I was visiting insurance company after insurance company, filling out several pages on their online forms, just to get a car insurance quote! What I got out of it was mostly disappointment and a lot of wasted time. I was discussing this with my friends at work and wanted to get their opinions and experience with their car insurance company. One of my friends suggested using 2insure4less.com. He had recently used their online quotation form for his car insurance, and they came up with a quote there was 35% lower than the best quote he had been able to obtain by himself.

I decided to give 2insure4less a shot and was pleasantly surprised that I only had to fill out a short form to get started: Name, zip code and if you currently are insured.

2insure4less.com are getting quotes on your behalf from multiple car insurance companies, which based on their experience are able to give you the lowest price on your insurance. They do the work for you and remember you do not commit yourself to anything!

I ended up saving over 30% compared to the quotes I had obtained on my own!

Does your bedroom have piles of clothing, cardboard boxes, suitcases and even gym equipment? And when was it last properly cleaned and decorated? Bedrooms should be restful, stress free and beautiful rooms. They should stimulate the senses whilst still having a calm influence.

Here are seven tips to refreshing your bedroom without spending a fortune.

Deep Clean

Bedrooms always need good cleaning to remove dust, hair and other debris and to control bed mites. Vacuum the room regularly with a high quality cleaner but once a year get the room professionally cleaned, perhaps more often if you have pets or if you smoke in the bedroom. Deep clean carpets and beds and all dust traps such on top of wardrobes or on picture rails.

Air the room thoroughly and frequently let the mattress air all day long to ensure that any moisture fully evaporates - mites need a moist environment.

A clean bedroom should smell fresh but that should be the result of a clean room and free air rather than overpowering room scents from supermarkets.

New Bedding

Since you spend a third of your life in this room you should make the experience a good one. Furthermore a good night’s sleep sets you up for the rest of the day. So it is worth investing in good bedding.

Get the best quality mattress you can afford and investing high quality cotton sheets is a good idea; go for Egyptian cotton with a high thread count. This will give your bed a luxurious feel and the sheets will be durable.

Paint

Some people think that decorating a bedroom is low priority since it usually is dark and most of the time it’s in use you have your eyes closed! But as you drift off to the land of nod or when you wake in the morning why not have an attractive surrounding? Fortunately repainting a room is not expensive and you can change your style frequently to suit your moods. There is no need to adopt the “conventional” magnolia and off-whites so prevalent these days. You can design your bedroom to be either a cool restful haven with light blues or an exotic boudoir with aubergines and reds.

Anything goes as long as it suits you.

Carpet

Bedroom carpet is usually long lasting because it does not get heavy usage with dirty outdoor shoes but that means it will accumlate dust over the years, hence the need for regular cleaning. Also if you are choosing a new carpet try to select a style that will not go out of fashion too quickly. That way you can retain the carpet when you redecorate the rest of the room.

Storage

This is absolutely critical. Most homes would benefit from a separate walk-in wardrobe but sadly do not have the available space. Failing that you need to be ruthless with bedroom storage. Put last season’s clothing into plastic boxes with lids and put in a couple of sachet’s of silica gel to absorb any moisture. Store the closed box in the loft or garage until needed next year. If the clothing is out of fashion, or no longer fits take it to a thrift/charity store.

It is always worth adding as many shelves, hooks, rails etc in your wardrobe to maximise storage space and to minimise frustration when it comes to finding a particular item of clothing.

Curtains

A good night’s sleep is essential to refresh body and mind, so your window dressing should be as near to “black-out” as possible. Your choice of window dressing is only limited by your imagination and budget (How about remote controlled motorised blinds?).

When you are designing the window dressings allow for the windows to open properly, since one of the healthiest ways to sleep is with fresh air circulating in the room. Except on the stormiest or coldest nights you can easily sleep with a window partly open as long as your window dressings are not flapping and keeping you awake!

Gadgets

Since you spend so much time in the bedroom, you might well want to invest in a few toys.

How about a remote control to switch on your shower and set the temperature whilst you are still curled up under the duvet?

Perhaps either you or your partner like to stay awake longer reading? Then why not invest in independent spot lighting over each side of the bed?

If you like watching TV in bed instead of having an ugly TV on a bracket attached to the wall, why not build it into a blanket chest at the foot of the bed. You can motorise it so that the TV rises out of the box for viewing and then disappears to avoid visual clutter and to hide a dust trap.

Which ever of these tips you adopt or if you have your own ideas you can easily and cheaply refresh your bedroom whenever it needs a new look or calls for a new mood.

Bronia Suszczenia is co-founder and Creative Director of York interior design, company Art from the Start Ltd based in England. She designs projects ranging from dressing a single window, designing interiors for new homes, right through to refurbishing whole hotels. Visit art-from-the-start.co.uk to see more FREE design tips, to see the design portfolio and to learn about the unique Room-in-a-Box interior design service.

Protecting your eyes from the sun used to be the main reason for buying a pair of sunglasses, but today it seems to be just as important to use the sunglasses to enhance (or maybe change) your personality and they becomes a part of your wardrobe. Just look at the celebrities and see how they are using designer sunglasses to add character to their look.
Actually the celebrities are the major trendsetters when it comes to sunglasses.

Now what style should you choose? Look for trendy tints that compliment your colors. Decide if you are into the wraps, tough guy/girl look or the more sophisticated large size typical designer styles of today. You could also be into the good old Aviators which are the teardrop shaped sunglasses with metal rim used by pilots and cops. If you are wearing prescription glasses your choice of sunglasses will be more limited and you will have to go for either clip on sunglasses or prescription sunglasses. Last choice is the more expensive one. As a rule of thump the shape of the sunglasses should be the opposite of your face shape. If you have a thin face, choose round sunglasses and if you have a round face, choose oval or square sunglasses. That’s a very good starting point.

Now for the shopping part. The internet have a lot of great sunglasses shops. Often you can get great deals when you order two or more pairs at the same time. Keep in mind that since different types of sunglasses fit differently with different out fits, this might be a good way to save some money and you really should have a small collection of sunglasses if your main purpose is to use them to enhance your personality.

What I will be writing here is proven to work. I used it when I stopped smoking and I have family and friends who also used the same approach when they quit smoking.

There are no magic or miracles involved. It’s simple and it’s all in your mind.

My uncle Dennis had been a heavy smoker for over 20 years and he was the one who told me how to go about it. He went from 60 to 0 cigarettes per day overnight. Ahead of that he tried to quit multiple times using nicotine gum and nicotine patches and it didn’t seem to have any effect on him at all. He still got the urge and cravings and was struggling with the thought about never be able to smoke again. The cravings are so powerful and when they hit you it become unbearable that you will be suffering like this many month ahead of time.

This is how most people feel and this is where you need to look at the situation differently, if you want to succeed in your personal fight for a better health without smoke.

When you first quit smoking, you will be hit hard by nicotine cravings. You will need to fight and win them one by one! Do not think about your day tomorrow or next week or next month, concentrate about the craving that is bothering you right now!

At first you will get the cravings very frequently. It will be tough, you will be tempted, but don’t give in and you will realize how your mind all of a sudden get away from the craving and get you occupied with something else. A new craving will hit you and the same will happen again. You will get a small break in between the craving and as the time go by, that break will be longer and longer. Keep fighting and resisting and you will realize that you win that extra time for each nicotine craving you are beating. It is a step-by-step process and even though it can seem so simple and maybe not a big deal when you are reading it here, once you are facing a craving and realize that’s the way it work, it will have a major effect on the way you are able to handle your whole nicotine problem.

As I mentioned earlier, don’t waste you money on gum or nicotine patches. If you do need something to help you with the cravings, I will strongly suggest Nicocure.

I used Nicocure when I stopped smoking and the same did Dennis. It worked much better than gum and patches and it is a great supplement to the technique mentioned in this post. It keeps the cravings smaller so they are easier to overcome. I bought one 60 days supply and after that I was fine on my own. I would think most people would be ok after taking it for 60 days. You can pick it up here

It’s about a year since I stopped smoking and Dennis hasn’t smoked for over 4 years.

I went on a small 3 days cruise just before Christmas and I thought I better get the pictures posted before I forget all about them and they’ll just be sitting there in another folder on my computer.

This was my fist cruise with Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. After two very successful cruises with Carnival I was looking forward to see if Royal Caribbean Cruise Line would be able to deliver the same quality cruise as Carnival.

Sovereign of the Seas is one of the older Royal Caribbean Cruise Line ships and it is scheduled to retire late 2008. Our cruise director told us it would be moved to Spain and sail for another company under Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.

We arrived at Port Canaveral around 11.15 am and were on board 45 minutes later. I did not get the “wow effect” like I did when I first got on board in Carnivals Fantasy or Inspiration ships. The flashiness was a little bit scaled down compared to Carnivals Fantasy class ships. Don’t get me wrong. I definitely liked Sovereign of the Seas and what it lacked in look, it had in lounge areas.

There were so many nice places to hang out and even though the ship was full it never seemed crowded anywhere.

We stayed in the pool area and enjoyed the wonderful buffet until our cabin was ready around 1 pm.

The cabin was ok. It was very small and I’m pretty sure the cabins in Carnivals Fantasy ships are at least 50% larger. It was clean and functional though. There was plenty of closet space and after unpacking the suitcases could be stored under the bed.

In our group we had one cabin with a queen bed and another cabin with three beds where one of them was a pull down bed.

The bathrooms were also small, but that was expected. Our two rooms were connected with a door between them.

Around 4 pm we had to go through the usual muster drill. What a pain it always is, but it is required by law that all cruise passengers go through it before the ship is leaving port.

We always got our dinner in the main dining room. The food was really good, but we all agreed that it was a little better when we were with Carnival. When we were cruising with Carnival we were also able to request items not listed on the menu, but on Sovereign of the Seas, when one from my group asked for a piece of cheesecake he was told he could only get what was on the menu. It’s no big deal really, but it is just one of the small differences we noticed.

Our first stop was in Nassau, Bahamas. I’ve been there a couple of times before and pretty much have seen what there is to see. We went to the straw market and bought some knockoff designer purses, wallets and sunglasses and walked around in the city.

The next day our stop was at Coco Cay Island. Coco Cay is Royal Caribean’s own island and we had a great time there. They have a nice lunch buffet lined up when you arrive and there are plenty of lawn chairs along the beach. We started doing a little shopping in some of the souvenir shops there, went for lunch and after that just hung out on the beach.

All in all we had a really good cruise and I really need to go cruising on one of Royal Caribbean’s larger cruise ships before I can do a real comparison to Carnival Cruise line’s cruises.

My friend saved $364 per month after getting her refinancing rates through Lendingtree.

All she did was refinancing the remainder of her old mortgage. She did not change the amount of years she had left to pay the old mortgage. The $364 monthly saving was solely because Lendingtree was able to find her a much better interest rate.

Please come back and post your mortgage experience from Lendingtree as a comment to this post.

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