduce your stress, especially when you know you can trust them to provide top quality materials and finishes as well as do a great job on the actual building/tiling/plumbing/electrical work and whatever else is needed.

Drug rehab treatment at a facility is notoriously costly and for those who may have spent years as an addict it is almost impossible to afford, especially if it is a residential clinic. The day clinics are cheaper, but their recovery rate may not be as high due to the addict returning to a high-risk environment each night. However, there are some free residential clinics available, which may be a good option for those who want to kick the habit that is wrecking their lives.

While state funded rehab clinics are available, there are pros and cons to using them. Here are some things to consider before making a choice.

Pros

• The biggest pro is that these clinics are free of charge. People who absolutely cannot afford the cost of drug rehab can get help.
• They are often reasonably close so there is little cost for travelling.
• If you have no or few financial resources, they are certainly better than nothing.
• They are residential, so you don’t have to return to a high risk environment each night.
• They use programmes that have worked for many drug addicts in the past.
• They have some volunteer medical staff, so you are likely to get people who know a lot about drug treatment.

Expert Bali holiday advisers Easy Bali Villas says that while many people who go to Bali on holidays are content to either stay in nice hotels or villas and do all the touristy things and visit the common and popular places, others may want to seek out and experience the true culture of this exotic island by getting off the tourist trail. Here are 4 ways to help you find adventure that is a little different from the main tourist drag in Bali.

1. Head north. Whether you drive from the south to the north, or simply book accommodation there for the whole of your stay, the north will provide many attractions that are free from the usual crowds of tourists. Whether you seek beaches untouched by the tourist footprint or sleepy villages where you can mingle with the natives going about their daily life, Lovina, Singaraja and Pemuteran are all worth your time and attention. In fact, Singaraja was once the capital of Bali and is still the second largest city on the island. Gitgit is a small village outside of the city surrounded by jungle and waterfalls, for those who desire to get out of the city.

Whether you intend to travel to Bali or some other overseas holiday destination, deciding what clothes to take can consume a lot of time, especially if you’ve never been there before. Once thing to remember is that blending in with the crowd can help to avoid becoming the target of pickpockets, scammers – especially if it well known that you are staying in a villa – and even the racial hatred that seems to be so prevalent in some countries.

People in western countries have a very relaxed idea of casual attire, which is not the norm in many Asian countries. Since your clothing is often what makes you stand out in a crowd, here are some tips on what to pack for your overseas holiday and what to leave at home.

• For couples, wearing matching T-shirts will make you stand out as a tourist, something you want to avoid if possible.
• Wearing a T-shirt with a national flag, swearword, a religious symbol or a hand depicting what could be considered a rude gesture is out.
• Wearing skimpy clothing is something that should be avoided in most Asian countries as it is offensive to the culture. People in shorts and sleeveless tops are generally not allowed to go into temples, churches or some clubs.
• Open-toed shoes, sandals and flip-flops should be left for beachwear only, as many countries are unhygienic and you can sustain scratches or cuts that quickly become infected unless your feet are protected. In addition, in the event of a plane evacuation due to fire, leather lace-up shoes will protect your feet from burns and cuts.

If  a spouse or a child who still lives at home is addicted to drugs it can be very difficult to live with, especially if they become violent. It’s essential to get them into drug rehab, but of course, you can’t force other adults to do this if they don’t want to. So, how do you deal with the addiction and the violence? It is important if someone is violent for whatever reason to make sure you and your children remain safe.

Sometimes, the only way to do this is to leave. There are women’s shelters you can go to, or you might be able to stay with a friend or another family member until the danger is passed – until next time. Never confront such a person about their behaviour while they are angry or violent. Wait until they have calmed down and then tell them that if they don’t seek help you will need to leave.

Never think that their problem is your fault, even if they try to blame you. This is a cop-out for them; if they blame you then they don’t feel they have to change. If your loved one is not violent, but simply addicted to alcohol or drugs, encourage them to seek help by going to a treatment clinic or by joining Alcoholics Anonymous. Wait until they are relatively sober before suggesting it though, or they are unlikely to remember what you said or what they promised.

Whether you are looking for some way to make your home worth more, or just want to enhance your own lifestyle, a kitchen renovation is considered to be one of the best investments. If you want to sell in the near future, it is the kitchen that all women look at first. If you ask someone like Colray Cabinets, the kitchen cabinets are old-fashioned and the kitchen looks drab, it is highly likely to turn people away.

But what if you are not planning to sell? Having a great kitchen will surely enhance your lifestyle. While all the house is important, the kitchen is a room where much work is done, where people gather to access the essentials to life; food and water. It is the room where food is prepared and from whence those delicious aromas emanate each evening.

The kitchen truly is the hub of the home, so it is important for it to look nice. If you have to be in an ugly room it is very difficult to feel happy and content. If that room is not very functional, but you still have to be there and use all the inconvenient parts of it on a daily basis, you will not be living the kind of lifestyle that you want. Rather, stress, tension, frustration and annoyance are the kinds of feelings that you will be coping with.

If your kitchen is drab looking and does not function as well as you’d like, renovating it will make a great difference to your overall enjoyment of life. You will look forward to coming home from work to create a beautiful meal for the family simply because the newly renovated kitchen is now a room you can enjoy being in.

But to get a truly great kitchen you need to have it designed and built by professionals. A cabinet maker by trade will be able to ensure that all the components in your kitchen not only fit together perfectly, but look good as well. You can collaborate with the designer to ensure you choose the best options available for your budget and lifestyle.

If you have never been to Bali before there are many wonderful things to do there. But for the person who has never travelled overseas before, knowing what to do and arranging to do it can be somewhat overwhelming. One of the best ways to get the most out of your holiday to Bali is to book some of the tours that are available. That way you have a group to go with and someone to organise all the travelling details for you.

There are many activities to enjoy and places to see with a group of other tourists just like you and participating with them for a few days will give you more confidence to go out and about on your own. Here are just some of the fun things you can do on an arranged tour.

• Go white water rafting down the Ayung River and ride an elephant afterwards. Friendly guides ensure you are safe and you can choose the level of difficulty. After, you can watch the endangered elephants put on a talent show and also ride on one of them. This takes a whole day with lunch and a hot shower included.
• Go on a day trip from Bali to the protected Lembongan Island. Snorkelling in the clear waters surrounding the island to see amazing coral formations and beautiful fish, riding in a banana boat and having fun on the waterslides will keep you busy and happy all day long. There are also extra options of parasailing and scuba diving.

When renovating an older home, most people tend to look at what is visible to make their decision about where to start their renovations. However, it is often what is hidden that needs fixing first. Any qualified electrician will tell you that fires in older homes are often caused by faulty wiring. Electrical wiring is just like anything else; it wears out over time and should be replaced.

In addition, older homes are often not sealed very well and this allows mice into the ceiling cavity where they can chew on the wiring. Once the plastic cover is gone the live wires are exposed, with sparks from the resulting short-out setting the framework on fire. Before you know it, the whole house has gone up in smoke.

Even without rodents chewing the wiring it can simply degrade, especially in locations that experience a very hot climate. Eventually the protective covering wears away, leaving live wires exposed to do their damaging work. Some really old homes have been found with large rings of blackened ash around burnt out wiring. These are the lucky ones that didn’t catch on fire for some unaccountable reason.

If you are building a new home there will be many decisions to make regarding the materials you use. These are important decisions so are worth due consideration. After all, you want your home to be made of durable material that will give value for money, provide good insulation and offer aesthetics as well. If it can be light as well as strong and have low maintenance, so much the better.

Colorbond roofing ticks all of the above boxes. However, there are even more reasons why steel roofing is a good choice.

• With the hot, dry Australian summers bushfires seem to be a part of the landscape, and not only in rural areas. Bushfires can spread into towns and even cities, where there are a lot of trees to provide fuel for them. Colorbond roofing is the ideal choice to help ward off fires, not only because it won’t catch on fire, but because it keeps embers from lodging in niches or under the eaves. This gives your home a better chance of survival if such a disaster should happen in your area.

There is always some risk to your health when travelling even if it just because you will be mingling with a lot of people from different places who could spread the kinds of germs that your body has not built up immunity to. When going to places such as Indonesia and especially Bali, there are things you can do to reduce the risk of getting sick and having your holiday spoiled. Here are some tips to stay healthy in Bali.

• First of all, take out sickness insurance before you leave home. This will ensure that you can be flown home quickly should you get hurt or sick, rather than going to a hospital that may not have the same quality of health care or the facilities that you are used to.
• Remember that Rabies is rife in Bali, so watch for wild animals and don’t try and pet the monkeys or the dogs. You can get rabies from a bite or a scratch.

When you are throwing a party, you’ll want to also add lots of fun entertainment. A party where people have nothing to do but talk and drink is somewhat boring.  One way to up the entertainment level at your party is to provide a photo booth so your guests can all have a bit of crazy fun dressing up and taking photos of themselves and their friends.  People are used to taking selfies with the mobile phones, but a booth provides an even better setting for them, where others won’t inadvertently get in the way.

There are many other ways to make your party fun and entertaining so your guests will enjoy it and remember it for months to come – and want to come back again next time.

• Add a mix of lively music so that everyone will hear something they like and can dance to
• You can also add other, more outrageous props and costumes for guests to use with the booth, apart from the ones already available.
• Teach people simple country dances that are fun and easy for all to do
• Have a live band to add a bit of romance to the occasion
• Choose a DJ with a lot of different music styles, who is experienced in getting parties to swing
• Hire an entertainer or group of entertainers suitable for the occasion

Moving is a hassle but once you have arrived at your new home and your removalists like Brilliance Removalists Melbourne have left you have to unpack. For a family with smaller children this can be a difficult time, but there are ways to make it easier. It is often mum who bears the brunt of it, if she is home caring for the kids while dad goes to work. But there are some things you can do to smooth out the process for your children and hence, for yourself.

1.Unpack the kids’ stuff first

Most parents want to get the kitchen stuff unpacked first so that cooking a meal is quick and easy, but focusing on the needs of the children will settle them down and help the work to flow without the interruptions of littlies wanting reassurance.

When you unpack their stuff first, they will feel like they belong and will often settle down to play with the toys that they were afraid would not arrive at all. Settling them into their rooms will prevent any squabbling about who is sleeping where or sharing storage space.

2.Make it easy on yourself

Leaving the mess is not what you want to do, but taking them for a walk around the neighbourhood to find the parks, library, cinema, school or local fast food outlet will help them become familiar with the new district and to feel more at home. And to make it easy on yourself, buy a light summer meal each or a big family meal to share as you come home. They are sure to be happy about that and settle in more quickly – and you won’t have to cook or wash up after it.

Graphic design should be so good it pops and sizzles, but unfortunately, much is so bland and boring it slips out of our notice, along with whatever it was advertising. Not all designers have what it takes to create great design, but by taking heed of just a few tips you can edge out the competition and become the kind of graphic designer that everyone wants to work for them. So here are a few idea to make your graphic design memorable.

• Fonts are an essential element in most graphic design, but you may be unsure which to use where – and shouldn’t it all be the same in a design? Not so. Pairing contrasting fonts can really make the design special – especially if you make one font large and the other smaller. This brings out the contrast and helps to make the text appealing.
• Colour is a very important component of any graphic design. Yours will really stand out if you match the font colour to the main colour in the graphics. For an exact match you can get the 6-digit HEX code by using a colour picker tool. You can also make the colour stand out more against a patterned background if you enclose it in a semi-transparent box or shape.
• Another way to help light text stand out when placed on a patterned background is to darken the background.
• Colour saturation can increase the vibrancy of an image that may otherwise look somewhat washed out.

There are plenty of tips and advice around to make your skin more healthy, but it doesn’t pay to take advice from just anywhere. Skin is the largest organ of your body and as such, needs sensible care that is simpler than you may think. Many problems with skin are due to what is put on it in the form of chemicals. A natural approach can be far more effective, especially if you have sensitive skin. Here are some musts for healthy skin.

• Use skin care products that don’t contain a boatload of chemicals. Even dyes and fragrances can irritate the skin. Go for a skin care product that is gentle and mild.
• Skin should not feel tight after you have finished your daily care routine. If it does, you’ve probably stripped away the natural oils that are there to protect it.
• Stop dry skin by using moisturiser after washing your face.
• Find out what type of skin you have and purchase products to suit it rather than choosing what your favourite singer uses. Realise that you can have oily skin on parts of your face and dry on other parts.
• Reduce your stress levels – even if you are stressing out over a zit. Stress is bad for the health of your skin as well as for your whole body. Set apart some ‘me time’ or use some kind of relaxation technique.
• Moisturise your skin regularly especially if you spend a lot of time swimming. After showering is the best time as that helps it lock in moisture. Pat your face dry rather than scrubbing at it with the towel.
• Get plenty of exercise; it’s not only good for your health overall, but especially good for the skin as it helps to remove toxins and reduce stress. It also helps the skin to produce collagen, which reduces wrinkles.

Carpets are one of the most popular floor coverings for both homes and commercial buildings. This is due to the comfortable warmth and noise insulation they provide. Walking on a hard surface is not only tiring, it is noisy, both to those on the same floor and to those underneath. However, according to Brilliance Carpet Cleaning Perth since carpet cannot be washed like a hard floor surface can, it poses a health hazard if you do not get carpet cleaning on a regular basis.

How your carpets get dirty

• Carpets in the home are exposed to more dirt and germs than those in commercial buildings mainly because pets often live there. Dogs and cats roam outside in the dirt and when they come inside, a small percentage always comes with them. Then they groom themselves to remove dirt and it goes into the carpet, along with their hair and dander, even if you can’t see it. These animals may even have fleas, eczema or other skin conditions, the bacteria from which will be wiped into the carpet as they lie or play on it.
• Birds may be kept in cages, but their feathers and dander drift out of the cage and settle onto the carpet. Those that fly around the house are likely to defecate as they go and if it lands on the carpet it is impossible to get it all out.
• Children tend to run inside without wiping their shoes or bare feet first and so dirt and grime is tracked inside. And it wipes off onto the carpet which acts like a towel, scraping off dirt from passing foot traffic and hiding it deep within the fibres.

Has anybody else noticed the correlation between the top-paying SEO keywords and the state of the Western English-speaking economy? No, don’t skim over this, it’s very easy to understand and very startling. According to wordstream.com, the six top-paying Google adwords keywords are…

1. Insurance
2. Loans
3. Mortgage
4. Attorney
5. Credit
6. Lawyer
7. Donate
8. Degree
9. Hosting
10. Claim

Now, pause and consider: all of these words have a common theme. They are debt-related. No, really! They’re all financial terms covering some aspect of business related to monetary liability. In insurance, you need that to pay for damages when things go wrong, loans are what you take out when you’re going into debt, mortgages are a kind of debt with a house attached, attorneys are who you need to settle matters pertaining to all of the above…

Nutrition is a word that is bandied about in many women’s magazines and even on television. We are told to have a healthy diet and also take supplements so that we get enough nutrition, add nutritional powders of all kinds to our fruit juice, juice our fruits and vegetables to ensure we don’t miss some vital vitamin and so on. So what’s the problem with this? Here are a few facts that could surprise you.

• Supplements: In tablet form, many supplements are synthetic. Our body often cannot make use of them in the same way it does with ‘real’ food. Often, the body doesn’t even recognise the supplement as food, so it just doesn’t get absorbed into the blood stream and taken to the areas that need it. The vitamins and minerals that come from a natural diet are bound up in highly complex molecular structures that cannot be duplicated by those chemical processes that are used in making supplements. Some tablets do not even get dissolved in the digestive system, but pass straight through, wasting your money and leaving you devoid of all those healthy vitamins you thought were making you healthy. Additionally, some supplements are made from genetically modified food and you don’t even know it.

Building a home is not always cheaper than buying one, but sometimes either option can seem out of your reach.  If you are thinking of building a home, here are some tips you may be able to use to lower the cost. Even if you use just one or two it will mean some kind of savings.

• Some blocks are quite big, more than you really need for a home. If you have a good friend or relative who is also wanting to build a home, consider going halves with them in a bigger block, then dividing it in half. But remember, it has to be someone you won’t mind having for a neighbour. And you will have to be sure that council will allow the division.
• Some blocks are challenging to build on due to the shape or size, or the fact that they are on steep ground. These blocks can often be priced more cheaply than blocks that are easy to build on. However, be careful of steep slopes because what you save on the block may need to be spent on the construction of the home.