Spring means kids are heading outdoors in droves in order to enjoy the warmer temperatures and extended hours of daylight. If you’re like many parents, you may have given into requests for outdoor play equipment and decided to purchase a swing set for your backyard .

There are some parents, of both genders, who can look at a collection of swing set hardware and parts and intuitively know how to put it all together to make a safe and stable play environment for their kids. Most parents, however, will need some help in this endeavor.

The easiest way to get a swing set installed in your backyard is to hire an experienced person to do it for you. Installation may be offered when you buy the set or you can hire a local handyman to do it. If you have friends who are good at engineering and construction, they may be willing to help you out. Otherwise you’re going to need to pay careful attention to the instruction manual and may even want to watch a few DIY or manufacturer instruction videos online.

Don’t let your ego get in the way. Your kids and their friends are all counting on you to ensure that the swing set is safely installed. Tossing aside instructions and winging it is not the way to go. Keep safety in mind at all times and you’ll be well on your way to a successful swing set installation.

Putting Together a Swing Set is a post from: Life In Car

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Before bringing a gun into the home, a new gun owner needs to think seriously about the responsibility they now hold to both their family and to anyone else that enters the home. Taking a gun safety course is probably a good start — and family members should take a class as well as the purchaser. This will make sure that everyone knows how to behave around the gun and should significantly reduce the risk of gun-related accidents in the home.

Basic safety rules start with assuming that the gun is loaded and behaving accordingly at all times. Paying attention is the main item. A loaded gun is not to be trifled with. Other tips to learn include pointing the gun in a safe direction, not holding a finger on the trigger, and not shooting hard surfaces.

Gun owners should make sure that their gun is always properly cleaned and has the right ammo when loaded. They should invest in a gun safe that suits both their specific firearm and their lifestyle. Most importantly, they should take lessons in firing and targeting the gun to ensure that if they are ever in a situation to use the firearm, they will know what they are doing and will be less likely to shoot a bystander.

Gun Safety at Home is a post from: Life In Car

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1. New Blinds are Perfect Home Improvement Project

Many people are interested in completing home makeovers and the extent to which they pursue this is based on the individual and their budget. However, regardless of the size of your house and income there are some standard improvement efforts that you can make that will greatly improve the appearance of your home and will also be affordable and easy to complete. Home owners are frequently surprised to learn that simply changing their window blinds can make a huge difference in the overall atmosphere and aesthetic appeal of their homes.

Blinds for residential use come in a large variety of sizes, colors and are made from an assortment of materials. Matching the right blinds to the right home can be an art and it is something that is never overlooked by home interior designers . In addition to finding the perfect color, the material used can make a huge difference in the look and feel of a home. One of the popular and somewhat luxury oriented models is the 2 inch premium wooden blinds , which are warm and elegant looking. These blinds provide a beautiful wall ornamental appearance to windows and can present a tremendous upgrade in the house’s appeal. Changing home blinds is a great improvement project that doesn’t take a lot of time and won’t require taking out another mortgage to complete.

New Blinds are Perfect Home Improvement Project is a post from: Life In Car

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How about those cold and wet winter days. Don’t you just love coming home in your wet socks that have gone from cold to warm, dry to sloshing, through out the day. Oh how you have just wanted to take them off for hours now. Well here is your chance. Your home now and you have purchased one of those wood stove inserts for your living room. Don’t bother dragging your wet socks up to the bedroom hamper just hang them by the heater. Have you ever wondered how long there have been socks anyway? How many socks have been hung next to a heater for thousands of years?

The history of socks goes like this. Socks were actually one of the first pieces of clothing that were ever worn. The are up there with underwear. I am sure they were designed out of a real need to keep the feet protected. They have evolved over centuries of time the first pair made of animal skins that were tied up around the ankles. And you thought those were cave man shoes. They were cave man socks. The Greeks made some of the first warm sock out of matted animal hair. They also came up with a variety with socks made of leather and fabrics.

Then religion came in and made their purity socks called puttees which the holy people of Europe would wear. At some point socks were the big symbol of wealth and nobility. Back before the Stock Market and investments. It was the knitting machine that was invented in 1589 that gave socks a new life. They were knitted out of silk, cotton and wool. They were made six times faster. Then came nylon in 1939. This material started the practice of blending multiple yarns. This is still what we do today. Today they are a fun expression of style and comfort. There are socks made for every activity of life. And they are plenty warm unless you get them wet.

Dry Socks is a post from: Life In Car

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As our calendar swings into the winter months, and with fuel and electricity costs being what they are, I decided I needed a better way to heat my home than simply run the heater all day and night; mainly, I needed to make better use of my fireplace, so I went shopping for wood inserts.  As a fireplace owner, you’d think I’d have thought about inserts before, but, frankly, when I bought the house, I never even considered this bit of technology.

With the insert installed, I found that it works pretty well.  With the insert and blower operating at full capacity, the average temperature of my house hovers at around sixty five degrees.  In the middle of a hard winter, I find that’s pretty good.  Now, I found that those self-cleaning glass doors works, which was a surprise to me, and it’s good to be able to still see the fire inside that clear glass.  This winter, I’m using the fireplace around the clock and I’ve found no real defects to the device, and although I haven’t seen my bills this month, I’m suspecting that it’s paid for itself already.  There are many different brands and manufacturers of these things, so it pays to do some study and find the right insert as well as the right type.

A funny thing happened when I picked up this insert — I started finding out about all my friends and acquaintances who also had inserts.  One wondered about whether or not he shouldn’t have had a gas insert as opposed to a wood insert.  Now, in a wood insert, there’s an air chamber that heats up, and blowers turn on and vent the heat when it hits the right temperature.   He noted that the insert is similar to the gas inserts, except it doesn’t have a flue pipe.  He then said he was thinking about putting in gas logs into the wood burning insert, but he wasn’t sure, but he’d done some research and found that in our state we didn’t need a flue pipe installed, but the dampers must be open.  He had some questions: Could he use gas logs in the wood insert, could he open the damper if it was already in use.  He thought the gas logs might work just the same as the wood logs.

If he’d done a little more research, he’d know that it’s not legal to try to use a wood insert as a gas insert.  If he wanted his unit to be efficient, he’d have to make sure the gas insert was lined at the top, so there were a whole host of reasons why his idea wouldn’t work.  Primarily, though, gas is quite a different fuel from wood and requires different things; if you want to be safe, efficient, and legal, I told him, keep burning the wood, or purchase a whole new outlet!

The Efficiency of Wood Inserts is a post from: Life In Car

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Let me say right from the start that I hate my stove.  If my old roommate were still living here, he’d probably ship it out and replace it with another equally old appliance like he did my aging refrigerator (without my permission) when I was gone for a weekend.  He actually had the temerity to ask me to pay him for the refrigerator when he moved out.  That just seemed strange to me.   But how does one go about buying a new stove?  What do you look for?

First, you need to decide whether or not to go with a gas or an electric appliance.  Can you receive natural gas or propane service easily?  If the answer’s no, then stick to the electric models.  Mainly, though, you want to keep in mind these features:

Consider the brand.  Investigate which models seem more reliable.  Consider, too, a smooth-top electric cooktop.  Most people like the ceramic-glass surfaces, which may be cleaned far easier and are better than the coil heating elements.  I can attest to that.  The coil heating elements on my stove top have twisted up and are at an angle.  It often seems like things are spilling under them, like pieces of  uncooked spaghetti.  A ceramic-glass surface would definitely be better.

Also, keep in mind a self-cleaning oven.  I can’t imagine why anyone would purchase an oven without one.  It seems absolutely mandatory to me!

There other accessories that seem valuable to pick up — like downdraft ventilation or a warming drawer.  You might want a larger oven window to actually see what you’re baking.  Al of these are good, but remember, too, to check for the warranty!  Most stoves have a one-year warranty, but usually you can buy an extended one with just a little extra cost.

I’ve already started looking around to see if I can find a place that has stoves for sale, and to find a place I could haul off my old range.  If I remember correctly, there are facilities available where you can take the range (or perhaps the seller will take it) to a facility that can recycle the parts and break the rest of the materials down into metal that can be used again — perhaps in another stove!

Looking for Stoves for Sale is a post from: Life In Car

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