Todays home theater equipment provides the cinema experience in the comfort of your home, but have you given much though to seating and furniture in your media room?

Perhaps the most important part of a home theater is the seating and furnishings make your media room comfortable to watch movies or play your favorite video games!

Comfy seating truly enhances your home theater experience and makes your home theater the place where everyone in the house wants to hang out.

Media Room or Home Theater?

For the total cinema experience at home, you might consider movie theater style seating!

A media room is more often a great room, basement or bonus room that is converted to use as a home theater, but also can be used for a computer room, game room or all purpose family and living room.

How to Budget for your Home Theater or Media Room

Price ranges for home theaters can run from as little as $5,000 or $6,000 to as much as $70,000 or $80,000 for a state-of-the-art media room. A dedicated, fully themed home theater room can cost well over $100,000, so get your checkbook ready if you decide to go all out!

You can hire a home theater expert to help you plan and execute your home theater room or do the plans yourself.

Modular media room seating is comfortable and convenient, offering a good overall value.

While not for everyone’s budget or tastes, modular seating can be a good value and, with built-in storage, cup holders and recliners, you can get comfortable in the modular home theater setups that Lazy Boy and other retailers sell these days. These modular sofa systems are very comfy and designed to enhance your media room viewing experience!

Movie Theater Style Seating

If you have the budget and really want to go all out, then installing movie theater style seating is a great way to go. And if your theater is large enough, you can seat a large crowd with this option. Install wall sconces, theater drapes and red carpet for a complete movie theater theme in your home theater room!

More Formal Media Room Seating

For a room that is not used exclusively as a media room, such as a great room or family room, a more formal type of seating may be more appropriate. Some people prefer a leather sofa and matching armchairs or love seats over the modular or movie theater type of seating.

Tips for Media and Home Theater Room Design and Installation

• Placement of your screen and seating arrangement is critical to having a good movie theater experience. Be sure your media room and flat screen television are appropriately sized; you want to get the right TV screen size for your media room.
• You want good access to the room so that seating and other furniture are easily accessed and so that your audio and video equipment are easy to reach. A pre-manufactured media cabinet or built-in home theater cabinetry are mandatory, so be sure to plan your budget accordingly.
• Arrange seating so that the screen is as close as possible to eye level and so that the angle of viewing is as straight on as possible.
• Plan your media room layout completely before buying any equipment and follow the right sequence when designing and outfitting the space.
• Start with framing and rough in construction, if needed; use a double 2×4 wall to isolate sound if appropriate, depending on the location of your media room.
• Bring in plenty of electrical wiring and install multiple circuits to support the additional load your amplifiers and other audio/video equipment will demand.
• Insulate your home theater room well to confine noise to the room and to ensure a comfortable climate.
• Add ambient and accent lighting to make your media room flexible so that lighting can be lowered and raised as needed; dimmers are a great way to help control lighting levels in the media room.
• Sheetrock, paint, install cabinetry or pre-made media center and, finally, install your flooring. While you may like the look of hard surfaces, using carpet and putting some kind of tapestries, theater-style curtains or other soft materials on the walls improves sound acoustics.
• If you are handy, buy cabling in bulk and make the video and audio connectors yourself to save money versus buying over-priced pre-made cabling.
• Be sure to run speaker wires to the wall and ceiling location before you sheetrock; installation of speaker mounting hardware may be done before or after sheetrock, depending on the type of brackets you buy. Plan accordingly.
• This will be less expensive than buying pre-made cables. You can buy the parts and tools that you’ll need at any local electronics store.
• If you are retrofitting speaker cabling, you may be able to run wires under the flooring or use Wire Mold or similar products to help conceal speaker wires. Avoid using wireless speakers; the sound quality is completely inferior and the cost is much higher!
• Organize your component cabling with wire ties and be sure to label everything; you’ll be glad you did later as you need to reconfigure components!

If you have issues immediately after installing it, remove it, and always, always save new software to your desktop, right click on the file and scan it with your virus scanner prior to installing it, particularly if it came from a site you are not familiar with.

We’ve done our internet roundup of some of the very best that are available, free of any kind of added software.

Not the shareware, or the quits in 30 days variety, but honest to gosh freeware, that you can save and use year after year.

PC WALLPAPER from the UK, brings a wide variety of stunning Christmas wallpapers, and having installed several, they are great additions and are easy to install and uninstall.

Wonder Christmas offers some striking wallpapers, featuring Christmas trees, Santa Claus, stars, snow scenes and gingerbread houses.

Among the most stunningly beautiful free Christmas wallpapers I found in my travels are those located at Scenic Reflections They are striking in detail, amazing colors, optimized in every way and have no additives. The snowy hut, featured here, is just one of many extraordinarily beautiful Christmass wall papers and screen savers that are free and feature animals, snow scenes, birds and wildlife and some of the most intricate and lovely scenes of Christmas that I’ve found so far.
Another site to download quality Christmas wallpapers is Graphic Freebies.com which features some lovely trees, pine boughs and snow scenes that are free to grab and use.

The reason for this is because a great deal of the energy that you use for your home comes from fossil fules that are used to power the electric plants.

Lowering your electric use will in fact lower not only your bills but also the pollution that you cause.

Lets face it. We can’t all run out and purchase new appliances so that everything we have is absolutely energy efficient. It would be nice if we could afford it, but unfortunately some of us can’t replace everything we own that’s over a couple years old.

While that isn’t practical there are some steps we can take to make the most, or perhaps to make the best of the situation that we currently live with, in regard to our appliances.
There are ways we can minimize our bills and our impact on energy consumption using the same appliances we currently have.

Take stock of what you have in your home. Then take these steps, recommended by Energy Star, to use them to their best advantage and to save as much as you can in both energy and cost to you.

Your refrigerator is the single largest power consumption appliance in your home aside from maybe your hot water tank.

A few ways to help out in this department are to:
Set your temps for different seasons. Put a thermometer inside and make sure that it reads about 40 in the mornings after the fridge is shut all night.

Manual defrost refrigerators are usually far more efficient than automatic defrost models.

* Vacuum the coils in the back of your refrigerator twice a year

* Check the door gasket occasionally to be sure the seal isn’t broken.
* Refrigerator should not be located near the stove or exposed to direct sunlight.

For your Stove:
Try to match the pot size to the burner size to prevent wasting the heat and energy

Use lids on your pots and pans.

Check to make sure that your oven door is sealed tightly.

Use your microwave or a convection over as they use much less energy as the regular conventional stove and oven.

It’s been happening since the onset of the original bbs programs, and as the sites grew in size and importance so did the nature of the threats against them.

If your site, or your laptop or PC contain data that belongs to anyone else, that might be sensitive in nature, that may contain any type of financial information, then you are a target like anyone else.

Hoping and hiding from those who target computers, even if only to use them in denial of service attacks, isn’t going to work.

Knowledge and understanding of how they attack and how to defend against it is the best chance of preventing it.

Hacking began as a game, to see who could “get root” (gain access to the most basic and most important part of your computer) and leave some small sign of having been there.
It began as largely harmless fun.

Granted some may be harmless still , kids pranks. Some of it certainly isn’t harmless. It costs millions in time, money and loss of business to those who are its target.

From Robert Morris to Kevin Mitnick and others, far less famous and far less wholesome, hacking has a whole new face of those who use it for personal gain, or for gaining notoriety.

Robert was known on the Internet as “rtm”. But he was actually far more than just the initials. He was the son of the chief scientist at the National Computer Security Center — part of the National Security Agency (US’s NSA)
His fame skyrocketed in 1988 when he maimed and very nearly killed an Internet in its infancy at the time by the release of the first worm.

Thousands of computers were infected and crashed. The term “hacker” became a household word because of him.
I personally after years of study don’t have the skills to defend against this kind of attack
That’s what makes software so important to me for use on my own laptop..
Free hacking programs abound by those who claim to want to help you prevent the hacking of your laptop or PC.

The question is do they work? For the most part yes they do.

They are drafted by people who are trying to pave their way, or get a foot in the door of the software industries and as such who have a vested interest in making sure that what they write is comparable, and in some cases far better than the commercial products out there on the market.

Hacking isn’t just a game anymore, its a disease of epidemic proportions and as such, can cost just as much in money, or financial loss than any other disease process.

It is both costly and embarrassing in some cases.

Would you like to be the one to explain to your boss that your work laptop was hacked last night and provided all of the medical information of ten employees to a third party?
No one wants that responsibility.

When there is a chance to prevent it, why would you not take it.

Some examples of free hacking software are located here, which are well written and waiting for you to test them.
http://www.freedownloadscenter.com/Best/free-hacking.html

You might be glad you took the time to download one.

The future of home gadgetry is here today with some truly unique ways to save energy, to make our lives easier and more convenient and to give us extra time for leisure and fun by our use of time saving, space saving, cost saving new toys for the smarter home.

First up, the Smart Strip power strip, that is the newest way to save energy, by switching off our appliances or devices by shutting down just one. Featured on CBX news as well as Wired Magazine, this little gem is energy and step saving.

The solar attic fan is environmentally smart and a fast solution that can save money. Completely powered by the use of solar energy, the solar attic fan is quiet and efficient in its venting.Asphalt shingles are subjected to greater temperatures when the roof decking is allowed to overheat, which is what happens in an under ventilated attic. Your purchase of the Solar attic fan will extend the life of your roofing as well as cut your AC bills in the summer time.

What electronic home is going to be complete without the installation of the Leviton Panel Mounted Surge Protective Device Rated for 120/240V AC 60 Hz. The Levitron protects against high-energy transient voltage surges on power lines which can damage the microcircuitry in X10 PLC devices, computers, audio and video components, and electronic appliances is a super investment particularly if you own more than one computer or piece of electronic equipment that you need to safeguard.

At 199 it does seem to be a bit on the pricey side, but when compared to losing so much more in replacement costs for your damaged equipment I think its a value.

Gardeners in your home are going to be impressed with the
CatStop Ultrasonic Cat Deterrent is a super means to prevent cats from accessing your garden as well as a humane deterrent to them.

Keep cats out of your garden with the CatStop! CatStop detects animal interlopers and lets out a very high decibel alarm that very often startles them away. The CatStop keeps cats out of your flower gardens, yard or anywhere you don’t want them to be.

Next up, and using technology so advanced that it has been used in interplanetary space probes, Innotech’s Voice Operated Remote Control Technology uses the sound of your voice to control your TV, VCR, Cable Box, Satellite, and Home Theater.

The Voice Operated Remote Control converts spoken words into remote control signals using Innotech’s acclaimed remote control infrared code library.

Able to recognize over fifty commands in any language Innotech’s Voice Operated Remote Controls are so automated they can perform complex multi-step operations from a single word and even surf the channels while you just lean back and watch! What an utterly amazing way to take the weekend off from virtually every thing.

WiLife Digital Video Surveillance System is the latest and greatest in home security systems.
With WiLife, you can secure your home or small business with a professional-grade digital video surveillance system in an easy-to-setup package. With email and cell phone alerts, you control your own security. Using free Remote Access, view your cameras anywhere anytime through the Internet.

Motorola Homesight – Home Monitoring & Control System
Quite simply, THE most affordable, scalable, easy to install All-In-One Home security, control, surveillance and observation system ever developed. You wont find a cheaper price. Monitor activity over your cellphone or the Internet, even when you’re away from home!

WaterDog Automatic Dog Fountain, perfect for a day out when you cant be there to provide your best friend with fresh water every few hours. This unique little gadget, The WaterDog helps to reduce thirst and sickness by providing a fresh clean cool stream of water on demand. Smart sonar sensing technology triggers the WaterDog to turn on when your pet approaches and turns off the water when your pet leaves.

EZ View Solar Powered Illuminated House Numbers, are an easy way to let people know this is your home, even after dark. Solar Powered House Number charges all day and glows all night. Has 100 hour of reserve power perfect for rainy days and long winter nights

Know in advance when company is coming, so that you can put the cat in the other room, or welcome them properly with

SureAction Vehicle Detection Systems Hardwired probes provide the most effective way for installing a probe system. Detects vehicles moving as slow as 1/2 mph. Battery operated probe for installation in areas where trenching is difficult.

Be secure inside while you take advantage of your wireless weather station to provide for knowledge in advance of the approaching weather with Oregon Scientific Cable Free™ Weather Station – WMR968.

Wireless outdoor sensors operate on solar power for simple installation. Includes Touchscreen Control Sensor, Anemometer, Thermo-hygrometer, Rain gauge, Baro-thermo-hygrometer, 12V AC adapter, all of which combine to give you state of the art weather knowledge at your fingertips.

When in doubt the perfect gift will always be something that helps to automate our lives and make them easier..
If all else fails, turn to the full automation systems of the Icebox kitchen computer system that can integrate all of your appliances and control them for you, using add on technology.

Who wouldn’t love a fully automated home, which has an electronic system to do anything that needs done?

With some of these fun and interesting small appliances you can add treats to the parties and delicious and healthy foods to your evenings at home.
Some specialty things that can add fun to your life and your kitchen , and make great gifts for families and friends are listed below:

Stainless Steel Chocolate Fountain

This appliance is a great addiction to any party or occasion. This chocolate fountain is great to use as a centerpiece for your event or just for a delightful treat. Strawberries, cookies, pretzels, marshmallows and more can be the perfect delicacies for dipping. This fountain can hold up to 2lbs of chocolate and keeps the chocolate warm and flowing. You have the option of adjusting your thermostat to your desired temperature and the base is dishwasher safe. This is just the item to add on your shopping list.

One of the most fun and addictive aspects of eating is chocolate, and the Chocolatier Electronic Chocolate Melting Pot is one way to offer that to family and guests. It has several different settings to offer you the means to melt chocolate that has been chopped or that which is whole. It also offers you some molds to make your own molded chocolate confections as well as skewers and forks to use for dipping fruits or cake squares.
You can find it at JC Penney at a price of about 12.99 for the smaller unit and 39 for the larger.

Mr Coffee has another chocolate making offering for us, that prevents the milk from overheating or the cocoa from scorching.
The Cocomotion Hot Cocoa maker makes 2 to 4 cups of hot cocoa and keeps it the perfect temperature for you, as well as wiping it to make the traditional frothy topped cocoa. With a locking lid it will keep the cocoa perfect until you are ready to drink it. The hot cocoa maker is sold at walmart at a price of about 20 dollars.

Do your own children love yogurt?
The Electronic Yogurt Maker is the perfect gift for your own kitchen or someone else’s. Using this little gem, your yogurt is made in 6-12 hours, and you can control what you put into it, how sweet the home made yogurt is as well as the fat content it contains, while making 6 jars at one time, with a timer to let you know when your product is ready for consumption.

Chicken wings in the varying flavors are a super treat for evening snacks, and what could be easier than the Wings N Things to make them. It also makes fries, chili cheese fries and has two seperate areas for deep frying and slow cooking in the same small appliance Costing about 50 dollars at JC Penney, and a bit less at Walmart, Wings N Things is going to be a fun addition to your holiday parties.

Smaller than the Carnival Cart which retails for about 300 dollars, this little brother to it, called Old Fashion Movie Time Kettle Popcorn is just about the perfect size and addition to your kitchen.

The mini version will pop novice style popcorn in your home, and offers you a tempered window, a measuring dispenser and a warming light while it makes up to a gallon of popcorn.
Its available from walmart for about 75 dollars, while another, still smaller version retails for just about 30 dollars.

Make delicious mash potatoes in the Mash Potato Maker, another new kitchen gadget on the market this season. It permits you to auto steam food, or mix your potatoes with other veggies for a unique taste experience. It retails for about 65 dollars.

Do you all love pizza.? Then you are going to be completely wowed by the Presto Pizzazz Pizza Oven which rotates while it cooks pizzas from hand made or frozen on your counter-top while you watch. It includes a non stick pan, timer and varying heat settings, as well as a recipe and instruction booklet for making various types of pizza.
This little jewel can be found at Walmart for just about 40 dollars.

JUST IN TIME… this small computer called the Icebox is designed to exactly fit your counter-top for the kitchen that can’t be without a computer.

It is a PC media center and permits you to watch television, play your favorite DVD or CD in your kitchen, and if you combine the Icebox with the Beyond the Sani, network card, you can control all of your appliances from the counter-top computer. Up to and including controlling your Bread Maker, coffee maker and Beyond Microwave, each of which retails separately of course.

this little dream includes a touch screen, CE net OS and a washable keyboard and remote.

Available at Walmart.com for about 1000 dollars, this is one of those things you get for the guys and girls who have everything.

The problem is that some rooms aren’t made for a big screen and the over large television set can essentially overpower the entire room.

In order to get the right television for your particular needs, there are just a few factors to consider. Screen measurements, display ratios, how you like to watch it and how much you want to spend.

Among the most important of the things you will need to consider for your purchase are:

What follows are most of the crucial questions you’ll need to answer for future viewing pleasure.

What is the correct size for my room?

The distance that you will be seated away from the television will help you to determine the clarity of the image on the screen as well as how detailed it is.

If you are only watching real HDTV images in every show and movie, then you could sit as close as two times the screen size measured diagonally.

In other words, if your television of 36 inches, then you can site about 6 feet away and see it relatively clearly. But since HDTV is not what we see every show in. you will be watching some conventional television,(analog) and it isn’t going to be pretty from that close a distance to the set.

In other words, if you want a television that is 60 inches, you should be at least fifteen feet away to watch it and see a decent image in an analog show.

Which is Best, Flat Panel or Box?

The plasma and LCD flat panels are just oh so awesome looking and everyone wants one. Admittedly they look like something from the 25th century in present day and that slim little silhouette is just alluring as heck. Still if you take it all into consideration, then to get full HD resolution, do you know you are going to need a television that is over fifty inches in diameter? In most cases, that means that you are going to be paying upwards of 8000 US dollars. If you want to skip the flat panel and opt in for a box style, you will get full HDTV resolution for about a third of that, or about 3200, for a television that still weighs under a hundred pounds.

More than a great price and a lighter weight television, you will also get a super bright and really cool HD picture, granted without the flat panel, but also without the price.

YOU can save still more if you are willing to take it down a notch more and skip the HDTV and go for LCD.

And you will still get a bright, stunningly good HD picture — minus the ultra-cool flat-panel appeal, of course. If you still like the flat panel and are willing to accept good but not true HD picture quality, you can save a lot of money on a smaller LCD or plasma display.

HD Resolution, a want or a need?

Okay, so lets say, as in the case of my husband, who truly believes that HD TV is not a need but there is no way he is going to pass up the flat panel that his best buddy next door has.

If you can be satisfied with the DVD clarity, or EDTV, you can get a top line glat panel from Panasonic for just about 3 K that measures up at about 42 inches. That’s nothing to sneeze at for that price.
While you aren’t going to get HD, your plasma will take the signals from HD to a native resolution and it will still look better, even on an analog television set.

The ratio of width to height in a wide screen is about 16 to 9, which is the standard for HD, and will match most movies on DVD or HD programs but, there are still many shows and news items that are shot in the basic 4 to 3 ration that is the normal television.

The point of that comment being that if you choose a wide screen HD television, then you will have some annoying wide black bars at each side unless you use the stretch mode like your computer has to give you the background setup .
it sometimes, as you know, distorts the image on your computer and it will do the same thing on your television.

The old industry standard, the CRT television that we all had as kids is not yet ready for the electronic graveyard. Its been revamped so to speak, and you can actually get “true HDTV performance with excellent picture quality, a wide viewing angle, long life (14 years or more), and a bright, contrasty picture that can be viewed in bright rooms” and get it all for under 2 K if you are willing to sacrifice a little in a meatier television with a bit more bulk and pounds to it. The biggest you can get will be about forty inches

Purchasing a 34 inch HD, from Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba or Samsung will offer you some awesome picture quality, and because the screen isn’t hellishly over-sized, it will show you non- HDTV programs clearly and look great.

If in fact your heart is truly set on the larger screen HD and you absolutely don’t want the headaches that you can get from the front projector variety that need a completely dark room to make them look decent, then the best idea for you, will be an RPTV. which will get you a true HD resolution, will cost alot less than the fifty inch plasma flat, and be workable for your situation.

Last, but most certainly not least, is the new kid on the playground, the LCoS, or Liquid crystal on silicon, which is a very new technology that seems to be, according to those in the know “showing real promise” to offer up an even better resolution than either LCD or DLP, but at the moment, there are very few varieties of this available, and Toshiba, who had introduced a few varieties of this has now given up producing the technology. It goes without saying that LCOS is a great deal further up in the price scale.

A few Price comparisons:

Toshiba REGZA 42HL67 42″ LCD TV – $1,042.00

Sony KDL-46V3000 46″ BRAVIA V series LCD Flat Panel HDTV – $1,929.00

Sharp LC32D62U 32″ HD LCD TV – $940.00

Samsung FP-T5084 50″ Plasma HDTV with 1080p Resolution – $2,277.00

Spooky word to those of us who don’t like to think about things happening to our homes or families. Still its a word that we should all be familiar with, and know exactly how we plant to deal with it if the situation arises.

Being a firefighter, I get passionate about some things that not too many other people do.
One of those things is installing smoke detectors in your home. Particularly if you have children, this is something that regardless of income or geography, you simply cannot afford to be without.

Each year in the United States over 3000 people are killed in fires and another several thousand are injured.
Having a working smoke alarm will increase your chances of living through a fire by fifty percent.
FIFTY PERCENT!!
Knowing what to do in case of a fire will further increase your families chances of staying alive.

Isn’t that worth your time and energy? To install a few smoke alarms and to take the time to install them and test them every few months? To teach your family what to do in the event of a fire?

A fire extinguisher should always be present in your home, two if you can swing it. One in the hallway, near the childrens room, perhaps in a bathroom cabinet, and another situated in the kitchen, within easy reach of the stove.

THey should be ABC type extinguishers, rated for all fires, and everyone in your home should be familiar with how they operate and able to use them if the need arises. To that end, make sure that once you’ve purchased one, that you go over its operation with your children.

Fire and Smoke detectors should be ideally situated in more than one area of the home, with the very least amount being one outside of each childs room, one situated outside your own and another near your kitchen.

The diagrams below, from a Fire Safety standpoint, are where you ideally want your fire or smoke detector to be situated.

Never put a smoke detector in a corner as the smoke won’t reach it in some cases before the fire reaches you.
Be sure when attaching your smoke detector to the wall, that you place it 4-12 inches from the ceiling and likewise, mount ceiling placed smoke detectors 4 inches from the wall.

Smoke rises, so if you have a odd-shaped ceiling, choose the highest point on the ceiling to place the detector.

Smoke is nothing more than gases that are the byproduct of the fire. In most cases smoke is poison and you need to stay below it.
If your detector goes off, thats not the time to hope that everyone knows what to do.

Talking with your children about fire safety is important. Not frightening discussions, but teaching discussions that are designed to get them to learn in ways they understand. One site that can be very helpful in finding a way to teach without frightening them is McGruff.org, which helps them to understand the material and gives them fire safety games and puzzles to do, that are designed to help them retain the learning material more easily.
I so recommend that you visit the site and spend some time with your kids to teach them how to be safe.

Teach your kids to sleep with the door closed and to lay a hand on it before they open it if they hear the smoke alarm go off. If it is warm, do not open it leave it shut and find another way out, such as a window. If you have no window, take anything you may find and block the smoke from coming into the room. Stuffed toys, clothing or anything else will be an effective tool to stuff under your door and prevent the smoke from entering.

When you change your clocks, change your alarm batteries.

Test your alarm monthly.

NEVER pull the battery from an alarm that goes off frequently. Relocate it, but don’t leave youself defenseless by disabling it.

Vacuum your detector every few months.

PLAN AHEAD!!

Particularly this time of year, firedrills in your home, table discussions about where the meeting place will be and suggestions for ways to get out of your home are the best method of making sure that everyone does.

One of the premier hotels on the strip, it had some amenities that I fell in love with, not the least of which was the amazing view from the 120th floor and that was easily accessed by the incredible electronic window treatments. A flick of the finger and the filmy drapes opened to permit a view of the multiple pools below, surrounded by live flamingos. I wanted to live there.

When I got home I decided I wanted to know more about them and the kind of technology it would take to implement them in my home.

A little research revealed that one of the first companies to provide this technology was a light control manufacturer was Lutron Electronics. In 2001 they engineered a control system that will communicate back and forth with a motorized window treatment that was provided by Vimco.

In a short time Vimco was purchased by Lutron who began selling their shades as a compliment to their own lighting controls and today, Lutron manufactures their own line of controllable shades, in many fabrics and colors and helped to make the shading of light an important aspect of every homes lighting scheme.

In fact. some of Lutrons competitors climbed onto the proverbial wagon and and although they did not go into the curtain and blind business, they did find partners to help them in manufacturing window treatments that go along with their own and are controlled by their controllers.

Thanks to the teamings manufacturers are not producing lighting controls that make it possible for home owners to know that they can pur Thanks to these partnerships, homeowners can get both a lighting control system and controllable window treatments from one source and know that the systems are going to work together without a hitch.

We all love our windows and the view they afford us, but as awe inspiring as that view may be there are going to be times when we want to cover it up or blot it out.

I personally find that when I am watching television, that I don’t care for the glare that the sunlight casts across the screen, and it makes it distracting for me to watch. At those times I would prefer to have my blinds closed.

The thought of not having to get up to do that, and to be able to use a remote control from the hallway to close my blinds if I choose to stroll into the living room in my robe does in fact impress me.

Window treatments aren’t just good for privacy they will help to save energy, keeping your home warmer in winter and cooler in summer, and frankly just make good economical sense.

In electronic controlled draperies, the fabric, whether is is sheer or heavy weighted draperies, is attached to a rod that looks a great deal like a standard one, that has a built in motor.
A hand remote control is then able to be used to conveniently close the draperies or curtains, without having to get up and wrestle into place manually.
I will admit that the absolute convenience of that appeals to me as well.

According to the Electronic House, there are several other reasons to purchase them, not the least of which is how they function in letting in natural light and balancing it with the electric lights. Take a look at the writings there on Electronic Window Treatments.

Why Buy Controllable Window Treatments?

* They can protect furnishings from harmful UV rays.
* They can preserve your privacy.
* They can make your house appear occupied when you’re away.
* They can reduce heat gain on sunny days.
* They can let sunlight in to help illuminate a space.
* They can complement your home’s lighting design.
* They can reveal the beautiful view outside.

These will of course have to be arranged judiciously for safety in traversing the stairs but using your stairwell to house a wide array of different decorations and house collections that will be shown of to a great advantage makes it something more than a stairwell. It turns the staircase into a focal point, particularly if it winds down into a often used hallway or living room.

Antique toys liven up the staircase on the right and are attached to the railing using fine wire so they can’t become a danger but instead do what they were meant to do, delight visitors, while on the left you see old and antique baskets marching up the stairwell to be met at the top by hanging quilts..

The baskets in my home were replaced with a collection of nutcrackers when the Christmas holiday rolled around and then as each holiday arrived, I found some type seasonal ornamentation to add to the stairway shelving.

The nutcrackers and baskets I settle into place and make sure they don’t fall and create a hazard by using double faced tape to assure they remain upright and in place on the stairs.

You might consider taking the shelving idea above the stairs , particularly if yours have high ceilings. Run a piece of board or shelving from your local home store, (such as Home Depot) and using L shaped brackets attach them about 8-12 inches from the ceiling, and echo the decor that you used from the stairs themselves above the stairs as well, or coordinate them.

If you use toys on the stairs, then perhaps use greenery or baskets with dark red ribbons to draw they eye and lift it toward the ceiling.