Central Florida Swimming Pool Designs

Living in Central Florida where it is upwards of at least 80 degrees most of the year, most of us have considered installing a pool at some point. There are many things to consider when making such a decision, however, if you decided to go for it, you may as well go for something that you really love. For something truly special, go with some new and interesting swimming pool designs that make your pool more personal and more enjoyable.

Swimming pool designs that you come up with on your own are going to cost you more when you have your pool installed as a pre-made model, but you may very well think that extra cost will be well worth it. This is something that celebrities do quite often, but you don’t have to be a celebrity to want to have something that reflects your lifestyle or your interests. This is something that you are going pay for, and will be with you for a long time, so you may as well take advantage and get creative.  Many pool designs can be tweaked to reflect your style or you can come up with a completely unique design.

What do you do for a living?  What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? These are things that you may want to think about when you are thinking of swimming pool designs and ideas. If you love to play guitar, for example, there is no reason why you can’t have a pool that is shaped like one. If you own an ice cream shop, you can have a pool that is in the shape of an ice cream cone with a few scoops on the top. These can make some pretty cool swimming pools.

Perhaps a pool shape feels a little bit over the top for you.  You don’t have to think of a shape when coming up with swimming pool designs and ideas. You can go with something that is still out of the ordinary. You can have a waterfall that goes into your pool, and a real rock surrounding that makes your pool feel more like an oasis rather than a built in pool. You can do just about anything when thinking of your swimming pool design ideas. Go with different materials like stone, tile, and even glass. Use whatever colors you want, and make sure everything makes you feel relaxed and refreshed.

Originally posted 2009-10-07 13:19:44. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Join the Central Florida Craft Show Circuit

Most families could do with a little extra income these days. This is easier said than done, as many of us know. However, there are still a few realistic avenues left to explore. With the job market so tight, it’s time to think outside the box. Why not create your own small business? Work right from the comfort of your own home, making your own hours!

One such opportunity exists in the Central Florida craft show and craft fair circuits. In a depressed economy, people are still looking for outings and entertainment. In fact, in a bad economic climate, people are looking for inexpensive ways to have some fun and buy hand made items that are both creative and don’t bust the budget. If you’re the artistic or crafty type, take a look at how you might use the tight economy to your advantage, making some extra income and have a lot of fun yourself. 

Perhaps you have a hobby, that you’ve practiced for years, making gifts for family and friends. Do you knit or crochet? Raise bonsai plants? Make jewelry? Are you an amateur photographer? Maybe you’re a garage sale fanatic, shopping the weekend sales for great bargains. Any of these hobbies can become a personal business, bringing in some income to offset rising expenses.

There are frequent craft fairs and craft shows in the Orlando and Central Florida area.  Bucklers Craft fair, for example, draws in painters, artists, cooks, and sculptors from all over the state of Florida.  Whether you live in Lakeland or Orlando, Celebration or Winter Haven, there are craft shows in abundance, year around. The cost of renting a booth is nominal, usually no more than $25 for a weekend craft show. No matter what your talent, you can build up an inventory of product in your spare time at very little cost. If you follow the craft show circuits in your area, chances are good that you can sell out at each event. Your overhead is about as minimal as it can get, requiring a small investment in materials, work that you enjoy and a few weekends of selling throughout the year.

People who are artistically inclined are apt to be able to diversify their skills. For example, during the Christmas season, you can make decorations and wreaths. Crocheted or knitted caps and mittens sell well during this time. How about flower arrangements for Mother’s Day? Jewelry sells well all year long. With an eye to the retro market, your garage sale finds can turn a profit. You are certainly not taking advantage of anyone. You’ve invested your time and savvy eye to finding what people want. The craft shows and craft fairs provide a venue that brings your talent to a wide audience, looking for something just a little bit different.

If you’re looking for an extra source of ongoing income, put on your thinking cap and see how you might put your artistic talent to work for you. The rewards of participating in craft shows around Central Florida might just fill the bill!

Originally posted 2009-10-06 11:53:15. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Vegetable Gardening in Central Florida

 Central Florida’s unique climate makes for much creativity from those with a green thumb.  Some may think that flower and vegetable gardening are somewhat the same. While the basics of watering and weeding are similar, they are vastly different in many ways. Save yourself from learning this the hard way and do you a little research before you “dig in.”

What you may neglect to consider, it that vegetable gardening tends to attract a lot of animal attention. The severity of this, obviously, depends on where you live.  Consider that whether you live in the country or the city, a fence against rabbits and other small animals may not be sufficient.  Most don’t tend to think of large packs of deer as being city dwellers, but anything is possible.

Depending on what types of vegetables you grow, your garden may be left alone, or bombarded with wildlife. Timing, location, and crop choices are key to having a fruitful garden. You may also find some tips online, or you consult with your local Central Florida gardening center when buying your plants or seeds.

The difference in flower and vegetable gardening might also be in the type of attention they need. You have to pay more attention to spacing of the vegetable plants. Some need a lot of room to be productive, and that is not always a consideration when planting flowers. You also have to keep the weeds under strict control, and you have to pay close attention to growing seasons as Central Florida’s climate is unlike anywhere else in the country. You could be fixing a homegrown fresh salad and slicing fresh strawberries in February whilst your cousin in New York is heating up canned soup. Consult your local Central Florida garden center for tips and information about what crops fare the best at what times.

Originally posted 2009-10-07 13:28:39. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Active Adult Retirement Communities in Central Florida

Picking out active adult retirement communities can be difficult. After all, the active adult community you choose is probably where you’re going to spend the rest of your life. Gone are the days when options for retirement are to live on your own with hired help, live with family members, or stay in a nursing home. Although those are still viable options and practical for many, there are many active adult communities, retirement communities and senior living facilities to choose from in Central Florida.

Currently, active adult community resources in are better than they have ever been before! There are more options for retirement in Central Florida than anywhere in the country. The key is to figure out what your needs are and what kind of community you are looking for.

Some active adult communities model themselves on a vacation resorts. These retirement communities are good for people who want to enjoy a lot of privacy and live basically the way they’ve always been living except with more luxury. They have groundskeepers, pools, private apartments, and a minimum of shared resources. Many of them have recreation rooms and organized events where people can get together.  However, the emphasis is on individual living as they are geared toward those who value their independence most highly.

There are other active adult communities, however, that take a much more communal approach. In these retirement communities, the goal is to help each other and work together. Many of these have communal dining areas as well as small personal kitchens, so that people can take most of their meals in the company of others but have the luxury of cooking at home when it suits them. They tend to be managed in a much more hands-on sort of way. Retirees themselves make most of the decisions about how these communities are run. As a result, residents of these retirement communities get to experience true democracy as part of their retirement.

When it comes to retirement it’s all about location, location, location. What better location for retirement than Central Florida? People come form all over the world to retire in Central Florida where the average year-round temperature is 70 degrees and there are endless opportunities for leisure activity, and entertainment.

Originally posted 2009-10-06 12:45:51. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Selling a Car in Central Florida

Buying a car might be difficult, but selling a used car is every bit as complex. It can be really difficult to calculate the precise moment when selling a car make sense. After all, you never know exactly how much life your used car has in it. If you don’t really need your car, or could get by on local public transportation in Central Florida, you can usually wait a little bit longer before you decide to sell. If, on the other hand, you live in a more rural area in the Central Florida region and are very dependent on your car, it often makes sense to start looking for a buyer earlier rather than later.

 

There are so many different options for selling a car; each has its advantages and disadvantages. A lot of people, when they decide to sell their car, will wait around and try to find the best individual buyer they can. If you get just the right customer, you can sell your car for the bluebook value, or even a little bit higher. Perfect customers, however, can be few and far between. Unless you are selling a collectible car, it makes a lot more sense to consider the other options.

Some prefer to sell their car to a local used car dealer. It is much easier to make the sale, after all. You won’t necessarily make as much as you would from an individual buyer, but then again you won’t have to wait around for months as people come and go, checking out your car and trying to decide whether they want it. Time is money, so sometimes convenience is worth losing a little bit of cash on the deal.

On the other hand, donating a car to a local charity is an option that too few people consider. If you are not selling a car in good condition, you probably won’t get a lot for it. If, on the other hand, you donate your used car to a local Central Florida charity, you can be guaranteed the bluebook value on a tax write off. Often, this translates to more than you actually get if you sold a car for cash. At any rate, it is at least worth considering. You get a tax write-off, while helping a worthwhile cause.

Originally posted 2009-10-06 11:50:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Laminate Floor Repair in Central Florida

In Central Florida, more and more people are using laminate flooring in their homes. Gone are the types of laminate floors that look cheesy and make a room look cheap. When you use this, even in a very expensively decorated home, you are going to love the options that you now have. Laminate wood floor, for example, looks as good as the real thing, and some cannot tell the difference. Though this flooring is very durable, things can happen. It’s best to know a little about laminate floor repair when something goes wrong.

The type of laminate floor you have depends on the style you choose and even the room in which you are going to lay your new floor. This makes a difference in how you go about laminate floor repair. Some come in rolls and others are going to come in tiles. Obviously, laminate floor repair is going to be easier if you are dealing with tiles, but that does not mean that floors that come in long rolls cannot be fixed. It might take a bit more effort, but, rest assured, you don’t have to live with nicks and scratches.

The way that your flooring is installed can tell you how easy or difficult laminate floor repair is going to be. There are many different types of glues that you can use to put down the floors and some hold better than others. Some are also easy to get up when a tile needs to be replaced, and that is probably the easiest laminate floor repair that you can do. However, these glues may not hold the floor down as it should and Florida humidity may affect results.  Be sure to find the best of both when you lay your laminate yourself or when discussing your options with your local contractor.

If you have tiles, you have probably guessed that your laminate floor repair is going to be much easier. You only have to remove that tile, if the damage is that extensive, and then you can go about adding a new tile of the same pattern. This job should be easy and quick, though you do have to use the same drying time rules that you used when the floor was installed. It’s important to wait 24 hours or more after laminate floor repair before traffic hits the area.

When your laminate floor repair involves long rolls of flooring, you may have to pick up the entire area covered by the damage. However, that is not always necessary. Ask your local Central Florida home improvement store for easier ways to go about your laminate floor repair.  It is best to have your laminate floors installed professionally by a local Central Florida contractor or Central Florida flooring expert unless you confident in your own skills.  Either way, be sure to keep extra tiles or laminate on hand so that you always know that you have an exact match if a flaw arises.

Originally posted 2009-10-02 09:10:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

House Organizing Tips

You can take time to organize your closet or see what you can do with the mess in your garage, but what happens when it seems that your entire house is out of control. Those with smaller places often have this problem because they have too much stuff for the limited place that they occupy. Those with large houses, however, can run into the same problem. Most of the time it is because we don’t have enough time to keep up, and in Florida we don’t have basements! Look for some good house organizing tips to get things straightened up.

Some house organizing tips tell you that you have to get rid of some of the stuff that you really don’t need. This can be a difficult process, especially if you do not know how to do that. You wouldn’t have the things you have if you didn’t think you needed them. You have to get it into our mind that there are some things that you just have to part with and you are going to do it. Here are a few suggestions…

One of the best house organizing tips for this would be to come up with three boxes. Take each one with you into any room with which you want to start. One box is for what you know you have to keep and there is no question. The second is for things that you know you can be rid of without worrying about it. The third one can be for those things that you are just not sure you can part with, but you know that you should. Start putting these things into the boxes and watch your clutter slowly dwindle.

Once you have a good grip on filling these boxes, you should have more space in your room. You can then look around to see where you want to put what you know you want to keep. If you think about some common house organizing tips, you know you should keep each thing in a useful place. Books go on shelves, clothes into dressers, important papers into filing cabinets, etc. If you are still dealing with clutter and just seemingly do not have enough space, there are several contractors in Central Florida that can help you implement custom-made shelves and storage units to rooms in your house or your garage that will make your storage space as neat and tidy as possible. 

You can then decide what you want to do with the box that you know you can be without. You can have a sale if you wish, donate the items to charity, or you can simply throw them out. The toughest of the house organizing tips would be what to do with the other box. You can set it aside and go through it later, or you can be determined about it and do it right then and there. Really think about what you need and get rid of everything else. Once you do this in each room of your home, you are going to find much more space and a better feeling of peace once you are free of most of your clutter.

Originally posted 2009-10-06 11:56:53. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Celebration Homeowners Beware Water Problems

If you live in Celebration, there may be a kind of “time bomb” ready to go off in your house at any moment. Thanks goes to a dozen or so residents who have called our attention to it, including Dennis Kennen (who started a thread on the Front Porch last month) and to Rick Amick (who posted a thorough explanation and warning). The problem is sudden and unexpected water leaks inside the house. The root cause: water pressure delivered to our homes that significantly exceeds County and Uniform Plumbing Codes, coupled with the omission by Celebration builders to install simple pressure relief valves.

Just ask residents such a Thomas Muery, Renato Texiara, and William Abendschein. All had expensive repairs totaling thousands of dollars.

The solution is relatively simple: a pressure relief valve installed in the water line just before it enters the home.

I just had one installed in my house in East Village, after I learned of the danger by reading the Front Porch thread started by Kennen. Suddenly, recent incidents nearby suddenly became clear. Earlier this year, my immediate neighbor suffered extensive water damage to the entire first floor of his house. Three months later, his neighbor had a water pipe burst, flooding half his house and ruining the carpet. A few blocks away, a friend had a burst water line just a week ago. The next day I had a mysterious trickle of water form under our washing machine.

Kevin the Plumber verified my fear. The pressure was about 120 psi, far exceeding the recommended maximum of about 80 psi. In a bit over an hour, Kevin installed a pressure relief valve, his second such installation that day. The water pressure time bomb has stopped ticking at my house.

But that raises an interesting issue. Should not some public organization (such as the County, CCDD, or CROA) be warning residents of this danger? Do the builders have an ethical responsibility to warn all the homeowners? What about real estate agents who sell houses to unsuspecting buyers?

Based on the talk around town, the attitude seems to be Caveat Emptor … Let the Buyer Beware. The Water Department, CCDD, The Celebration Company, builders, and real estate agents all seem to be pointing their fingers either at the others or at the home owners themselves.

Thus it falls to the Fourth Estate (a term coined by Edmund Burke, meaning “the Press”).

We urge you not to procrastinate. Test your water pressure with a simple pressure gauge available at Lowe’s, Home Depot, or a good hardware store. If it exceeds roughly 85 psi, buy and install a pressure relief valve. Or call a reliable plumber like Kevin (their repair costs reportedly vary between $150 and $250, depending on the size of house and other factors).

Even if the water lines in your house have held until now, the excessive pressure month after month may eventually produce a weak point, causing what could be inconvenience (at best) and catastrophic, expensive damage (at worst).

Just because our public servants haven’t waived a red flag, it doesn’t mean there isn’t danger. Just ask the residents with posts on the Front Porch, category “Place& Community.”

Corpus Christi Opens New Church in Celebration

Celebration’s Corpus Christi Catholic Church, which had previously held its services at Celebration High School Cafeteria, recently competed its new church building on Celebration Avenue and Waterside Drive, just in time for Christmas.  The result is a stunning, classical-style building inside and out that not only fits well with the architectural pattern established by The Celebration Company, but also becomes an attractive, prominent landmark of the community.

Groundbreaking for the church was held in November 2008, though construction did not begin in earnest until the following January.  “It seems remarkable that they could finish such a large and complex building in such a relatively short time,” said Celebration resident Dan Tomsick, who during his daily walks past the site kept track of progress.  Brasfield & Gorrie, the general contractor for the project and a Fortune 500 company, kept up a steady pace, especially in the last three weeks when the seating, altar art, and stained glass windows were installed.

As a consequence, pastor Father Gregory Parkes, was able to celebrate the first Mass in the new building on December 24 morning to a nearly full house of excited parishioners from not only Celebration, but also Orlando, Kissimmee, and the entire Four Corners area. In a ceremony beforehand outside the front doors, Tim Dwyer of Brasfield & Gorrie handed the keys over to Building Committee Chairman Jack Blitch, who in turn presented them to Father Gregory.   After humbly thanking the Committee, Father Gregory acknowledged the hard work and support of the trades people, the Parish, and the Town.

“We received the certificate of occupancy only a few days before,” later confided Father Gregory, “and the parishioners scrambled to move our liturgical materials from the High School and to set up the church, complete with the Nativity scene and various Christmas flowers and decorations.”  Parishioners were particularly touched by the members of the Celebration Presbyterian Church down the street; they brought two lighted Christmas trees that were placed alongside the exterior front doors of the church, as well as some beautiful Christmas wreathes that were hung on the front facade.

Fortunately, everything worked relatively smoothly at that first mass.  Seven hours later, the Church hosted an overflow crowd for its 5 pm Christmas Eve Mass that featured the Children’s Choir. Father Gregory opened the liturgy with a greeting and then the rhetorical exclamation, “Can we give glory and praise to God for this beautiful church?” — to which the congregation responded with enthusiastic and prolonged applause.

Even without any advertising or notices in the neighboring hotels, the turnout for the four Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Masses was remarkable.  Observed Bert Fitzgibbons, “We had about 3200 people attend those four Masses, nearly double the number at the same number of Masses held last year in the High School cafeteria.”

The Church will be formally dedicated at 5 pm on Saturday January 16, with Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Orlando Diocese presiding.

Details about Corpus Christi Catholic Church can be found at www.celebrationcatholic.org.

What You Need to Know About Auto Insurance Claims in Central Florida

Everyone’s budget is being stressed today, but, like death and taxes, auto insurance is an inevitable expense that you must squeeze into the budget.  We all know that auto insurance is high, especially if you’re under 25 or single. In both of these cases, some auto insurance actuary has determined that the insurance company’s risk is higher than that of insuring a married couple. This does seem discriminatory, but we don’t make the rules.

However, the risk of not having insurance on your car is too great. For one thing, if you are stopped for a traffic violation in Florida and found to be uninsured, your vehicle can be confiscated and impounded on the spot. You’d then be faced with a ticket and fine, impound fees and coming up with the money for insurance before you can get your car back.

Now that you have this auto insurance, you may be in an all-fire hurry to get your money’s worth, right?  However, before you pick up the phone to make an auto insurance claim, take a moment to weigh whether it’s worth filing. Auto insurance companies have a very long memory. If your insurance coverage pays for minor damage, you’ve got to balance this off with the potentially astronomical increase you might realize in your insurance premiums.  For example, windshield repair and windshield replacement is covered in Florida.  However, it may not be the best idea to run to the nearest auto glass business and get a whole new windshield for a rock you picked up on I-4. Sometimes, it’s not worth making the auto insurance claim you are entitled to according to your policy. That $30 repair could very well raise your premium by $5 a month.

Always remember that insurance companies have long memories. The more auto insurance claims you submit, the higher your rate will go. For those minor parking lot encounters, see if you can’t do the repairs yourself. Any time you can avoid submitting auto insurance claims, your insurance rates tend to remain stable. If the repairs are simple and relatively inexpensive, you’re certainly better off doing the repairs yourself, or hiring a local Central Florida car body mechanic with good references to take care of the blemish.

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