Tumblertown

Black can be a slightly scary color when it comes to decorating and most of us feel happier and more in our comfort zone with natural colors and neutral schemes. But it is a shame to miss out on the sheer drama that black can bring and if you are willing to be a little daring it can lift your color scheme out of the ordinary and plant it firmly in the twenty first century.

Of course, if the rest of your room is all natural tones and fall colors or traditional furniture, then introducing black would be a mistake. You have to start from the right place and that is usually with a contemporary style room or a blank canvas.

Plain black rugs work best in a largely monochromatic color scheme. You could have a neutral floor in pale natural colored stone or laminate, white walls and black furniture. Black and white photographs in black frames or giant black and white prints without frames look great on the walls. Then introduce a shot of a single bright color such as turquoise or hot pink in a few accessories.

If you choose a plain black rug make sure that it has some texture. A black leather shag rug would look wonderful, for example, in a contemporary monochromatic room. Without texture, you will have to keep vacuuming your plain black rug to keep it looking good, as it will show every thread and speck of dust.

You can have more fun with color, if you choose a patterned black rug. For example, if your rug has shades of purple and burgundy along with the black you can use these colors in other items in your room such as burgundy cushions for your black leather sofa or a feature chair in royal purple. For this reason, if you would like a patterned black rug, choose one in colors you will enjoy using in other parts of your room.

When you are buying a printer, there is much more to be considered than the initial cost, and the same is even truer about a portable laptop printer. The quality of the print has to be at the top of your list, unless you are just printing notes for your own use. You will also want to consider if it has a car adaptor, does it require Bluetooth, how many pages it will print per charge, the size and weight of the printer, the size of prints it makes, if it prints in color or just black and white, what type of paper it uses and how much the ink costs.

Canon Pixma sells for $250.00, but that price does not include the battery or Bluetooth adapter. The HP Deskjet and Pemtax PocketJet are $350.00 and the Brother MW-140BT is $400.00. The car chargers are not included in any of these, and the Brother does not have a car charger at this time.

The Canon prints about 450 pages per charge in both color and black and white on letter size paper. The HP also does both on letter size photos or text and their charge is good for 350 pages. Neither the Pemtax nor Brother do color and their charge lasts for 100 pages, but the latter prints only 3×4-inch pages and they both require thermal paper.

The first two afore-mentioned printers will fit in your carry-on luggage, weighing 4 and 4.5 pounds respectively, while the PocketJet fits in your laptop bag and weighs 1.1 pounds and the MW-140BT will also fit in your bag, but weighs just 11 ounces.

The right portable laptop printer is not only a matter of personal preference, but also the type of traveling you do, the type of printing you need done as well as the size of the page you need. The cost of ink and paper, as well as the availability of these items in other places, could also be a factor, so be sure to do your homework before you buy.

When you have tired of the conventional, over-played home lighting solutions you’ve seen everywhere, it is time to branch out and find some unique, colorful lighting solutions. What most people don’t realize is that there are so many beautiful, unconventional garden/yard light fixtures on the market. It may take a little looking, but easy-to-install, dazzling light fixtures are commonplace if you know where to look. The Ladybug Solar Lights from a company called Smart Solar is a fine example of a colorful and charming lighting solution for the yard. These lights look like real ladybugs, glowing bright red for many hours during the night.

The Smart Solar Ladybug kit comes with four cute ladybugs to place anywhere in your yard. Place them at the base of your front yard bushes for visitors to see at night, or put them in your garden in the backyard. Anything is possible being that they are solar powered. The four ladybug lights are connected together with a low profile cable. A single solar panel module gets placed into the ground with the bugs, and gathers energy during the day. At night, the bugs power on automatically with no human input. You do not need to plug the ladybugs into the wall or perform any complicated wiring. Simply take them out of the box, place them into the ground, and you’re done. (One day of charging in the sunlight is required before first use.)

After the initial purchase, the solar ladybug lights cost you absolutely nothing to operate. They get all the power they need from the sun. A built in sensor on the photovoltaic solar panel turns the lights on and off as the day changes. The bugs look great when placed among foliage or decorative rocks. Place them anywhere you please and enjoy their whimsical light display!

The lighting options on the retail market are practically unlimited, ranging from rustic outdoor lighting to motion sensitive security lights. Rustic lighting is one of my favorites, but required a very specific atmosphere to blend in well.