Category: sponsored post

**This is a sponsored post written by me for client mentioned**

Have you ever heard of Japanese Ikebana?  I sure hadn’t until I came across the book, Japanese Ikebana for Every Season by Yuji Ueno and Rie Imai.  The cover of the book shows beautiful and interesting plant arrangements.  I say plant because it’s not just flowers, it could be vines, bushes, just about any plant it seems.  The authors are highly qualified on the subject.  Rie Imai is a japanese lifestyle coordinator whose main focus is interior design and flowers.  The other author, Yuji Ueno, is a floral artists.

You might be wondering what Japanese Ikebana is, I  know I was.  The idea I get from it is that you use a few flowers and plants and arrange them in understated containers to decorate your home.   That is very simplified coming from someone who is not an expert.  The book goes on to tell you how you can arrange them, how to stabilize flowers, what kinds of plants to use, and how to select the flowers for your arrangement.  You can see samples of the book on Amazon.  The pictures are gorgeous and makes me feel like I could actually do this.  I would love to learn some simple ways to decorate my home, wouldn’t you?  As I’m pouring through the sample pages I start thinking of ideas.  I have some beautiful tiger lilies that bloom in the spring I’d love to try to make arrangements for my home with those.  But what container to use?  I bet old mason jars would be helpful.  Maybe dusting them with some glitter.  Then I think maybe I’m going overboard.  I guess I’d have to leave it to the experts in the book to guide me.

Another thing that appeals to me about this book is that, in creating these arrangements, you don’t need a lot of money.  You can use containers from around the house and gather plants/flowers from outside.  If you have a flower garden the arrangements seem like they could be endless.   I found this great picture as an example:

Have you ever tried Japanese Ikebana?  Have you heard of it before this post? I encourage you to check out the book on Amazon.  If nothing else, just look at the gorgeous pictures.  This would make a great coffee table book too!

**sponsored post**

 I was 17 years old.  I had my drivers license.  I had an orthodontist appointment.  It also happened to be my parent’s wedding anniversary date.  My parents had let me take the car to school so I could go to my orthodontist appointment right after .   I decided I would drive back to town and pick my parents up an anniversary card.  I bought it and drove up 11th Street.  There is a 4 way intersection. There are only stop signs coming up and down , not for the main road that crosses over.  The curbs were painted yellow and people aren’t supposed to park too far to the end but they do anyway.  I couldn’t see to my left, and I needed to turn left.

It was raining.  Inched forward a little to see if I could see around the car to make a left.  I still couldn’t see.  Inched forward a little more.   I tried to see through the windows of the parked car and it didn’t look like there was a car coming.  I look back on this moment and often think I should have just made a right instead, and went a different way.   A car was coming down the main road pretty fast.  The speed limit on that road is 35 mph.  I saw him as I was half way out onto the road.  He hit his brakes.  You could hear the tires squealing  He hit me on the drivers side.

My dad picked me up to take me home.  I really expected my parents to be mad. They were actually more concerned and I guess relieved that I was ok.  I handed them the anniversary card I bought.  My dad said “We’ll have to save this, probably the most expensive anniversary card we’ll ever get”  He was trying to break the tension with everything going on.  I remember going to school the next day and not feeling quite right.  My gym teacher, (who also happened to be the first aid instructor) pulled me out of gym class and told me sit out because she thought I was still in shock.

My dad told me that when he talked the cop, the cop had told him to go easy on me.  He said there’s lots of accidents in that intersection.   For many years I wondered if we could have done something to make that intersection better.  We’re not the type of people to sue but if the cop knew that it was a bad intersection, I had to wonder if we couldn’t have talked to a lawyer to get the town to make that intersection better.  That intersection is unchanged since my accident. There’s still part of me that things I should go to a city council meeting and bring it up.  Shock can be serious for some. I had wondered if it would have been worth it to talk to Graves injury accident attorney.  A friend that lives in Fort Pierce Florida had told me about them.  I wonder if it would have let the town know that I was serious about wanting them to fix that intersection.  If there had in fact, been lots of accidents there as the cop had said, I like to think that others would have agreed with me.

The information in this post was brought to you buy graveinjury.com

**sponsored post**

If you’re a senior in high school you’ve probably already been looking into colleges. If you’re currently enrolled in college then you already know.   College is a big expense but is definitely a good investment.  There are lots of expenses involved when talking about college including the cost of textbooks.  I think it’s absurd how much college textbooks cost but most of them you have to have.  Some of them you’ll only use for a couple months and probably never look at again. I have my textbooks from college just gathering dust up in my attic.  They’re about 13 or 14 years old now so I doubt they’d be any good to anyone except maybe as kindling.  I can honestly say there are some I never opened again after a certain semester was over.

Have you ever priced out a new college textbook?  Some of them a hundreds of dollars.  No kidding.  Even if you get used ones from the campus book store, they’re still pretty expensive.  So what is the alternative?  You have to have the books right?  Consider renting college textbooks.  Renting college textbooks from campusbookrentals.com lets you save 40-80% off bookstore prices.  That’s big savings.  To find out more about how renting books from campusbookrentals.com works, check out this video:

Free shipping both ways, flexible renting periods, you’re allowed to highlight in the rented textbooks, well this just sounds like a good deal to me.  It does get better though.  When you rent books from campusbookrentals.com they donate to Operation Smile.  Operation Smile is a medical charity that works around the world with children that have facial deformities like cleft palates and cleft lips.  Medical professionals provide their service free of charge and train doctors in poorer countries so that more children can be helped.  Just doing quick general searches I see all types of textbooks on the site for nursing, business, law, and lots more.  I even did a search for Occupational Therapy books which is what I have my degree in.  They have those too.

If that’s not enough to make you want to check out their site, you should also read about their Rent Back program.  If you’ve already dished out the cash to buy those outrageously priced textbooks, don’t worry, there’s an option for you too.  When you’re done with your textbooks you can rent them to other students and earn some of your money back. Every time your book is rented, you get paid!  So really, if you’re book is in demand you have the potential to earn all your money back and then some.

Using campusbookrentals.com and rentback.com are great options in saving money on college textbooks.

**sponsored post**