Thursday, May 31, 2018

Creating The Perfect Haven To Rest In

We all have hectic lives, and most of us countdown the hours until we’re able to crawl back into bed for the night. However, many of us don’t really pay much attention to the decor of our bedrooms because we either don’t have time, or we simply haven’t really thought about it. Did you know that your body relaxes more when it’s happier with the room that you’re in? An aesthetically pleasing bedroom is more likely to encourage a more comfortable and restful sleep, so take a look at these tips on creating the perfect haven for you to rest in.

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

Lighting
Lighting makes all of the difference to how you perceive a room. If a room is too bright and the light glares into your eyes, you’re bound to be less inclined to spend much time in there. If you’re unable to change the kind of bulb or lights in your bedroom, consider investing in a few lamps so that when you do decide to retire to the bedroom, you’re able to relax in a more comfortable light!

Colors
Colors in your bedroom also make the world of difference to how you feel and also how you wind down. Bright and bold colors are more likely to excite the brain, meaning that you’re going to find it much harder to fall asleep. Deep and creamy colors are often the best choice for a bedroom as they give off the feeling of warmth and coziness. Consider changing the colors of your room to something more relaxing and you’ll find you’re falling into a much easier slumber.

Furniture
Every bedroom needs a wardrobe, a bed, and probably some drawers to store all of your clothes in. However, did you know that your bed could be affecting your sleep routine? Have you ever asked yourself how long does a mattress last for? You’ll actually be surprised at how often it’s recommended to change your mattress, and also how easily your sleeping routine can be affected by having a mattress that needs replacing.

Smells
The smell in your bedroom is also another important factor to get right so that you can get a good night of sleep. While air fresheners and plugins create wonderful smells, some simply aren’t the right scents for a bedroom as they can end up keeping you awake. For your bedroom, try to go for smells like lavender or special nighttime plugin refills so that you can drift off into a natural sleep! Linen and cotton smells also work really well.

Technology
Finally, the technology in your bedroom should be kept to a minimum. So, if you like watching TV in bed, make sure you’ve got it on a timer so that you don’t end up spending your whole night glued to the telly instead of getting some all-important winks! Avoid having anything that’s too thrilling on too so that you’re not tempted to cancel the timer too!

Friday, May 25, 2018

The Incredible Health Benefits Of Your Daily Coffee

Drinking coffee every day is something that lots of people can’t live without. For some, it’s the warmth and comfort that holding a hot cup of coffee provides. For others, it’s the buzz that helps them get set up for the day ahead. However, there are so many more benefits to coffee - read on for some of the incredible health benefits you could enjoy:

Wakes You Up For The Day
Coffee wakes you up for the day ahead. If you’re the kind of person who feels groggy for the first few hours of the day, you’re not alone. Because coffee has a high caffeine content, you should perk up after just one cup, and the effects can last anywhere from 3-4 hours depending on the type of coffee. Fresh coffee is higher in caffeine than instant coffee.



Keeps You Regular
Coffee can also help to keep you regular...if you catch our drift. Some people aren't as regular as they would like and a coffee a day helps them to ‘go’ and feel much better for it.

Tastes Great
As well as the health benefits, coffee tastes great. Some people may need a little time to get used to the taste, but they often wonder how they coped without this miracle drink after a short while.

Has Numerous Health Benefits
Coffee has numerous health benefits that just can’t be ignored. Yes, too much coffee can be bad for a person. If you’re relying on lots of coffee to keep you going every day, you need to address a deeper problem, perhaps with your sleeping pattern or an illness that is making you feel fatigued all the time.

However, a couple of cups of coffee per day can lower your risk of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, help you to fight depression and feel happier, and provide you with many essential nutrients. Take a look at some of them listed below:

Riboflavin (Vitamin B2): 11% of the RDA.
Pantothenic Acid (Vitamin B5): 6% of the RDA.
Manganese and Potassium: 3% of the RDA.
Magnesium and Niacin (B3): 2% of the RDA.

Providing you don’t exceed the recommended caffeine amount for your height, age, and weight, drinking coffee every day will help you to be healthier. You can even get high-quality coffee delivered to you so that you never run out of your supply.

You Can Supercharge Your Workout
Drinking a coffee before your workout will help you to enhance your efforts. You should have more energy, and you might even find that you beat some of your previous personal bests. It’s the most natural pre-workout drink you can have.

Burn More Fat
Coffee can help you to burn more fat, so it’s a great drink for those who are trying to slim down. Not only does coffee suppress your appetite, it also speeds up the fat burning mechanisms in the body!

Too much of anything can be bad for you, including coffee, but in the right amounts, coffee does so much more good than harm!

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

A Step-By-Step Guide To Measuring Your Debt

Sometimes in life, you have to be absolute. You just have to drill down, get to the baseline, and then go from there. That baseline can often involve accepting a few realities that make you feel uncomfortable. It’s vital, though, that you see it as a starting point— the rock bottom that you’re going to be able to build on in the future.

One area of life where you have to strip things back and get to the crux of the matter is debt. For most of us, debt is nebulous; it is many different strings, and we avoid tying weaving those strings into a complete tapestry. We can handle knowing we owe $2,000 on one credit card and $1700 on a loan but add those numbers together into a single figure, and it scares us. As https://www.theatlantic.com/ suggests, most of us don’t know how much we actually owe. Perhaps that’s because we’re simply too afraid to obtain the exact figure.

Nevertheless, you need to know that figure. Here’s why:


  • The logistics. You need to know the full figure so you can address it head-on and create a debt management strategy that will work. 
  • Planning ahead. If you decide to browse https://debtconsolidation.co/ and choose the right company for you, you’re going to need to know the figure you’re consolidating. If you consolidate too little, you could find yourself in need of another loan or debt management plan, so getting the final figure is important. 
  • A touch of reality. Many of us bury our heads in the sand when it comes to money. If you suspect you have been doing this, then seeing the final figure might be just what you need to finally address the situation head-on. 


When you have accepted that you need to know exactly how much you owe, it may be surprising to realize that it’s tougher than you expected to do. Here’s a step-by-step guide that can ensure you find the correct figure:

Step One: Write to your loans company 

Information on loans can take the longest, so this should be your first port of call. You want the exact figure you owe right now, not just the amount you initially borrowed. You need to know exactly how interest has affected the overall debt.

Step Two: Add your credit cards together

Next, add together all of your credit card debt. This is one of the easier steps; you should be able to find account information online!

Step Three: Add store cards and hire-purchase

Store cards should be relatively simple, but hire-purchase can be more troublesome. As with loans, you need to know exactly what you owe right now, not just what the value of the initial goods you borrowed for to you was.

Step Four: Add other debts

This step is a necessary addition and one that is often overlooked if people only look at their credit file to learn how much they owe. To get the true figure, you should also be adding:

Debts to friends or family
Amount owing to your utility provider
Rent or mortgage arrears
Overdue bills

Step Five: Calculate your final total

When you have gathered all of the above, you will be able to calculate exactly what you owe. With that figure in mind, you can now move on and develop a debt management strategy that really works for you.


How to Earn Extra Money With Ease

It happens to almost everyone at some point, everything is ticking along nicely, bills are paid, and there is food on the table when suddenly – BAM, the car breakdown and is going to cost a fortune to fix. Or, the freeze is kaput, and not only does it flood the kitchen due to the defrost but it was fully stocked, and everything is ruined. It was something you couldn’t have seen coming, and not everyone has a rainy-day fund to help take care of those things. So, what do you do? Pinch from Peter to pay Paul? That is going to keep having an impact. Here are a few suggestions that aren’t as drastic and will help.

Pop up a flyer in your local post office, shop or pub offering to run small errands. A lot of older adults struggle to get around and carry all their bags of shopping – you’ll be doing a good deed and making some money.

Sell your stuff. Unless you’re a strict minimalist, you’ve probably got a lot of things you don’t use. List it on local selling sites.

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Set up a store on CafePress, or Shopify. All you need is a few ideas for a design, and the rest is pretty straightforward. Items are all printed and delivered on demand, and you get a cut of the proceeds. It helps if you have a decent social network to help you plug this one.

Sign up for Fivver, Upwork, People Per Hour or Freelancer. Put whatever skills you have to good use and make some extra cash.

If your car isn’t the issue, get it wrapped. There are online companies like Carvertise who wrap your vehicle in a brands advertising, and you get paid for it.

Get a loan, if you are struggling because you have bad credit then check somewhere like https://personalloan.co/personal-loans-for-bad-credit/ , make sure you can never borrow more than you can afford.

Wash some cars in the local area, most people appreciate a job well done when it comes to their car, and it’s even more beautiful when the cleaner comes to you.

Give Blood, although you should do this just for the good of it, you can get paid between $20-$50. Not only that but you could check out what is paid for plasma too. It will vary from state to state.

If you find it easy to keep your home in tip-top condition, then why not hire out your cleaning services? Have a simple price structure and your stock of cleaning supplies and work when you can.

In the same area, if you have a particularly green thumb, start growing fruit and veggies and sell them on when they are ready to be potted on. Or, opt to spruce up some gardens.

None of the options are going to work without a little effort, but all of them can bring in a nice side income which can help you cover expenses that you weren’t expecting in the future.

Friday, May 18, 2018

Bonus Word Issue Fixed!

If you were having issues being able to find the bonus words to enter in the giveaway, try it again!  I have fixed the link!  Sorry for any problems!  You will get credit if you let me know you had a problem! 

Have a wonderful weekend!
Shelly

Daphne & Velma Blu-ray Giveaway! #DaphneVelma

Disclosure:  Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.


Jinkies! Your favorite mystery-solving teenagers are back in an all-new, live-action feature-length movie!

State of the art robots and high-tech gadgets are common sights at Ridge Valley High, an innovative center of learning for some of the brightest minds in the country, including new transfer student, the bright & optimistic Daphne Blake (Sarah Jeffery) who is excited to finally go to school with her online bestie, the whip-smart & analytical Velma Dinkley (Sarah Gilman). But not everything is as innocent as it seems as mysterious disappearances begin to plague the top-performing students on campus. Once cheery and full of life, kids now appear in a “zombiefied” state - lifeless and shells of themselves. Can Daphne and Velma learn to work together and save the students or will they become the nex victims? Get ready for thrills and laughs as we follow the first adventures of Mystery Inc.’s fierce female duo.


Daphne & Velma Mystery Video Decryptor & Soundboard Blog App:
• Help Daphne & Velma solve their latest case by helping them decrypt the footage! Dial the knob and meters to just the right position to unlock the footage and move to the next challenge.
• Trigger fun & spooky sounds right from the movie in this fun soundboard

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will release Daphne & Velma on Digital, Blu-ray and DVD on May 22, 2018.

The film stars Sarah Jeffery (Disney's "Descendants: Wicked World") and Sarah Gilman (ABC's “Last Man Standing”), and is produced by Ashley Tisdale and Jennifer Tisdale’s Blondie Girl Productions. Daphne & Velma will carry a suggested retail price of $19.98 for the DVD and $24.98 for the Blu-ray.




Would you like to win a Blu-Ray of Daphne & Velma for your family?  Simply check out the blog app and enter on the rafflecopter form below!

Tuesday, May 15, 2018

God Bless You and Good Night - Children's Bed Time Book Review

Disclosure:  We received a copy of this book at no charge to facilitate our honest review.  All thoughts stated are those of the Shelly's Bits and Pieces family.


One of my favorite things to do is to read bedtime stories before I put children to bed!  I have been doing that ever since I first started babysitting when I was 15.  My favorite types of bedtime books have always been ones related to God and His love.  We were recently given the opportunity to review God Bless You and Good Night, by Hannah C Hall,  and we think it is too cute!  The illustrations are adorable, picturing animal parents getting their baby animals ready for bed.  The rhyming story and bright, colorful pictures capture the attention of kids and parents too!  It reminds us all that God loves us and always blesses us!

 The bestselling God Bless You and Good Night has sold more than a quarter of a million copies as a board book, and this beautiful expanded picture book will make a perfect gift for families.

  

God Bless You and Good Night sparked a series that is as beloved as it is adorable. The original board book has sold more than 280,000 copies and continues to grow. This expanded picture book offers a classic, collectible item that readers will love for their own home library and is a beautiful gift option for baby showers and birthdays or as an announcement gift for soon-to-be grandparents.
With its deluxe formatting, larger art spreads, and expanded content, this picture book will be the family favorite for bedtime.

 

The A God Bless Book series has sold more than 600,000 units and has appeared on
numerous bestseller lists.


Thursday, May 10, 2018

Get 300 bonus SB when you sign up for Swagbucks in May #ad

Disclosure:  This is a sponsored post!  I receive SB for sharing.



All throughout May, you can earn large bonuses when signing up as my referral on Swagbucks. Swagbucks is a rewards site where you earn points (called SB) for things you're probably doing online already, like searching, watching videos, discovering deals, and taking surveys. Then you take those points and exchange them for gift cards to places like Amazon, Starbucks, or PayPal cash.

When you sign up through me this month, you can earn a 300 SB bonus! Here's how:

1. Sign up using this link

2. Earn 300 SB total before June 1st, 2018. You'll get a 300 SB bonus for it!

3. That's it. It's super easy, and Swagbucks is for real. I use it myself, and I've earned over $2000 in gift cards to Amazon, Delta Airlines, and American Airlines!