SUMMER FRESH

I recently decided to freshen up a few spaces around my apartment for summer - who isn't ready for a change? I switched out some pillows in the living room, and tossed in a green throw, which is perfect for the frigid summer a/c (I found it at Hattan Home, a purveyor of lovely, colorful home goods - it's the pom pom throw in lime).

I made the palm pillows out of a Tommy Bahama tablecloth, and the lattice ribbon pillow DIY is HERE.

Here's the "winter" version (the cheetah print is what gives it away).

I'm also switching out a rug. Completely unplanned, but when I found this beautiful stencil-look rug for TWENTY FIVE dollars at T.J. Maxx, I couldn't resist!

Here's the "winter" version.

What about you? Do you change out your decor with the seasons?

Love Quotes

Love quotes are expressions or words said concerning love that enable people view love in a different perspective. Love is life and we cannot live without it. For this reason, so much has been said and continues to be said about love. We take some of the memorable pieces and keep them to refer to love. They are love quotes and their function is not only to teach but to entertain. The following are some of the most popular quotes in regard to love. The quotes may express love, show regrets of love or even state the various emotions that may be brought up by love. 'In my dreams and our love, there are no impossibilities'. This is a quote that best shows the power of love and the ability it has to move mountains. Many people who have fallen in love report that there is no greater feeling and, you feel as though you can conquer the world with the person you like. There is no doubt that this is one of the quotes that inspires people not to give up looking for love in their lives.

Other quotes are 'you need money to call someone honey'. This is a quote that shows how materialistic people have become. A lot of value has been placed on having money to facilitate love. This has become worse on the onset of modernity. It is common place for people to choose money over love but, in the end, they will get exactly what they want. We all need love and we all need some materials, when there is no proper balance for this, people end up losing focus of what is important in life. The more you read the many love quotes available, the more you will realize that the amount of wisdom that you have to gain. If you feel philosophical enough, you can come up with your very own quotes; variety will spice up life.

Love Images

The image of love and romance is very common within art and has been for many centuries, right back to the rise of the Renaissance across Italy and then the rest of Europe. Art has always been about emotion and there is no stronger emotion than love, making it an ideal subject for any painting or drawing. This powerful emotion can have negative and positive impacts on everyone's lives and as such the images and paintings created from it depict a wide range in scenes which cover for example happy couples or the loneliness of someone after a relationship breakup.

The importance of love and romance has not changed in society for hundreds of years but the way in which it has been depicted in art has. Previously, traditional art meant that paintings would be highly decorative and complex pieces which marked the renaissance and baroque periods before newer art movements came about such as the Pre-Raphaelites, where artists were encouraged to centre in on a central figure which would normally be a glamorous woman sat by herself. JW Waterhouse was loosely connected to this art movement and he created paintings such as Tristan and Isolde.

Within the modern era art movements have become far more abstract and people's choices for images and pictures of love have changed considerably, with many going for simple digital ones that get their messages across in a very unsubtle way that fits into the much faster pace of society in general. E-cards have to a certain degree taken on traditional cards as a way of getting across romantic messages to a loved one but it is highly unlikely that they will ever actually replace them because printed cards suggest more of an effort has been made and this is important when receiving any romantic messages.

We can comfortably conclude that art and love have been close partners for many centuries, with artists tapping into the power of this emotion to produce impressive and memorable paintings that have also been greatly appreciated by the art mainstream public because of their own interest in this passionate emotion. The media continue to underline the importance of love to one's personal happiness and as such so much of people's behaviour in spent in and around finding or enjoying romance in various ways. People will go to extraordinary lengths in order to achieve the important feeling of love and so it is also highly appreciated from it's inclusion with in art.

Love Wallpaper

love wallpapers on your computer can really brighten up your day. There are many images to do with love that are guaranteed to make you smile. So many people are familiar with the heart and the bow and arrow as symbols of love towards one another that having these as your background can remind you of that special someone, any time of day. Love wallpapers for your desktop can also sport a loving message or quotation as well as loving images. These words can have powerful meanings or just simply say 'I love you' but one thing is for sure, each message will leave you feeling warm and happy inside. Hearts are a very versatile image, as many people will like to have these as their wallpaper without it being especially about love. They can be used as general images creating a fresh and funky picture.

The cupid with its bow and arrow is a typical type of love backgrounds, although you can now find the design in a range of different forms, such as cartoon or fine art. You can even find some love quotations and pictures with a touch of humour about them. Bashful cartoon teddy bears or a comic strip style wallpapers with a romantic but silly ending can make you laugh. Bringing such humour to a love story is a refreshing alternative to old fashioned pictures of love. Even jokes about love can be appealing to some, wanting a more comedy feel to their love backgrounds.

Valentine's Day is a time when many users of computers will change their desktop backgrounds. Love backgrounds will become most popular around this time as people tend to feel happy and loving and like to think about their loved ones. The different styles of wallpaper you can choose from include cute and cuddly animal pictures, exotic and colourful designs, scenes of natural beauty and well known poems and quotes from over the years.

There is no denying it; everybody wants to make their computer background more beautiful. Using the array of amazing art and creations available, you can bring your desktop to life. You can share the love by sending your favourite wallpapers to your friends or your loved ones so they can have a wallpaper to remind them of you. There are probably more love backgrounds available than any other category, so don't worry you will never get bored, plus you can switch and change your love backgrounds as and when you want to. You may even like to add personal photos to your love wallpapers, entwining your image with that of a beautiful scenic view or a funky colourful and modern design. Customising your wallpaper for your desktop means it will be unique; nobody else will have the same background as you do. Love wallpaper is always going to make you feel happy each and every time you turn on your computer, so get searching and find your special love backgrounds.

New NZ Choppers take to the Skies in Exercise:

A109s

The Defence Force's newest choppers will be soaring through the skies above the Waiouru Military Camp this week ahead of a major training exercise later in the year.

The helicopter transition unit (HTU), based at the Ohakea Air Force Base, will spend this week at Waiouru with three NH90s and two A109s helicopters to train with soldiers from Queen Alexandra's Mounted Rifles regiment.

The training will help prepare the helicopters for the Southern Katipo exercise being held in South Canterbury in November.

About 1000 army, navy and air force personnel will take part in the large-scale exercise, which will run over several 

weeks.

NH90

Click here for NZ NH90s video: Video of NH 90s

It was the first time such training had been undertaken with the helicopters.

''[We're here] to test out and train for our ability to deploy, away from our home base of Ohakea.

''The aim is to maintain and operate helicopters from an austere environment without the luxury of hangars and the day-to-day help we get.

This will help us build up procedures so we can deploy the aircraft within New Zealand and overseas.''

The unit was practising flying techniques, including low flying, troop carrying and drop-off and pickup techniques in complex terrain.

The NH90 was ''quite different'' from the Iroquois in what could be done with them, as it was able to deploy in more situations, cope with harsher environments and combat high-tech opposition, he said.

(Photos off net, News item Manawatu Standard)

Love Quotes

Many women including myself like to claim that the male segment of our population knows nothing about love and romance. African men in particular get a lot of criticism for been un-romantic and incapable of expressing their emotions. From personal experience I would say that this is not true, some of the most romantic men I have dated are African. However, what is romance really? I like to define it as the expression of love. In this article I define romance through the use of some of my favorite African love quotes. These African quotes give us a glimpse into African culture and views on life. They are a part of African history and show us that love and the expression of love are universal. So in defense of my romantic African brothers here are some African love sayings, enjoy them and for all the men out there feel free to use them this Valentines Day to show your beloved just how much you care.

Funny Quotes

Almost everyone today seems to be stressed out due to their family or their work pressure. While stress cannot really be eliminated, you can still try to negate its effects as much as possible using funny quotes. These quotes bring you a little laughter everyday which would certainly make your day a lot more manageable. Whenever you feel under a lot of pressure, try searching for a few humorous, stupid and silly quotes and read them to yourself. You would instantly feel a lot better about yourself.

These funny quotes would teach you to handle life with a little smile on your face. They would remind you that you should not take everything so seriously. People understand humor better than words and when words fail to describe what you feel, a good quote can sum it all up in a few words. At parties, you can break the ice and make people warm up to each other with a little dose of laughter.

With the internet, things have become easy so you would be able to find any type of funny quotes you want with just a click of the mouse.

Sad Quotes

Love is another important relationship to all people after friendship. Showing care as well as love to your beloved one will make you to enjoy, have fun, make you cry, depressed etc. Love has equal power that makes the people to show all sorts of feelings. This page will suit best to the readers who have experience in sorrows occurred in love. Some of the sad quotes about love that are going to be mentioned here will gain take you to the previous golden days before the sorrow started. These sad quotes will also help you in learning on purpose of life to live. The following are some of the sad quotes in love and they are:

1) Sadness can be said as the word that has got speechless expressions- People who are depressed with something will not have words to explain them because depression stops them in speaking.

2) Majority of the sadness' have various meanings- As mentioned before, sadness would have a very deep meaning and majority of them could be expressed in very few words.

3) Expressing unlimited love will result in possessiveness- This is one of the wonderful sad quotes and this is the main reason for the relationship to get break. Love is different from possessiveness, but possessiveness occurs only because of love. Showing too much care as well as love will result in relationship break-up at a short period of time. Even relationship break-up is also possible if no proper care or love is shown. At the same time, excess love will make each other uncomfortable and results in unwanted fights during the initial stage. Later on, silly fights will extend to major fights and chances are there for the relationship to get break.

4) It will be very painful when you do not know that the person whom you love is in love with you.

Quotes

Quotes are the sayings of Great Personalities. These are the guidelines given by our elders to guide us, advise us and to keep us on track in true meanings. Quotes show the depth and broadness of the person saying those words. Each and every word in a quote is rich and relish with the scholastic information. These great personalities are still alive in us because of their great quotes.

When we search on Google by typing the word "Quotes", a long list will appear where you will find different categories of quotes such as love quotes, intelligent quotes, quotes about life, etc. Various sites are there where you can find thousands of quotes on different categories. Some sites do provide a list of sayings by some specific personality like Shakespeare, Einstein etc.

The most famous category of quotes is love quotes. The reason behind is that we don't consider ourselves expert enough to describe our feelings in the form of words while those personalities did that for us. They said thousands of words in single quote so we find it better to use their quote rather than inventing ours.

The second most searched category is the funny quotes. This stuff gets updated daily as lot of people can add their own quotes and in our daily life we find lot of funny things that can be put in the form of a quote. It is the category where you will find very few names of known personalities. Funny quotes play an important role indeed. These can bring a smile on the faces of tire and tensed people. By providing a compiled list of funny quotes, you may add a share in bring smiles on to the faces.

Funny quotes are often about the normal routine of life that we never care to look by that angle. But when we read the quote, we find that incident to be happened many times in our daily routine. Moreover, the quote which is closer to our daily life has great impact and makes us laugh more. So if we will be told some joke which is not related to our lives or is about the thing that we don't know then it may not bring even a single sign of smile as we won't be able to get the taste.

But the care need to be taken when you search about the quotes as you may find some wrong one which will be quoted with a name while actually it won't be from that personality. So consult two or three sites if you are quoting in some sensitive publication.