Month: July 2023

16 Top Curb Appeal Ideas For Your Home This Fall

Ready for some great curb appeal ideas to give your home a facelift this fall? Check out our list below for fantastic curb appeal ideas to spruce up your home.

When you think about taking on a project to spruce up your curb appeal, there’s really no reason to stress, sometimes all takes is a bit of paint and your creativity. Some of us just simply have an eye for it, while others may require a little inspiration to get their creative juices flowing.

Whatever your tastes and preferences, I’m pretty sure you can use this list to get started with you curb appeal decoration for fall.

Brilliant fall foliage can naturally make your home look more attractive – there is just something about the cooler weather and the turning of the leaves that is so beautiful that even the summer-lovers are dying to take part in fall festivities.

Putting up fall decorations, all that pumpkin flavor, the orange overload and, of course, approaching holidays like Halloween and Thanksgiving are all reasons to take part in adding to your fall curb appeal! Here are 16 top curb appeal ideas for your home this fall. Have fun!

 

1. Highlight Your Front Door

Highlight Your Front Door | Top Curb Appeal Ideas For Your Home This Fall

Paint your front door with bold color! No doubt, this is a bold move! However, this is an easily updatable and reversible approach that has a huge impact on your home’s curb appeal. Here’s a place you can use a splash of orange or any bold jewel tone will do.

2. Plant Fall Flowers

Spruce up your lawn with a splash of color. Fill it with colorful and vibrant mums. Check it out here.

3. DIY Fall Monogram Doormat

DIY Fall Monogram Doormat | Top Curb Appeal Ideas For Your Home This Fall

Welcome your guests with some extra fall flair with this DIY fall monogram doormat. Click here to read more.

4. Hometown Pride Pumpkin

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Beautifying a pumpkin with your house number guides both trick-or-treaters and Thanksgiving visitors alike. You can also show your state pride with a little extra paint to complete the look! Check it out here.

5. Fill a Window Box

Amplify a lonely window with bright colors of silk flowers and faux gourds that can be easily spotted from the curb. Check it out here.

6. Spruce Up Your Pumpkin

Add some glamour to your simple pumpkin patch by wrapping a beautiful striped ribbon around it. Click here to read more.

 

 

7. Welcome Guests

Welcome guests in fall style! Let your guests know how much you adore their company with a weathered sign that welcomes them in a big way. 

Consider Living Off Grid | Homesteading Guide

Have you ever considered living off the grid? Looking for some inspiration to pursue your dream to live off the grid? Read on and be inspired and be inspired to get started.

What is Living Off Grid?

“Living off grid is being capable of providing your own needs the natural way, simply without the help of any remote infrastructure and being totally independent of outside utilities.”

If you are already tired of your modern city lifestyle and thinking of living it all to have a simpler life as an off-gridders, but still have second thoughts because you don’t know how you can get started. Let our favorite Youtubers, Doug and Stacy help you with that. Doug and Stacy have been documenting their homesteading journey via video blogs, and I’m pretty you will also love them just like the many of their followers, including us.

Read our “OFF GRID with DOUG and STACY – Youtube Homesteading” post and learn more.

Hit play to start video below or watch it here.

Here’s a peek of what you can expect, it is Doug’s talking about “Just Doing It”.

  • You will not need hydro, solar panels, wind turbines.

You will not need hydro, solar panels, wind turbines. | Consider Living Off Grid

  • Without carpentry experience, Doug was able to build their log cabin in 90 days for only $15,000.

Without carpentry experience | Consider Living Off Grid

  • Live Free – don’t be like many other older people who says I wish I have done these and that.

Live Free | Consider Living Off Grid

Living off grid is rewarding. Being able to what things you wish to do and don’t do things you don’t want to.

Living off grid is rewarding | Consider Living Off Grid

  • Just Go For It. You got nothing to loss and with everything to gain.

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  • Be a Doer of Living Off Grid. Don’t just be here watching living off grid videos but be a doer of living off grid.

Be a Doer of Living Off Grid | Consider Living Off Grid

Doug’s discussed a lot of great stuff in the video that I’m pretty sure you can simply do it and you’ll also find it rewarding just like Doug and Stacy.

Thanks for checking our Consider Living Off Grid post! Are you now ready to get started living off grid? Let us know in the comments below and don’t forget to check out more videos from OFF GRID with DOUG and STACY!

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Homesteading and Farming – The Ultimate Survival Lifestyle

Subsistence Farming…

Christmas Gifts For Teens | Homesteading Christmas DIY Crafts

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Don’t Take It at Face Value: Why TSA’s Implementation of Facial Recognition is More Dangerous Than You Think

Facial recognition is an invasive and dangerous surveillance technology. When the government moves forward with pilot programs that will, if fully implemented, subject millions of people on a daily basis to the technology that should give us all pause. Currently the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is running two different pilots that use of facial recognition technology to confirm travelers’ identity. As explained below, this is a mistake—not only because of the ongoing privacy and bias issues but because of the long term implications of using our face as our ID. That is why EPIC has previously urged Congress to suspend TSA’s use of facial recognition technology and supports the call by several Senators earlier this year for TSA to halt the technology’s use.

TSA Facial Recognition Pilot Programs

TSA’s 1:1 pilot uses a real-time photo taken at a security checkpoint and compares that image to the image on the traveler’s government-issued ID (e.g., a driver’s license or passport). Instead of handing over your ID to a TSA agent, travelers will place their ID into a machine that will then take a picture of them and compare it to the image on the ID to verify their identity. In theory, travelers can opt out of the pilot at the security checkpoint to avoid having their picture taken and their identity verified by facial recognition. In those instances where a traveler opts out, a TSA agent is supposed to check the ID manually to verify identity. This 1:1 pilot has currently expanded to at least 25 airports.

There is also a more limited 1:many pilot currently focused on “trusted travelers” (e.g., TSA PreCheck enrollees) that uses a real-time photo taken at the security checkpoint and compares that image to a database of images the government controls. Currently, these travelers may opt into the 1:many pilot and, if they do so, do not need to present a government issued ID at the security checkpoints where the pilot has been implemented. Instead, their identity is verified with a real-time photo taken at the security checkpoint that is sent to Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) Traveler Verification Service (TVS) for identity verification. TVS is CBP’s cloud-based facial recognition identity verification service. TVS leverages photos from government databases containing passport photos and/or visa photos, among other sources, to perform the identity verification against the photo taken in real-time.

Both pilots raise the possibility of bias issues that could disproportionately impact certain groups of people (e.g., women and people with darker skin). According to TSA, they are testing the facial recognition algorithm for accuracy and to ensure it is free from bias. But it appears the TSA is not using an independent third party to perform the tests, and the agency apparently has no plans to release the results publicly, which calls into question how they are testing the algorithm and any results of that testing.

The Risks of Facial Recognition—Even for Identity Verification

Regardless of the test results, though, TSA should not be implementing the use of facial recognition. Unfortunately,despite the potential privacy and bias…

Growing Blueberries on Your Homestead

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Bugging Out: Realities. Storing preps in foot lockers and plastic totes.

I recently relocated from a rural suburb in a purple state to a much smaller community in a very red state. I had long-term plans to make this move, but an unexpected career change enabled me to move sooner than expected. While my new home is not a compound deep in the woods, it does provide me with more security, more privacy, the ability to expand my gardening efforts, the option of raising some chickens and/or rabbits in the future, abundant wildlife, and a smaller community where people go to church and value their freedom.

When making our relocation decision, my wife and I decided that we wanted a location that would be our final home. This was an extremely important decision, so we visited the general area on many occasions, getting to know the area, visiting many towns, and looking at a large number of properties and houses. This was a multi-year research effort. One of our considerations was the proximity to hospitals and doctors. The area we were considering was rural and mountainous. Some of the specific locations that we considered were ruled out as we believed them to be too far from appropriate medical treatment if one of us had a dire health emergency. We settled on a location that was rural and private but was an acceptable distance from a good hospital.

We purchased our red state home several months ago and only recently sold our purple state home and moved to our new location. During that interim period during which we owned both houses, we moved some of our materials and belongings so that we could sort of camp out in the new home during many trips there to make repairs and updates on the new house.

Bugging out by vehicle

It occurred to me prior to one of these trips, that I could use that trip to test what it would be like to bug out by vehicle. I needed to move my preps to the new location anyway, so I killed two birds with one stone. I have a mid-sized SUV and a hitch-mounted cargo carrier. Many years ago, I had developed my bug-out strategy. That included storing preps in foot lockers and plastic totes that could be easily stacked in my vehicle, after folding down both rows of back seats. In addition to that, I had also earmarked many of my non-electric tools for a potential bug-out. Some of these were tools that I still used fairly often. So I left them in my tool shed while placing yellow stickers on them, so that I could easily spot and gather them in a hurry. Other items that I would take included my inventory of freeze-dried food and clothing, shoes, etc. In order to maintain OPSEC, my firearms were placed in flexible covers, which were then placed in a very large golf bag cover with wheels. I also keep all of my important papers in a small file tote in a location where…

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