Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Nashville, TN (PRWEB) December 15, 2014

Nashville braces for another bug invasion. Each year, as the temperatures drop, bugs begin to seek shelter and warmth inside businesses and residential homes. The bugs that top this years list are ants, wasps, spiders, box elder bugs and stink bugs, according to All-American Pest Control. Fortunately, All-American offers tips on how to keep these bugs from overwintering in Tennessee homes.

Keep your gutters clean and free of debris. Not only will you keep rainwater from making your perimeter soil moist for insect habitation, you'll also get rid of the debris spiders and box elder bugs nest in. Rake leaves up off your lawn, but especially away from your foundation. A rotting blanket of leaves invites bugs to overwinter near your exterior walls. Trim bushes down, get rid of vines, and cut tree branches that come near to your home. Insects and rodents use branches like a highway into your home. Fix leaks in and around your house. Pests are drawn in by moisture and standing water. Fill in any areas near your foundation that collect puddles, and force that water away from your home. Keep food sources protected and cleaned up. Don't leave fruit out, avoid leaving dry dirty dishes in a stack, clean counters and rugs regularly, and pick pet food up after mealtime, instead of leaving it laying in the dish. Keep all trash covered and sealed. Open trash is a food source and a breeding site for all pests.

When the cold weather hits, pests will look to overwinter in homes, and that can be trouble for families. Some species of spiders can cause disfiguring wounds accompanying painful bites. The sting from a wasp can send some into anaphylactic shock. Roaches and other bugs can spread disease and cause asthmatic reactions in many. And, termites, carpenter ants, and other wood chewing insects can do significant damage to homes. With these 6 tips you can help make your home less attractive, and less accessible, to invasive and harmful pests. Get protected, and stay protected, by learning how to exclude bugs and wildlife from your home, with the help of a professional pest control company.

###

All-American Pest Control services middle-Tennessee, is proud to be endorsed by Dave Ramsey, and is a winner of the Angie's List Super Service Award. They are an Accredited Business with the Better Business Bureau and have an A+ rating. Visit their website at http://www.allamericanpestcontrol.com.

View post:
6 Ways to Prepare for Winter Pests in Nashville

When outdoor Christmas and holiday lighting displays switch on, some families enjoy taking drives to see what other decorators have thought of this year.

On Truckey Road, Tim Jones encourages sightseers to go one step further. They're welcome to park, step out and walk through a garland-lined pathway set up in his yard. Only up close is it possible to appreciate how much he's accumulated over 40 years of decorating his family's house and yard.

Jones said it all started when his mother-in-law gave his family some outdoor lights and a cross, saying they could either put them up or throw them out.

"We've always added something since then, some years we add more than others," he said.

This year, some inflatable fabric penguins play keep-away with a snowman's head, and the yard now has an animated sleigh that appears to take off, among other additions. The mischievous penguins stand among light-up reindeer near a team of eight hitched to a sleigh - with a red-nosed one on point. That sleigh is where Santa sits and welcomes visiting children on evenings Thursday through Sunday.

That's just one side of the trail. The rest is lined with many decorations and Christmas trees, some adorned with homemade additions. Near one corner is a full nativity scene near a church and two blow-molded choir members. One visitor told Jones about his favorite corner, where three trees are decorated with billiard, hunting and beer themes. There's so much to see that visitors will sometimes return during daylight.

"Even after this long, we still get people where it's their first time they've been out, or people who've been coming for six or seven years and they didn't know they can walk around and look," he said.

Across town, Rob Abram has a more subdued but still attention-grabbing light display. He's ambivalent about putting up lighting, but despite the frustrations that come with putting it, he enjoys being part of a neighborhood tradition. Every year on Christmas Eve residents along his street and the next one over will put out luminaries in their driveways to add to their electric lights.

"With the luminaries out, we get a lot of traffic on Christmas Eve coming through here," he said.

While Abram finds himself sympathizing with fictional dad Clark Griswold of National Lampoon fame, who plugged in his elaborate lighting display to find that none of it worked, he still finds enjoyment in the end result, he said. Abram recommended finding a good light string troubleshooting device, and uses one called the LightKeeper Pro to fix his incandescent-bulb strings.

Read the original:
Outdoor lighting spreads holiday cheer

Affordable Maid Services Del Mar
http://www.mollymaid.com/local-house-cleaning/ca/east-south-county.aspx is Del Mar #39;s best source for affordable maid and home cleaning services. Making time ...

By: Molly Maid Home Cleaning Services

Continued here:
Affordable Maid Services Del Mar - Video

Residential Maid Services House Cleaning Del Mar
http://www.mollymaid.com/local-house-cleaning/ca/east-south-county.aspx is Del Mar #39;s best company for the most trusted Residential Maid Services and House Cl...

By: Molly Maid Home Cleaning Services

Go here to see the original:
Residential Maid Services House Cleaning Del Mar - Video

Anne Helms Irons, a social worker who held starring roles in local community theater productions for nearly 50 years, died Nov. 28 of heart disease at Gilchrist Hospice Care in Towson. She was 83.

Born in Baltimore and raised in Guilford, she was the daughter of Dr. Samuel T. Helms, medical director of the Emerson Drug Co., and Selina Clair Helms.

She was a 1949 graduate of Roland Park Country School and earned a bachelor's degree in theater from the College of William and Mary in 1953. She attended the University of Maryland School of Social Work, graduating in 1969.

After working as a caseworker with children in the foster care system in Baltimore County, Ms. Irons became an administrator and executive in what was then known as the state Social Services Administration. She retired as chief of the administration's adult services division.

But acting was her passion, friends and family said.

While a student at William and Mary, she spent her summers acting in "The Common Glory," an annual production in Williamsburg depicting the American Revolution. The event drew about 80,000 attendees each summer, according to the college.

She briefly went to New York to pursue acting, returning to Baltimore in 1955 and beginning a 40-year career in social work, said her daughter, Jane Irons Moore of Baltimore. But she continued to act in local theatre.

"She did shows constantly, even while she was a social worker," Moore said.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, she was an ingenue of local theater, playing the title roles in "Gigi" and "Anna Christie" at the Vagabond Arena Theater. She starred as Eliza Doolittle in the Baltimore Actors' Theater's production of "Pygmalion."

A Baltimore Sun reviewer of "Arms and the Man" at Center Stage in 1963 said Ms. Irons "radiated" a spirit of impudence in playing a maid seeking to improve her social status.

Visit link:
Anne Helms Irons, social worker

December 14, 2014 1:59 PM

Christmas Without Cancer volunteers delivering gifts to the Ellis family. (Credit: Bill Figel, Figel Public Relations LLC)

I was a fan of WBBM Newsradio 780 long before joining the staff as a...

(CBS) Christmas came early Sunday for a west suburban family gearing up for another round of cancer treatment for their five-year-old son.

Chris Ellis will check in to the hospital tomorrow for a week-long clinical trial for his stage four neuroblastoma that will leave him highly radioactive.

But his mother Danielle wont have to worry about buying and wrapping the familys gifts because volunteers with the group Christmas without Cancer have taken care of that for them.

Gerri Neylon came up with idea 11 years ago while working as a nurse in the oncology department of Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn.

That first year, she asked friends and family to donate gifts and gift cards to a young woman she met in the hospital who was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant. The response was three vans full of donations.

Ellis family clockwise: Ted, Danielle, Chris and Maria. (Credit: Bill Figel, Figel Public Relations LLC)

Since then, Neylon has set up a website for her non-profit, http://www.christmaswithoutcancer.org, and it has delivered gifts to 12 families in the last week alone.

View original post here:
Christmas Comes Early For Five-Year-Old Suburban Kid With Cancer

Published: Monday, 12/15/2014 - Updated: 29 seconds ago

BY LAUREN LINDSTROM BLADE STAFF WRITER

When volunteers in her neighborhood painted the home of Bobbie Davis on Nesslewood Avenue, she was overjoyed. The weeklong project of scraping, priming, and painting the house with coat of blue paint, trimmed in gray, was a gesture of neighborly affection she said she never saw coming.

It came to her free of charge in the summer of 2013, and though she found it unexpected, it was anything but random. The project was part of deliberate, ongoing beautification efforts by the Old West End Neighborhood Initiative aimed at bringing life back to the homes in the area.

OWENI began meeting in 2012 to address neighborhood safety and blight concerns. The organization works in the Old West End and Overland Industrial Park areas between Collingwood Boulevard and the old Jeep site, and from Berdan Avenue south to Delaware Avenue.

Ernest Sawyers and his wife, Brenda, moved to Toledo 29 years ago when he was transferred by Chrysler, and theyve lived in this neighborhood for 10. Shes an OWENI chairman and he works with neighborhood development. The group meets monthly to discuss concerns and plan projects. Mr. Sawyers said he wants residents to know OWENI is there to help them make their neighborhood better.

Though mention of the Old West End often conjures up images of the expansive Victorian homes plentiful in the historic part of the neighborhood, the area that concerns Mr. Sawyers and OWENI has been harder hit.

The Old West End is informally sectioned off, divided up in the historic district and his section, while the Cherry Street Legacy Project starts on the other side of Collingwood. When neighborhoods define their own boundaries and characteristics, lines can be fuzzy. Mr. Sawyers said they often work with homes a few blocks outside of their official boundaries. If someone wants help fixing up their home, theyll listen.

Local community leaders, including several pastors and church parishes, have joined in the efforts. It is funded through the Toledo Community Foundation and partners with the local chapter of NeighborWorks, a national organization devoted to community development. The goal: to beautify and bring people back to the central city.

A combination of factors contribute to the decline, Mr. Sawyers said. The area has few job opportunities, especially after the former Jeep plant stopped production. Many of the residents are senior citizen so repairs are difficult, and the older homes make utility bills expensive. When OWENI started meeting two years ago, vacant homes were more than commonplace.

More here:
Group keeping Old West End safe

Expectation and Reality Life as a Landscape Architect Danielle Desilets and Kristina Stevens

By: CELS @ URI

Read the original:
Expectation and Reality Life as a Landscape Architect Danielle Desilets and Kristina Stevens - Video

UK's most senior officer says new budget cuts require 'radical action' He claims police needs to catch-up with the changing nature of crime Others claim scale of cuts to come could decimate neighbourhood policing

By Rebecca Camber for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:44 EST, 14 December 2014 | Updated: 05:56 EST, 15 December 2014

78 shares

154

View comments

Warning: Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe says forthcoming cuts in police budgets will endanger the public unless radical action is taken

The public will be put at risk unless police forces merge to save costs, Britains most senior officer warned last night.

Scotland Yard commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe called for the traditional landscape of policing to be ripped up, replacing 43 forces across England and Wales with nine regional super forces.

He has warned that forthcoming cuts in police budgets will endanger the public unless radical action is taken.

Read the rest here:
Get rid of 34 police forces to save cash, Scotland Yard's Bernard Hogan-Howe says

Illustration: Kerrie Leishman.

The Sydney Botanic Gardens and Domain, while a gift from governors Phillip and Macquarie to the people of Sydney, is of its essence, a gift of nature.

Its attractive deep cove, with its two long tongues of green reaching down to the harbour at Bennelong Point and at Mrs Macquaries Chair, is essentially the landform shaped down the aeons. It is broadly as it was before European settlement. That is what is so wonderful about it a place defined by naturalism. But even more than that, a garden space made richer by its developed horticultural heritage.

The Sydney Botanic Gardens is one of the great gardens of its kind in the world. We therefore have a duty of care to maintain and protect it.

Advertisement

The Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trusthas outlined a plan which fundamentally commercialises this historic garden place. The plan seeks to give the gardens a railway station, a ferry wharf, a hotel, a permanent sound stage and, as inappropriate as these things are, worse than that, three clumsily placed buildings. According to the draft plan, a 100- to 200-seat cafe and function places in each of the very points that the two green tongues touch the harbour Bennelong Point at the foot of the Opera House and Mrs Macquaries Chair and a separate extension of the Art Gallery of NSW jumping the expressway to land in the gardens themselves.

Jorn Utzonset his Opera House and the steps to its podium against the immediate rolling green hill rising from the Man OWar steps reaching to Government House. It is a poetic picture of nature juxtaposed with major architecture. Where that rolling hill meets Utzons steps, the gardens trust wants to erect a building. And a big one. The insensitivity of it is breathtaking. And to what purpose? The draft plan tells us "an orientation centre, associated retail, 200-seat cafe, 100-seat outdoor dining area and public toilets". In other words a mini-mall.

But not happy with that detraction against the site, the trust seeks to repeat it at Mrs Macquaries Point. Here, on what is probably Sydneys most natural and sacred site, with panoramic views from the Opera House and Harbour Bridge to Bradleys Head, the trust intends to construct another building. And that building, according to the draft plan, is another cafe, retail and function space with a terrace under a glass canopy. In other words, a blot on the landscape. But in this case, the most sensitive bit of landscape in the city.

One can only imagine the growth in the tourist bus traffic that will tear Mrs Macquaries Point to pieces as tourism operators pour their clients into the cafe and function space. These tourism operators want to sell the nature that Sydney offers while reserving the right to trash it wherever they think they can make a faster and more convenient buck.

One can understand the greedy and crass tourism industry wanting to build these things, but having them done at the behest of the gardens trust the supposed trustee of this natural domain is what is truly disturbing.

View original post here:
A blot on Sydney's landscape