7 Tips On How To Live With Cat Allergies

how-to-live-with-cats

You’re either a cat person or a dog person. Not too many people I know are both. We love both cats and dogs but you’d be surprised to know that cat allergies are quite common. There are lots of people who are allergic to cats. If you are one of them, you might know this already. But if you’re not sure, it’s a good idea to get a skin test or a blood test. The good news is it’s possible for allergy sufferers to continue living with cats as long as you set some rules for yourself and your feline pet. We thought we’d put together a cheeky little list for our friends who have cat allergies!! Here are 7 tips on how to live with cat allergies.

cat allergy tips

1- Always carry antihistamines with you

Make sure you have a stock of antihistamines at home and bring your anti-allergy medications with you, wherever you go. Stock at home and keep a few in your purse as you never know when they will come in handy. You might have friends who own a cat. There will be times when you might have to visit and the medications will come in handy.

2- Invest in the best pet hair vacuum you can afford

Cleaning up cat fur can aggravate your condition so if you suffer from cat hair allergies, it’s worth investing in a machine that will do the job well. Sucking up those stubborn strands of cat hair can make all the difference to your level of comfort, so make sure you do your research and purchase the best pet hair vacuum your budget will allow.  A good tip is to pick the best vacuum for carpet, even if you don’t have a lot of carpet as it’s likely to be the type of vacuum that will suck up the loose cat fluff causing your eyes to water and your sinuses to puff up!

3- Choose hard chairs over soft ones

The couch can be very, inviting but soft seats are usually where cats like to sleep. If you will be visiting someone with a cat, most likely, even if there’s no visible cat hair, there’s dander and allergens stuck in these plush sofas. Plastic or wooden chairs are less likely to hold allergens. These types of chairs can also be easily cleaned.

4- Keep your bedroom cat free

If you or anyone in your household owns a cat, just make sure that it doesn’t have access to your bedroom. To help keep your cat allergy under control, your bedroom should strictly be off-limits to your feline companion.

5- Use HEPA filters

Filter the air in your home because allergens can be in the air you breathe and you won’t even notice. They are smaller than pollens. Have these filters installed in your home and your car. There are also portable HEPA filters.

6 -Wash your hands

If you come in contact with a cat, wash your hands thoroughly. Some would even go to greater lengths such as taking a bath after exposure to cats.

7-Have someone else bathe and groom the cat

If you really have to keep a cat, never do the grooming yourself. If you can’t get someone else to do it for you, a groomer will never refuse to do it for a fee!

Cats are amazing, but, if you suffer terribly from cat hair allergy, you might even want to consider getting another pet. But if that’s not an option, there are ways to live with your cat without compromising your health.

How to make a duvet cover

A duvet is a comforter that is slipped into a duvet cover. You can make this fast duvet cover from bedsheets, so your duvet will be as easy to look after as the sheets on your bed.

Lay the duvet on a large table on the ground and measure its width and length.

Take your duvet dimensions to the shop and buy two flat sheets marginally longer than the width and length dimensions of the duvet.

Duvets and level sheets vary in size so double check the sheets you buy are satisfactorily sizable to cover your duvet.

You need one standard weight zipper which is half the width of the completed duvet cover.

To cut and produce duvet cover, follow this brief list:

1 Center your duvet on the sheet, so the borders of the duvet are within the hemmed edges of the sheet.
2 Cut the sheet out the same size as the duvet, cutting off the excess cloth from the bottom, sides, and top. Should you need a bit more length, rip out the hems in on the top and bottom of each sheet and after that press the hems flat before cutting.
3 Using the original cut sheet as a pattern, cut on the next sheet the same size as the original sheet.
4 Add the zipper on one end of the duvet cover by using a centered zipper program. Then sew the rest together.

It’s not as difficult as you might think! But if it’s too much trouble check out these neat duvets here.

A moldy start to the new year

Last week, Stephanie went to the doctor after months of miserable sneezing and a cough. It turns out, after lots of tests, she’s allergic to mold and cat hair! So this week, we’re cleaning up old food, clogged sinks and anything that causes mold to grow. And we’re also looking for a pet vacuum cleaner to remove the hair that our beautiful Persian cat, Rory, has shed throughout the house.

We discovered that mold and mildew can pose significant health threats to both humans and pets. Mold has been linked to respiratory issues, allergy and even depression. Mold also aggravates symptoms in people with allergies and asthma. Worse than the mold you can see from the corner of the shower are mold spores, the compounds that come from mold clusters.

These are imperceptible to the naked eye and fill the indoor air with poisons. Mold loves warm, humid areas, such as bathrooms or a damp basement and in places you might not think of such as the swimming pool! Yes, it sure does look like we might need to invest in cleaning up our pool too. We found some decent pool cleaners but it sure does look like the new year has started off with a few unplanned expenses! Sigh!!! A further update to our investigations in pool cleaners…it seems like one of those robotic pool cleaners is the way to go, especially as we don’t want to spend all our free time scrubbing mold off the walls!  It looks like the best robotic pool cleaner is likely to be the Dolphin Nautilus, which is a nice piece of equipment but not exactly cheap.  So, we’re going to have to make some decisions about whether to spend our savings on one of those or a less expensive model.

Open windows and doors to increase air circulation, particularly after showering or while cooking. You don’t need bleach to eliminate mold, and you might also skip those harmful conventional cleaners in store aisles which claim to remove mold. These cleaners frequently contain severe acids and chlorine bleach. Cleaning with these compounds will only release toxins into the air, and unknown health risks if these products come into contact with your skin.

For small mold problems around the home, these two natural cleaners will work:

1 White vinegar

You can clean the house out of top to bottom with plain white vinegar, and which includes killing mold. As a naturally anti-microbial substance, vinegar will solve your mold problems. Let the vinegar sit for some time and after that wipe away the vinegar, mold and all. And there are some other cool ways to use white vinegar too.

2 Tea tree Oil

As a natural fungicide, tea tree oil may eliminate your nasty mold or mildew problems. Also, it’ll fill your home with a lovely medical scent. Simply add 10 drops of tea tree oil into a bottle of spray and fill it with water.

The Cultural Iceberg – Why civilizations create culture

iceberg

As part of my degree in anthropology, I’ve been reading up about civilizations and culture. Most people have a very vague notion about the meaning of civilization.

However, in my research, I discovered specialized areas of Intercultural Communication, Cultural Psychology, Sociolinguistics and Cultural Anthropology that is fascinating.

The concept of culture is frequently initially taught in starting anthropology and sociology classes using the cultural iceberg.

Just think of an iceberg. There’s a part of the iceberg you can see over the water line. The part that’s over the water reflects all of the visible elements about culture: art forms, music, foods, food customs, funerary traditions, tools and engineering, dress, spiritual traditions, artifacts and objects, and a host of others. Of course, culture affects art, language and a whole lot of other things.

Under the water is your part you cannot see, which is essentially composed of beliefs, values, philosophy, worldview, senses and ways of thinking.

This region of the iceberg clearly supports the component over the water.

Which portion of the iceberg is the largest? Clearly, it is the invisible part and that is precisely what you run up against whenever you encounter so-called civilization shock, civilization bumps, and cultural battle.

Culture is transmitted out of day one about babyhood by parents and families, and your transmission is continued through other social institutions like school, church, peer groups, along with other social groups social networking, usually throughout a lifetime.

All cultures believe that their civilization is right and good. This is your definition of ethnocentrism, and it’s characteristic of all human beings from each culture. Here’s an example of a cultural bump wherein the two parties involved had no notion of why they’d have a negative reaction.

That’s all for today. I hope I haven’t bored you with this post.

How to paint a vase – Brighten up a tired room

painted vase

I was searching for a way to rapidly brighten up our summer dining table yesterday, and this super fast DIY was born, with leftover paint samples to decorate glasses and vases to fill with garden blossoms.

I used a water-based emulsion paint to get a layered look.

I wanted a decoration which I could wash off later – if you wish to produce a permanent effect, use oil-based paint plus a primer.

I utilized vases from IKEA, inexpensive as chips just $2 each, along with a lovely clean, smooth shape like retro milk bottles.

Roughly mix your paints up – in my case a sky blue and pure white – and use masking tape to specify the area you wish to paint.

Layer on your paint, then apply your finger or brush to blend to produce the look that you want.

Peel away the tape after the paint has dried, and you are ready to move to the next stage.

Vases can look good in rainbow or with stenciled initials or motifs.

Handle the completed product carefully. Splashes of water will not damage your creation but when it’s freshly painted it can be susceptible to scratches and knocks.

To remove your paint just scrub in soapy water that is warm.

It’s a great way to brighten up a room and infuse a dash of color into a drab area. Here are more ideas on how to paint a vase.

Embroidery Art For the 21st Century

Embroidery might sound like an old grandma’s kind of pastime but if you look a little deeper into it, you’ll find that it’s actually a fascinating art form that requires a lot of skill. These days, embroidery is experiencing a renaissance, with many contemporary artists getting into it.

Lace

Lace is used contemporary artists using needlework instead of painting. Two talented lace artists, Laura Owens and Angelo Filomeno, have created beautiful works.

Filomeno’s picture of a skeleton, stitched silk shantung with metallic threads and adorned with crystals, is an explosion of opulence.

Owens’s chinoiserie motivated flowering tree embroidered on tussah silk is more discreetly luxurious. Filomeno, a former tailor’s apprentice, and Owens, who trained with a painter, have eroded the distinction between the fine and the decorative arts.

Silk

Another medium for artists is silk using delicate wisps of silk, cotton and artificial thread on translucent muslin.

One well-known modern artist Ghada Amer has made creations that raise eyebrows around the world.

Amer has replicated definitions of the word fear from English, French and Arabic, a nod to the experience in all three civilizations, the text is partially obscured by dangling threads. Some artists trust the charm of lace to revive tired topics, not always successfully.

While the works exaggerate the indignities of the pixelated digital reproduction, they don’t add much to the originals. A few of the most intriguing works reinvigorate the tradition of the sampler, a piece of lace which offers a religious or moral saying.

DIY iPhone Covers

Ten years ago, not too many people had iPhones. These days, everyone has one…or at least a smartphone. One of the things that we all seem to do quite often these days is losing or dropping or smashing the screen of our iPhones. I’m not that handy with repairing things, especially iPhones. Fortunately, I love fiddling with the stuff. Many iPhone repair alternatives could leave you without a phone for weeks and will cost a fair cent, but do-it-yourself iPhone repair is fast, cheap, and is not as hard as you might think.

I was surprised to discover there’s a kit for every contingency, whether you need iPhone 7 display repair, or dropped your iPhone in a pool, or, shattered the display into tiny pieces; there is an Apple iPhone repair kit for you! So can an ordinary person fix an iPhone?

To be able to fix your iPhone all you need is a trusted source for repair parts and a bit of technology know how.

Certain repair providers sell complete do-it-yourself kits which contain all you need to fix your damaged iPhone.

Make sure you’re purchasing the best quality iPhone components to restore your device. The purpose of do-it-yourself phone recovery is to conserve money. Therefore it is essential to obtain the tools and parts required from a trustworthy source.

Otherwise, you might end up spending a lot of money trying to find quality components by trial and error. Purchasing components that are suspicious will only set back you and also cost you more in the long term.

Having the correct tools is an essential part of a do-it-yourself repair. By trying to take apart your apparatus without the right tools, the odds are that your iPhone will end up in better shape than whenever you began.

Top quality repair kits come with all the tools you may need for repair. Thorough repair directions may be the differentiation between a fast, stress-free repair encounter and throwing your telephone across the room in frustration.

Look for flowcharts or videos which guide you throughout the fixing process specific to your problem. Reliable iPhone repair businesses may have a client support team ready to help you at any time with any repair problems you might encounter.

Look for iPhone repair businesses that back their products with a guarantee. There are lots of companies that sell reconditioned iPhone components that could break down of the road, so beware.

Fixing your iPhone can save money but it’s important to make sure you find an Apple iPhone repair kit which includes the quality guaranteed iPhone repair components, all the necessary repair tools, and comprehensive instructions. From iPhone 4S repair to the battery when replacing the screen, you can mend your iPhone with the proper tools and parts.

Peanut Butter Brownie Pie – Grandma’s Delicious Recipe

brownie pie

We all love peanut butter so it’s not surprising that peanut butter is one of the most popular nut kinds of nut butter around. You can do all sorts of things with peanut butter, including making a yummy peanut butter brownie pie. Peanut butter emerged about ten years ago and the first peanut butter biscuits used 1 tbsp of shortening, lard or butter and 3 tbsp of peanut butter. These days, we use a lot more peanut butter in our recipes!

Who invented peanut butter?

Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1884 devised a brand-new process for milling roasted peanuts. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis, Missouri, altered the food grinder to make it into a peanut butter grinding machine which made peanut butter. For inspiration, here’s a little history of peanut butter.

Ingredients

16 ounces brownie mix
1 large egg
1⁄4 cup peanut oil
1 cup water
1 1⁄2 cups of chilled milk
4 ounces vanilla pudding mix
1⁄2 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup of thawed Cool Whip

Recipe

Heat your oven to 350°F.
Make the brownie batter using egg, water and oil.
Grease a pie plate and pour the batter into it and bake for 30 minutes.
After 30 minutes, remove from oven and cool completely.
Scoop out center but leave a 1/2 inch rim around the edge and a thin layer of brownie on the bottom.
Beat the milk and pudding mix.
Add 1/3 cup peanut butter and mix well.
Stir in Cool Whip.
Spoon the mixture onto the crust and top with reserved brownie pieces.
Microwave the remaining peanut butter for one minute and stir. Drizzle it over the pie.
Refrigerate it all for two hours.