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May 2019

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5 Under-the-Radar Tips to Raise a Healthy Child

All moms have their children’s best interest at heart. Still, raising a healthy child is a monumental task that requires constant vigilance and thorough planning. Indeed, roughly one in three kids in America are either overweight or obese according to the American Heart Association. Given that fact, it’s crucial that stressed-out moms have a few tips up their sleeve to ensure their child’s wellness. Fortunately, you can use these five methods to help you and your family achieve better health today.

Find Healthy Role Models

The company you keep will have an effect on your children and how they act in social situations. What’s more, this “monkey-see, monkey-do” phenomenon will also extend to their diet. If you consistently surround yourself with individuals who make healthy choices and eat healthful foods, then your child will be more willing to follow suit as well.

Eat at Home

No, it’s not always convenient to prepare a home-cooked meal, but avoiding junk food and eating at the same table with your kids will help foster healthy habits. In addition, you should encourage your child to take an interest in cooking and meal-prep themselves. Not only will this encourage them to understand food, diet, and nutrition in a more meaningful way, but it may also allow your little one to develop a love of cooking.

Destigmatize the Doctor

It’s no secret, plenty of kids are freaked out by visits to medical facilities. Checkups, dental appointments, and other health-related outings have long been a pain point for kids and moms alike. To combat this issue, it’s important for moms to acquaint their children with some of the “scarier” aspects of these visits. As such, moms should work to explain commonplace equipment like stethoscopes, otoscopes, and pediatric blood collection tubes. Remember, the more your child understands about these trips, the better prepared you’ll both be to handle them.

Enjoy Success Together 

It’s rare to find only one healthy child within a family. In most cases, either everyone in your household will practice healthy behaviors, or no one will. That means you and your partner need to set a positive example and emphasize wellness as a family. Celebrate your successes together and find common exercises and activities everyone can enjoy. 

Set Hard Limits –– And Stick to Them

Maintaining a routine is essential to raising a healthy family. Establish limits for TV and computer usage and don’t be coerced to change. It may be difficult at first to set hard-and-fast bedtimes or media restrictions, but doing so will help everyone in your family stay on the same page in the future.

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Entertainment

Do You Enjoy Casual Smoking? Start a Cigar Club

Being focused on your kids doesn’t mean that you have to draw away or depart from your own interests.

As a matter of fact, tending to your interests along with your family’s wellbeing helps you maintain a refreshed state of mind.

That is why it is extremely important for you to find an interest that resonates with your mind, and expand in practicing it. For instance, if you enjoy smoking White Owl cigars, then starting a cigar club of your own could go a long way.

Setup an Area

The first thing on your mind while starting your cigar club is to designate an area in your home where you and your attendees could meet in peace.

Ideally, the room should have plenty of seating available, where the club members could lounge around while enjoying their cigars.

Having a space that has some couches and armchairs is great. What would elevate it is a large coffee table. With that, don’t forget about ash trays.

Overall, make the room’s ambience to be as relaxing as possible. It would help your new attendees feel more comfortable.

Designate Accompanying Activities

You should also devise accompanying activities to enhance your cigar smoking experience.

For instance, a bottle of Scotch whiskey could be a great addition to your cigar regime. With that, you could also add a few choice snacks to enhance the experience.

The key is to add any activity that helps you get the most out of this indulgent and wonderful experience.

Find Some Members

Once you have arranged the basics for your cigar club, make sure to reach out to your people that would be interested in the activity.

From there, you could get together and select the kind of cigars you want to smoke, the frequency and specifics of your meeting, and the additional snacks and essentials to enhance your experience.

The suggestions by your new members will help you go over any potential loopholes.

And that is all you would need to start your cigar club. For further suggestions, make sure to take feedback from your new club members. Having a host of ideas would go a long way into making your cigar club a success.

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Mom Stuff

Can We Get Halloween Back, Please?

Many of us can remember when we were kids, how special Halloween could be. There was something truly special about getting dressed up in the best costume possible, going out there and trick or treating until you had so much candy it was hard to carry, and trudging back home exhausted but with a huge smile all over your face.

As adults with kids of our own now, we can’t help but noticing that just like Christmas, Halloween has been over-commercialized almost to the point of killing it completely. It’s time to fight back. Here are some tips for breathing life into Halloween 2017:

Costumes:

Get the mentality right now; costumes are for the adults too! Get your own costume, and get everybody else around you into the spirit of dressing up in costumes as well. Don’t be afraid to wear sexy halloween costumes if going to parties for adults, it’s one day of the year you can truly let your hair down; take advantage of it!

If You’re Hosting:

One area where people really can take up the level of their halloween decorations is by adding some spooky audio. A few well-placed devices with fully charged batteries can add an extra dimension to your Halloween ambiance that will have the whole neighborhood talking about it right through the New Year, and into the year to come!

Stories:

This one is a long-standing tradition that has been gathering dust. Whether you have a group of kids, a group of adults, or a mixed group, just sitting around and trading scary stories is an incredible way to get in the proper Halloween spirit, and imagine, it doesn’t cost a red cent! Bonus points if you go to the internet and try to find the scariest stories you can to take the storytelling up another notch.

House Parties:

In this author’s humble opinion, Halloween shouldn’t be a bar night any more than Christmas should. Consider organizing house parties for after the kiddies are sleeping off their sugar highs. This will really allow you to go deep with the decorations and plan activities that are much better done in a home setting, for example, the storytelling mentioned above.

Let’s hope that this year, your Halloween can be the best one you’ve experienced in years, maybe due to ideas in this article, or even other ideas that inspire you. At any rate, may your Halloween be full of chills and thrills and still tranquil!

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Finance

Payday Loans Near Me

If you are worried that you may not have easy access to loans and money because of your poor credit history, then the good news is that you have the option to go for Payday loans. Because of the high fee and high-interest rates associated with payday loans, they have become an extremely popular and sometimes profitable business opportunity for lenders. They are easily available through small companies, offices, banks, and other financial institutions. A lot of companies have also started giving payday loans online without any documentation. If you have a valid checking account, then browse around here ‘I would not get a payday loan near me’ is not a cause of concern for you anymore.

Understanding a Payday loan

A payday loan is an ultra-short-term loan that is usually given for any period less than 1 year and is usually given to people with a bad credit score. This is because people who have a good credit score would rather go for cheaper alternatives like credit cards or secured loans. Payday loans are very cost heavy for a borrower and are associated with a high risk of default as well. 

The amount of money that is given as a payday loan is determined by various factors such as the income level of the borrower, checking account balance, reputation, and of course, the credit score. The time taken in disbursing a payday loan is also not much because of the minimal documentation required. Thus, it is one of the quickest ways (though not the best) to get money for an immediate financial need or crisis. 

The wide reach of payday loans

The payday loan industry is not very regulated, and thus the guidelines to be followed by the lenders are very simple and comfortable. This is a big incentive for the lenders to offer payday loans because unless there is a default, they end up making a lot of money in a very short period. As a result, you will find a number of lenders online and in your neighborhood who are willing to give these loans, and easy payday loans near me is not a problem at all. 

Due to the ease of availability of these loans, people with a bad credit score have been majorly incentivized. People do not need to bother about working on improving their credit score anymore, and can easily approach any of the payday loan lenders to get some quick money and overcome their financial instability. This exercise has become habit-forming, and this can be a cause of distress for people in the long run.  

Banks or smaller companies?

Earlier, only small financial companies were in the business of giving payday loans, but now even banks have ventured into this space. Some people misconstrue the payday loans given by banks to be safer and more reliable, just because earlier banks used to provide loans only after all due checks were done and only to people with a good credit score. 

It is essential to understand that payday loans taken by banks can be worse than those taken from smaller companies. This is because the borrower’s checking account is with the bank, and this gives the bank control over the borrower’s transactions. They can apply restrictions and limits on the withdrawal of funds, and can sometimes even automatically withdraw money from the borrowers account in case of a default. Thus, borrowing from a smaller company gives a borrower more control over his cash flow and money in hand. 

On the contrary, smaller companies and offices do not follow as many guidelines and regulations as banks do. As a result, they can charge any amount of upfront fee and interest rate from the borrower, and can also set their own rules of loan disbursal. A bank, on the other hand, is a more stable financial institution and is regulated by a Central Bank that monitors all its transactions. Thus, it is not as easy for banks to charge exorbitantly to the borrowers. 

Conclusion

Though payday loans are readily available nowadays both online as well as brick and mortar institutions, they should not be considered as an easy alternative to safer and more feasible avenues of having money. Proper financial planning and regular small savings can also go a long way in not having the need to borrow and not getting trapped in the cycle of borrowing and re-borrowing.

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Health

5 Things You Never Knew About Steel and Its Uses

If you are like most people, you generally are aware that steel is used quite pervasively and in a variety of different “things.” With that said, if you are like most people, you likely only have a limited understanding of how important steel has been and continues to be throughout the past couple of hundred years, and up until today.

Recycled Steel Has Been Used for Generations

One of the most remarkable things about steel and its uses is that the recycled version of the metal has been used for many generations. In fact, recycled steel has been used for over 150 years.

Steel represents one of the first items that was recycled. It remains one of the most widely recycled substances in this day and age. Nearly every steel object in use today contains recycled steel Indeed, a typical steel product contains from about 25 percent to 100 percent recycled content.

Steel itself is completely recyclable. In addition, it is cheaper to recycle steel than it is to mine and process virgin steel. About 65 million tons of steel is recycled in the United States annually at this juncture in time.

Steel and the U.S. Railroad System

Although people realize that trains run on tracks, when quizzed, many people do not realize that railroad tracks are steel.

The railroad system, using significant amounts of steel, started to come into being in a more major way in the mid-1800s. By 1850, about 9,000 miles of steel railroad tracks had been placed in the United States. Slowly but surely, the U.S. railway system was moving westward.

The pinnacle of the efforts to link the east and west coasts of the United States with rail service occurred on May 10, 1869. On this date, the final stretch of steel railroad tracks was placed in California, linking the entire country from east to west to the railway system.

Steel Made High Rise Structures Possible

In the early 1900s, steel became an important element in commercial construction projects. Thanks to the use of steel in building projects, high rise structures like the Empire State Building and other towering structures became possible.

Steel permits the framework to be created necessary to construct buildings many stories higher than was ever possible before its use in commercial construction projects. As an aside, steel also played a vital role in the creation and development of the elevator. The elevator has also been an important element in the construction of ever taller buildings.

Steel has made the amazingly tall buildings constructed in recent years possible. This includes the tallest building on the planet, the Burj Khalifa, which is 2,722 feet tall. That is about a half a mile in height. The Empire State Building is 1,454 feet tall. One World Trade Center, currently the tallest building in the United States, is 1,776 tall.

Surgical Instruments

During the course of a lifetime, nearly all individuals will end up facing some type of surgery. People certainly are aware that a variety of instruments are utilized in surgical and other types of medical procedures. However, this represents another area in which people are not fully aware of the ubiquitous use of steel in the creation of surgical instruments, and other types of medical tools and devices.

In addition to surgical instruments themselves, a broad spectrum of medical devices rely on steel. This includes medical devices that are placed inside a person’s body via some type of surgical procedure.

Some of these devices that are placed into a person’s body require very small quantities of steel to function. These small medical devices present one of the spectrum in which varying quantities of steel are utilized. The construction of mammoth buildings represents the other end of the spectrum.

Steel and Exploration

Steel is also playing an important role in exploration. Even in this day and age, when pretty much the entire planet has been mapped out, there remain places on the globe that we are still exploring. Steel is playing a significant role in these exploratory endeavors.

One part of the planet that remains largely foreign to us is the Antarctic. Steel is vital in the creation of strong, weather resistant structures in what many consider to be the most hostile location on the planet.

In addition, steel is being utilized in underwater crafts that are permitting exploration into the deepest depths of the oceans of the world. Without steel in these underwater crafts, what we would be able to explore under the water would be significantly limited.

Jessica Kane writes for Advance Online, a leading provider of web-based OSHA. DOT. and HAZWOPER training.

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Mom Stuff

Hair Care Tips for Busy Moms

Moms are incredibly busy. Whether you stay at home and raise your kids or are out in the workforce, you have a lot to balance. This means that you need to save time whenever possible. If you’re losing your hair and need Platelet Rich Plasma at SHI therapy, these tips will help you pamper the strands on your head. They’ll also save you quite a bit of time in the morning.

Only Wash Your Hair When You Need To

Depending on your styling routine, you may not need to wash your hair every day. You might be able to get away with washing it every other day or even as little as once a week. On top of that, if you choose shampoo and conditioner that is gentle on your hair, your hair will stay nice for days on end. Some types are far too strong to be regularly used and should be saved for deep treatments. Speaking of which…

Use A Deep Conditioning Treatment

Although these treatments tend to take up time (and we’re trying to save you some), you shouldn’t skip them. Make sure to deep condition your hair after washing it, no more than twice a week. This will make your hair feel supple and strong. Also, your hair will look great for days on end, since the treatments make it frizz free and shiny.

Don’t Fight Your Natural Texture

It almost goes without saying that people who have curly hair wish theirs were straight, while those with straight hair want waves or curls. No one seems to be happy with their natural texture, and everyone thinks that the proverbial grass is greener on the other side of the fence. However, when you’re trying to save time in the mornings before you’re ready to spring for Platelet Rich Plasma at SHI therapy, you need to embrace your hair’s natural texture. You’ll save quite a bit of time on styling, and your hair will look great. Everyone looks better with naturally textured hair.

Favor Simple Styles

There are some simple hairstyles that look great and are very simple to put together. A ponytail, simple bun, or even a basic braid takes next to no time at all to do. The more you master them, the more time you’ll save in the morning. Before you know it, you’ll be able to throw your hair in a bun with one hand while wrangling kids with the other. Your hair will look great and won’t take any time to style at all.

Choose Minimal Hair Maintenance Routines

This goes along with our statement on natural textures. The more natural you keep your hair, the less time you’ll spend maintaining it. Things like haircuts and coloring treatments take up time. You might view your time at the salon as the few moments you get to relax and be by yourself without your kids hanging on you. Despite this, you don’t want to spend hours in the salon every week. Keep it as simple as possible.

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