By Lori Homstad, business owner and mother of two
Whether you love football season or not, it’s easy to love spending time outside now that the hot temperatures are fading into a comfortable fall. If you’re cooking on the stove or manning the barbecue grill, you can easily make both the kitchen and the patio area more stylish and functional. Here are some tips to make it happen:
For the kitchen, focus on convenience, comfort and control. Some window blinds are either hard-to-reach or large and heavy. When you’re choosing window treatments for the kitchen, consider some of the motorized varieties because they can be opened or closed with the touch of a button. This is especially helpful if you’ve got a hard-to-reach area over the sink. Motorization creates a cordless environment that’s safer for kids and pets, too.
The blinds can either be battery-powered and WireFree or can be wired or 
plugged in. You can control the movement from a wall switch, hand-held remote or an automatic timer, (all of which are backed by a five-year warranty.) Check out the demo in the YouTube video below. Your kids would appreciate the high-tech “cool factor” here.
If you or your husband like to barbeque this time of year, make sure the patio looks as good as the food! Often the patio is the most neglected area of the house when it comes to decorating and comfort. We do lots of free in-home consultations with clients who ask about outdoor solar shades for the patio, and they’re always surprised at how much style they add. (And yes, they’re affordable, too!)
Solar shades reduce glare and block UV rays which helps protect your furnishings from sun fading. They come in lots of rich colors and fabric styles. Regardless of whether your personal style is contemporary, traditional or elegant, there’s definitely an option that fits the look you want. I’ve seen these types of shades used in just about every type of home décor you can imagine. And these blinds do help lower your air-conditioning bill, so everybody wins.
Home design is so much more than furniture and accessories. Remember that the way you finish off your windows can pull the whole room together and take the room’s sense of style to a whole new level.
Related article listed below. Click on the title to read more:
Click the play arrow below to see a demo of motorized blinds.
Have a question for Andi, beauty blogger and fellow mama? E-mail it to mamas@nwaMotherlode.com. 
MAVERICK: More than likely he’s happy and excited, just not the same way you are.
Also, for those of us cavemen types out there, the responsibility of being a dad might just now be sinking in. He’s seeing the next 20 years, and then some, filled with doctor bills, braces, bikes, clothing, and college that he’s gonna have to figure out a way to pay for. He could be trying to get his head around a serious reality check.
GRAY: My first recommendation is hormones. How are you dealing with things? A little emotional perhaps? Remember, your body’s getting hit with a ton of stuff right now. When my wife got pregnant she couldn’t stand chocolate anymore – yeah, chocolate – so something as relatively minor as your husband not being excited ought to rank pretty far down on the totem pole.
or “a grilled cheese sandwich,” or “socks.” In the real world, you don’t really understand what having kids is about until you’re in the thick of things.
a: I trained on the da Vinci Surgical System for three years during my gynecologic oncology fellowship at the University of Minnesota. I use it almost exclusively to perform cancer staging surgery for cervical and endometrial cancers. The da Vinci robot (pictured at right) offers the patients a rapid recovery and return to their normal activities that other open cancer surgeries do not. My patients typically are well enough to be discharged the day after surgery with minimal pain and scarring. Whereas routine open surgeries require a full six weeks of recovery, my patients are able to return to their routine and activities usually within one-to-two weeks and can go back to work within three weeks if desired.
Tell us a little about what you like to do when you’re not seeing patients.
Package cream cheese
2 cups sugar
Mamas, we know you appreciate Chick-fil-A as much as we do on those days we just DON’T want to cook! And if you’re watching your weight, we love that they have a nutrition guide that includes a meal calculator, diabetic exchange and more useful information. 
Michelle Thompson is mom to two beautiful daughters, Macy and Brooklyn, and is nwaMotherlode’s Fashion Mama editor. Look for new articles from Michelle on the last Friday of the month. 
young people possess. It may have been a long time ago, but I’m fairly certain I knew how to cut with a pair of scissors by the time I was in 9th grade. When I was a kid, young people did things that actually required you to use a pair of scissors. When you went to visit your grandmother, for example, she didn’t have a Nintendo to keep you occupied. So, if you got bored, she’d mix up some flour-and-water paste, give you some brown paper that she cut from a grocery sack, and let you cut pictures from the Sears catalogue to make yourself a “scrapbook”. So, back in the day, we learned to cut with scissors.
400 degrees and squirt melted plastic. Let’s look at the words that describe this thing: ‘Hot.’ ‘Hot glue.’ ‘Hot glue GUN.’ See, that gives us a big clue. You’ve got to be careful.”
Dr. John L. Cash is the “Country Preacher Dad.” (That’s him pictured at right with one of the babies in his congregation.) He was raised in Stuttgart, Arkansas, and has spent the last 25 years being a country preacher in the piney woods five miles south of the little town of Hickory, Mississippi. (On week days he works at a public school.) He and his lovely wife, Susan, and his sons, Spencer (age 19) and Seth (age 16) live in the parsonage next door to the Antioch Christian Church (where the youth group once made a hospice-craft that educated them in the wonders of the hot glue gun.) He would love to hear from you in an email sent to 
specified by the kids’ school. It was supposed to have pockets and metal prongs to hold the paper inside. But all the smart parents who’d planned ahead had already bought all the red folders with metal prongs, leaving me with boxes and boxes of no-prong folders to sift through in shame. I and my fellow procrastinators searched through the leftovers hoping perhaps one or two pronged folders would magically surface.
Leaving the house with a baby and no backup baby outfit: When you make this mistake, cruel fate will step in and give your baby a terrible poopy diaper “blow-out” which will inevitably travel all the way up the baby’s back and between his small shoulder blades, soaking through his clothes and onto yours.
And this giveaway is especially awesome because it’s tied to a wonderful event that helps women who have lost their hair due to cancer treatment. Please note that you don’t have to donate hair to put your name in the drawing for the gift basket, but we wanted you to help us spread the word about Procter & Gamble’s Pantene Beautiful Lengths event on Wednesday, Sept. 8. The event will be held during the P&G Beauty Northwest Arkansas LPGA Championship.
HOW TO ENTER: Throw your name in the hat to win the $200 health and beauty basket from Procter & Gamble! It’s simple to enter — just click on the orange comment button and tell us about your own personal battle with cancer or about someone you know whose life has been touched by this disease.
What the heck is a groupon? Only the fastest growing company in the history of the internet! Groupon is a new twist on coupons. It all started in Chicago, but Groupon is now available in about 100 cities across the US. The well-organized, sleekly-designed website offers irresistible deals in the spirit of “group discounts”.
Unfortunately, Groupon isn’t available specifically in NWA — but Tulsa is on the list! And with enough retailers located in both places – and up to 90% discounts! – a FREE registration with Groupon.com might just be “worth” it! For example, in the last week Groupon offered a $50 Groupon for GAP for only $25! The site went wild!
Sarah would love to hear from you with questions or feedback regarding gadgets, technology, or blogging. You can also stop by Sarah’s personal blog, 
wanted the behavior of “missing curfew” to decrease, then he should have punished her, which is exactly what he did. NICE! So far…
First, the positive thoughts that I have…this was exceptionally creative and I like the way he was thinking outside the box. The daughter has also said that she doesn’t intend on breaking curfew again, which shows the discipline was effective, assuming she’s not going to change her mind anytime soon.
But, there are some negative so let’s address them, as well. While I’m sure that Southlake is a great place to live (and apparently work), I imagine there are a few families in Southlake that are, how shall I say, not the family I’d want to have my teenage daughter babysitting. You don’t know who will respond to this ad nor do you know that they’ll keep your daughter safe. While everything will likely be okay, and it’s easy to assume this to be the case, especially in this town, the fact is…you never know. I’d be unwilling to take this chance with my daughter (or yours).
pitfalls? I think so. I would suggest doing exactly the same thing EXCEPT for placing an ad in the newspaper. What about having her do 30 hours of babysitting for your neighbors, friends, and people at your work? That way, you know whose family she will be babysitting, and they will know who they’re getting. They’ll also know why they are getting her services for the low, low price of…free. Safety for both parties has been taken into account while the purpose of the punishment remains intact.
and talking about what happened. They are also laughing, laughing, and laughing. Though this is not always a bad thing, the purpose of the punishment was to decrease her missing curfew, not embarrass her. Some may say that if her embarrassment results in her coming home on time, then everything is okay; however, I’m wondering whether his daughter is being placed in a position so that she will not trust him enough to come to him for future issues/problems/discussion for fear that he may do something like this again. That will really depend on his relationship with her…let’s hope it’s a good one.
The other day my husband and I were driving home from dinner and I started asking him to name songs for certain categories that I was making up as we drove along. I named mine as well. Here were my answers. I’d love to hear yours! (This isn’t TOO deep, now).
How long have you had the Haute Dog shop?
a: Haute Dog products are 100% vegan and all-natural. Yes, if you do some searching, you can find other natural, vegan products, but you can’t find the expansive collection that Haute Dog offers! People like choices and variety is the spice of life, no? It’s also important to know that our ingredients are selected from high quality (human) spa suppliers here in the USA. My experience in researching the field of dog grooming products is that you either get cute packaging but crappy ingredients, or great ingredients but limited selection. Haute Dog is committed to never cutting corners!
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