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Theres nothing like smelling the perfume of flowers and witnessing lush greenery right in your courtyard! Outdoor living, with aesthetic utility, is at its best when nature dazzles the eye and nurtures the soul, explains Neera Gulati

Retreat spaces is what I would call them. Landscaping Services  If you have your own land and are building an independent house for yourself and the family, it would be a wonderful idea for you to create a living space away from your main house, which would be a sanctuary you will want to remove from the house to create a sense of privacy and solace. In this busy world, you would love to be away from the busy household chores and create a space outside your house, that is either in the garden area or a backyard. Or if there is space constraint, you could do something in a balcony or a terrace.

One of the most popular outdoor spaces is the outdoor dining room and kitchen. Plans for outdoor dining rooms can range from the basic to the outrageous, depending on your inclination and budget. Merely placing tables and chairs to take advantage of (or to avoid) the sun, with a barbecue set up nearby, may be all you need.

Even so, consider accents to dress up the space, like container gardens and solar powered lights. If you want to go broke, install an entire outdoor kitchen with weatherproof cabinets and appliances to form the ‘walls’ or boundaries of the space which you can then dress up with lively tiles and a dining set, and use a pergola to provide shade and some cover. Outdoor living spaces are often the only access to nature that the modern lifestyle affords. You can create natural spaces at home. It certainly isn’t difficult to build outdoor living spaces. But it does take an appreciation for the ‘divide and conquer’ approach. We take it for granted that our houses are divided into rooms, but the concept for having similar outdoor living spaces may sound odd.

At first indeed, the biggest obstacle standing in most people’s way is that it just doesn’t occur to them to divide up a yard so as to maximize their enjoyment of it. The more conscious we become of outdoor living spaces, the more we can tailor them to suit our needs. Having separate outdoor spaces allows you to create mini landscape designs. Just as you can paint or wallpaper an indoor room using a colour scheme unique to that room, so also you can use colour to make individualised statements for each of your outdoor living spaces. But here, instead of paint or wallpaper, you determine your colour scheme when you select the plants you’ll be using for the area. Proper application of colour theory in landscape design can even influence mood and perception.

More the merrier

The materials which you can use for outdoor living spaces can be different from the indoor rooms. For floors, for eg, you could use grass, patios or decks. For the walls, you could use formal hedges, fences or informal hedges. For the ceiling pergolas, decorative canvas canopies, awnings or lawn umbrellas will be great. Keep both aesthetics and function in mind when constructing outdoor rooms. But in areas dedicated to physical activity, if you have to choose between the two, focus on function. Never compromise on safety. You can make up for compromises in aesthetics later, when you accessorize your outdoor rooms.

Below are examples of outdoor rooms and how to put them together.

Pool areas: Landscaping around swimming pools presents specific challenges regarding safety, maintenance and  privacy. You don’t want people slipping on anything, you don’t want to spend all your time cleaning the debris, and you don’t want the neighbours peering in at you. In selecting a ‘wall’ to enclose the area, all of these considerations come into play. ‘Floor‘ in pool areas must be slip-resistant.

Meditation areas: For meditation gardens, (which is a wonderful way to de stress from your busy schedule), privacy is very much an issue. Here reflection, not physical activity, takes centre stage. Aesthetic consideration, consequently, will carry greater weight. Most people find plants more relaxing than hardscape, so consider planting hedges to form the wall of such outdoor rooms. For a floor, consider a combination of natural materials.

In meditation gardens, a ceiling may come in quite handy. Here, you’ll choose between aesthetics and functionality. A vine covered arbour may be more inspiring to gaze up at, than a lawn umbrella, but the latter will keep you and the books you may be reading, dry. If you’d like something more solid than an umbrella, consider installing a pergola and covering it with fibreglass. But water shouldn’t be banned from contemplative outdoor rooms. If there’s any place in your yard for accessories such as garden fountains and waterfalls, surely its here. There is nothing like the soothing sound of bubbling water to put you into a reflective mood.

You could also create an living room outside. Deck it up with cozy furniture, speakers and ambient lighting, with plants of your choice, and you would love to use this place, all the year round.

Nowadays, most people want to live and entertain in a much more informal atmosphere. Guests also would love to gravitate towards the great room, which blends into the kitchen and outdoor living spaces.

These outdoor dining spaces should reflect the informal yet stylish design of the interior great rooms. Create an outdoor retreat that allows you and your guests to spill outside from the room. Don’t be afraid to mix chandeliers and old antiques outdoors, especially in outdoor dining areas. Utilise a touch of indoor style and unify the space by adding outdoor drapes, pillows and rugs to complete the look.

The use of colour, pattern and texture in fabrics is an excellent way to reflect the indoor space. Add colourful elements by choosing flowering plants to accent containers scattered throughout the outdoor living space.  Mix and match materials in these outdoor settings, juxtapose wrought iron with glass, steel with terracotta, wood against woven components. Outdoor living is at its best when nature dazzles the eye and nurtures the soul. Create your perfect casual environment out.

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After a long tiring day from work or after doing some household chores, what people usually look forward to is to relax in their couches or beds while watching their favorite televisions programs or reading informative books. To most people, they found couches and beds as their comfort zones. There are times that we are so tired and we ended up sleeping in our couches. Frequent sleeping in couches is not advisable because it can cause backaches since couches cannot provide comfortable sleeping position that can be experienced when people sleep in beds.

Those who usually find themselves sleeping in couches can purchase furniture that is used both for seating and sleeping. Daybed sets function as couches and at the same time beds. They provide the comfort that people can experience in beds without consuming too much space in their living rooms. Consumers do not have to worry that daybed sets may affect the interior design of their homes because manufacturers assure them that the designs of such furniture will contribute to the aesthetic value of traditional and modern homes.

What are the products that are included in daybed sets? Consumers can choose whether they will buy the products included in daybed sets separately or they will look for companies that offer daybed packages. Daybed sets usually include pillows, coverlets, comforters and curtains that would match with the design of the furniture. Purchasing daybed set as a package is advisable and less-expensive than buying the products included in the set separately.

Advertisements for daybed sets are prominent in magazines and Web sites so consumers will not have difficulty looking for the products. There are daybed sets that are especially made for children’s rooms, for living rooms and for master’s bedrooms. Those who are interested in buying this furniture should know where the sets will be placed to at least have an idea if its design will match with its surroundings.

There are Web pages that allow consumers to have a look at the different daybed sets and know how much the furniture costs. Consumers can purchase them through the Internet and it will save them money and effort because they will just wait for the furniture to be delivered at their homes. Daybed sets are really good in houses that have little floor space because it has dual function. Above all, consumers who will buy the furniture will not have regrets for they will find the product very useful.

Tags: household chores, money, rta, surroundings
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Dear Heloise: After searching my own family roots for the past year, I would like to share the following hint: Please ask the older members of your family to go through any and all old photographs, and provide name, date and place where the photos were taken and who is in them. Our family had boxes and boxes of old photos, and had it not been for my mother and grandmother going through them and naming who all the people were, we would never know.

People take for granted that everyone will know who is who, and after 50 to 100 years, that’s not always the case. We’re still at a loss about hundreds of family photos with no names. %26#151; Jamie Matherly, Orange, Calif.

Jamie, you are so right. It’s sad to say, but when older relatives die, everything they know goes with them. Stop and take a few moments to ask a question or two about people in those old family photos %26#151; you might not get another chance. %26#151; Heloise

Dear Heloise: Here is an idea that perhaps you haven’t heard. When my wife was living, she always changed our bed once each week. Since she passed on, I only change it every two weeks by sleeping on one side of the bed one week and then moving over to the other the second week. %26#151; John Stewart, Westlake, Ohio
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Dear Readers: I gave John a call, and he said he does this because his mother did the same when his father passed away. Many times we do household chores the way our parents did. How often (why and when) do you change the sheets? College kids, when you write, I promise I won’t tell your parents. Mail your reply to: Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, TX 78279; e-mail to Heloise@Heloise.com; or fax to 210-435-6473. %26#151; Heloise

Dear Heloise: I have, in the past, forgotten where I have put some items and invariably purchased a new one. I now have made a database on my computer, labeled “household items.” Everything is alphabetized, and the problem is solved. %26#151; Paul Cohen, via e-mail

Dear Heloise: I would like to share a money-saving hint that I have found to be as good as buying jewelry boxes.

I go to the craft store, and in the department where they sell wooden items, I purchase small trivet boxes or medium-size unpainted trays. I use my artistic skills to paint the boxes, wait until they dry, then put a lot of loose earrings and necklaces that I commonly wear on a daily basis inside. This is a good way to help keep my daily jewelry at my fingertips and organized. %26#151; Anna Victoria Reich, Stafford, Va.

Dear Readers: If your printer stops working, you’ve tried turning it off and then back on again and it still doesn’t work, remove the ink cartridge and gently clean it with a soft tissue. This just might do the trick. %26#151; Heloise

Tags: daily basis, household chores, money
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KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — With a slight nod to modern Islamic fashion, the scene at KLCC Suria, a six-story shopping mall in the Golden Triangle district, could be played out anywhere.

Women glide by in business suits, saris or silky tunic and pants ensembles with matching headscarves.

On the patio at Starbucks, a boy with spiked black hair and a young woman in a long-sleeve T-shirt and black-and-white basketball shoes share coffee and work at a laptop.

Two doors down at Santini, the Malaysian version of an Outback Steak House, a group of businessmen don’t wait for service. They press a button on their table labeled “water,” “bill” or “waiter.”

Western Malaysia can feel at times like a corner of India or China, or even Europe or the United States. This is especially true here in the capital of Kuala Lumpur where oil money keeps Prada and Gucci in business, and skybars and swimming pools top five-star hotels.

The official religion is Islam, but this is a country with a large population of Hindus and Buddhists, and reminders are often as subtle as an arrow on a hotel-room ceiling pointing toward Mecca or the sound of the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque.

I didn’t know what to expect when I signed up for a homestay in the Islamic village of Hulu Chuchoh, a few miles from a Formula 1 racetrack and the Kuala Lumpur airport, but what I found was something that had eluded my husband, Tom, and me during the week we had so far spent in Malaysia.

We’d eaten in Indian restaurants, wandered through several Chinatowns and had dinner with a couple from Hillsboro, Ore., working for Intel in Penang, but we had yet to get to know a Muslim Malay family.

That changed when we moved in with Partiwi Zainal in the pink stucco home she shares with her husband and daughter in a village surrounded by tapioca and rubber plantations less than an hour’s drive from the city.

Checking out of our high-rise hotel across from the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur and into Partiwi’s guest room meant spending the next two nights in the 90-degree-plus heat without air conditioning. Sleep didn’t come easily. But in this post 9/11 world, to be sitting in her living room and playing a game of marbles with other guests — two Muslim teachers and a high-school student — was a special opportunity.

Partiwi, her husband, Mohd Hilel; and their daughter, Lena, 12, the only one of five children still living at home, are a thoroughly modern family.

At 49, her black hair, long neck and angular face hidden most of the time behind one of her dozens of brightly colored headscarves, Partiwi looks more like a woman in her late 30s, especially when she switches to her black scarf with a built-in visor and climbs on her motorbike to take her daughter to school.

Lena starts regular classes around 7 a.m., comes home for lunch and then goes back for Islamic instruction from 2:30 to around 6 p.m.

Her uniform is a white scarf and tunic over a long, green skirt. At home, she relaxes like any preteen, in T-shirts and sweat pants, and spends her time reading, watching television and text-messaging her friends on her cellphone.

Mohd, 52, teaches at the local elementary school. He suffered a stroke a few years ago, and now Partiwi does all the driving and most of the household chores. A few years ago the village chief came up with the idea to organize homestays as a way for the local people to supplement their incomes and introduce foreign visitors to Malay culture.

Partiwi signed up and did some remodeling to the house where she raised her family. Little by little she’s been making improvements. There’s an ironing board set up in the prayer room. Last year she installed an air conditioner in her living room. “Maybe next year, the bedroom,” she said.

Many families operate cottage industries in their backyards. Partiwi showed us hers: a small bakery where she makes tea cakes and snacks from homegrown tapioca. The chickens running around the driveway supply the eggs.

“You want to follow me?” she asked us on our first afternoon. The village chiefs often organize programs such as fishing or rubber-tree tapping demonstrations for visitors who come in groups, but we were on our own, and nothing was planned. Partiwi’s upbeat invitation was the cue for getting in her Toyota and tagging along on impromptu errands.

The first stop was her aunt’s tapioca chip and snack factory. Partiwi opened her truck, and we helped her unload big plastic bags filled with snacks she delivered for packaging under a brand called “Mr. Rizac” that the family exports to Singapore and Dubai.

Several women sat in a small room sorting and bagging chips, “like Pringles,” Partiwi said, only made from tapioca, a root vegetable that resembles a long sweet potato. This was a start-to-finish operation. An older woman and man sat peeling mounds of tapioca by hand. Another ran the peeled roots through a hand slicer, while, inside, men fried the chips in vats of boiling palm oil.

Next, it was a visit to Sam J Frozen Foods for a look at women stretching and molding dough into roti canai, an Indian flat bread, curry puffs and other breakfast foods people used to make at home when they had more time. Sam J looked to be in her 60s. By now, I was beginning to notice that most of these businesses were women-owned and run.

“In an Islamic country?” I asked Partiwi.

“Of course. Women here don’t stay in the house.”

Other highlights from our two days in Hulu Chuchoh:

–Going to the car wash — two guys with a hose and buckets set up in a parking lot.

–Shopping for headscarves with Partiwi and her friends at an outdoor market. How many does she have?

“Many, many.”

She takes hers off in the house, but going outside without one would not only violate her religious custom, it would be like going out without lipstick or makeup, she explained.

“I wouldn’t feel pretty.”

–Sharing amazing Malaysian meals with the other homestay guests. They ate with their hands; we with fork and spoon.

–Figuring out how to brush our teeth without using a sink. The bathroom was otherwise well-equipped with shower and western toilet.

–Wandering around the village, flagging down an ice-cream man with a freezer strapped to his motorbike, and watching families on their way home from work and school. Everyone greeted us and asked where we were from.

“What do you think of Malaysia?” everyone wanted to know.

“Very nice country,” I said. “Especially the people.”

——

MALAYSIAN HOMESTAYS

Malays make up about 57 percent of the country’s population of 26 million. Islam is the official religion, but Malaysia is a multicultural society with a large population of Chinese (25 percent) Indian (10 percent) and other ethnic groups who practice Hinduism, Buddhism and other religions.

Three villages — Bukit Bangkong, Hulu Chuchoh and Hulu Teris — take part in the Banghuris Homestay program in the district of Sepang near the town of Sungai Pelek and the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Around 100 families participate. Cost, including meals, is around $30 per person, per day. Contact Salam Wagiman, 43950 Sungai Pelek, Sepang, Selangor Darul Ehsan. Phone: 011-6-019-232-5787 and leave a message, or e-mail sriplgitm.net.my.

Homestays are available in other areas throughout Malaysia. Contact Tourism Malaysia, 213-689-9702 or see www.tourismmalaysiausa.com.

Tags: backyards, household chores, money, pool, tapp
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“When something goes wrong with the plumbing in your house, it’s usually wise to call a plumber out to come deal with the problem. However, you might not always be in the position to call a plumber. Maybe you don’t have the money right now or perhaps you need a quick fix to an emergency plumbing problem. When those times come up, life is a whole lot easier if you know how to do some basic plumbing yourself.

Here are some common plumbing tips that many people rely on for taking care of the issues that arise in their homes:

o A few simple tools can go a long way towards fixing clogged drains. Keep a drain brush, a small wet/dry vac and a basic tool set around and know how to use them.

o Drain cleaners are good for quick fixes of clogged drains so always be sure to have a bottle on hand.

o Insulate your pipes in the winter to prevent them from freezing. If they do freeze, use a heat lamp to help them slowly unthaw.

o Keep a strainer over your shower drain so that hair will be less likely to plug it up.

o Leaky faucets are often caused by a problem with the washer inside the faucet. Learn to unscrew and replace this faucet to save yourself problems with the water bill.

o Prevention is always better than dealing with a problem so incorporate cleaning your plumbing into your regular household chores.

o Rely on your local hardware store. The people who work in these departments are usually happy to help you solve your problem. Make friends and count on them in times of need.

o Rubber is the single most important item to have on hand if you want to be able to temporarily fix leaky pipes yourself. You’ll also need clamps to hold the rubber on to the leak.

o Take a class or read a book about fixing your toilet. The biggest emergency problem in a home is the toilet. You can usually handle leaky faucets and even clogged drains long enough to get professional help but a toilet is something that you don’t want to be without for long. Learn every aspect of repairing this on your own so that you can help yourself when it breaks.

o Use the pop-up stopper on your drains. To use them effectively, make sure that you clean them regularly.

o Whenever you take something apart, be able to put it back together. You can do a lot of help to your plumbing by being able to dismantle your pipes. When you do this, line up each part in the order it came off on so that you can easily see how to put it back together.

Being able to solve simple plumbing problems on your own is an important skill. However, it’s just as important to be humble enough to know when you’re in over your head and have to call a plumber!”

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In real life, he is a successful 35-year-old business owner and husband-to-be. But on Second Life, the virtual fantasy world with 11 million “residents,” his avatar, Lugh Dragonash, is a cyborg, or human machine, which can make it difficult to meet women, he says.

Not that he’s looking. But he could, because in Second Life, you build your perfect pretend life, down to property, skin tone and a dream spouse. Even Dragonash’s fiancee, who is 29 and unemployed but works as a go-go dancer in Second Life, has a boyfriend. She engages in cyber sex with him and, before you ask, Dragonash doesn’t watch. And no, he adds, it doesn’t bother him.

“Nothing happening here (in Second Life) has an impact on my real life,” Dragonash says. “She does her thing and I do mine. Fun is a priority. If it starts to have an influence on my real life it stops immediately.”

For some, it’s starting to affect real life. Online infidelity was once limited to chat rooms and dating sites. But there is rising concern that virtual worlds such as Second Life and Kaneva and role-playing games like “EverQuest” can escalate the potential for and extent of infidelity. After all, avatars, or alternative identities, do it all: shop together, get married in wedding ceremonies and even buy property with virtual currency they purchase with real-world dollars. They can also commit crimes against each other, get divorced and sue one another in real-life court over in-game disputes.

It’s enough to have woes with a real-world spouse. Are we ready for secondary ones?

Players of “EverQuest” can get so tangled in their fantasy worlds that the affairs mimic those in soap operas, where the wife and mistress are essentially at war. Here’s an example from a post on “EverQuest Widows,” an online support group on Yahoo for partners of obsessed gamers:

“A couple of months ago my hubby told me about a lady he was engaged to in the game,” writes one sad “wid.” “He broke it off with her when she wanted him to leave me and come marry her in real life.”

Launched in 2000, the group’s posts range from tales of low self-esteem and neglected children to missed holidays and anniversaries.

Legally, cyber affairs don’t, by themselves, constitute adultery. However, if cyber-cheating leads to a real-life affair, then the actual adultery can be grounds for divorce in jurisdictions that consider fault.

Furthermore, if cyber-cheating is egregious and leads to a regular pattern of cruelty in the marriage, or causes the cyber-cheater to abandon completely his marital responsibilities, it could be considered grounds for divorce in fault and mixed-fault divorce regimes, says Melissa Murray, a family law professor at UC Berkeley’s School of Law.

On a recent final exam, Murray posed a question to a class of second- and third-year students about a man who was fooling around on Second Life.

“In the future, family law and other aspects of the law will have to wrestle with the question of how to deal with conduct in these virtual spaces,” Murray says.

Most of the time, at least in Second Life, it doesn’t go that far, says Lisa Rein, of Berkeley, Calif. Rein is a frequent lecturer on social networking and virtual worlds and has held San Francisco State University classes in art galleries on Second Life. She believes that virtual worlds are just the next phase on the online relationship continuum.

“People either understand the relationship their spouse is having online or they don’t,” Rein says. “And if you’d rather have a conversation with someone on Second Life than your own wife, yeah, you probably have a problem. But that’s not different than any other online relationship.”

By 2011, up to 80 percent of Internet users - 250 million people - will participate in virtual worlds, according to a recent report by Gartner Research. So the opportunities to make new friends and relationships are going to multiply beyond our current, and somewhat limited, MySpace comprehension.

That said, Rein and others stress that it’s important to remember the infinite unintentional situations in virtual worlds that can be misconstrued as flirting or cheating.

“The rules of physics don’t work in the virtual world,” says Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which was launched five years ago to study social behaviors in virtual worlds. “You can share body space, override other people’s behaviors and transport to another land.”

More important, humans are not evolved to have a module to respond differently to virtual things, he says, so nonverbal behavior and reaction is almost identical online to what it is in the real world.

Take Rein’s Second Life avatar, Haley Bailey. She is a girl-next-door-type (the unadorned, default avatar in jeans and a T-shirt) who has found herself in questionable situations without intending to.

Once, in Second Life, Rein wandered into a gothic night club where she accepted a gift of clothing from avatars she had just met. When she tried the clothes on, she found herself wearing a provocative outfit and drinking blood from a horn.

One Second Lifer who controls an avatar with the first name of Oz tell tales of roaming dark alleys where prostitutes beckon; he didn’t mean to be there. Another relays how a slight arm movement put her in a missionary position with the avatar sitting next to her at a party.

“It’s the nature of the environment to try things without meaning to,” Rein says. “So there are circumstances where cuddling with a stranger could be perfectly innocent. You could just stumble into a situation, literally.”

If a spouse were to glance at the screen at the wrong moment, Rein says, things could look really bad.

Another time, when she was in a long-distance relationship, Rein and her boyfriend at the time met up in Second Life. After wandering around, they found themselves in a fancy bedroom of a big house. On the bed was a cuddle ball. They both reached over and touched it, and the ball put them in a cuddling position.

“It was really nice,” she recalls. “And very empowering. I really felt like I was with him. But if he did that intentionally with somebody else, it wouldn’t be cool.”

Clinical psychologist Kimberly Young, the director of the Center for Online Addiction Recovery in Pennsylvania, has been researching Internet behavior and online addiction since 1995. She estimates that 60 percent of her private practice clients deal with online affairs.

“Like any affair, the person emotionally shuts down from his or her partner and engages in emotional and physical relationships outside the marriage,” says Young, the author of “Caught in the Net: How to Recognize the Signs of Internet Addiction - and a Winning Strategy for Recovery.”

But online affairs are harder to deal with and detect because they occur on a computer in the home rather than at a bar or office, Young says. What’s more, they can be carried out while a husband or wife is sitting in the next room.

“The Internet provides the opportunity for affairs to happen when they (normally) would not have,” she explains. “Usually the person is not seeking an extramarital relationship but discovers one online.”

The effects, however, are just as devastating to the marriage, according to an article Young published in the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy. Young writes that partners felt betrayed, rejected, abandoned and devastated and that it was “as emotionally painful to them as live, or offline, affairs.”

As eWidower, an EverQuest Widow, says of his wife’s transformation:

“She was so sexual and available to several guys online while she put me on the shelf,” he writes. “At one point, she had even told me that I would get more intimacy if I would stop objecting to the guys online. She had also said that if I wanted more attention from her, I should take some lessons from the online guys. … It was bad.”

THE WARNING SIGNS

Worried your spouse may be involved in a cyber affair? Here are some behavioral changes that can be associated with online infidelity, from Kimberly Young, clinical director of the Center for Online Addiction Recovery at http://www.netaddiction.com:

- Change in sleep patterns

- A demand for privacy

- Household chores ignored

- Evidence of lying

- Personality changes

- Loss of interest in sex

- Declining investment in the relationship

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