The Many Benefits of Ereaders

I hear a lot of back and forth conversation over which is better, print books or ebooks on electronic readers. Now, I'm a very traditional person, and love the smell and feel of a book, but I've learned to appreciate the many advantages that ereaders provide. First of all, having an ebook reader has allowed me to condense my library into the space of a DVD, where it used to take up many shelves. I had boxes upon boxes, and dozens of shelves full. My collection took up a lot of space even though our house was large. My home is no longer cluttered with books, but I still have all of my favorites, and room for a lot more. The best feature yet is that I can take dozens of books anywhere I go, and they all fit in my purse.

Real Ways to Get Rid of Acne

The temptation to achieve acne free skin creates desperation in many young adults, and older ones too. Watch out for programs that capitalize on the emotional need to get rid of acne quick.

• Fad diets or fast schemes are unlikely solutions to acne free skin.
• Candida buildup and toxins are a contribution to acne, but extreme solutions can unbalance the system dangerously and are bad method for acne free skin.
• Finding the right acne treatment product and combining it with good hygiene and lifestyle choices are the best way to become acne free.
• There are items in your house that you can use as a quick solution when you can’t get to the store for acne cream.
• Another way to achieve acne free skin is to try holistic acne free treatments.

There are many in the general public that fall for the grand promises and hope for the reality of a miracle cure.

Severe dietary restrictions such as those suggested by fad programs are not effective for treating acne on a long-term basis, and won’t even live up to the title promise. While this type of cleansing can help your overall health and be a part of an acne free treatment plan, they should not be considered a complete solution.


How to Truly Become Acne Free

Choose a high-quality medicated skin cream. Organic ingredients like tea tree oil actually have much the same benefits as harsher chemicals like benzoyl peroxide.
Along with a good medicated cream it is important to keep your skin free of oils and dirt. Wash several times a day, but don’t be fooled into thinking that getting rid of surface problems means scrubbing or using harsh cleansers. Scrubbing your skin is only going to irritate it further, and make the inflammation of acne pimples and pustules worse. Use gentle methods to clean your face and any area where you have acne at least twice a day (more often if you work at a hot, dirty job, or weather creates excess sweat).

Common Household Solutions for Acne Free Skin

Did you know that something as innocent and easily found in the home as toothpaste can be an emergency substitution for creams? A dab of toothpaste (not a gel) placed on your pimples can dry out the oils on the surface of the skin and help promote acne free skin. One drawback to using toothpaste is that it can discolor the area if left on too long, so only use it during the day when you can wash it off after about a half hour.

Diaper rash cream is another quick acne treatment you can find around the house if you have a last minute breakout. Using Calamine lotion can help stop the itching that often accompanies acne breakouts. Itching will only make the problem worse.

Holistic Acne Free Skin Treatment

A quick look around the house will likely turn up many of the items you can use to take a holistic approach to acne free skin. For instance, vinegar applied with a cotton ball to pimples will dry them out and help you on your way to acne free skin. Using a salt water rinse a couple times a day is a great addition to an acne free skin program. It reduces oil, and is anti-bacterial.

An egg white mask will pull out excess oils from your skin, and a honey mask gives you a natural anti-bacterial skin conditioner that will leave your face soft and smooth.

These are just a few of the ways you can work toward a healthy way of combating acne, and get acne free skin, but it won’t happen overnight, or in 3 days. Real acne skin treatment takes time, and it may even be months before you find yourself blemish free. Even then, you should continue maintenance steps to ensure your skin remains acne free. Keep up with multiple daily cleansing, and maintain healthy eating habits, exercise, and avoid things that create acne promoting environments.

The Fight Against Dry Skin and Hair

As I get older, I don't have to worry about acne anymore. I had it bad as a teen, but as an adult, really only had to deal with it at certain times of the month. Now, it's dry skin that's a problem for me. I need to use a good moisturizer for my skin, and my hair is just as bad. I think the most drastic changes were with my hair. I always had a problem with it getting greasy fast, but now it's so dry, and hard to keep moisturized. Using a strong, but organic and safe moisturizer like argan oil for skin and hair is my only salvation. In fact, after joining a health club recently that had a pool, I found that the chlorinated water made it nearly impossible to keep my hair soft. Using oil as a conditioner is a good way to keep dry hair from getting all frizzy and tangled.

Getting Rid of Acne

Acne is a serious problem that affects teens and adults causing both physical and emotional distress. Because it is so common, it is often treated as a simple problem, but it is quite complex and there are several things that need to come together to cure acne.

How to Cure Acne

When it comes to trying to cure acne, too often people take the topical approach and when it doesn’t work fast enough, they blast away with more powerful drugs. Medicated solutions to curing acne are just one of the many ways to get rid of skin blemishes.

Acne is much more complex than just a pimple on the surface of the skin. It has several conditions all working together to create the problem that presents itself visibly on the outside, but you can’t just treat the cause, you have to treat every area of the problem in order to really get a handle on your acne problem.

Along with using a good acne cream, here are some basic practices that you can do every day to improve your overall health, and have a big influence on your skin condition. None of these on their own will cure acne, but in combination, they are a powerful way to help get rid of blemishes anywhere on the body.

• Keeping the area clean and free from surface contaminants is the most often solution tried when it comes to dealing with acne, but there are some things you should know in order to get the best results.
• Along with using a high-quality acne medication you can make adjustments in your lifestyle that will encourage healing from the inside out.
• You can find many items in your kitchen or home that will aid you in the fight to cure acne.
• There are centuries of misinformation on how to cure acne. Before you can fight it, you have to know what’s real and what’s not.
• Finally, give your treatments the appropriate amount of time to work.

Cleaning and Medicating

Wash your face and outbreak areas with a good medicated soap twice a day. Part of the cause of common acne is clogged pours from oils and flaking skin. Because this is the most easily seen issue, it is the part of the acne cure that most people are aware of. However, be careful not to over cleanse or scrub your skin. Scrubbing the skin too hard will only cause further irritation and actually can make acne worse.
Follow up with an application of medicated acne cream that includes a strong moisturizer to protect your skin and make it feel invigorated.

Personal Habits that can Combat Acne

Along with the surface cleansing and conditioning, you need to help your body deal with the inner issues that create ideal the atmosphere for acne. Some of the things you should do are:

Eat plenty of fresh foods, especially fruit and vegetables. Avoid canned veggies that are loaded with salt, and while you’re at it, throw away the table salt as well. Load up on carrots too because they are full of beta carotene (vitamin a) and that is great for your skin and also reduces acne causing sebum.

Eat fiber and drink lots of water. Eating fiber and drinking water are both good ways to keep your system moving, and flushing out toxins from your body. Those same toxins that help create acne conditions. Water is also a hydrating fluid that will improve the well-being all of your body’s organs, especially the largest organ of them all—your skin.

Cut down on dairy and other allergy trigger foods. Dairy products, wheat products can aggravate, and even be a leading cause of acne. The Center for Food Allergies explains that foods that cause allergies create toxins in the body that have to be expelled, and the primary way the body gets rid of toxins is to sweat them out through the pours.

Get rid of the junk foods. They are bad for your body in every way, and provide no nourishment at all. Worst of all, most junk foods are loaded with chemicals and allergy related ingredients such as flour, sugar and dairy products.

Lay off the makeup. The obvious reason for this is that makeup covers up the skin and creates a caking over the pours. That is easily translated into extra elements to clog them up. That’s not how to cure acne. Keep your skin as clean as possible and as free of elements that will encourage clogs and restrict airflow.

Don’t squeeze them out! It’s tempting, and hard to resist, but squeezing zits encourages scaring, and worse yet, it releases all the bacteria that was pent up inside onto your skin and fingers. Then touching other areas of your face encourages the spread of those bacteria.

Wash your pillowcases often. When you sleep at night, your skin is in contact with the pillows and all of the toxins being released through your pours are being transferred to the pillow case. If you don’t wash them and replace them you are simply laying in a bed of bacteria.

Pull back your hair and keep it off your face. Even if your hair isn’t naturally oily, it has oils in it that will transfer to your skin to add more to the battle.
Mix up some honey for a good way to cure acne. Honey is a natural antibacterial and is also very soothing for your skin. 1 egg, 2 tbsp of honey, a little milk and a tsp of vitamin e oil helps get rid of bacteria and soothe inflamed skin.

Exercise (yes, it helps your skin too). Anyone who wants to know how to cure acne needs to consider the whole body, and exercise is important for health and the general well-being. However, exercise does more than just promote good health, and weight loss. It also improves blood flow to the skin and encourages the release of toxins through sweat. So get moving and get rid of acne.

How to Cure Acne with Natural Resources

Clean skin is healthy and less prone to outbreaks. Along with honey masks, you can use egg white masks to promote good blood flow to the skin. Egg whites dry and pull out the impurities in the pours to help cure acne. Baking soda makes an excellent exfoliant to scrub the skin, and soaked oatmeal is a good way to scrub the skin gently. When you’re done, use a little natural Aloe Vera as a moisturizer.

Acne Cure Fallacies that Won’t Work

Acne has been around since the beginning of time, and as such there are a lot of fallacies that surround it. Some of them that still hang on today are considered answers to how to cure acne are laying out in the sun, giving up sex and scrubbing and irritating your skin until it is raw and painful. None of these are helpful, and some can even be more aggravating to the condition.

The Long-Term Approach to Curing Acne

Find a high-quality acne cream that has soothing properties instead. A combination of well-tested medications and a natural moisturizer will help control acne outbreaks, and keep your skin supple and healthy looking. That along with a healthy lifestyle and improving your skin condition from the inside out will set you on the path to a solid and well-balanced acne cure.

Most of all, it is important to be realistic in your expectations of your acne treatment. Overnight cures are unrealistic. Give the medicine a chance to work, and take care of your skin and body in the meantime to build up a strong support system for your health.

Eye Catching Display

Every time I go to the doctor's office with my husband, he can't help but grab a bunch of fliers and brochures from the tabletop displays. Whoever came up with the idea for those was a genius. They are so attention grabbing, you can't help but pay attention. If all of those folders and papers were simply strewn about on the top of the table, flat, a lot fewer people would pay attention to them. I kid my husband about taking them, but some of them have some really good deals in them, and I've found out a few things about different problems I didn't already know. Some have even helped me in my writing.

Pretty Flowers

Things are really coming along with the yard here. I am loving the good soil at our new home. Compared to the sand based soil at the old house it grows things miraculously. I even am keeping a small flower bed alive, and planted a new rose bush that is thriving. I'm really REALLY looking forward to next summer when I can get a bigger start in the spring without having to worry about all the moving and health issues we had this year. I haven't done much at all with the backyard, but am going to attack that next year with a vengeance, and do much more to the front too.

Making Sure You're Prepared

All through our marriage, my husband carried a large insurance policy on himself. We did that to provide for the family when the kids were little and the mortgage was high, and it made sense. Now though, we really need to rethink that. Of course, it would be nice to have a lot of extra money in the event something serious should happen, but I don't even like to type that "serious event" much less want it to happen, and I'd prefer to have him be with me a long time. However, the monthly premiums are high, and I don't think I'd need that much if something bad happened. We don't have a mortgage and the kids are grown up. Using a life insurance calculator is important to figure out what the proper amount of insurance you really need is. It can work both ways. For us, to see if we're spending too much money, for others, perhaps to make sure they are prepared enough in case something bad happens. In my case, the worst thing that could happen is we spend a little too much money each month, but I'd sure be well cared for if my husband passed away. It would be far worse the other way around, and if I had small children and a lot of bills and a big mortgage to pay off and not enough insurance to do it.

Good Work Bad Hands

I did a LOT of work outside yesterday. It was one of the rare days that I took off from working even though I had assignments to do. I just needed to work on the yard. I am so happy with this new property. It's smaller than what I had, but I love that about it. The 10 acres we had was just so overwhelming at times, and so spread out you really couldn't landscape it (without a ton of money). However, I am paying the price for the hard work yesterday. My left hand is really giving me problems (carpal tunnel). That will really make it hard to do the work I have lined up for today, and I have a REALLY big project that means working extra long hours for the next four weeks. My hand better shape up and get working right, or I'm going to be in a lot of pain for four weeks.

Keeping Time

I have gotten away with not wearing a watch for a long time. I don't go out too much, and when I do I usually rely on my car clock, my cell phone or a clock at the location I'm at to tell me what time it is. The problem is that I don't pay much attention to my cell phone when I'm at home, and I don't have many clocks in my new house. At least not yet. I did put a pretty little shell and fish clock in my bathroom, but hey, how often do you need to know what time it is in there? I bought one for the bedroom... vital because I never take my phone with me in there, and I rarely watch TV in the bedroom even though it's there, or want to wear a watch in bed. The only place in the kitchen for a clock would be inconvenient, so I think I'm going to look at some of the pretty michael kors watches and go back to wearing one. It really will make it easier even when out. My new cell phone is a bit of a pain to "unlock" every time I just want to see what time it is, and I won't have to dig it out of my purse to find out either. Most of all, I'll be able to keep better track of my time at home.

Scared to Buy a New Laptop

It's about time for a new computer. I'm a little shy about pulling the trigger though, for one reason: my really good laptop flat out refuses to work with the wireless comcast internet. I gave it to my son because the router is in his room and he can hardline in. I am using my good, but not as good laptop to work on because it works with the wireless in the house now. I never had that problem before with my other one, although I did have plenty of problems with it and won't buy a HP again. It still works wirelessly on other systems like our portable wireless device when we go out on the boat, or at the library, just not on comcast. What's with that? Is it because it is a Vista? I've read that some Vista laptops have that problem. That would calm my nerves about buying a new laptop if I new that was the case because most new ones come with 7 now, and I'd want that anyway because the one thing I LOVE about the laptop (newer than the other one) that I'm using now is it has Windows 7 on it. That was a vast improvement over Vista. I'm just scared that I'll spend a lot of money on a really good new laptop, and have it not want to work with my wireless internet in the house.

Hearing it All

I really need a hearing aid. My hearing is getting much worse. I dread not being able to hear anymore at all. Even now though, I have to have the words on the TV or DVDs, and am always asking "what" when people talk to me. Forget talking on the phone. It's time to get a hearing aid and get it over with. It's not like they're hard to use, and I can even get the hearing aid batteries online so it's easy enough to keep up with. I think my mother-in-law had to have her hearing aid cleaned every so often, but otherwise, she had great luck with it, and her hearing was far worse than mine is now.

Finding the Spark

I missed out on a great opportunity a few months ago, and it still bugs me. There was a chance to submit a short to a compilation that had a theme that was really exciting, and I even had it all mapped out. I just couldn't concentrate on it with my husband in the hospital. I still think of it. It wasn't a lot of money, but it would have been so much fun to get my feet back in the creative writing arena again. I have a bid in to write a serial for a magazine now though. I hope I get it. Maybe that will spark my juices again.

Getting it the Way You Want It

I'm watching Hot in Cleveland and Melanie is dating a man who gave her a toe ring. That's weird, but a ring is such a romantic gift. It doesn't have to be "the" ring. A promise ring is a wonderful symbol of your relationship without the pressure. Like everything, I'd prefer to shop online. For promise rings it would be makemypromisering.com. You can get it made just the way you want it. That's one of the great things about shopping online. You can find everything you want, and wonderful sites where you can customize items to fit your exact need and desire.

Getting Motivated

I have to admit I am having a hard time getting motivated to work lately. There's so much going on in my life, so I guess that's a big part of it. Big transitions make it hard to concentrate. I thought that once my hubby got out of the hospital it would be better, but he was home all the time recuperating. Then he was able to get back to work, and I thought, now...

Well, okay, I am working, just not at full speed. It's not even a matter of the work not being there. It is. It's just hard to feel motivated to do it. I get what I need to get done, done, but I'm not going above and beyond to do as much as possible. There's so much I need to do at the new house, and money to be spent, I really should be pushing it to the max so I can get it all done. Now if I can just convince myself of that, I'll be on track.

Won't Miss the Old Days

There's never a time I don't think about, and remember the terrible time I had with my son as he struggled with addictions. He had the most serious problem with alcohol, but experimented with many types of drugs as well. He was in an out of , and at first I wondered if anything would work. Finally, he committed to the program. That was the real answer. He had to really want it to work. Once that hurdle was over, he got the help he needed, and finally wanted, and the program worked wonders. Thankfully, life has smoothed over quite a bit, and he's steady and stronger now than I ever thought he'd be. I'll never forget those days, but I sure don't miss them.

Bigger isn't Always Better

Lots of people would probably feel sad about moving from a big, 3000 square foot house into a smaller, 1000 sq foot house. Not me though. I got tired of that big, sprawling house. I had to clean it. LOL That made it a lot less fun. The new place is so much easier to manage, and in a lot of ways, having less space keeps any "hording" tendency under control. Well, for most people anyway. I know some people who can cram a small house to the rafters, and take up every inch of space. I love the smaller house though, and I don't feel like I'm running a marathon just to make dinner anymore in the kitchen either.

A World Gone By

I sold my big, fancy horse trailer last week. I was sad to see it go. Even though it was 7 years old, it still looked almost new, and was in great shape. It was a very classy trailer. The people that bought it are very nice, and I hope they have as much fun with it as we did. I still remember the fun I used to have outfitting my horses and myself for a show. It got even more fun, and easier when I could shop online for riding apparel and the tack for the horses. There's something that makes you feel so regal when you get all decked out for a show. I know I'll always have the pictures, and the memories, but I'll miss actually being a part of that world.

Cooling Off

It has been so hot here over the last few weeks it's been hard to concentrate on working. Finally there's been a bit of a let up, and the heat is more seasonable. I can live with, and work in 70 and 80 degree heat, but mid-90s and higher is nearly impossible. You get exhausted just sitting around. The heat is overwhelming. I am a bit surprised at the let up of heat. It's only early August and I've always thought August was worse than even July is in terms of heat. Thankfully, it looks like August is going to behave itself some, and I'll get things done more quickly.

Getting Help to Overcome Disabling Panic

Lots of people know about drug rehab centers, and associate them with disabling addictions. However, few people know there are treatment centers for people with severely disabling illness like panic attacks. These panic drug treatment centers help people live normal lives by getting them in control of their fears, and terrors. These are very serious to the people who live with them. I've known people that suffer from disabling panic attacks. They suffer so much with them that it disrupts their lives, and keeps them from achieving their fullest potential at work, and with fun activities too.

True Fun

The current season of True Blood is drawing to a close, and it is really getting exciting. I thought this would have fizzled by now, but the writers still manage to keep it going and building new things to make the series interesting. I've never read the series of books the story is based on. I should, as a writer you'd think I'd want to. I do, and I will, but I have found for my own experience that I either read a book before I watch a movie or series, or after, so since I haven't read it before, I'm going to have to wait until they finish off the series on TV to read the books. I actually prefer it that way rather than reading first, because otherwise I find myself comparing them too much. This way, I can enjoy the TV show, and then enjoy the books. Since books, by nature can be more involved, I am not usually disappointed that way.