Christmas Gift Ideas For Parents

Finding those perfect Christmas gift ideas can be challenging. You want the gift to say I am thinking of you, I know what you like (this is not a generic re-gift) and you want the gift to impress, if only just a little bit. Yet, when it comes to buying gifts for our parents, it can be challenging.

Most parents seem to have everything they want. Most parents also have enough money to buy what they want. Where does that leave us in the shopping department? Sometimes, it leaves us at a lost. But if we really think about those gifts before we go shopping, we can come up with some really interesting presents that parents are sure to love. Here are a few examples to get you started.

Gift

Hobbies: Does mom like to sew? Does dad like to fish or hunt? You may think they have all the tools for their favorite hobbies. But think, again. New equipment and new stuff are always coming onto the market. Buy dad that new lure and reel? Buy mom some new patterns or even a newer, fancier sewing machine with all the extras. Do not settle on buying more of the hobby products you know they all ready have.

Christmas Gift Ideas For Parents

Food and other treats: Parents are like everyone else, they love to eat and they have their favorite treats. Why not check out the many gift baskets available both in stores and online (that can be delivered right to your door or your parents' door)? You can buy these food gift baskets that contain many fine luxury items such as: dark chocolates, fine wines, gourmet cheeses and crackers. Plus, you add tempting breads, nuts, muffins, cookies and cakes to those baskets. Be sure the basket itself is nice. Mom may want to reuse it for decorating or storage purchases.

Useful services: Does dad hate to mow? Is mom tired of washing those windows? You could hire a service to come in and do those chores for mom and dad. They can be assigned to come as often as you can afford or as often as mom and dad prefers. Imagine the burden it will lift off all their shoulders to see the work being done, without them having to do it?

Mini-vacations or trips to the day spa: Would dad enjoy a mini vacation, near a golf course? Would mom like a mini vacation in a day spa? With a little bit of searching, you are sure to find both entertaining and relaxing treats for both of them. Imagine their pleasure of getting away and doing something that makes them happy. Do not worry about not having anything to wrap in a pretty box. You can always wrap the reservation tickets.

Remember when it comes to buying Christmas gifts for your parents, actually think about your parents and what they would like, not what they need or what is expected. If you do that, then the ideas should start flowing.

Christmas Gift Ideas For Parents

Jeffrey Meier at Jam727 Enterprises at http://www.thearticlehome.com blog offers even more detailed information on a wide variety of topics.

Holiday Gift Giving: Recipes for Homemade Christmas Trail Mixes

Homemade Christmas trail mix is the perfect stocking stuffer, teacher gift, mailman gift, or family gift. Trail mix recipes vary in specific ingredients, but generally they contain cereal, nuts, chocolate chips, dried fruit, and at times, small candies like M&M's or Heath Bits.

It's easy to make up large batches of trail mix at one time, which means you can make plenty for everyone on your list in one day. It's much easier than baking and is a nice switch from the traditional cookies and fruitcake.

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Package your homemade trail mix in tins, cellophane bags, or small paint cans for an interesting and fun presentation. Add a small card with all of the ingredients listed, just in case you're not sure about potential allergies.

Holiday Gift Giving: Recipes for Homemade Christmas Trail Mixes

Homemade Christmas Trail Mix Recipes

Christmas Tree Trail Mix

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees Fahrenheit and grease a jellyroll pan or cookie sheet with sides. Also, grease the sides of a large bowl. Set aside.

8 cups popcorn

1 cup walnuts, toasted

1/3 cup real maple syrup

teaspoon cinnamon

teaspoon kosher salt

Pinch of baking soda

1 cup dried cranberries

Pop the popcorn according to the directions. Mix the toasted walnuts and popcorn together in the prepared bowl.

In a saucepan, combine the syrup, cinnamon, and salt. Set to medium heat and allow the mixture to come to a boil and let it cook for about 4 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove the pan from the heat. Add the baking soda and blend well (the mixture should have a creamy consistency).

Let the mixture cool slightly and then pour it all over the popcorn and nuts. Make sure the popcorn and nuts are thoroughly covered.

Turn everything out onto the prepared cookie sheet and distribute evenly. Bake for 15 minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit or until the mix is 'dry'. Cool for 20 minutes. Add the cranberries last.

Christmas Party Trail Mix

Yogurt covered raisins or pretzels

Peanuts, walnuts, or your favorite nut

Almonds

Chopped dates

Yellow raisins

Dried oranges, cranberries, or apricots

Corn Chex cereal

Toss all of the ingredients into a large bowl and mix. Take the entire bowl to the office Christmas party or divide it up into smaller containers to give as gifts to family and friends. Easy and delicious!

Holiday Snack Mix

Dry cereal - your choice

M&M's, Heath Bits, or your choice of small candy

Raisins

Dried fruit - apples, bananas, apricots, cranberries, etc.

Granola or oat bran

Chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, or white chips

Mini marshmallows

Pretzels

Toss the ingredients together and then divide into mason jars, tins, coffee can, or any other interesting container idea that comes to you.

Packaging Your Presents

Keep an eye out all year at garage sales, dollar stores and sales at World Market to find interesting containers and canning jars to store and gift your recipes. Add a bow or ribbon and the recipe and I'm sure the recipients will appreciate such an attractive and tasty gift.

Trail mix is so easy to make at home! The colors and textures are fantastic from a presentation standpoint too. Try different methods and ingredients in your trail mix and maybe you'll come up with your very own version of homemade Christmas trail mix. Serve it at family functions, give as gifts, or munch on it while you make your homemade Christmas cards. No matter how you serve it, trail mix is the perfect gift.

Holiday Gift Giving: Recipes for Homemade Christmas Trail Mixes

Shellie Gardner is the owner of Christmas Light source, a great place to find Christmas Lights. Christmas Light Source is a one stop shopping website for all your Christmas lighting needs. From traditional to LED lights to hardware and every thing in between, they have everything for holiday lighting decor as well as tips, tricks, videos and do it yourself projects.

How To Choose The Best Keyboard For You

In this material we shall discuss how to choose the best keyboard for you. I get lots of emails from visitors to my web site asking what keyboard they should choose. They often want to know whether they should choose one particular keyboard over another. Well choosing the best keyboard for you does not have to be difficult at all. As long as you know and understand the features that you really need, it's a simple matter of buying a keyboard that comes with these features. And there's no need to pay extra for features that you will never have use for.

Here's a checklist for choosing the best keyboard for you. Understand what these features are all about and you can choose your keyboard according to them. These features are as follows:

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Professional piano players, serious pianists and piano students should buy 88 key keyboards. But if portability is an issue, the best keyboard for you would probably be a 61 or 76 key keyboard. If you're looking to save money, a keyboard with less keys may be your best bet.

How To Choose The Best Keyboard For You

Personally I think touch response is very important. In fact, I wouldn't buy a keyboard that didn't come with this feature. With touch response, your keyboard will feel and sound like an acoustic piano. The more pressure you apply the louder your keyboard will sound, and the less pressure, the softer. Some keyboards take touch sensitivity one step further with a feature called Graded Hammer Effect where the keys are heavier in the bass and lighter in the higher registers of the keyboard just like an acoustic piano.

Knowing what kind of display you really want makes it easy to choose the right keyboard for you. It's really about personal preferences. You have various choices when it comes to a display. These include color display, backlit display, one that displays lyrics and score, or even a 640x480 dot matrix display. Or how about a keyboard that comes with a touch screen?

Do you need a keyboard that comes with recording capability or not? There are many options available from simple 2 track sequencers to 16 track sequencers. The more tracks the better. These are great for practice as well as professional arrangements and compositions.

Yamaha keyboards come with a feature called Yamaha Education Suite that is very good for students. If you're buying a keyboard for a child or student, you may want to buy one with this feature. It actually teaches one how to play the keyboard with its various keyboard lessons.

Polyphony is another important feature. Polyphony has to do with the number of notes that can play together simultaneously. If your playing is such that you're only using one or two voices at a time you can get away with low polyphony. But if you're doing complex sequences it becomes an issue, and the more polyphony the better. Polyphony choices include 16 or less, 32 to 64, 98-128, and 128 and over.

If you're a student you will find Yamaha's guide lamp very useful. With this feature the keys light up as you play, indicating where you should place your fingers.

Understanding what terms like GM, XF, XG, and XG Lite stand for will make it easier to choose the best keyboard for you. Other standard features include metronome, tuning and transpose.

If want to harness the power of the Internet your best keyboard should be one that connects directly to the Internet. Some Yamaha keyboards come with a feature called Internet Direct Connect (IDC) that allows you to do just that.

Whether you're a beginner, professional, teacher, gift giver, religious, or simply want a piano replacement, choosing the right keyboard for you shouldn't be difficult at all. As long as you know what to look for the rest comes easy.

How To Choose The Best Keyboard For You

Mantius Cazaubon offers a guide to help you choose the best music keyboard for you on his site Yamaha-Keyboard-Guide.com. Visit Yamaha Keyboard Guide.com for Yamaha and other music keyboard reviews.

An Introduction To Teacher Education

A teacher's job is a highly respected and specialized field, be it teaching kindergarten, grade school, high school, college, or post-graduate courses. Teachers are necessary in all fields of education, and in order to be teachers themselves, they need to be educated by experts in their desired fields.

Teacher education is a diverse field, covering numerous subjects and various methods of teaching. Teaching in any field is demanding and is a challenging task. Beyond regular education, some people choose to follow specialized paths, such as early childhood education or special education. These teachers need extra educational background in order to be certified to deal with their specific students. These teachers need to have extensive patience and be friendly with toddlers. Innovative play way methods need to be adopted to ensure continuing interest among kids.

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Another specialized educational field is Montessori teaching. This style of teaching appears to be simple, but in reality, it is highly demanding. As this is a specific style of teaching, aimed at gifted or advanced students, with a degree of flexibility and customization not found in traditional curriculums, teachers will need to learn the best ways to work within the Montessori structure, and apply their educational background to this style of teaching.

An Introduction To Teacher Education

Elementary or primary school is the backbone for all people's education. Thus, these teachers have to be able to convey basic principles, such as reading, spelling, writing and math, as well as cover basic science, social studies, and sometimes foreign language courses. Of course, all of this has to be taught in an age-appropriate fashion. Elementary teacher education focuses on methods that work best for young students.

High school teachers face challenges elementary school teachers usually do not. Because they teach teenagers who are dealing with the issues of adolescence and can often "act out," teachers need to learn how to engage and motivate this difficult age group. Subjects are taught in greater depth in high school, as well, so the teacher will need more specific knowledge. They also sometimes have to be ready to compensate for any gaps in elementary education, particularly deficiencies in the basics - reading, writing and math.

Ultimately, the goal of teacher education is to provide future teachers - or teachers looking to further develop their teaching ability - with the skills they need to convey essential information to their students. The training they will require depends on many factors, including the age group, subjects, and type of school they will be teaching in.

An Introduction To Teacher Education

Teachers [http://www.i-Teachers.com] provides detailed information on Teachers, Teacher Education, Teacher Resources, Teacher Gifts and more. Teachers is affiliated with Teaching Degrees.

How to Make an Inexpensive Framed Chalkboard Or Bulletin Board

For years, I admired those framed chalkboards & bulletin boards, but The Budget Diet girl inside of me couldn't justify spending +! So, I figured out how to make them for less than , and they make perfect teacher gifts! Here's how to make your budget friendly framed chalkboard or bulletin board:

#1. Find an old picture frame of any size...these are easy to find at garage sales, flea markets, Goodwill or thrift stores for just a few dollars! Also...always be on the lookout for a "free curbside treasure"...a.k.a. the trash!

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#2. Take your frame to Michael's or Hobby Lobby and have them cut a piece of foam board to fit.

How to Make an Inexpensive Framed Chalkboard Or Bulletin Board

#3. If you're making a chalkboard...take the foam board home & paint it with chalkboard paint. Next...return to Michael's or Hobby Lobby and have them insert the foam board into the frame & finish the back.

#4. If you're making a bulletin board...buy a piece of burlap & take it to Michael's or Hobby Lobby...they will mount it on the foam board, insert the foam board into the frame & finish the back.

#5. Have you child write "Have a Great Summer" on the chalkboard OR write a thank you note to the teacher & pin it to the bulletin board. If the chalkboard or bulletin board is a gift for a friend or family member, simply write a note on the chalkboard or pin a note to the frame.

Once you've mastered making these...you might just give them to all your friends & family! Just remember, always be on the lookout for old frames!

How to Make an Inexpensive Framed Chalkboard Or Bulletin Board

* What is The Budget Diet?
http://www.TheBudgetDiet.com is a diet for your wallet...not your waistline! You'll discover a collection of Shape-Up Tips to help you slim down your daily spending! Whether you need to cut back a lot or just a little, you're sure to find plenty of Shape Up Tips that your family can live with. Challenge yourself to incorporate my top 5 Shape Up Tips in your life, and subscribe to my free Shape Up Tip of the day and you'll soon find your family saving at least 0 a month! So, let's get this diet started!