Planning on renovating your home? Here are some of todays biggest trends to help guide you in making those remodeling and home addition plans:

Luxurious and Opulent Bathrooms

Spas are known to do wonders for ones mind, body and soul, so its not really surprising that more and more people are trying to bring the spa experience into their homes. So in the next few years, expect to see bigger bathrooms equipped with multiple or enlarged showerheads, heated tile floors, large tubs and, for the high-end bathrooms, whirlpools and waterfalls.

Warm Colors

Warmth and comfort are big days, so if youre thinking about repainting your bedroom or living room walls, consider painting them in natural and earth colors. Those in red, green and yellow tones are particularly popular and trendy these days.

Bigger and Better Laundry Rooms

The trend in laundry rooms is to make it larger, more organized and more colorfulin short, make it better than the damp, cramp and depressing laundry room that can be found in most homes today.

Customized Features

As with cars, jewelry, clothes and most of things in life, customization is big when it comes to home renovation today. Whether its through personalized furniture or fixtures, more and more people are putting their personal stamps on their homes.

Bigger Kitchens

over the years, the kitchen has increasingly become the heart and soul of a home. More than just a place to eat, the kitchen is also where the houses occupants (and if a teenager lives there, their constant stream of friends) gather to talk, do some work and just hang out.

With the increasing importance and role of the kitchen, todays trends dictate that the ideal kitchen should be larger and more spacious. In contrast to the industrial kitchens of the past years, the kitchens new look should be warm and cozy. So instead of the stainless steel tops and furniture, opt instead for counters in earth tones and appliances in rich, warm colors.

wood Floors

The clean elegance of wood floors are enthralling homeowners everywhere and making them among todays biggest home trends. Say goodbye to your old carpeting, say hello to bamboo and hard wood floors.

Specialized Rooms

Specialized rooms are one of todays most trendy home additions. many homeowners convert their grown kids old rooms or have a new one added to their house to have a special place where they could do their crafts, yoga and other passions.

More Spacious and Organized Garages

Better clean up that garage. According to experts, another one of todays big home trends is spacey and organized garages. Instead of the usual cornucopia of jumbled, well, everything, things should be neatly stored in shelves or cabinets. Organizing the garage and ridding it of useless junks will do something many homes have never had before: a spacious garage that actually holds cars.

One last parting tip: unless youre going to renovate the entire house, you really have to carefully study if the trend you chose to follow will suit the house and your needs. Why build a spacious kitchen if you never cook, right?

Visit this site before you make any remodeling and home addition plans.

Maraya Mullen is a copywriter affiliated with A and B Rose Remodeling, a company that specializes in executing renovating and home addition plans.

¶ 8:56 PM 0 comments

players are hitting the ball further than ever and there seems to be no limit to the distance that balls travel these days.

The likes of Bubba Watson and John Daly are making the old 240 yard drive look like a wedge from a perfect lie.

Yes, technology makes for more distance. The golf ball just travels further end extensive research into dimple patterns and ball construction has the inevitable result of more distance.

Manufacturers have changed the lofts on sets of clubs and sell that off as extra distance. Why? Because distance sells like nothing else! Everybody, even the tour pros want an extra ten yards.

The impact on golf courses and course design is enormous. Courses are being lengthened, the rough is longer and tougher, and greens are super fast and not receptive at all. Just watch the majors!

So what is the next big thing in golf? What is going to distinguish the individual from the pack? Can the local club golfer benefit from this as well? They do make up the bulk of sales anyway!

Chances are that it will be the diet. Yes, THE diet. Gary Player was most probably the first tour player who seriously worked out in a gym. These days mobile gyms are following the tour.

Then came technology and everybody jumped on the bandwagon to maintain a portion of this lucrative market. The positive side to that is that it makes it easier for the average player to start end to enjoy the game more with more forgiving clubs and some extra distance.

That is why the next big thing in golf just might be a proper, balanced diet. The demands on physical fitness and mental stamina on the major tours is increasing by the day. Physical training and fitness can only be successful when combined with a well-managed diet. We also know that 95% if the reasons for visits to the doctor can be related to what we eat - need I say more?

Now that you have revisited your membership at the local health club and spent your earnings on the latest technology, have a serious look at what you eat, and DO NOT forget to drink 1 to 2 liters of water every day!

The benefits of a proper diet and exercise with sufficient water are just too much to go into now. This just might be the next big thing in golf and life in general.

To your health!

The gym phase is a given, technology is advancing rapidly, and the diet will make a difference in the demands of the professional golf circuits.

Corrie Nel is a golf fanatic and former club captain. Find out how to lengthen your drives and lower your scores at:

www.sportatlas.com (Please use ID 1536)

¶ 1:45 PM 0 comments

Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity. Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total. There absolute essence is revealed.

~ Vijnanabhairava Tantra, verse 111

Each of has the desire (yes?) to become ~ with each breath we take, with each step of our lives ~ more fully alive And yet there is the paradox that each breath we take, each step of our lives, brings us one step, one breath closer to our death. So how do we work with this? Is there a solution to this paradox?

The traditions of Buddhism as well as Kashmir Shaivism see (the appearance of) this life of ours as training-ground for (the appearance of) that moment of our death. They resolve the paradox through the understanding that only by training ~ in every moment ~ in the art of being fully alive, fully present here and now, in this moment, in this moment, in this moment ~ only through a practice such as this are we able then to be fully present (fully alive!) at the moment of our death.

The quotation above, from the Vijnanabhairava Tantra (a text written by the Shaivite school of Kashmir around the first century A.D.), points to such a resolution. Lets take a closer look

Wander or dance to exhaustion in utter spontaneity. Have you ever danced, or performed any other activity, so completely, with such total abandon, such love and absorption, that the point of exhaustion (what distance runners call the wall) opens into a whole new realm of experience, puts you in touch with a whole new flow of energy/inspiration? Its the moment when years of training (our accumulated expertise) is allowed to open, to fall away into a mindless spontaneity when movement becomes both divinely precise and effortless (Michael Jordan, Baryshnikov, & Jet Li come to mind here) when I am no longer doing anything, yet all things are still manifesting, radiantly, perfectly. In the language of Taoism this state of effortless doing is called Wu Wei.

Then, suddenly, drop to the ground and in this fall be total. Have you ever gone out on a warm summer night, laid on your back on a grassy hillside, and let your mind & heart & vision travel out into the starry sky, with its countless galaxies? When we surrender, we surrender completely no holding back. We let the whole thing dissolve. We die into the present moment. In the language of Tibetan Buddhism, this is called the Completion Stage.

There absolute essence is revealed. What if the essence of life and the essence of death were one and the same? What if both our wandering and our dancing were expressions of that one essence, and equally wise? What if we could touch ~ with each breath, each step, each of our awakened daily activities ~ the sweetness & power that is this essence?

And now, please feel free . to Dance!

Elizabeth Reninger holds a Masters degree in Chinese medicine, is a published poet, and has been exploring yoga - in its Taoist, Buddhist & Hindu varieties ~ for more than twenty years. Her teachers include Richard Freeman and Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. To read more of her yoga-related essays, please visit her website: http://www.writingup.com/blog/elizabeth_reninger

¶ 1:01 AM 0 comments