Jessica Alba Models House the Eco-Way

Jessica Alba, a popular actress who is certainly someone who can afford a lot of the high-priced furniture and home furnishings today, is someone whom you would least expect to go for used items. But considering two hot topics today involved ECO, eco-friendly and economical, she is modeling her new home according to the logical way of living.

Apparently, she is thinking wiser. Old stuff placed in homes such as antiques to which people seem to be throwing away on sales is a common trend. But as they say, one’s trash is the gold of another and that is how most of the furnishings Alba has today has gone so far.

Interior decorator Kari Whitman scours antiques store, flea markets and a client's existing inventory before even thinking about new furniture. "The craftsmanship is often better in older pieces," says Whitman. "For Jessica Alba's house we bought almost every piece used."

(Source) InStyle

Renovate your Home the Eco-friendly Way

One of the wonderful things about all of the attention that the environment has received recently is the fact that eco-friendly living has been at the top of the minds of many of the people around. For that reason, eco-friendly lifestyles have started to become considerations of major corporations and that in turn has led to a lot of them cleaning up their act and becoming more eco-friendly in the way they do things. They’ve also started making eco-friendly products, which in turn have made it easier for people to lead eco-friendly lifestyles.

One example of that is renovation. Renovating your home used to be one of the most wasteful activities you could engage in because of all of the materials you didn’t recycle and then all of the materials that you used up afterwards. However, nowadays there are tips for maintaining a lot of your house instead of renovating it as well as a number of tips on materials and techniques that you can use for an eco-friendly renovation. There are many different websites that have articles on this topic, but Scotiabank has certainly got a good one with their “Eco-Friendly Tips for Renovating your Home.”

Rise in Apartment Rentals Looms

Thanks to the celebrated foreclosures and failure to pay mortgages going around in the whole world today, what alternatives does a person have as far as being able to get a decent place to live these days for him and his family? The answer is quite simple…RENTALS.

Just like the traditional upstart yuppie, not all people are expected to afford the high prices in the millions for current real estate offerings in the market today. Normally, renting out an apartment or a condo unit is the first thing to do, trying to set aside savings from daily income for the meantime.

But there are people who thought that they could do the same, paying mortgages in installment and then settling their mortgage debt in about 25 years or depending on their agreement with financial institutions. Apparently some have failed. This has become a significant part of why groups as Lehmans Brothers and Morgan Chase are in the red. Due to unsettled debts and the controversial declaration of individual bankruptcy, many of these borrowers got off the hook and the government’s bailout plan aims to overrule this area.

This is why I view the bailout plan a high risk move. It is bad as an economic analysis is concerned. While you are helping banks and financial institutions from their debt drowning problems, you are also promoting further damage for incapable people to invest and not worry about failure to settle their financial obligations to the bank.

The financial economy is indeed falling and while the intentions on the outside feature of this financial bailout by Bush and his government is mean to do good, it is really causing more harm. So who is to blame? The credit departments of these financial institutions perhaps? Who else? They are responsible for approving loans are they not???