Monday, December 5, 2011

Tips for Budget friendly chritmas decorations...


1. Branch Out

Go branch hunting outside. Spray-paint the branches in a silver or gold, pop them in a vase and voilĂ  ... elegant holiday decor. Take it a step further and dangle some ornaments on them or tie a few bows.

2. Show Your Cards

Glue leftover cards or those from previous years on matboard using Spray Mount, double sided tape or rubber cement and hang as holiday artwork, says Mary Ellen Turner, vice president of seasonal merchandise for Party City. The boards could be trimmed down to the size of a single card or left as a whole board with numerous cards attached to it lined up against a wall or on top of a coffee table.

3. Go Natural

Use natural elements, such as evergreen branches, pinecones or berries with candles. "But always make sure to place candles in separate holders, such as hurricane glasses, for safety," says Kimberly Kennedy, author of The Art and Craft of Entertaining and lifestyle consultant for the National Candle Association. Or, pile artificial snow on a silver platter, a tabletop, or mantel with vintage glass ornaments and votives in crystal holders to create a dramatic effect.

4. Add Some Swagger

Make a swag out of Christmas cards, say Jennifer and Kitty O'Neil, authors of Decorating with Funky Shui: How to Lighten Up, Loosen Up and Have Fun Decorating Your Home. Start with last year's cards and hang them over a long strand of twine, and tack two ends to front corners of your mantel, or down a long hallway.

5. Tie It Up

Take your throw pillows and tie them with holiday colored ribbons either once around the middle or like a Christmas gift. Add a rhinestone pin for an extra kick!

6. Find a Canny Solution

Don't have Christmas stockings? Santa won't care. Take soup, peanut, or coffee cans and create a new place for gift stuffing. About one inch down from the top of the can, drill a hole. Now paint the can whatever color you like and either add a label with the person's name on it or paint it right on the can. Glue things on (paper snowflakes work great), paint, etc. -- there are no rules! Then string a ribbon through the hole and hang it on the mantel.

7. Make a Bow

Take red, white or green bath towels and stack three different sizes with coordinating ribbon, thus creating a "gift wrapped package." Place on bath counters or tiered rack behind toilet bowl to dress up the guest bath, says Connie Bandstra, author of Tasty Temptations.

8. Brighten Up

Fill large tubular vases with red cranberries to add a beautiful splash of Christmas red to any room. If you don't have any vases, take 3 or more clear glass wine bottles or other household bottles and fill them with cranberries. You can even take it a step further and add flowers, twigs, or greenery with water. Another easy tip is to fill candle trays with cranberries or even pour them into the center of your dining table with candles here and there and voilĂ !

9. Frame It

Take some hanging picture frames and simply frame some pretty holiday paper as artwork. Sometimes you can even find a nice greeting card worthy of being framed and hung.

10. Spray It

Take household bottles (wine or juice, even beer bottles) and simply spray-paint them holiday colors. Green, red and blue work well. Even just taking a dozen bottles, spraying them with silver paint and popping candles, flowers, or twigs in them is the simple and perfect accent for a dining table, fireplace mantel, or a long console table. It will look stunning and no one will even guess how you did it so simply!

11. Get Abstract

Cut up red, green, silver and white construction paper or colored glossy paper, into 6- to 8-inch strips. You can even paint or spray-paint old magazine pages. Loop one end to the other and glue to a blank canvas. Do this with dozens of strips and fill the entire canvas. You're left with a cheap and easy piece of abstract holiday art that looks like you paid $300 for at an art boutique!

12. Just Add Water

Take clear vases or bottles, fill them with water, add holiday-colored food coloring -- a few drops will do -- and float candles in them or just line several up in a row to add a simple, cool holiday accent.

13. Turn the Lights Up

Take holiday-colored ribbon and pin or glue it around the bottom of your lamp shade. So simple and so stylish.

14. Decorate the Door

Make your own holiday wreaths. Go outside and cut almost any type of greenery that you see, bend it into a circle and tie with anything you have, whether it is fishing string, ribbon or rope. Hang it simple and fresh and add a few ribbons or ornaments. You can also use these on a table and lay them flat, then place a candle in the center. If you let it dry out, you can make it last a bit longer and even spray it a holiday color if you choose.

15. Splash on Color

Take a blank canvas and spray-paint it a solid holiday color. It's that simple. You could also stencil or stamp snowflakes, stars, etc. to add some holiday accent.

16. Go Modern

Take some small household, clear glass bottles and throw some holiday-colored drops of paint inside, shake it up and the paint will splatter inside to look like a modern piece of art. (You can also just spray the outsides a solid color.) Tie a ribbon around the top and can decorate a whole Christmas tree with them. Makes for great shelf ornaments, kitchen counter decorations or centerpieces!

Tips for new Bloggers

Before starting...lets know about HTML and XHTML ??

When inserting codes into the Blogger template, page element, or blog post, you may have seen error messages that the code could not be parsed, was not well-formed, was broken, or that the elements were not closed properly. These errors can be corrected if you understand the rules that must be adhered to in XHTML documents. Blogger templates use the XHTML 1.0 Strict Document Type. In this article, we shall explain some of the XHTML syntax or rules, so that you may troubleshoot and resolve the problems if these error messages should occur.

XML, HTML and XHTML

We shall keep this short. Just so as you understand what we said about document type, view the Page Source or Source of your Blogger blog. You should see this document type declaration at the very top:-




The terms – XML, HTML and XHTML - refer to the markup language used to write the web pages. Many of us would have heard of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), invented by Tim Berners-Lee, and used since the early days of internet. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a meta-language, used to create other markup languages. The traditional HTML was later recast to use the rules of XML and that resulted in a new XML application, called XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language). Because XHTML rules are strict and unforgiving, not conforming to them when attempting to modify the template would result in error messages. So, what are these rules that Bloggers like us should take note of?

Basic Rules of XHTML

1. Codes to be in lowercase

Since XML is case sensitive, all the element keywords and attribute names used in XHTML should be in the lowercase. For example, the template code is not this:-

Tips for New Bloggers


but this:-

Tips for New Bloggers


If you have noticed, the elements and attribute names between the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) signs have to be in the lowercase. However, the value, which in this case is “Tips for New Bloggers”, can be in the uppercase, lowercase, or mixed case.

2. Attribute values to be in quotation marks

All the attribute values have to be enclosed either in single or double quotation marks. The following examples are not accepted by XHTML:-



Text Link






Instead, they should be written as such:-



Text Link






3. Container elements must have closing tags

This is not correct:-

A paragraph.



In XHTML, there must be a closing tag with a forward slash (/) at the end:-

A paragraph.




Examples of the many non-empty elements that have opening and corresponding closing tags are:-

    ...

  • ...

  • ...

    ...


    ...

    ...
    ...

    ...

    ...


    4. Standalone elements to be closed

    Some of the elements are empty or standalone. They do not have associated closing tags. Common examples are:-












    Nonetheless, in XHTML, these elements must be terminated or closed. There are two ways to do that. One way to terminate the element is to put a forward slash (/) at the end like this:-












    The second way is to add a corresponding closing tag like this:-


    ...
    ...
    ...
    ...

    ...
    ...
    ...


    5. Elements to be properly nested

    This means that elements must be closed in the reverse order. For example, this code is not accepted in XHTML:-

    ...



    It is improperly nested because the form was created first followed by the table. To close them in the proper order, the table must be closed before the form, like this:-

    ...



    6. Document to have only one root element

    In the XHTML document, you will see that except for the document type declaration, all the codes are nested between and . This is the root element and all other elements or sub elements are in between. The document structure will look like this:-


    ... ...


    7. Attribute minimization is not allowed

    In XHTML, all attributes should be in the form name="value". Even if the value is the same as the name, it cannot be minimized to one word. Hence, in our Add Text Box and Textarea article, the textarea code is not this:-




    but this:-




    XHTML Character Entities

    Quite a number of readers had asked why they were unable to display HTML codes in their blog posts or why their codes were not well-parsed when inserted into the template. If you have noticed by now, the codes are wrapped in the lesser than (<) and greater than (>) signs. The moment these are posted, they will be interpreted as codes and will trigger an action by the browser. Should you want to display these as part of the text, use their character entities instead.

    ""
    &&
    <<
    >>


    The next time you see an error message to the effect that the code is not well formed, not well parsed, not properly closed, etc., take a look at this guide, troubleshoot the problem and try out the possible solutions.

    Tips to use the best SEO tools of Google !


    Well....Its best known that Google is a webmasters best friend, heres more proof. Google has provided a number of tools for SEO and helping webmasters to provide better content by understanding how and what has more demand in the web world. Below are a list of tools that would help you do the same.

    Google Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools is a no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize visibility of their websites.

    Google Analytics: Google Analytics (GA) is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that the product is aimed at marketers as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics originally grew.

    Google Website Optimizer: You can try different versions of your site that will be randomly displayed to visitors, allowing to obtain sufficient data for us to make decisions about design changes.

    Google Zeitgeist: A Trends showing tool which shows what is Hot and what is Not on a year basis.

    Google Trends: Allows you know how much or little that is sought a sentence or word in Google, allowing to compare curves between them. There are only the most popular.

    Google Insights for Search: Allows you wanted to see what is a phrase or word, regardless of popularity.

    Google Traffic Estimator: Made for Adwords, allows us to draw conclusions about the views that a particular word generates.

    Google Keyword Tool: Also made for Adwords, we can help you choose the best words in our texts to attract more visitors.

    Google Search Tool Based Keyword: Another option that allows us to find keywords on specific websites.

    Google Ad Planner: For statistical profile of visitors to any website.