Guest Post: Bringing Out the Breast in You- Why Your Underwear Is As Important As Your Outerwear

Image: sexontube

We all have that one pair of knickers that have somehow remained in the drawer for about five years. Still worn now and again; regardless of the fact that they look like they've (only just) survived a nuclear holocaust. And you’ll know too that the feeling when you put them on isn't one of confidence, or eroticism. It’s a feeling of necessity, and businesslike functionality. From the outset of the day, there’s no element of pride or excitement as you shimmy on your outfit over the top of a delicious lacy two piece that nips in your waist and pushes your chest and makes you look and feel –fantastic.  
Why?
The fact of the matter is, that wearing something a little daring underneath a regular ensemble makes you walk a little taller and smile a little brighter, knowing that the little secret under your blouse would make a delightful surprise to anyone who was lucky enough to see it. Moreover, you wear it because you know that you look good. True beauty does come from the inside, but there’s no shame in pushing a little bit of it out and up.
How?
Good lingerie needn't break the bank. Invest in a properly fitted, pretty bra and for each bra buy four pairs of matching knickers. You needn't bust out a new set every day; just do the knicker-switch. Swap pantyhose a few days a week for hold up stockings and team with a pair of sensible but dramatic heels. This’ll improve your posture no end, and your pins will look simply divine.
If you’re looking into impressing your partner, maybe try something daring, like a corset with a suspender belt; for the more vanilla amongst us maybe a demure negligee. Then toss your clothes to the ground and watch them try not to choke on their own tongue.
When?
From day to day, a good bra and panties will set you off in the morning with a good mood. It’s as simple as silk, lace, and a good mirror.
For special occasions (for you and your partner) ensure that whatever you’re wearing makes you feel comfortable and confident. If you’re trussed up like a Christmas turkey and you feel ridiculous, chances are it’ll ruin any kind of ambiance you were looking to create. It can be liberating to let loose and forget your inhibitions. And ladies, we spend approximately one third of our lives in the bedroom. Wouldn't you rather spend them ruffling the sheets rather than straightening them out?
If you have any advice for newbies regarding rocking sexy lingerie, let us know with the comment box below! We want to know your loves, hates, favorites and guilty pleasures.

Susannah Perez has a passion for fashion and beauty, as well as the science behind it. She has an obsession with lingerie and loves any excuse to dress up!

Guest Post: Beyond the Kitchen: 6 Household Uses for Cornstarch

Have you ever wondered what else you can with all the seldom-used dry goods filling your kitchen shelves? Commonly used as a thickening agent in soups, pudding, and sauces, cornstarch is found in most kitchen pantries, but its uses go way beyond cooking. Save money on cleaning, pest control, and even art supplies with these useful ideas for cornstarch. Who knew the stuff could do all this!

1. Clean windows
Say goodbye to pricey, toxic window cleaners. Simply mix 1 teaspoon of cornstarch and 1 teaspoon of liquid dish soap with 1 gallon of water. Mix well and apply to windows with a sponge. Squeegee off excess for a streak-free shine.
2. Polish silver
Old becomes new again when you mix up a paste of 2 parts cornstarch to 1 part water. Apply using a soft washcloth and let dry. Buff to a shine using another clean washcloth, and you’re ready for a classy dinner party.
3. Iron clothing
Military creases are easy to achieve if you are out of spray starch. Mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch with 1 pint of cold water in a spray bottle and shake well until cornstarch is dissolved. Spray on clothes and iron as usual for a perfectly pressed look.
4. Get grease stains out of fabrics
No need to throw out a nice shirt because you were clumsy at dinner and got some oil on it. Start by blotting as much grease as you can out of the fabric, then sprinkle some cornstarch over the stain. Let sit for ten minutes, then shake it off. Launder as usual.
5. Keep the roaches at bay
Cockroaches are said to be able to live through nuclear wars, so what is an effective, easy  way to treat them? Here’s a solution: mix 1 part cornstarch to 1 part plaster of Paris. Spread this mixture in areas and crevices where cockroaches are found. The roaches will eat the mixture and die. Don’t forget to vacuum up the dead bugs!
6. Make finger paint
Battle boredom and get the kids excited about a finger-painting project with cornstarch paint. Mix ¼ cup of cornstarch with 2 cups of water. Boil the mixture until it has a slightly thick consistency, like paint. Pour into small dishes and add food coloring to each dish. Mix well and you’re ready for a fun (but messy!) afternoon. Bonus: cornstarch finger paint is non-toxic.

Youa V. writes about about baking tips and family recipes for Become A Better Baker, a guide for bakers of all ages and levels. Become A Better Baker offers dozens of instructional videos, delicous recipes, and great tips for baking with kids.

Citations:

• Image Credit: ACH Food Companies

Guest Post: Deck the Halls with Baby Keepsakes: Some 1st Christmas Gift Ideas

That first Christmas is a special time of year for the entire family. So while the Jolly Old Elf is busy preparing to stuff presents under the Christmas tree, there are plenty of creative holiday-themed baby keepsakes you can make yourself or buy to remember and cherish your time together.  

First Christmas Ornament

Pick out a special ornament for your tree this year to remember your baby’s first Christmas.
For those “do-it-yourself-ers,” simply cut out a cute photo of your little angel and, using a glue stick, glue the cutouts to an ornament. Consider dressing up Santa’s Little Helper in a special elf or reindeer costume for the photo.
Once you’ve glued the photo to your ornament, you’ll want to add the year with a marker or felt tip pen.
You could also decorate your tree with a digital image of your little one printed on an ornament. Most stores that print digital photos also have special printing options, such as personalized ornaments. All you have to do is upload the image at the store or through the store’s Web site, and they’ll reproduce the image on an ornament.
And while you’re at it, consider making this a holiday tradition the entire family can enjoy!

Personalized Christmas Plate

If you want to start a new holiday tradition for your baby’s first Christmas, personalized holiday plates are the perfect keepsake.
Most stores that print digital photos will not only make ornaments, many can also make special personalized holiday plates with your uploaded images. You can then get a stand to display your little cherub for all your family and friends to see!
Or, if you want to make sure Santa has his fill of milk and cookies on the big night, consider getting a customized plate. Check your local gift shops, or go online to find places that will make a special Christmas keepsake for your baby that has his or her name on the plate.

Baby’s First Christmas Photo Album

You’ll never want to forget that first Christmas with your little one. For every holiday-themed milestone moment – like the first time your baby sat on Santa’s lap, or that first Christmas morning – snap a photo so you can cherish the memories forever.
And for the tech savvy, consider downloading your photos onto a digital frame. Pick out your favorite holiday photos of your toddler, then set the photos to run on a continuous loop to set the holiday mood!

Christmas Mobile

You can find a Christmas mobile for your little angel at numerous stores this time of year, including some that will play holiday music. And if your local stores don’t carry one, you can find one online.
Or if you really want to get creative, try making your own Christmas mobile. You can go online to find websites that will give you instructions, and the characters to print and cut out. You can personalize it, too, with photos of mom, dad and baby, and instead of using small batons or wooden sticks, consider using branches from a fir tree for a special Yuletide keepsake.

Natural Baby Bedding

Keeping your angel happy and healthy is so important. As the Arabian proverb says, “He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.” So when searching for Christmas-themed baby keepsakes, consider buying natural baby bedding. Organic materials are all natural. That means, no hazardous chemicals are used, the material is fire retardant, and it has natural antifungal and antimicrobial properties.
Other Baby’s First Christmas Keepsake Ideas Include:

• Elf booties

• Stocking with his or her name embroidered on it

• Christmas onsie

• Little Santa hat

• Personalized blanket with your baby’s name embroidered on it

• Disney Princess jewelry

Martha Marks is a busy mom of two who also loves to provide online shopping gifts for special events of all kinds. On her website www.totalcomfortandjoy.com, she has beautiful gift ideas for babies and toddlers and recommends quality pieces that will last for generations.

Guest Post: The Art of "Slickdealing"

The Art of “SlickDealing”

From the perspective of an experienced bargain hunter

Bio:

I call myself a “Slickdealer” because I don’t believe myself to be cheap but rather frugal (a term that a lot of people mistakenly think means being cheap).  The dictionary defines frugal as the following:

 “Economical in use or expenditure; prudently saving or sparing; not wasteful”

It’s not that I don’t want to buy high quality items, it’s that I would like to buy such items at the cheapest price possible, thereby being economical and not wasteful. I have been practicing the art of ‘SlickDealing’ for many years and it has saved countless dollars! 

Example:

My best example of SlickDealing is a story from when I was 10 years old.  The new Tony Hawk Pro Skater game had just been released for N64 and cost a whopping $60. My mom and I went to the local GameStop to take a look at what they had and, of course, the game wasn’t any cheaper.  I didn’t want my mom to spend that much money on a video game that I knew would be cheaper in a few months, so I started wandering the store looking for another game to buy. After a few minutes I noticed a sign on the wall that read, “trade in any 5 of these games and get a free game of your choice!”  Attached to the sign was a list of eligible games for the promotion.  I began to wonder if any of the games on the list were on sale at the shop for a low, discounted price. Low and behold, this Gamestop had all of the games on the list. I walked around the store collecting the five cheapest games on the list. After around 10 minutes of price comparing, I had a total of around $37 in used games, all of which were eligible for the promotion. I walked up to the cashier and purchased all of them. When the transaction was finished I thanked the cashier and said, “I would like to exchange these for the new Tony Hawk game using the promotion on the wall.” The look on the cashier’s face was priceless. His next move was to call over the manager, who confirmed that I was allowed to do this. So the manager finished the transaction and I walked out holding my new Tony Hawk game for a grand total of $37. As I walked out of the store, I could see out of the corner of my eye the cashier walking around the store removing all of the promotional signs!

Purpose:

            In this series, I hope to show you the steps and measures that I routinely go through when I’m looking to buy a certain product or service in hopes that I can help you get the best bang for your buck on whatever you are looking to buy.  It basically boils down to 3 general steps:

1.      Quality Research

2.      Merchant Research

3.      Price Research

You might have noticed that the word research is in every one of these steps.  That is no coincidence; SlickDealing is pretty much all research!

Erik Johnson is the promotional manager for SuperheroDen.

Guest Post: What is SEO? (Search Engine Optimization)

Search Engine Optimization, also known as SEO, is the ongoing process of making web pages rank highly in a search engine’s search results for certain search terms. SEO refers to the optimization or organic search results, which are not to be confused with paid search results. While there are many different tasks that an SEO must do to make a webpage rank highly within a search engine’s results, the various tasks can be categorized within three main areas: structural website optimization, content optimization, and off-site optimization. While I will be discussing each of these three areas if discipline in later articles, this article should serve to give a very basic understanding of what SEO is.

To begin, you may be wondering why, or how, SEO exists. In order to answer this question, we should first acknowledge, at least briefly, how search engines work.

First, search engines gather data by crawling web pages online and evaluating these pages based on a long list of criteria, also known as ranking signals. Depending on how well a given web page meets each individual criterion, that web page is given a certain ranking within the search results for a given set of search terms.

By understanding how search engines work and understanding the major criteria for ranking highly in search, webmasters can begin to optimize their webpages for high search rankings. While we can thank those who have dedicated themselves to investigating the search signals and testing their hypotheses, the ability to perform SEO is actually a natural side effect of how search engines work.

At this point, I’m sure many of you are wondering how SEO works. While this requires a very in-depth explanation that I will give in future blog posts, I felt it appropriate to give a very brief explanation here.

Search Engine Optimization begins within the code of the page you are trying to optimize. The webpage should be properly tagged in order for the search engine to know what the page is about. This involves having appropriate titles for the page as well as having tags within the page’s code that tell the search engine that the page is relevant for search results.

Next, the page needs to have good, substantial text content. This content should be original and should be focused on a single topic. If you wanted your website to rank in search results for five major search terms, it would be best to discuss each term on five different pages (and try to optimize each page for a certain term), as opposed to discussing five major terms on a single page. Remembering this will help you to create good, focused content.

Last, SEO requires you to make sure that other related websites are signaling to the search engines that your webpage is relevant, and worthy, to rank for a given search term. This is done primarily through obtaining links from external sites to the page being optimized. While this aspect of SEO requires an explanation longer than a single sentence, this should provide a general understanding of what off site elements are necessary for rankings.

Hopefully this article has provided you with a general understanding of what SEO is and how it works. Please leave questions in the comments section and I will try my best to answer! 

George Fox is a marketer for SuperheroDen.

It's SEO Saturday!!

Each Saturday I'll be featuring a series of posts that deal with Search Engine Optimization. Many of these posts are guest posts from some really great bloggers. Hopefully you'll learn a lot from them :) 

Guest Post Welcome!

Recently I've decided to add a few new weekly features to my blog. My goal is to eventually have a theme for each day of the week. For right now I'm starting with 2 :) Tuesdays will be "Trying to Conceive". Each week I'll be posting articles filled with information, resources, and products to help women that are struggling to get pregnant. 

On Saturdays I will be offering articles relating to SEO (search engine optimization). While on first glance SEO is really easy. Then you actually start trying to do it and soon realize it's not nearly as easy as it seems. I'm hoping to offer articles that will help anyone trying to figure out how this stuff works. 

While I am fairly knowledgeable in both there areas, I am in no way an expert. So I've decided to open my blog up for guest posts on these topics. I don't charge for these posts,  and allow the writer to include 2 links back to their website. The only thing I don't allow is affiliate links. If you like to write about either of these topics please email me at tianna58 at gmail dot com. Or you can contact me through my Facebook page. 

I hope that everyone likes these new topics to my page. I'm really excited and hope this works out as well in practice as it does in my head lol