Water yoga is low impact and gentle on the muscles and joints, making it perfect for the elderly, pregnant women and people with injuries or chronic conditions. Additionally, the buoyancy of the water cushions falls and makes certain postures, like handstands, safer than on land. With a little creativity, almost any land asana will translate to water. However, there are some poses that lend themselves to water already.
Floating Forward Bend
In shallow water, hold on to the edge of the pool and place the soles of the feet against the side of the pool, with your knees bent. Slowly straighten your legs and rest your torso on your thighs. Hold the pose for 10 seconds. Repeat three times.
Wall Cobra
Stand in chest-deep water approximately one foot from the edge of the pool. Lean forward until your navel touches the wall of the pool. Arch your back and hold the pose for 10 seconds. Repeat three times.
Floating Boat Pose
Float on your back in the shallow end of the pool. Engage your abs, point your toes and hinge at the hips so that your toes and head are both out of the water. Extend your arms toward your toes and hold the pose for 10 seconds. Repeat three times.
Floating Half Bow Pose
Float on your back in the shallow end of the pool. Extend your right arm overhead and bend your left leg into the water. Grab your left ankle with your left hand, engage your abs and open your chest. If you begin to roll to the right, extend your right arm sideways to stabilize. Hold the pose for 10 seconds and alternate to the other leg. Repeat three times on each leg.
Making stickers is a fun project you can do with your family or friends. Decorate any surface, the windows in your bedroom or customize gifts with your own homemade creations. You can make almost any shape or picture that you want.
Cut two pieces of clear shelf lining paper, making both pieces the same size. Place one piece on a table and tape all four corners to it with the backing side down. Don’t peel off the backing.
Draw a picture on the shelf paper lightly with a pencil. You can find a picture that’s fairly easy to copy or come up with your own creation.
Fill in the picture by painting brightly colored acrylic paints onto the lining paper. Be careful not to smudge the paint as you go. Rinse your brush thoroughly in water when changing colors on your project.
Let your picture dry completely according to the instructions on the paint label.
Peel the backing of the second piece of lining paper very carefully. Stick this piece over your creation and smooth out all the air bubbles with your hands. Prick any air bubbles that you are unable to remove with a needle and smooth them out.
Remove the tape from the liner paper and cut out your picture with scissors or an Exacto knife.
Peel the backing off of the second piece of liner paper on your picture and stick it anywhere you wish.
With the necessity of “going green,” why not cut down on the use of tissues by making old-fashioned handkerchiefs? You can easily sew plain white ones in a large size, colorful ones in bright prints in a medium size for kids, or dainty small ones in old fashioned small prints for yourself.
Buy your fabric. For the large size hankerchief, you will need a 17-inch square of fabric. For a medium size hankerchief, you will need a 15-inch square of fabric. For a small size hankerchief, you will need a 13-inch square of fabric.
Wash the fabric, but do not use fabric softener. Dry and iron the fabric flat.
Carefully cut the fabric in desired size squares. If you have a rotary cutter and a quilter’s cutting board, the lines are all marked out for cutting; simply use a ruler to keep your cut straight.
With the right side of the fabric facing away from you, fold the very outer edges in 1/4 of an inch and press the fold.Repeat the folding (you’re doing this to make sure there isn’t an un-sewn edge to ravel), but after you have pressed the seam, stitch all four seams with a medium stitch. You can use a decorative stitch if your sewing machine has the option.
A necktie quilt is generally a remembrance quilt. It can be used to showcase the ties from one person or an entire group or committee. You can work the neckties into a number of different patterns. The Dresden plate design works especially well. Follow these steps if you would like to make a necktie quilt to honor a special person or simply to display a large array of discarded neckties.
Pick a pattern. The Dresden plate pattern works well, or you might want to sew your neckties directly on a quilt with a simple block design. Go to the Wisconsin History site and look at Allie Crumble’s design for inspiration.
Plan the size of your quilt. Necktie quilts are generally wall hangings, so the size might be determined by the area where you would like to display it.
Buy your fabric according to your pattern instructions. You might want to bring your neckties along when you go to the fabric store so that the colors complement each other.
Prewash your fabric, dry it and iron it. Use spray starch, but don’t use steam.
Cut out your pieces of fabric, following the instructions on your pattern carefully. Remember to allow for 1/4-inch seams. Label you pieces to avoid confusion.
Stitch the pieces together into a quilt top. If you are using an applique method, sewing the ties on top, sew your neckties in place.
Place the batting in between the quilt top and the backing, with the right sides facing out. Baste the three layers together.
Quilt each block using a design, or stitch in the ditch if you are using a simple block pattern.
Apply binding to the edges of your quilt and sew it in place.
How do you actually manage time? The secret is in the categories. Look at your calendar for tomorrow. It’s probably already full of events and activities that you’re hoping to accomplish. As you work or afterward, you’ll be filling in the blank spaces.
Now look at the list and categorize it. How much time during your working day did you actually spend:
Putting out fires. An unexpected phone call. A report that’s necessary for a meeting that should have been printed yesterday. A missing file that should be on your desk. How much of your day was actually spent in crisis mode? For most people, this is a negative category that drains their energy and interferes with their productivity.
Dealing with interruptions. Phone calls and people dropping by your office will probably top the list when you’re assigning events to this category. Once again, for most people, this is a negative category because it interferes with (and sometimes kills) productivity.
Doing planned tasks. This is the most positive use of time during your work day. You are in control and accomplishing what you intended to accomplish. Planned tasks can include phone calls, meetings with staff, even answering email – if these are tasks that you have put on your agenda.
Working uninterrupted. You may not be working on a task you had planned to do, but you are getting to accomplish something, and for most people, this is a very productive, positive work mode.
Uninterrupted downtime. Those times during the work day that are used to re-energize and regroup. Lunch or a mid-morning break may count IF they’re uninterrupted. If you’re lucky enough to work with a company that offers on-site work-out facilities or nap rooms, that would count, too. Everyone needs a certain amount of uninterrupted downtime built into their day to be productive during their work time.
Learn the Art of Furoshiki: Japanese Gift Wrapping Style
When it comes to Japanese gifts, it’s not the inside that really counts. Gift-wrapping, called tsutsumi, is the most important part of the gift-giving it seems. How you wrap and tie the package is considered especially symbolic and carries a lot of expression about how you feels towards the person and the gesture of giving them a gift.
The wrapping around the gift is seen as being part of the entire gift experience, with the opening and revealing of the contents viewed as one complete experience. In Western culture, gift-wrapping seems mostly just meant to conceal the gift, with unwrapping often being very perfunctory or even crude. Japanese gifts are aestheic and beautiful on the outside, with the same full expression of the culture’s love of balance, nature, novelty and simplicty.
The root of the word tsutsumi is the word that means “to refrain” meaning to be discreet or moderate. Simple but gorgeous paper wrapping, tied with gentle natural fibers or thin ribbons make a bold but beautiful understatement when compared to the flashy papers and big bows found in American forms of wrapping.
There are a variety of places where dry-cell batteries can be recycled, including municipal sites and for-profit entities such as retailers and sanitation companies.
Some cities have established permanent collection sites for hazardous household materials such as batteries (and indeed some cities have outlawed the disposal of batteries and other toxic materials in municipal dumps, though federal law permits it). Other cities hold special collection days one or more times a year.
Consumer electronic chains such as Best Buy, Circuit City and Office Depot also typically have recycling kiosks inside their stores or outside the front entrance. Recycling batteries at these locations is usually free and consumers do not need to have purchased batteries at a particular retailer to take advantage of its program. Button batteries are often found in watches and hearing aids. Retailers of these items often recycle the batteries for customers for free.
Consumers can receive information about recycling centers from their municipalities, or they can consult Web sites such as http://earth911.com/, which is endorsed by the EPA, to find municipal and other collection sites. Visitors to the site plug in their zip codes and the types of batteries they want to recycle. Another site that provides the same service is http://www.call2recycle.org/. The site is run by The Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corp., which is a non-profit organization that promotes sustainability. Companies have sprung up to fill the need for recycling batteries.
For example, Battery Solutions will accept batteries by mail or will arrange pickups for customers. The Big Green Box is another firm that recycles batteries from anywhere. The company mails customers a cardboard box for safe disposal of up to 40 pounds of alkaline, lithium, mercury, zinc and other types of batteries. Consumers then mail the box back to the company.This can be a solution for home offices and small businesses.
There’s more to beans than curd and paste; they can also be made into elaborate artworks. Bean painting, where beans are used as the raw material, is a kind of folk art, adopting artistic characteristics from Chinese traditional painting, sculpting and decorative arts. Instead of completely imitating traditional arts, the genre boasts its own special flavor.
Bean-painting artists aspire to achieving realism in their works, paying a great deal of attention to mastering lifelike expressions and gestures. The most distinct feature of bean painting is simplicity tinged with exaggeration to emphasize an abundance of sensations.
Bean collecting adheres to a series of strict steps: Beans chosen for pictures must first be processed so they will not rot or mold. Bean painting not only serves as an ornament but also appeals to collectors. When making bean paintings, artists try their best to take advantage of the original colors and shapes of beans to express the proper themes incisively and vividly without damaging their natural appeal. Hence, properly combining the beans, and gluing and cutting them are also a must.
Compared to tooth and jade sculpting, beans are easier to deal with. However, artists must possess an extraordinary imagination to arrange these ordinary materials to make a truly unique picture. Expressing various themes, bean painting is a precious handmade artwork that calls on special artistic characteristics.
First of all, the picture’s composition must serve a decorative function; secondly, the original bean colors must be used as the main hue to produce a colorful picture expressing brightness and joy; and lastly, the works should reflect real life. Combining the merits of other folk arts and its own special characteristics, bean painting is deeply loved by Chinese people and foreigners. Such works have become very popular gift among friends and relatives.
For an especially polished table, cloth napkins can be folded into appealing shapes to add to the décor of your table. Napkin folding works particularly well on freshly starched napkins. Here are some common folding techniques:
The Trifold Napkin
Place the unfolded napkin in front of you in the shape of a diamond
Bring the top corner down to meet the bottom corner (fold it in half diagonally) creating a triangle with the point facing down
Fold the left and right corners down to the center point
Fold the top point down to meet the bottom
Lift the napkin from the center, allowing it to stand alone on the two folded sides
Windmere’s Fan
Place the unfolded napkin in front of you in the shape of a square
Fold the napkin in half either vertically or horizontally
Starting at the shorter end of the resulting rectangle, begin making ½ inch accordion pleats, stop when there are approximately 4 inches left to fold
Fold the accordion section in half so that the folds are on the outside with the remaining 4 inches at the center
Make a stand by folding the 4 inch section toward the base of the fan, allowing the pleats to fan out
A poem portrays our awareness of a specific subject with our private perception.
The subject of writing is varied from politic to romantic, but most people write romantic sweet love poems more than other topics, usually in short sentences. I myself prefer to write them than to write the longer version. They are easier to be understood, also take less time to make than the longer one.
Here are 3 simple steps to make short sweet love poems:
Steps #1 Discover your mood.
To make the professional-looking short sweet love poems, the first thing you have to do is to know your mood. Good mood is a state when you feel confident to do something. In this condition, you can compose a good quality poem. But what can you do if you find yourself in a bad mood?
Well, since most people find that they can not make any satisfying poem in this situation, I believe that the similar result would happen if you force yourself to do it. The best solution is to wait until you get your good mood back.
Step #2 Make a poem template.
Poem template is a helpful tool to quickly compose poems. I am developing this method to help many people to make their own poems. In this method, you are provided with incomplete sentences like this:
sight
night
eyes
days
Your task is to complete the sentences to make poems using your own words. Take a look at this example:
Remembering your sight,
is like having a dream in an endless night.
I could see through your eyes,
that love is eternal as the changing of days.
This love poem is made by someone who has no background in composing poems, but he eventually made a fine masterpiece.
Step #3 Project self confidence.
Many people find themselves has no confidence to explore their feeling. To compose short sweet love poems, confidence is a prominent thing. I believe that everybody has a personal talent that distinguishes him from others, so be confident in making your own poems because you are special!
