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Receiving a floral arrangement can be a great surprise! Flowers can cheer up your day and spread joy to anyone else who sees them, but after about a week they start to dry up and are just plain sad. What can you do to make your flowers last even longer? Make them into potpourri! Potpourri can be just as pretty as your floral gift and it offers a pleasant fragrance, reminding you of the gift each day.

The first step to making potpourri is to dry the flowers, which will begin to happen once they have lost their liveliness.

Since flowers will shrink as they dry, always collect four times the amount you will need for the final potpourri mix. There are many ways to dry your flowers, one is to fasten them together in small bunches and hang them upside down or carefully separate the petals from their stems and spread them out on a vented surface such as a window screen. This allows for proper air circulation and thorough drying. If the petals are packed together too tightly or overlap, they will decompose instead of drying.

The screen method is generally preferred as it allows for more moisture to be released, but leaving smaller flowers whole, and hang drying them can make your potpourri more attractive. The drying process generally takes about 1-2 weeks. You know the petals are completely dried when they look and feel crisp.

Along with the flowers from your bouquet, you will also need aromatic leaves that harmonize well with the flowers you already have. In addition, spices and peels and a fixative for holding scents will help make the aroma last longer.

Start by placing your dry flower petals in a glass jar or bowl that can be covered tightly. You can select a theme for the scent to complement the look of the potpourri such as country garden, lavender fields or the forest. Gently combine the flowers and leaves, and then mix the fixative with the spice, and blend into the flower leaf mixture with your hands.

You can leave some of the dry leaves whole, and crush others to release their scent. Spices and peels have a stronger aroma, so they should be used sparingly. For the best aroma, grind dried whole spices before combining them with the fixative and adding them to the mix. Use one tablespoon of fixative per cup of flowers and leaves. The most popular vegetable fixatives are orris root, which has a light lavender scent and Gum Benzoin, which has a sweet vanilla scent.

If you find you would like a stronger aroma for your potpourri, sprinkle essential oils one drop at a time, stirring between each drop. Seal and store your potpourri mixture in a warm, dry, dark place for about six weeks to cure. You can display potpourri in a bowl or jar, or it can be used in pillows or potpourri balls - however you like.

When you get into a table top miniature war game, your army is a big investment in time, money, and effort. To help you get started on the right foot, here’s a few tips for new Warhammer 40k players.

Learn The Rules.

Get your codex of choice and the main book. Read them both thoroughly before you start building an army. Having a pretty clear idea of how it all is supposed to work makes it much easier to put together a decent starting force.

Decide What You Like.

Did you ever consider creating your own personalised jewellery. Perhaps you played with beads when you were a child but have never touched them since. The easiest jewelry to create is probably a necklace and with just a litle thought can look either funky or elegant and appropriate in both cases to the rest of the outfit you are wearing.

If you want to sew, you need some scissors and/or shears. In fact, even if you aren’t doing any sewing, every household needs some scissors! Because they’re such a useful tool, it’s important to have at least one pair.

Scissors vs. Shears

For starters, though people often use the names interchangeably, scissors and shears aren’t really the same thing and are meant to perform different tasks. Shears are used for the heavier cutting jobs. Scissors are best used for lighter cutting jobs such as trimming or clipping threads.

Shears For Strength.

Sewing was once upon a time a very popular practice with most households since ready-made clothes were not easily available as they are today. Mostly women enjoyed sewing clothes for the family, toys and even earn money working from home by sewing for friends and neighbors.

The sewing hobby disappeared today mainly because we don’t have the time to indulge any more. However, if you have recently stumbled over your grandmother’s sewing machine or just want to pamper your kids and their toys by being creative, here are the basic sewing supplies you will require in order to get started right away.

Sewing As a Hobby or Business

WARMACHINE (yes, it’s supposed to be in all caps) is a table top miniatures war game made by Privateer Press. It’s primarily a skirmish-level game with anywhere from half a dozen to maybe 40 models in a typical game, though you can certainly go higher if you want. The game centers around a powerful leader called a Warcaster who can empower and manipulate the hulking Warjack steam-punk mecha. Helping out the core battlegroup is a hugely diverse group of troops. These include anything from disciplined riflemen to undead pirates and even fire bomb chucking zealots.

The Rules

Simple Tricks for Reducing College Tuition Costs…

As the high school years wind down, parents begin contemplating how they will pay for their children’s college tuition. For those who are tackling this question for the first time, and for some who are tackling the question for the second, third, or fourth time, the mere consideration is enough to turn one’s head prematurely gray. But, for those who receive good advice, gray hair can be postponed for a few more years.

Many parents turn to the U.S. government and the federal financial aid system to help find additional money to assist with college expenses. To determine the extent and eligibility for this supplemental money, families are required to fill out the Free Application for Financial Student Aid or the FAFSA form.

The FAFSA is used to determine the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), which in most cases is the starting point or minimum dollar amount a college anticipates a family to contribute toward their child’s education in any given school year. Once a preliminary EFC is determined, financial aid packages are constructed for prospective students by the various colleges and universities.

The EFC calculation is primarily based upon an assessment of parental and student income and asset values. The income and assets attributable to the student are assessed at a higher rate than those of the parents. Families with more money have a higher EFC than those families that are less well -off who are not expected to contribute as much.

A higher EFC also indicates a student does not need financial help in the form of scholarships and other types of gifted aid, which do not require repayment. Instead, the student may only qualify for loans and other forms of assistance that require repayment and can result in thousands of dollars of interest charges.

Worried about skyrocketing college costs, parents of high school seniors often suggest that grandparents make donations to Junior’s college fund in lieu of holiday gifts.

If they’re financially able to do so, most grandparents happily comply. After all, one reason they’ve accumulated their wealth is to help younger generations achieve success, including going to college. Unfortunately, their generosity may devastate their family’s finances.

What most parents and even their financial planners don’t realize is the timing of financial gifts is critical in determining how much their family pays for college. Doing this incorrectly not only could cause your child to lose scholarship and other forms of gifted aid, but your family will also be expected to contribute more towards your child’s educational costs.

When cash gifts are given to high school seniors for Christmas or Hanukkah, the money is in the child’s name and bank account when the family completes the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) in January. Hence, this gift is assessed at the child’s higher rate.

The bottom line? The FAFSA considers the initial gift given in December as “untaxed income” and increases your Expected Family Contribution by fifty percent of the gifted amount. Additionally, since the money is in the child’s bank account on the day the FAFSA is signed in January, it is now considered an asset of the child increasing your EFC by an additional twenty percent of the gifted amount.

In total seventy percent of grandma’s generous gift is swallowed up by the financial aid system without you even knowing it. The good news is that you can avoid these painful consequences by ensuring that your gift is given at the right time and in the right way.

Saving money is only one consideration when putting a child through college. To fully leverage your educational investments, you have to understand how the financial aid formula will be affected by how and when you use your investments. The choices you make could cost or save your family tens of thousands of dollars.