Why buy when you can build? Dog house plans and schematics are pretty easy to find if you know where to look, and can make building a dog house a lot simpler. The article focuses on what you need to think about before starting construction.

Pre-construction Tips

Shopping Guide

It’s wise to consider all of the options and alternatives before you commit yourself to one particular style of dog house. There is nothing worse than building a great new kennel, and your dog doesn’t even use it!

Take note of these tips:

- Put a lot of thought into how big your dog house needs to be. If you’ve got 2 dogs, consider building a duplex dog house with a removable wall so that they can sleep together if they want.

- Make sure that any plans include an overhanging roof to shield your dog from rain and wind.

- A smart thing to do before going out and buying building materials is measuring your dog. I know it sounds silly, but a kennel that is even 5 inches too small might lead to a claustrophobic hound!

- It’s always smart to slant the floor slightly towards the entrance. This will help any water that gets inside run out. Your dog won’t sleep in a puddle..

- Depending on where you live and the breed of dog, you might need to protect the dog house from the sun. If you live in a particularly cool area, you’ll need to do the opposite.

Download Dog House Plans Online

There are literally hundreds of websites online that will let you download plans. Unfortunately, the quality varies greats, and most will only give you basic instructions on how to build a small kennel.

Easy to Build Dog House – The Essential Guide

Kids Only Flash Sales Sites

Absolutely indispensable secret weapons of the chic-onomic parents are the flash sales, members-only sites specializing in the mini- fashionistas! The following sites cater specifically to the babies, kids and Moms (sometimes Popes): TheMiniSocial.com, Zulily.com (launched very aggressive online marketing campaign), Totsy.com and bTrendie.com.

Shopping Guide

They feature multiple baby, kids and maternity brands (clothing, footwear and hard brands, i.e. toys, furniture, strollers, bedding, car seats etc.) in the various levels of coolness at up to 70% off retail prices on a daily basis. Therefore, monitoring their sales can be quite daunting. These sites are our secret resources, my dear fellow fashion mavens on a budget.

Shopping Experience: Clicking, Paying, Shipping and Receiving

Now, the only obstacle between us and these highly coveted and insanely cool brands are our organizational and clicking skills. Merchandise is on a first come first serve basis, and once an item is is in your cart you have a 10-15 minute (depends on the site) countdown to complete the purchase before you lose the item. If you are 5 min late for the Kids Ink blowout sale ( a t-shirt down from !) the only items still available you will see through the angry tears streaming down your cheeks would be the colorful bodysuits in 12m and 18m sizes. Another problem with the highly coveted brands, is when the sale event finally opens the sites can’t handle the hordes of shoppers rushing in and crash, leaving you clicking hysterically on the size you need, which is hopelessly frozen. When the site finally comes out of its online coma, every single thing you wanted is magically gone. I have no idea, whose broadband is broader than yours, but HauteLook does it a lot and no apology on Facebook is ever enough to make up for the lost chances because somebody somewhere had managed to snatch JBrand skinnies in your size!

The Big Four (Gilt, HauteLook, Ideeli and Rue-La-La) announce their sales calendars weekly. You can set up the reminders and plan your budget. Unfortunately, TheMiniSocial does not have this useful feature. The e-mail messages announcing new sales will drop duly in the members’ inboxes on the same day the sale is opened. And you might end up purchasing something every day, spending .95 -.00 shipping charges per order, which is extremely annoying and wasteful! Zulily lists their upcoming sales for 3 days in advance. Totsy and bTrendie send weekly e-mails, listing active and upcoming sales as well as daily reminders for open sales. You can always check sales calendars on the sites.

I e-mailed TheMiniSocial.com asking them to consolidate my three orders placed within 5 days since they weren’t’ shipping them for the next two weeks anyway. They actually responded quite promptly, promising to look into it and do their best. So, in the end, I paid two shipping charges and was credited to my account as a compensation for the short order besides the cost of short-ordered item refunded to my credit card.

Short ordering is another problem you will have to deal with while shopping on these sites. Besides closeouts, overstock or sample sales, when merchandise is delivered quite promptly, there is also another way to cooperate with manufacturers and here comes the long waiting period. The manufacturers provide the sites with the information and samples of the merchandise they want to sell to the enormous online audiences. They agree on quantities they are capable to supply within specific timeframe. So, basically, the sites often sell non-existent goods. The goods are to be produced by the manufacturer according to the sales figures provided by the sites upon the sale’s end. The manufacturer gets the dough to produce the merchandise, the site gets its markup, and the happy customers get their discounted goodies in 2-3 weeks depends on how long it takes to produce the required quantities. The win-win scheme is brilliant but sometimes it doesn’t always work out smoothly. The manufacturers fail to produce or deliver the already sold quantities to the sites (short-ordering them), and you get short-ordered on the goods you’ve purchased. The way sites handle this delicate and very disappointing situation is very important, because short-ordering is an integral part of L3 shopping.

I’ve got short-ordered 4 times already: twice on HauteLook, once on ideeli and once on TheMiniSocial. In all cases the missing item cost was refunded to my credit card and compensation credit to smooth the tragic blow was deposited in my account ( by HauteLook, by ideeli and by TheMiniSocial). As I’ve mentioned earlier Ideeli’s handling of this problem was the most disappointing and unprofessional.

HauteLook.com works hard on improving shopping experience and customers’ satisfaction. Shipping is always an issue, and paying -15 shipping charges plus taxes (certain states’ residents) makes these sweet deals less delicious. The New Year resolution sent out to HL members contained such important topics as the reduced shipping charges for the smaller items (packages), PayPal payments acceptance and so on. Gilt had differentiated their shipping charges based on the order’s total: .95 for the orders less than and .95 for the orders more than . Editor’s Closet runs occasional free weekend shipping promotions.

Invitations – Viral Marketing

The members are encouraged to invite their friends to join the ranks of the club. The rewards range from to in credits deposited in the account of the inviting member after the invited friend made her/his first purchase. Smart way to expand the membership base: let the members do the legwork and spread the word. A note to non-members: you will not be able to even view the collection on sale if you are not a member. So, if you follow the invitation link and are prompted to register, please do not panic and run away. Just register and enjoy exclusive brands at the exclusive savings at the convenience of your home or the office.

Boys Be Cool Calendar of the Chic-onomic Events

With all these sites out there and dozens of sales popping up daily, the monitoring of the events worth your attention could be quite overwhelming. Check Boys Be Cool Calendar of the Chic-onomic Events, where the sales are posted daily or follow BBCool on Twitter or Facebook, where the sales events information is constantly updated.

The Guide to L3 Shopping – Flash Sales, Members-Only Sample Sales Sites Review – Part II

Knowing how to clean and care for your Sterling Silver Jewelry is not as simple as you may think. These instructional tips give you the know how on cleaning your sterling silver properly with out damaging the finish and making your items last from generation to generation.

Step #1: Deciding on the proper cleaning products to use is some what confusing and extremely important. Choosing products such as: bleach, ammonia, alcohol, acetone, and other such products can damage your Sterling Silver beyond repair. Stay with a mild cleaner and be sure to dilute them with water (just to be safe). Some good home products to use are: baking soda, non abrasive tooth paste, mild phosphate free detergents as well as commercial silver cleaners.

Shopping Guide

Step #2: Choosing a cleaning brush. Be careful on the type of brushes you choose to deep clean Sterling Silver. Stay away from hard bristle brushes with horsehair and abrasive style brushes. The best cleaning brushes to use may be a baby tooth brush, a mushroom brush, very soft bristle toothbrush also consider using a sunshine cloth, which can be used wet or dry.

Note: When cleaning Sterling Silver always clean up and down motion NOT in circular motion.

Step #3: When drying your sterling silver jewelry choosing the proper cloth material should be taken very carefully. Use 100% cotton materials such as: old T-shirts, sweat shirts, cotton balls, soft flannel materials (all unbleached), and silver wipes. Using these types of home and commercial materials can help prevent your Sterling Silver from being scratched or even completely damaged.

There are many misconceptions on what to do to keep your precious Sterling Silver Clean and lustrous. Following the steps provided will insure your Sterling Silver will be taken care of properly and will last a lifetime.

Clean Sterling Silver Jewelry How To Guide

It is time to eat now. Malaysia is rich with its local foods. There are numerous of local food that you should try. For me, if you came to Malaysia and eat at the five star hotel without trying the local foods. There is no point for you to have vacation here. Go out and try the local foods especially the hawker. Some of them serve the best food in town but make sure they are clean.

When I went to Langkawi, there is a very huge and beautiful restaurant near to my hotel. Then I took a cab to Kuah for some shopping, the taxi driver was very friendly he told us where we should go for shopping plus he told us where is the best restaurant in Langkawi. He also told us that the huge and beautiful restaurant is very expensive and the food are not tasty. After some arrangement he agree to take us to his recommend restaurant.

Shopping Guide

At 8.00 p.m he pick up us at hotel lobby. He took us to the Kampung Nelayan Restaurant located in Kuah. However this restaurant is very hard find. For you information this restaurant was featured in Jalan-Jalan Cari Makan( a famous culinary television how). So no wonder there are no table available for us. We have to wait about 10 minutes to get a table but it worth to wait. All the seafood are very fresh and the most important part is cheap.

After about an hour later, the taxi driver came to send us back to the hotel room. We bought some foods for the taxi driver as a symbol of thank you. The food was so good and it makes me forget about my high blood pressure. I think I should take a good care of my health after this.

Malaysia Travel Guide – Where to Eat Langkawi

You will want to think about the type of longboarding you’re going to be doing before you just go out and buy a longboard. If you want to go downhill as fast as possible, you’ll need a high tech board, like something from sector nine or loaded longboards. If you just want to cruise the streets and do things at low speeds, then most any other board will work just fine.

You may just want to go out and buy a longboard that’s already setup for you. This is called a complete longboard. The best advice that this guide can give you if you take the route of buying a complete longboard is this: don’t waste your money on a cheap board. Your experience will be infinitely better if you spend a good chunk of money on a good longboard. If you’d rather put a deck together, you will need to buy all the parts. We’ll explain wheels first.

Shopping Guide

Longboard wheels vary in size and hardness. Longboard wheels are typically very soft. Softer wheels grip the road more easily and give the rider a smoother riding experience. Softer wheels also work better when a person slides – they act more like a brake than harder wheels do. This is at the cost of the wheels, though. Softer wheels tend to not last as long as harder ones.

You will also need a longboard deck. The only company that really makes these is loaded longboards. Fortunately, loaded longboards are great decks. You can also buy a loaded complete, but some people like to put their own together. Be sure to read about the different types of flex that loaded longboards offer, as it will affect your riding experience.

The last thing to pick is a good set of trucks. There are different sets of trucks out there and the best way to find out which ones work well for you is to try them. Most stores should have the trucks you’re looking at setup on another board and should be happy to let you try them out. If you can’t test them, though, just make sure that you buy yourself some wide trucks. They can always be replaced later.

That’s about it for putting together a longboard. You’ll find as you go through everything that the best way to piece a skateboard together is to go to a shop and look at all the components. Find parts that suit you and your riding style, then put everything together. You shouldn’t be too disappointed if you’ve taken the time to find quality parts.

Guide to Buying a Longboard

With that in mind, we’ve put together a quick T-shirt screen printing software guide, to help you identify and buy (or use for free!) the best T shirt printing software available. Let’s start with some free options and work up to the professional print design software.

Web Based Design:

Shopping Guide

Many custom T shirt printing services are now offering web based tools to help you select t shirt fabric and color, and then to upload and compose your own designs onto these t shirts before printing. Of course, you are still required to create your own design for uploading, but all the complexities of the printing are taken care of by the service provider. Check out websites like: Streetshirts and Zazzle for examples of these programs.

Illustrator:

A powerful vector art package from Adobe, perfectly capable of complex and precise t shirt design. Vector art is ideally suited to creating infinitely scalable images, specifically for logo’s and very large print, but it’s also keenly suited to creating designs for accurate screen printing. Use of vector graphics will ensure your t shirt printing is always accurate and crisp, whatever the size.

CorelDraw:

One part illustrator, two parts Photoshop. CorelDraw is a vector based design program with excellent usability and is capable of exporting files and formats perfect for precision screen printing and DDGP. While CorelDraw has existed in the shadow of Illustrator for many years, recent iterations make it the superior software when it comes to design for screen printing, custom t shirt design and DDGP.

T-Shirt Printing – Design Software Guide

Electronic store gadgets seem to sprout out of nowhere like mushrooms. Every time you read a newspaper or magazine and watch the television, you are introduced to the latest and most advanced technological breakthrough on the face of the earth. Of the many gizmos and devices available on the market, one thing that TV addicts may want to consider investing on is the HDTV or High Definition Television.

This new device is a more enhanced version of digital television, or DTV. The resolution in HDTV is more defined and you will truly have a more cinematic experience with this type of television.

Shopping Guide

However, when buying HDTV, you need to insist on an integrated system because it is complete and you do not have to think about connecting tuner or receiver. With the integrated system, all you need is a satellite or cable connection.

If you do not have enough money, you can probably consider the HDTV-capable set. This is an HDTV monitor but you will need to find or buy an external receiver to enable you to watch an HDTV show or program. It is important to note that an HDTV without this external receiver is just like an ordinary television set. You will not be able to enjoy high definition images even if the monitor is HDTV without this add-on.

By the way, an HDTV ready is not necessarily an HDTV capable screen or monitor. Before buying this type of system, carefully ask your sales clerk if the set is actually an HDTV screen. Better yet, just stick with the HDTV integrated system or the HTV-capable set.

Since there are many brands of HDTV in the market, choosing one can really be daunting. To help you out with this task, read the buying guide below to know what features of HDTV to look for:

Audio

The most common type of sound system used in HDTVs is the Dolby Digital Surround. Some manufacturers, however, use other type of audio systems. The best way to determine which brand has the best sound is to try them out.

Connector Ports

The number of connector ports of HDTV varies tremendously from one brand to another. Thus, if you are buying an HDTV, or any other television sets, you need to see if the product has all the connector ports you need.

The usual connector ports that are being used are the Composite Video, RF, A/V, RCA, Component video, VGA and HDMI.

HD Receiver/Tuner

If you do not want any fuss, you should opt for a set that has an internal HD receiver or tuner. As mentioned earlier, this is the integrated system type of HDTV set. However, if your cable or satellite provider rents out or offers free external HD receiver, then you may want to buy the much cheaper HDTV capable set.

Resolution

One of the most important features that you need to look out for when buying an HDTV is the resolution. If the resolution of the HDTV set is poor, then there is really no reason why you have to buy that set because your old television set may have better resolution.

If you want fantastic resolution, be sure to look for a set that has a vertical resolution of 1080i and 720p. Standard television usually only has a vertical resolution of 480i. By the way, the “i” here stands for interlaced, which is the type of vertical resolution being used in analog TV, while the “p” is progressive, the usual choice for digital television sets.

Your Electronic Store HDTV Television Buying Guide

Are you playing as the Cleric in Rift and want to learn how to properly build your character for any situation? If you want to learn how to perfectly build your Cleric as a healer, tanker or DPS character, here are a couple of tips that you may find useful.

Before we get into the soul combinations for your Cleric, lets break down each soul so that you have a full understand of what each soul is capable of.

Shopping Guide

Warden Soul – The Warden soul is a water based healer that can heal players over a short time period. They are also known for their quick mana regeneration.

Sentinel Soul – This soul is very effective in group play because it has excellent AOE healing abilities.

Purifier Soul – This soul has very weak damage against enemies, however is excellent when it comes to healing party members or yourself. The Purifier soul is terrific support and is best suited for raids, parties or PVP.

Inquisitor Soul – By using a combination of life and death magic spells, the Inquisitor soul deals a lot of DPS damage to enemies. Not only is this soul terrific at DPS, it also has DoTs and can ensnare and CC enemies easily.

Cabalist Soul – The Cabalist soul is very effective at dealing AOE damage towards enemy targets, however they are very weak and have the lowest chances of survival during combat. It is recommended to attack from afar.

Justicar Soul – The Justicar soul is the main tanking soul for Mages.

Shaman Soul – Where the Shaman soul lacks in healing and defense, it makes it up in melee DPS. This soul can effectively fight off opponents and deal a ton of damage.

Druid Soul – The Druid soul is similar to the Shaman soul because it can also deal melee DPS. The difference between the Druid and the Shaman is that this soul has the ability to summon a pet.

Now that you have a good basic understanding of all Mage souls, we can get into the combinations and builds for solo and group play.

If you want to build a soloing Mage character, you can either choose from a meelee or ranged DPS. If you choose melee DPS, select the Druid as your main soul and have the Shaman and Warden as your off souls. This build allows you to use Druid’s ability to summon a pet to heal you during battle and the Shaman’s buff to add additional DPS to your enemies.

Now, if you want to be a ranged DPS character, opt to use the Inquisitor as the main soul and the Purifier and Warden as off-souls. Your off-souls will allow you use shield abilities to absorb damage and heal over time, while your main soul can nuke enemies from a distance.

If you want to do some group play, you can either choose to become a healer, tanker or a DPS character. Use the same combinations as above if you want to be a DPS in your party, but if you want to play the healing role choose the Purifier as your main soul and the Sentinel and Warden as off souls. All of these souls have different healing abilities, so be sure to alternate these abilities effectively as you see fit.

A good tanking build is to equip the Justicar as the main soul and use the Shaman and Purifier as your off-souls. If you put 51 points into the Justicar soul, 15 points into the Shaman soul and just equip the Purifier without any points, you will be able to fully utilize all of the Justicar’s tanking abilities and have +15% healing, -5% damage reduction and elemental resistance from Shaman.

The reason why you would want to equip Purifier as an off-soul without any points is because you will have access to a shield that can absorb damage from enemies, enabling you to become even more of a tank.

Do you want to know exactly what souls to combine and exactly how to allocate your points to become the ultimate tank, healer and DPS character?

Well if you want to be build the perfect character to dominate your friends at Rift, I highly recommended using a step-by-step build guide created by the elite closed beta players of Rift.

A guide like this contains specific information about what you need to do to perfectly build your character like a pro. All you need to do is follow the step-by-step instructions and the high quality soul tree maps within the guide to build the ultimate tank, healer or DPS character!

Rift Cleric Build Guide – Perfect Cleric Build For Solo And Group Play

Almost any WoW profession guide can become pretty tedious in practice. Although a certain profession combination may work great for one player, that same combination can be completely useless for another. The problem with any WoW profession guide is that it ignores the circumstances of the individual reading it.

This Warlock profession guide is written with a different intent. There are many great profession combination’s that can work very well with a diverse class like the Warlock, and the goal of this guide is for you to take away the best possible profession for your Warlock’s playing style.

Shopping Guide

Warlocks are amazingly powerful damage dealers in World of Warcraft, but can be somewhat of a glass cannon at times since their armor is entirely cloth. Although since Wrath of the Lich King Warlock gear has become spirit based, both intellect and stamina are still very important. Many Warlocks choose to focus more on intellect than stamina due to the nice damage bonuses, but they lose health as a consequence. As a Warlock, it’s important to pick your profession carefully so that you can level efficiently without being afraid of dying–unless you have an extremely fat wallet, you’re going to need that extra gold later!

Enchanting and Tailoring

The most common profession for Warlocks is definitely the Enchanting/Tailoring combo. Warlocks can be an expensive class because of all the potions required during regular leveling, and making your own armor can definitely help reduce the overall cost of leveling a Warlock. Because only cloth armor is worn, Tailoring becomes the most obvious choice as a profession. A Warlock can create very nice pre-raid armor through Tailoring. However, the best aspect of becoming a tailor is that it allows players to create their own bags. Bags can be surprisingly expensive in the world of Azeroth, and it can really save some gold to be able to make your own. Even better, bags sell for huge profit in the Auction House. The best bag for a Warlock is the Abyssal Bag, which is a Soul bag that can hold up to 32 Soul Shards. Any player that levels a Warlock for long enough knows how frustrating carrying around Soul Shards can become. Enchanting can strongly supplement this choice because a few good enchants can significantly improve a Warlocks PVP and PVE experience. Although all good players and classes use enchants, it is almost essential for a Warlock to use enchants as it becomes much more important in DPS classes. Disenchanting can be quite profitable and can turn useless junk into Auction House treasure. A player can disenchant many common items into essences, shards, and dust that they can then use to fund their enchanting.

Herbalism and Alchemy

It’s no secret that Warlocks burn through mana and healing potions at an amazing speed regardless of build. Choosing the Herbalism and Alchemy professions puts Warlocks at an advantage in raids and instances as well as PVE. Elixers and flasks are great for improving raid and instance performance, and the Auction House profits aren’t bad, either. The Life Blood buff, acquired by becoming a Herbalist, can be a real life saver in a tough battle as it can heal for 2000hp over five seconds. Since many Warlock talents require sacrificing health for mana, this can be an extremely useful buff for any player.

Other

Another useful Warlock profession is Inscription, which you can use to create stat enhancing glyphs to either use or auction. Warlocks, depending on their build, may have a hard time questing and raiding due to low mana. The injectors for healing potions and mana potions can be extremely useful. Choosing the Engineering profession not only allows a Warlock to create injectors but also Goggles, which are favored by DPS caster classes. Although certainly not the most directly useful Profession to leveling, some Warlocks opt to become Miners simply for the Toughness buff. This buff can improve your Stamina by 50 which can help especially during AoE.

WoW Profession Guide – What’s the Best Profession For a Warlock?

Thousands of people are avid stamp collectors. Even though this hobby may not seem the most interesting to everybody, stamp collecting is a great hobby. Those who are into collecting stamps know it can be a very entertaining hobby that can be quite time consuming. There are many reasons to get into stamp collecting. It can be exciting to find the different stamps that have been issued throughout the years. It can also be a thrill to collect special edition stamps or find stamps that were misprinted. Another reason that stamp collecting can be exciting is because many old stamps can be worth quite a bit of money. However, it can be difficult to know what old stamps are worth. Fortunately, an old US postage stamps price guide can help you know what your stamp collection is worth.

Benefits of Stamp Price Guide

Shopping Guide

A stamp price guide not only will let you know what the price of stamps are, but it will also offer other benefits as well. An old US postage stamps price guide will let you know all the stamps that are available and what special edition stamps have been issued over the years.

Stamp guides will also have interesting articles about stamps and stamp collections. A lot of great information can be gained from these guides. Many times the articles themselves alone are a reason to purchase the stamp guides.

Where to Find Stamp Price Guides

There are many different places you can find stamp guides. Collector stores that specialize in collecting stamps are a great place to start. You may find that your local collector store has several different stamp price guides. You can ask the salespeople at the store which guide they would recommend as well as what the differences between the guides are.

Stamp price guides are not as common in retail stores, but you may find some that carry them. Your favorite bookstore will have stamp price guides available as well. If you are part of a stamp collectors club, the other members may know a good place to find stamp guides.

The Internet is a great place to find stamp guides. There are several special collectors sites that sell stamp price guides. As well, there are hundreds of stamp collecting discussion forums on the Internet. These sites will help you find a place to purchase a stamp price guide.

An Essential Tool

An old US postage stamps price guide is an essential tool for any stamp collector. The information found inside this guide can help you learn more about collecting stamps and learn how much your collection is worth. Check out the places discussed above and see if you can find an old US postage stamps price guide so that you can get even more out of your stamp collection today.

Old US Postage Stamps Price Guide