3 Ways LED Lights Are Better Than Ever

The last 15 years have seen the biggest advancements in lighting since Thomas Edison brought his incandescent bulb to the market. Lightbulbs are now smart enough to listen to our voices and promote a better night’s sleep. Perhaps the most helpful advancement in lighting is the improved quality of LEDs. Today’s high-quality LEDs deliver impressive energy savings — near 90% — compared with incandescent bulbs, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. LEDs are also driving a lighting revolution with smaller sizes, improved brightness and wide-ranging colors.

Each of these advancements creates opportunities to illuminate your house in great new ways, making this a perfect time to rethink your home’s lighting.

1. Smaller Size

LEDs can be as small as the head of a pin, and this allows us to light our homes more discreetly and with more precision than ever. LED strips can be hidden inside cabinets, drawers, closet rods, shelves and just about any place you can imagine. We can place light where it is needed instead of attempting to fill a room with a broad wash of light that often causes glare. 

The small size of today’s LEDs also makes adding cove lighting to homes easier than ever. A few strips of LED lights tucked into a ceiling cove can make a classic ceiling feature even more dramatic.

Smaller recessed downlights are another result. It is now possible to get everything you need from a series of 1- or 2-inch downlights instead of the 6- or 8-inch cans of decades past. Many homeowners love the less cluttered ceiling that results.

2. Brighter Light

While LEDs have become smaller in size, they have grown in brightness. The combination of small size and high brightness allows them to deliver functional light in new ways. 

Brighter LEDs allow us to provide all the light we need on countertops when placed discretely underneath upper cabinets. This can reduce shadows on the counter to almost nothing — a much better and safer approach.

Most LED bulbs available to the consumer are labeled with an equivalent incandescent bulb wattage, such as “60-watt equivalent.” This can be quite helpful, as you simply need a higher or lower number for the wattage equivalent if you want more or less light. As a basic guide, an LED bulb equivalent to 60 watts should produce about 800 lumens, a technical measurement of the amount of light leaving a bulb.

3. Wider Range of Colors

With a simple push of a button, LEDs can be mixed together to change into nearly any color imaginable. Red, green, blue and white LEDs combine to create a rainbow of colors that can set the perfect scene for a romantic dinner and then change into your favorite team’s colors for watching the big game.While colored LED lights might seem like a novelty, selecting the right color “temperature” can make a dramatic difference for everyday lighting. A bulb’s lighting facts will use the term “color appearance,” which is another term for “color temperature.” This helpful metric is measured in degrees Kelvin, with lower color temperatures being warmer, or amber, and higher color temperatures being cooler, or blue.

Article from: Houzz

Halloween Safety

Halloween Safety

364 days of the year we tell our kids, 'Don't take candy from strangers!' And then on Halloween we send them out to take candy from every stranger they can find. And we call our children confusing!

Halloween can be fun, exciting and a whole lot safer if you review some Halloween safety tips and prepare a bit before they go out:

1. NEVER eat candy until your parents have had a chance to look at it.

• As a parent this is very stressful' what the heck are we supposed to be looking for' I'm a parent, not a forensic scientist?!? If anything is unwrapped or if you are at all uncertain, throw it away. Have an extra stash of candy to replenish your child's supply. (To be honest, I throw a LOT away' I figure an extra $10 spent on replacement candy for my child's safety and my peace of mind is well worth it' ).

• We are quite good friends with the neighbours on the block and we package special, big treats in closed paper bags for each others kids, complete with name, phone number written on the front. As an extra precaution, you could even distribute special stickers for the people on your block to use to ensure they were the givers of the treat bags. For most of the kids, the block plus the community center Haunted House is enough trick or treating for them anyways.

2. Stay with a big group (preferably including an adult!). Stress the importance of not splitting up (if 'Johnny' is cold and wants to go home, EVERYONE should walk him home before continuing to trick or treat). Just in case your child ends up being 'Johnny', let the children know before they go out that when the group returns safely with your child, there will be an extra special treat waiting for them (make it worth their while to stick together!)

3. Obey traffic laws, don't run out between parked cars, stay on the sidewalk, don't take shortcuts through back alleys or parking lots!

4. If your children are going out alone (without an adult), designate a route together before they leave.

• Stress the importance of them staying on that route, so if something does happen there's a chance of finding them!

• Talk to them about the fact that you are trusting them to go out on their own and that with trust comes responsibility!

• If they are going out alone, make sure they have a flashlight and money for a phone call.

5. NEVER enter a stranger's house. They may have THE COOLEST haunted house and THE COOLEST candy on the block, but they are still strangers. TALK TO YOUR KIDS about this! If the child absolutely must see the house, let them know that you would be willing to accompany them later in the evening. Or, better yet, many companies, zoos, etc have started putting on haunted houses the day or two before Halloween' attend one with your children to get it out of their system.

6. Only visit houses that have lights on. Not everyone enjoys Halloween' talk about and respect the differences in people's views!

7. Wear a bright costume. If your costume is not bright enough (or even if you think it is!), put some reflective tape on the back and front. This can be done in a way that goes well with the costume'

• in the shape of a bat for batman, a witch or a vampire,
• as an outlined fringe on a cape,
• as moon shapes for a witch or a wizard,
• in a skull and crossbones shape for a pirate.

8. Don't wear masks -- use makeup instead. If the costume comes with a mask and the child MUST wear it, have them put it on top of their head (like a hat). They can then bow their heads to show the mask.

9. For those of you in colder climates (like us), make sure you think of the season when you are making or buying the costume!

• Hats and mittens are a must has a lot of costume ideas with baseball caps' these can be easily modified to use winter hats.

• Cloaks can be used instead of the capes that come with store bought costumes. They're VERY simple to make (they have to be... I can't sew *grin*) and can be made with fleece or other warm fabric. I highly recommend adding them to any cold weather costume!! How to make a No-Sew Cloak

Full article here: Halloween Safety

Have a Fun & Safe Halloween Everyone!

Bank of Canada Reveals Latest Interest Rate Decision

The Bank of Canada resisted pressure from investors by declining to signal it will soon follow global peers in easing monetary policy.

At a decision Wednesday, policy makers left interest rates unchanged for a seventh straight meeting and said stronger than expected growth, as well as inflation on target, means current levels of stimulus are where they should be. That’s despite the escalating trade war between China and the U.S. undermining global economic momentum.

The Bank of Canada’s reluctance to signal a greater willingness to cut rates -- which makes it an outlier as counterparts around the world ease policy -- may come as a surprise to some investors and analysts who had expected more dovish language and some easing later this year. The Canadian dollar rose after the statement.

“This is a bit more hawkish than we anticipated,” said Brett House, deputy chief economist at Bank of Nova Scotia. It’s “not a clear change in bias. It doesn’t close the door on an October cut, but it doesn’t set up an October cut either.”

Wednesday’s narrative underlined trade risks and reiterated that Canadian growth is likely to slow in the second half of this year -- all of which suggests policy makers are far from confident about the economic outlook and could be keeping the door open for increasing stimulus if things worsen.

Global Easing

But the net effect of the statement is a continuation -- at least explicitly -- of the central bank’s reluctance to show its hand on whether it plans to join other central banks like the Federal Reserve in easing policy, preferring instead to wait for more concrete signs of weakness before moving.

“In sum, Canada’s economy is operating close to potential and inflation is on target. However, escalating trade conflicts and related uncertainty are taking a toll on the global and Canadian economies,” the central bank said in its statement. “In this context, the current degree of monetary policy stimulus remains appropriate.”

The Canadian dollar rose 0.4% to C$1.3280 per U.S. dollar at 10:09 a.m. Swaps trading suggests investors are fully pricing in a cut by December, with strong odds of a second by this time next year. That’s still less than the four rate cuts priced by the Federal Reserve over that time.

“The Bank of Canada is stalling but it will eventually be peer-pressured into interest-rate cuts,” Frances Donald, chief economist at Manulife Investment Management Ltd., told BNN Bloomberg.

Waiting too long is a risky strategy that could backfire if policy makers are late to recognize spillover effects on businesses and households, particularly since the country’s outlier status on policy could fuel gains in the Canadian dollar.

Bank of Canada officials said they will pay close attention to “global developments and their impacts on the outlook for Canadian growth and inflation.”

The case for cheaper money isn’t as compelling in Canada as it is elsewhere. A strong run of economic data affords the Bank of Canada opportunity to resist -- as it has so far -- the dovish turn in global policy.

Interest rates also remain stimulative in real terms, and borrowing costs have already declined sharply in the country because of falling global bond yields -- a development the Bank of Canada cited in its statement. But escalating tensions between China and the U.S. are getting tougher to overlook. Trump’s tariffs on imports from China have already become a major reason behind global factory weakness.

The Bank of Canada characterized Canadian second quarter growth of 3.7% annualized as “strong” but noted some of the strength was probably temporary and pointed out that consumption spending was unexpectedly soft.

Article by - Canadian Real Estate Wealth