From the Builder

Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving!

This is my favorite time of year. Not only is there an abundance of delicious things to eat, but also the time I get to spend with my family is something I genuinely look forward to. I certainly hope that you are able to spend time with your loved ones this holiday season.

This time of year is notorious for home fires and Thanksgiving Day is the busiest home fire day in America. We have included some tips to help keep you and your family safe. This month we focused on kitchen fires and next month we are going to focus on overall home fire prevention and safety.

If you enjoy the colors of fall, you will want to read our article on how to incorporate those colors into your interior design and décor. Fall colors are a hot trend in interior design and will probably stay that way for some time.

In giving thanks for all that is good in our lives, I wanted to share with you a parable that my father shared with me. Being a second-generation builder, the “Parable of the Carpenter” meant a lot to me as it reinforced powerful lessons my father taught me.

Enjoy the holidays!

Jeff
 

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Cooking up Some Holiday Kitchen Safety

Harry S. Truman coined the phrase “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” But, it seems an appropriate phrase to remind us that there is some inherent risks involved when cooking those delicious meals we all love this time of year.

With Thanksgiving here and the holidays fast approaching, many of you will be doing a lot of cooking, which doesn't always just mean delicious food. Many of us will have extended family visiting for the holidays and planning a feast for all these people is a huge undertaking in itself.

Along with menu planning and making accommodations for extra guests, keeping everyone safe and being prepared for an emergency should be at the top of everyone’s checklist. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), Thanksgiving Day remains the leading day for cooking-fires, with three times as many cooking fires as on an average day. On Thanksgiving 2008, U.S. Fire Departments responded to 1,300 home-cooking fires, compared to 420 such fires on an average day.

To read more click here
 

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Incorporate the Colors of Fall into Your Home Decor

This time of year is one of my favorite seasons. I love the warm and rich colors of the landscape that signal Fall’s arrival. The beautiful reds, oranges and yellows induce a feeling of warmth, comfort and calm. Color and emotions are closely related. Specific colors are known to provoke certain emotions and leave impressions on us whether we notice it or not. If you are like me and would like to bring some of the colors of fall into your home and decorating style, here are a few things to consider for your decorating scheme.

RED
Red feels vibrant and exciting and is often associated with love, passion, courtship, impulse and intensity. Red is also a grounding color and can make you to feel safe and secure.

The Pros and Cons of Red
The color red is a very powerful color, which can even bring out rage, confrontation, fierceness, and aggressiveness. Red has been known to raise blood pressure. In casinos, red is widely used so that people will stay and continue to gamble, not realizing that time is flying by. And red supposedly stimulates appetites, so it is often used in restaurants. It is also a color that demands attention. You see it in warning lights, fire engines, and hydrants.

How to Use Red in a Room
Because it demands attention, the color red will wake up a room. It should be used as an accent in accessories, part of a pattern in upholstery, or one impressive chair or bench. When you have accents of red, it draws attention to other things you might not even notice in the room. The whole idea is to entice, intrigue (and) invite without clubbing you over the head and dragging you in. Red (when used as an accent) is a good color to have in a nursery because it stimulates and aids the development of neural connections in an infant's brain. Be wary of painting an entire room in red because it may prove too stimulating. Instead, try using red on one accent wall in the room or Brown-red shades that are more appropriate for walls since they give off a more comforting feel.

To read more, click here
 

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Pass it along for prizes!

We hope that you are enjoying our newsletter as much as we like researching and writing the articles for you. We have received such positive feedback from our readers and a great many of you have forwarded our newsletter along to friends, family and constituents on a regular basis.

Our e-newsletter client allows us to see how many times each original recipient forwards the newsletter. We don’t see the addresses that you forward to, but we do see how many times it is forwarded from you and which links have been clicked.

We have been using this information to determine what articles are most read and therefore determining what content to put in the newsletter each month. With that being said, we want to start awarding a fun prize each month to the reader that forwards our newsletter the most!

We will offer a different prize each month, so pass it along to your e-mail contacts and have a chance to win a fun prize. Our winner will be announced each month and the prizes are sure to get fun and interesting! 

Stay tuned to see who won and what they won for passing it on!
 

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The Parable of the Carpenter

by Michael Josephson and Chararcter Counts

A master carpenter who'd worked for the same builder for nearly 50 years announced he was retiring. The builder told him how much he appreciated his work and presented him with a $5,000 bonus. Then he asked if he would build just one more house. He owned a magnificent lot with a spectacular view and wanted to build a dream home there.

The carpenter was bitterly disappointed at the small bonus and extra project, but the building fee would help him buy a small cottage. He agreed to build the dream house.

He'd always prided himself on his uncompromising commitment to quality, but his resentment caused him to cut corners, ignore details, and accept shoddy workmanship from his workers. He even looked the other way when some of them substituted cheaper materials and pocketed the difference.

When the house was finished, the builder shook the carpenter's hand and with a huge smile gave him a thank-you card. The carpenter was disdainful - until he saw inside the card the deed to the house he'd just built.

The carpenter was ashamed to have misjudged his old friend and betrayed his own values, and he was remorseful that the house he would now live in for the rest of his life had been made so carelessly.

Our character is the house we live in, and it's built piece by piece by our daily choices. Deceit, irresponsibility, and disrespect are like shoddy workmanship. Whenever we put in less than our best and ignore our potential for excellence, we create a future full of creaky floors, leaky roofs, and crumbling foundations.
 

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