big & huggable » family and home

trimming the Christmas tree

admin_bighuggable — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:39:32 +0000

Although it’s still the month of November, I feel that it’s Christmas time already. Thankfully, I’m done with the general cleaning last Sunday, so I already bring out the Christmas tree. My third child helps me assemble it since she too loves this season. But, we realize our ornaments can use a lot of update. They are old enough to be tossed and changed. For that matter the tree is still empty in terms of decorations.

I end up sitting in front of the computer looking at the different Christmas ornaments of Personal Creations. I love the colors of their decorations and wondered who might be behind it. Then, I find myself at personal creations linkedin page. At least now I know who are behind their brilliant product ideas. But, I’m more interested in buying the ornaments to liven my Christmas tree. The only difference now, I can decorate my tree with personalized Christmas ornaments that are customized with engraving, clay handprints, photographs, family characters drawings & more. I feel this would be very fun.

Training Kids Daily Body Care

admin_bighuggable — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:38:02 +0000

Simple body-care tasks such as brushing teeth, combing hair, eating healthy food and bathing are important skills for children to learn. Many are resistant to caring for their own bodies, however, because it takes away from playtime and other fun activities. To encourage your child to take care of her body, it’s important to make body care fun and easy, in addition to explaining its importance, according to pediatrician Dr. William Sears.

Basic body care doesn’t have to be a boring, monotonous task that takes children away from fun activities. Parents should make body care fun and interesting. Provide your child with a brightly colored toothbrush and try putting food coloring in water to encourage her to drink it. Children often master a task most quickly when they’re rewarded for trying, the authors of the book “Child Psychology” write. Try instituting a star chart system. For every day that your child completes basic tasks such as brushing her teeth, drinking water and choosing healthy snacks, give her a gold star to place on her chart. When the chart is full, reward her with a special toy or outing.

Toddlers should begin learning about the importance of washing their hands and brushing their teeth as soon as they can talk. Children at this age love doing things for themselves, so encourage your child to brush his own teeth and wash his own hands with supervision. Preschoolers can help you pick snacks and foods. Give them choices of two or three healthy items. School-aged children can begin choosing their own foods. Reward them for healthy choices. Encourage children to move, run and play and help them understand the important role exercise plays in health.

Parents often struggle with getting their children to perform basic hygiene tasks such as showering and brushing their hair. A hallmark trait of childhood is the desire to be independent and to have control over one’s own life, according to “Child Psychology.” Harness this desire to encourage your child to complete basic hygiene tasks. Instead of pleading with her to wash her hair, offer her a choice: Either she can wash your hair or you will do it for her. Ask your child if there are particular supplies she would like to have around, such as a special soap, a brightly colored brush or a tear-free shampoo. This gives your child control over her own hygiene — and child-friendly supplies make it easier for children to complete basic grooming tasks.

Best Guides to Great Parenting

admin_bighuggable — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 09:46:07 +0000

Though it is impossible to draw up a list of list of hard and fast rules and methods for parenting, simply because not all family situations are alike, and not all children respond to parenting methods in the same way. If this is so, does that make any talk of ‘learning’ about parenting useless? Absolutely not! While methods may have differing effects, and every situation calls for a different set of rules, the things that should remain constant are the basic concepts each parent must learn. These concepts will help guide parents in their constant effort to be better parents.

Unconditional Love – Unconditional love is one of the concepts that should permeate every action and every interaction between parent and child. It is also one of the most misunderstood concepts. How a parent expresses this to the child may very well determine how the child views himself, and his/her worth.

Many children grow up with a low sense of self-esteem as a result of many different factors. They may feel that the love they are shown depends on their accomplishments. Or, they may feel unwanted, or unloved. All parents should, early on, be certain to show their children how important they are, no matter what, so that they can grow-up loving in the same way. This concept is very important in building self-worth.

Responsibility – Children should grow up with a sense of responsibility for their actions, and the things around them. Far too many children grow up to be irresponsible parents, friends, and family, not caring or not knowing how to care, and to accept their own responsibilities.

Children who grow without a sense of responsibility too often find themselves blaming other people for things they should be dealing with themselves. Alternately, lack of responsibility training could cause children to blame themselves for things that they have no control over. This is an opposite, but equally undesirable problem. Responsible children learn to care for and properly manage their time and resources – and ultimately your time and resources as a parent as well!

Respect – Children should be taught to respect at an early age. They learn that there are people that they should answer to, and that there is organization within every social unit. They learn that no matter whom the person they are talking to, that person has worth and should be respected.

This will help make relationships grow smoothly; as respect is one of the foundations of any good relationship. Children who learn to give and expect respect in return, adjust better to other people than those who don’t.

Therefore as a parent one helpful illustration might be to think of raising children as being like flying a kite – you let the kite fly into to the wind, giving slack as the kite flies higher, and reining it in if overwhelmed by the wind. But, like the kite, if properly flown your children could accomplish greater heights of personal development with the help of your support and parenting.

xmas present for hubby

admin_bighuggable — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 22:50:09 +0000

Christmas is soon coming. If you may not know it, I love this occasion a lot because it’s the celebration of the birth of Christ. It’s a really festive occasion where everybody becomes giving to one another. The streets are lighted with colourful Christmas lights that create good mood. In most homes, Christmas trees can be seen with presents underneath to be shared on the day.

For this year, I want to purchase one of those Bluray players as my Christmas present for hubby. I don’t really give him anything on Christmas before because of tight financial budget. But, I’m a little relaxed after my third child graduated from college. So, I have spare money for other things. I thought this player is perfect since he continually talks and have been keeping an eye on it. Well, let’s just see if I really end up giving him this or I might discover other stuff for him.

decreasing the amount of laundry

admin_bighuggable — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 11:39:10 +0000

Decrease the amount of laundry you do by creating new standards of “dirty”. If you wear a pair of jeans for two hours then put on your shorts, are the jeans dirty? Not in my house. Pajamas put on a clean body at night after a bath and worn once aren’t dirty either. Ditto for a towel that blots a freshly scrubbed body. Teach your kids that dirty mean it has food or obvious dirt marks on it. The exception? Underwear of course!

Minimize sorting by putting a hamper in each bedroom that has 3 slots. One for whites, one for darks, and one for mixed colors. For kids that are very young, try cutting out a large circle from construction paper for each category. Tape these on the wall above the hamper to show where to put each color. Alternately, you could buy inexpensive colored bins that match laundry colors.

Train your kids to bring you their dirty laundry at the beginning of each day or at some other time you choose. Don’t turn socks right side out for laundering. Show your family members how to take off their socks without bunching them into an inside out ball. If they don’t choose to listen to your sock lessons, let them turn their own socks right side out.

You may be able to minimize sorting even more by washing more clothes together. Many times light colors can go into the wash with mixed colors if you use cold water and the items aren’t brand new. Typically only cheap clothing fades anyway so buy your kid’s clothing from the nicer stores. It will last longer and wash well.

Some important questions to ponder: Do underwear need to be “folded” or can they be neatly placed flat in drawers? What about small T shirts and shorts? Do socks need to be matched up or can they be thrown into plastic boxes in a drawer and matched up by the wearer? Important questions, these!

Safety Tips for Baby Crib

admin_bighuggable — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 06:38:10 +0000

If using a blanket, it is best to place your infant with his or her feet nearly touching one end of the crib, and then tuck the blanket in at the foot and the sides allowing it to cover no farther than your baby’s chest. Using a sleeper instead of a blanket may further reduce any risk of danger. Your child should sleep on his or her back in a crib with a firm, tightly fitting mattress. This is to prevent your child from becoming trapped between the sides of the crib and the mattress. Do not put pillows, comforters, quilts, bumper pads or stuffed toys in the crib with your child. Only use fitted sheets that are made for cribs and fit the mattress properly.

Be sure there are no loose or poorly installed brackets, screws or other hardware on the crib or mattress support. The corner posts should not be taller than 1/16th of an inch high to prevent the infant’s clothing from getting caught and there should not be any cutouts on the headboard or footboard where your child’s head might become trapped. The slats of the crib should be no more than 2 1/4 inches apart so that the baby cannot squeeze through. Never use a crib with missing or damaged slats.

If you plan to use a crib with mesh sides, don’t use anything with mesh larger than 1/4 inch because the buttons from your infant’s clothing could get caught. If the crib or playpen was manufactured using staples, just be sure none of them are missing, loose or sticking out. Check the tops and bottoms on all sides to be certain the mesh is securely attached and make sure there are no rips or holes in the rail cover along the top especially. Always check for damaged mesh and do not use the crib or playpen if there are holes or loose threads.

By taking the above precautions you can reduce the chance of your child having an accident, and that will help just about any parent sleep a little better at night.

want to help her

admin_bighuggable — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 11:50:59 +0000

It’s been a week since my daughter left the country. She is trying her luck in a foreign place together with her hubby. I don’t like the idea much, but there’s little I can do about it. They are old enough to live their own life and make decisions for the betterment of their future family. But, if I only have a way to keep them nearby, I would definitely stop them. For now, the only way I can do is to show my support and trust them.

Speaking of support, I found a site that offers a number of jobs including the Technical Recruiter Consultant Jobs. I wanted to tell it to her directly, but can’t find the right timing since she is currently offline. So, I just left a message with the details. I just hope I don’t sound too pushy because I just want to help her.

Evaluating your Budget to Suit Retirement

admin_bighuggable — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 11:10:49 +0000

Life is all about balance and making hard choices, and there are often no harder choices to be made than those involving our finances. While it can become tempting to live above our means in the hopes that our financial situation will one day improve to the point where we can make up the debt we’ve incurred over the past years, this is neither an intelligent nor moral way to live.

Likewise though, cutting back too much in an attempt to save away for something such as our child’s education or our retirement fund may make it difficult to stay motivated. We all to help our children get ahead, and feel secure in our future retirement, but is it worth sacrificing the present for and making life more difficult now, for a future that is uncertain at any rate? These are the difficult choices that must be considered when planning out your finances current and future.

One of the common problems with purchases or expenses is that their future costs aren’t taken into consideration. You may budget for the price of a new car, but are you also budgeting for the increased insurance prices that will come with it, the other little upgrades that you may want to have done to it, the increased fuel cost that may be associated with the car, etc.? These scenarios are where people often get blindsided with costs they weren’t expecting and get in over their head. Many purchases are not just simple one-off payments or monthly charges, many will require additional expenses or payments you need to take into consideration.

Another risk you run by having your income constantly tapped to the limit is that when an emergency comes up you’re often forced to turn to the credit cards or some other line of credit to get through it, and from then on run the risk of that slippery credit slope.

It’s important to separate necessary from unnecessary expenses. We live in a true golden age of luxuries, and this is great and all, but too often these things come to be viewed as necessities when they are anything but. Thing about how people lived as little as 50 years ago and re-evaluate what’s really a necessity and what isn’t.

As much as you may not like, cell phones, T.V service, internet, video games, none of these things are necessities. Your cell phone and internet may be relevant to your work, making them more necessary, but for most these are nothing but luxuries that are anything but necessary. But if you’d rather eat less or rack up debt so you can send superfluous text messages or watch videos on YouTube, you might need to re-examine what’s important in your life and where your life is headed.

These are questions you need to answer for yourself. Remember that options always exist, though they may not be ideal. While you may be used to high-speed DSL or cable internet, you could save as much as $100 a month by switching to a simple dial-up plan. Especially for people who rarely use the internet this make a lot of sense as inconvenient as it may be. Think about the inconvenience of bankruptcy and then re-evaluate how inconvenient dial-up internet service is.

You have two choices when facing balancing life and debt and a tight budget, either cut back on your expenses or increase your revenue. Are those little luxuries worth having to get a second job and out in an extra 20 hours of work a week for, time that will effectively take you away from those luxuries anyways? There are many decisions to be considered, and only you have the answers to those questions.

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‘Drawdown Pension’ is it a good idea?

admin_bighuggable — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 03:16:13 +0000

Exchange that “drawdown” with “withdraw” and it can perhaps be most readily understood as the ability to withdraw money from your pension fund and leave the balance invested, so that (hopefully) it continues to grow. This ability therefore gives the pension holder an additional option on retirement: instead of using the pension for the one-off purchase of a lifetime annuity, funds can be withdrawn or drawn down for the purchase of an annuity at a later date. And the later the date, of course, the more attractive the annuity should be. It does mean, however, that you will probably need an alternative source of income in the meantime.

Clearly, this will give you a much greater degree of flexibility in the use of your pension and preserves the opportunity of a remaining pension fund that you could pass on to your children on your death (provided, of course, that the fund is still a reasonably significant amount).

If the pension fund is sufficiently large, you will be able to draw down income and continue to manage the balance of the fund, making any necessary investment decisions for yourself. In other words, it allows you to stay in control of a significant source of savings and investment.

Pension drawdown could also result in your being able to increase your income when you are older. Obviously, this will depend not only on there still being a sizeable balance in the pension fund, but also that the investments perform well. The opposite is also true, of course. If the investments do not perform well, then the fund can become seriously depleted and the income in your old age could in fact be significantly reduced.

Pension drawdown thus offers a more flexible alternative to purchasing an annuity as soon as you retire. This will suit those people who feel that the one-off purchase of an annuity at too early a stage locks them into an arrangement which might not represent the best deal over the longer-term. They might also be concerned about the relatively limited death benefits that come with many annuities.

From the foregoing, therefore, it can be seen that there are attractions to a pension drawdown. But these attractions come at a price. And that price lies in the risk of things going wrong or you miscalculating a number of factors. In other words, pension drawdown represents a risk. If the worst came to the worst, your decisions could leave your remaining pension fund seriously – if not totally – depleted. This would leave you without a private pension at all in your old age.

The risk is sufficient, certainly, for it to be very unwise to consider this retirement option without first consulting an experienced independent financial adviser, who can warn you of the pitfalls and carefully explain not only the attractions, but also the drawbacks of a pension drawdown.

sweet birthday gift

admin_bighuggable — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 20:37:30 +0000

Since I am happy today, I tend to remember a lot of things. I’m not sure why, but it is how it goes. One of the things I recall is the birthday of hubby’s older brother. We aren’t that close, but I’m sure he will appreciate the fact that his big day is noted.

Shari’s Berries sweets are the best birthday gift I could think of because he is a food lover. I’ve learned it’s a sweet way to celebrate another annual milestone of life that will be fondly recalled for years to come. From birthday cakes, to birthday strawberries or birthday gift baskets, the birthday choices are bountiful. But, all of them are obviously a great choice. You can find birthday gift online here. It is where I got the idea about the sweet birthday treats from delectable cookie assortments, to fun and imaginative delights like our one-of-a-kind brownie pops, flavorful strawberries, cheesecakes and so much more. Well, I hope you find it helpful just as I do.