Home, Furniture & Kitchen

Right out of the gate, there are 3 things to really like about the LifeTrak Zone C410 fitness tracker – it tracks your activity level and gives you detailed and useful fitness information, it measures your heart rate just by touching it, and it’s one of the easiest to use fitness trackers I’ve ever tried. It does what it sets out to do and it does it so simply that anyone, even people who find fitness watches and fitness trackers complicated, can pick up and use the device within minutes. 

Decorating a small kitchen can be tricky. It doesn’t take long for the countertops to get crowded and for the space to look cluttered. Here are some simple tips to making a small kitchen appear spacious and open!

Good Chinese food or Chinese takeout can be hard to come by. So what to do when you get a craving for Chinese food but you don’t know where to order from? You can jump online and hit up Yelp or other review sites, looking for a recommendation. Or, you can do what I finally started to do – make it yourself. Creating Chinese food at home isn’t hard at all, and if you have the right tools it’s a fast, easy way to get your Chinese food fix. Here are a few of my favourite make-at-home Chinese food recipes:

When I think of the BBQ, I think of burger recipes. Most people stick to the basic hamburger, done up in a bun with mustard, relish, ketchup and maybe a pickle or two, but this year it might just be time to branch out a bit and explore your burger options. With so many different hamburger recipes to choose from, you could make a new version of the classic every night of the week.

In the vegetable world, Kale is the Captain America of Super Foods. Mistaking this rich, green leaf for just another type of lettuce would be seriously undervaluing it’s super abilities including lowering cholesterol, upping your fiber content in a single bound, and lowering your risk of cancer. It also has 45 different flavonoids that have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory benefits.

It’s worth starting off by noting that every mother should be appreciated, and have that appreciation shown, all year long. Putting that aside, and assuming that you’ve already made the obligatory tray of breakfast in bed, remember that no mom will deny (secretly or otherwise) that receiving a nicely-wrapped package is a great way to show your appreciation, too. Here are a few great gift ideas for some of the likely types of moms on your list:

Working from home is an increasingly popular trend. Doing so saves on office space, commute time and many of the expenses of having a team working in a centralized building. It can also be an attractive option for employees. I worked from home on a part-time basis for a decade and switched to full-time over five years ago —I can’t even picture going back to a traditional office. But if you’re going to make this work, you have to take it seriously (it’s not all coffee on the deck and hanging out with the dogs) and your PC is a central component. I’ve put together suggestions on how to set up your PC to work from home.

What does the long weekend mean to you? For some people a long weekend is an extra day to turn the alarm clock off and sleep in. For others, it’s time to turn off the work computer and turn on the home computer. While it’s great to give your brain a breather and stuff yourself with hot dogs, it’s also the perfect time to gear up, get out there, and do things you’ve been waiting all winter to do.

It’s great to be impulsive, but if I know one thing for sure it’s that a family camping trip just can’t be done correctly when approached with a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ mentality. Yes, logically you could be on the road in 20 minutes with the kids, a bunch of sleeping bags, tent, and flashlight to head off into the wild, blue yonder, but you’ll be regretting it come midnight when someone is cold, wants a very specific type of snack, or needs their nightlight to ward off the monsters in the dark.

  If you read the NY Times Bestseller Wild by Cheryl Strayed, then you will learn how not to pack as she did for her hike on the Pacific Coast Trail. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend this true story of her over 1,000 miles hike by herself to escape the loss of her mother and a broken marriage, all with no wilderness experience whatsoever. I don’t profess to be a wilderness expert although I have done a fair number of wilderness trips of at least one night, and usually more. The trick with overnight backcountry camping is not to take too much while making sure you have what you will need so you don’t get in trouble.