You have a closet full of beautiful ballroom dresses and you want to keep them looking that way. Making sure that they stay clean and fresh does take some planning. Whenever you wear any ballroom dancing dress, it will surely require extra special effort to remove any odors and restore it to its former pristine condition.

There are a couple of points to take into account when you are thinking about how best to stow your ballroom dresses . For starters, you want to make sure that the color remains as true to the original as you can. Sunlight is the foe here. The most effective thing to do is to find a dark-colored plastic cover which will safeguard the dress from fading. If you hang up the dress in its cover somewhere that has plenty of space around it, this will help to prevent creasing of the garment. Something else to look out for is mildew. This could develop on your dresses and wreck them if they are stored in a damp spot. Thus, a dry location is best and also open the cover to allow some fresh air flow.

Moving on from how to store our ballroom dance dresses, let’s now take a look at the best way to care for them in terms of keeping them clean and well-presented. The care instructions supplied by the manufacturer or your dress-maker are an excellent place to start.

The chances are that if it’s practice dancewear with no embellishments or trimmings, then it might be machine-washable and almost certainly hand-washable. In either event, wash in cold water with a mild detergent. For competition dancing clothes, again if they are not finished with decorations such as stones and beads, you can try hand or a very cool machine wash – no more than 30 degrees Centigrade – to avoid shrinkage. Generally-speaking, it’s all right to machine-wash fabrics such as georgette and Lycra, commonly used in ballroom dance dresses.

If there is heavy staining, then consider using a pre-wash stain remover treatment also. You have to be specifically careful if the dress has dark-colored satin bias binding because this can mark the material. So you have to be painstaking in making certain that the binding and the material do not touch each other while still damp. This may well sound like overkill, but you will be happy you did it.

Now if your ballroom dresses are decorated, then you should never wash or even dry clean them. The danger is that any stones will be scratched and lose their sparkle. What is more, it’s also possible for the glue to break down. You could, obviously, spot clean with a brush.

Ballroom dresses can be refreshed by placing them in a steamy environment. This will additionally help to even out creases. If a dress requires more than a steam, you could cautiously hand-wash the body suit only with the dress turned inside out. Be sure to use a gentle soap and cold water. Rinse in cold water and do not wring the dress out prior to hanging it up to dry. If you have had to wash your ballroom dress, allow it to drip dry over the bath tub. If the dress is extremely weighty when wet, it might be a good plan to place it across a clothes horse. This will help to avoid the fabric from stretching. This would be permanent. Keep in mind that fringe dresses can take three to four days to dry properly! So you should not leave it till the last minute to wash it, if you need it for a particular event.

Now let’s examine the tricky subject of ironing. If you can avoid it, then you should do so. Again, pay close attention to the maker’s instructions. Synthetic fabrics are notorious for burning easily, so use a very cool temperature.

Hopefully, you have found this advice helpful. With a little thought about storage, cleaning and ironing your ballroom dresses , you will find that they keep their initial beauty much longer and no matter how much you invested in them, it will have been money well spent.

It’s Earth Day, friend reader. Not that you’d know it, what with a gazillion pounds of waste being thrown indiscriminately into holes and oceans every day. But while I am quite sure that we will eventually find a way to deal with that junk (fire it into the sun, am I right?), a more problematic problem is that of fresh water. Sure, your tap will pour out delicious, cold water all the time — but the cost of providing fresh water for population centers is getting… but you probably know all this. And you know what’s coming. Stop wasting so much water!

I try to minimize my own water usage, but sometimes there’s just no way to turn the tap on and off in a timely fashion — or is there? Yes, there is, and it’s existed for decades, you just don’t have one in your home yet. Time to get one.

It’s a lever-activated faucet, silly, you knew that because you read the headline. For $40 you’ll have a nice chrome faucet that will take away that gnawing feeling inside of having wasted too much water while shaving or brushing your teeth. It won’t take away the gnawing feeling on your ankle from the coyote that’s taken over the den, though. Just don’t go in there! It’s obviously not friendly, look at its eyes!

Anyway, I might just pick one of these up in honor of Earth Day, but you definitely should, because you earn more than me. Yes, I’m sure. Ask the coyote. Don’t ask the coyote!

[via Lifehacker]

I always had a sneaking suspicion that I was doing something horrible to my watches by wearing them in water and now I know: almost nothing under the sun is truly waterproof. This older post by a watchmaker spells it out in plain English: most waterproof watches are, at best, not waterproof at all. Also, don’t wear your watches in the shower, for Wango Tango’s sake!

Finally – do not wear your watch in the shower. Watches are designed for cold water only. After swimming, rinse your divers watch under tap. Have the case and bracelet cleaned every 12 months. Do not expose to direct sunlight or heat. Use common sense and submerge only if you really have to. Do not be fooled by brand / model names like “promaster, diver, seamaster, shower-proof” – very often this is just another advertising gimmick.

Here is his list of absolute no-nos but read the piece for more detail:

* gold or two-tone watches

* chronograph and other complicated watches

* multi-pusher digital watches

* any vintage watches or watches over 15-20 years old

* any timepiece attached to a leather strap

Motorbike Mission One represents a great gadget for men who want to impress women on a two-wheel beast. Being a revolutionary electrically vehicle, Mission One reaches a maximum speed of 150 mph. It is equipped with a high performance battery that can take up to 150 miles without additional recharging.The motorcycle has a chassis which is custom-built and suspension elements integrated for competition levels. The newest model from 2010 is equipped with: Ohlins inverted front forks, Ohlins fully adjustable shock, Brembo 4 piston monobloc calipers, Marchesini wheels and special tires for racing. This beauty is around 60K $.
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Have you event wanted to wash with different colors of water? Well, now you can. With the Glowflow LED Tap Faucet you can see the water falling in your hands in 2 different colors. This gadget has a temperature sensor that colors the liquid according to the temperature of water. So, for cold water is blue and for hot one is red – a great feature for the kids. Without touching the tap, or without actually feel the water on your hands you can figure it out if the water is proper for a bath or no. Another practical side of Glowflow LED is that many mixer taps are quite untrustworthy regarding the control of the temperature and in addition, having a colorful waterfall dropping in your hands is a cool thing. This creative gadget for men costs about 15 pounds.

Did you get sick of crowded cinemas full of noisy, uneducated people along with you cannot watch your favorite movie? Forget about this, because know you can enjoy your leisure time beside your family watching the movies you like in your pyjamas.BeoVision 4 TV comes with a Full HD 50/65 inch long plasma screen which satisfies even the movie creators. The BeoSystem 3 module is responsible with the TV intelligence and along with a fully digital surround sound gives you a complete experience. The coolest feature of BeoVision 4 is that it can adapt to your room conditions. Either if you have white or painted walls, the Automatic Picture Control sensor measures the light in your room and adapts the TV light accordingly. Being a flexible gadget, BeoSystem 3 decodes all encoding systems and handles up to ten speakers and two subwoofers instead of a stereo sound. The gadget price can rise up to 100K $.



In everyone’s life there are days when you get up in the morning and all you want to do is to stay in bed and watch movies or read. Even though you are happy or in a bad disposition, you just want to lie down and lose all day long. With Hi-Can Bed you can literally entertain yourself in bed all day long. Another great gadget for men, Hi-Can comes in stock with a hi-fi sound system, a drop screen with DVD player and the feature to fully capture you in an unforgettable experience.



This bed it’s very practical if you are the type of person which falls asleep during a movie. Another entertainment capabilities of this bed are and the internet and games plus the control of lights and temperature for creating a perfect atmosphere. Now, all that is missing is popcorn! Enjoy! The price offer for this gadget is 42K euros.

I don’t know about you guys but I find it fascinating to see what are the cool new inventions that people around the world come up with every day. In this article, we are going to write about some gadgets that are fun, weird, and inventive and can make out everyday life much easier (or least boring).
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Have you ever had your hands full while you were carrying a big load of dishes into the kitchen? Ever wanted to turn on the kitchen faucet but unfortunately you didn’t have a spare hand to do it? Well, now you get the touch sensitive faucet. Even if it costs around $500, it will give a nice touch to your kitchen and since it is touch sensitive, you can turn it on with a simple finger, your elbow, you nose and even your feet (I think you’d have to be some kind of gymnast or circus acrobat to accomplish the last one). I still have a couple of question for the guys at Delta Faucet. How do you adjust the temperature? How does the faucet know when you need hot water and when you need cold water? What happens if you have a cat and the cat touches the spout when you are not around? I’m sure the inventors already thought about these aspects, they just forgot to mention these things and how to solve them. Overall, this is ingenious and might be useful for a lot of folks (especially the one that don’t have a cat).

Another cool new invention is the pair of boots that tells you where to go. The CabBoots are still at the prototype stage but once they’re out, I definitely want a pair. They have this built-in guidance system that communicates with your feet. I know it sound amazing but it’s just how they work. They use electromechanical elements that make the boot tilt as a warning that you are heading in the wrong direction. The inventor, Martin Frey, has a website where he explained exactly how these boots work.  We didn’t find any information about how much he estimated these boots are going to cost, but I’m pretty sure they will be a huge success, especially for people that don’t own a car. Besides, long walks are very good for your health.

I know this is going to sound funny but what if you had a toilet lid that opens and closes by itself? What will the Japanese people come up with next? This should reduce the number of arguments between husband and spouse on the subject “you forgot to let the toilet sit down again after you went to the bathroom”. This lid has a sensor which is triggered every time someone approaches the toilet and it opens. After the person has used the toilet, the lid automatically closes. We are still waiting for some sort of software for face recognition so it can tell the gender of the “user” and determine if the lower sit has to be raised as well or not. The same question pops-up in my mind again. What if I have a cat? A cat that is dumb enough to fall into the toilet every time someone forgets to close the lid? Does the sensor detect when it approaches the toilet as well? Oh well, I don’t have a cat yet so why worry?

I hope you are prepared, because this one is a winner. I think this gadget is addressed mostly to those people are always in need of a full cell phone battery but I’m sure that teenagers that just can’t seem to survive in this cruel world without a mobile phone will want one of these too. The 3.5 lbs generator is a device that you strap to your knee and every time you walk, you kinetic movement is converted into enough power to charge 10 mobile phones. And this will not even bother your pace. We didn’t manage to find out how much one of these Bio Mechanical Energy Harvesters costs but as soon as we do, we’ll let you know.

The Laser Cosmos is a gadget that seems to bring the entire galaxy on the ceiling of your bedroom. It works like a projector and it will fill any room, big or small, with stars and special effects so you can feel you’re sleeping under the clear blue sky. I mean, can you imagine throwing a party at your home and seeing shooting stars while you’re dancing? It creates an atmosphere which is hard to describe in words. You just have to see it to understand how amazing it looks. The Laser Cosmos is shaped like a 3D star and it can be turned and twisted to any angle. It has a projector lens for stars and cloud formation and even a cloud brightness control. If you use this beauty in total darkness you will get the best results. It costs around $210 and you can order your very own Laser Cosmos online.  Unfortunately, you can only use it for 4 hours at a time. There is n ON and OFF switch to help you do just that and it does require an adaptor. It is very small (29 x 25 x 20 cm) so finding s place for it in any room of the house should not be a problem.

We have seen different laser projector before, but we have never seen a display so bright that can fill even the biggest room imaginable. Not only is it a killer party accessory but it will help you relax just like any other beautiful nature landscape. Just lie down, take a deep breath and prepare to be mesmerized by the shooting stars (don’t forget to make a wish). Aside from being relaxing, it is also a romantic touch we can add do that third date when you promised you’d cook for the beautiful lady. As you can see, people come up the craziest things to make like fun and much more pleasant.

Figures. Just yesterday we write about all the different e-books you can get your hands on this holiday shopping season, and then we get a bombshell:Barnes & Noble is 100 percent sold out of nook . The company says that it has exhausted its current supply, and will only have enough nooks to fulfill current pre-orders. In other words, if you were thinking about getting a nook for Christmas (or whatever holiday you celebrate) but didn’t pre-order one yet, well, too late now.

To throw some cold water on this volcanic story, Barnes & Noble says people won’t have to wait too long to get their nook if they order now. The expected ship date here on out is January 4, 2010, only a few days after Christmas day. So while the nook won’t be sitting under your tree, it’s not like you’ll have to wait months and months to get yours.

The big winner in all of this, of course, is Amazon, whose Kindle 2 is widely available. Considering there’s really not too much of a difference between the two readers, I think it’s safe to say that a few people who were prepared to buy a nook may now spring for the Kindle.

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