Going back to school is unquestionably exciting, but one thing that can make it even more fun is a creative back-to-school craft that can help your kids make the most of their time at home. Let your kids get ready for their first day at school with some creative and interesting back-to-school crafts. Making these craft items can also be one of the ways for you to spend some quality time with your kids. Let's get started and delve into some easy and fun back-to-school crafts for your kids. Personalized watercolor notebooks One can never have enough notebooks. Right? So, if you are planning to get customized notebooks for your kids, here is a fun idea that you can experiment with. Splattered watercolor notebooks are a great way to customize a plain notebook cover with some exciting colors. All you need to do is splash some watercolor on the notebook cover with the help of a paintbrush and let it dry. You can also write the name of your kid on the cover with a glitter pen or a permanent marker to give it a personalized touch. Beaded bag tag Having a personalized bag tag is a flashback to those good old days when we all had these attached to our backpacks. Now is the time for your kids to get one for themselves and the best part is they can DIY it. For easy back-to-school crafts such as beaded bag tags, you will need colorful yarn and some beads. You can customize these bag tags by adding in a few beaded letters of your kid's initials. Mason jar craft for the lovely class teacher What can you do with the extra mason jar that has been on your kitchen shelf for months? You pick it up and turn it into a super cute back-to-school craft that your kid can gift to their class teacher. All you need is a mason jar, some paint to coat it, a name tag, a string to attach the tag, a personalized message for the teacher, and a few pens to fill the jar.

Tiny houses or prefab homes are your traditionally constructed home, except as the name suggest they are tiny. Generally, the house will not be more than a couple of hundred square feet in total. This is a very interesting and minimalistic style of living, if you are not too particular about how you live or with what you can make do without compromising on the comfort. There are a number of factors that should be taken into account before you decide to shift into a tiny house. Ask yourself this very important question, can you really live in a tiny house? Before making a long-term commitment to buy a tiny house or prefab home, try it out for a few months. Rent a small place and furnish it to your liking, the way you would want the house to be and just explore all aspects. Space will be a big issue, since there won't be much of it. In fact, tiny houses are no bigger than you standard RV sizes, with similar layouts. These houses may be very cheap to rent, and for that matter purchase. But even an amount like $25000 for the base model is a big commitment, especially if you are unsure about adjusting to the layout. Also, if you are planning to share the house with someone, maybe your spouse, girlfriend or partner, you might want to ask them to try it out as well before making the decision. Normally tiny houses are preferred by people who have already lived previously in smaller spaces and rented units, sometimes minus the privacy. Having your own tiny little house will certainly be a better option for such people with the added privacy and luxury to design and modify your own space. Tiny houses are pretty similar to mobile homes, and are a smaller version of the mobile home. You have the option to have your house on wheels to be towed in case you are planning to relocate or can prefer a fixed foundation for the same. However, a proper foundation will require a number of permits and inspecting, as opposed to mobile homes which can be just hitched to the back of your trailer and towed with ease. You still have to decide whether to opt for a tiny house which has already been built by someone, or start fresh. Just because the house is tiny, doesn't necessary mean it will be very easy to construct. Tiny houses require just about every building skill essential for a traditional home. At the end of the day, you have to weigh in all your options and decide whether to buy a tiny house, a similar size RV or rent a unit for that matter.

Once again, it is that time of the year, when the feel of Christmas will soon fill the air just like the cold. You will decorate the house with lights and shop Merry Christmas stockings for your kids; and then finally the day will come with all the delicious dishes, unloading of Merry Christmas stockings and unwrapping of gifts. Even though people around the world celebrate Christmas in different ways, there are some things which say 'Christmas' like nothing else. Here are five things that establish the true spirit of Christmas. The shimmering white snow What is Christmas without the snow? The first snowfall of the season makes you feel the onset of Christmas festivities for real. Christmas and snow are inseparable, and the sheer beauty of one complements the cheerfulness of the other only too well. Christmas cookies and cakes Christmas is incomplete without lots and lots of cakes and cookies to fill your tummy as well as hearts. Be it the delicious, syrupy plum cake of the traditional Dundee fruit cake, or the huge variety of cookies like chocolate chip, anise-almond, Italian walnut, peanut butter, gingerbread and so on you always have something or the other to please your sweet tooth. Christmas tree decorations A big part of the festival is to bring out the stars, balls, lights, and streamers and decorate the tree with your family and kids. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing your tree in its fully adorned form on the Christmas Eve, ready to take home for all the gifts tomorrow. Santa Claus and Merry Christmas stockings Coming down from the legend of a kind-hearted Bishop Saint Nicholas who loved kids and gave them gifts on Christmas, the tradition has been maintained to this day across the world. Santa Claus comes sneaking in through the chimney, leaves the loveliest of gifts in your 24-inch Christmas stockings and goes to the next house ho-humming on his reindeer-pulled sled car a story that we all know since childhood and wanted to believe, even when we knew it was not true. It was a different feeling to hang the Christmas stockings the night before and go to sleep wondering what gifts we will get. Christmas movies The choice varies, but watching a good Christmas movie with your family is a quintessential part of the Christmas holidays. The TV channels run Christmas Specials all day, or you can hire a DVD of the classics old and new like 'It's a Wonderful Life' or 'Elf.' Without these, Christmas is just a winter holiday with lots of lights. Embrace the festivities in a classic way and don't forget to send your best wishes!

Snowboard boots are one of the most important components that you need as a part of your snowboarding gear, without which your whole snowboarding experience can go awry. A good pair of snowboard boots is one that is not just right for the board but should fit comfortably. When you are trying to buy a pair of snowboard boots, even if you are going to use it only for a short while, pick a good one because otherwise you can be easily injured. Some of the most important components that you should carefully look at when picking the right snowboarding boots are – the fit, the boot flex, the lacing systems, the liners, the footbeds, the sizing, and the socks. Some of the major mistakes that you have to avoid when picking good snowboard boots are: Don’t buy snowboard boots that are too big. Instead of just ordering it online, these are the types of shoes you may want to take a trip to the store for so that you can try them on and make sure they are an exact match. You can always take the advice of friends who own a pair of snowboard boots and find out the best brands or the footwear store they highly recommend. You need to remember that shoes fit everyone differently and what was comfortable for them may not be for you. Take their suggestions and then consider them but do not blindly follow them when buying snowboard boots. The most common mistake that people snowboarding for the first time make is that they splurge too much on the board and bindings but keep a very small budget for their snowboard boots. Getting the right snowboard boots is not just about the price and should factor in the risks that can result from buying a cheap pair of boots. That does not mean you have to set apart a high budget either. All you have to do is ensure that you get a good fit that does not put you at risk while snowboarding. Don’t just buy snowboard boots because they look good, you can compromise on the beauty of a boot as long as your feet fit perfectly into the boot.

Why should you purchase an indoor fireplace? People want to create a good ambiance and a relaxing atmosphere by heating their home in an efficient way. If you want to have a better idea about fireplaces, you need to get rid of the popular misconceptions about them. Indoor fireplaces are meant to heat the entire home In reality, wood-burning fireplaces offer heat to a relatively small place like a room. In a majority of the homes, fireplaces are used for creating a comfortable atmosphere when the weather turns harsh outside. If you are searching for a good fireplace and are not interested in spending money on fresh-cut wood for lighting a fireplace, you need to think about purchasing a portable gel fireplace in place. No inspection is needed for an out of use fireplace This is a wrong perception many people have. You need to realize the fact that when a chimney is not in use, you need to inspect a fireplace regularly to check for rodents and other types of insect-related infestations. If you have a dirty fireplace, you may have to deal with the risk for respiratory infections. Fireplaces keep on burning all the time efficiently The fact of the matter is that a fireplace can be described as one of the most inefficient heat sources that you can have at your house. If you want to save some serious money on energy, a substandard wood-burning fireplace may not necessarily be the best solution. A roaring fire is supposed to exhaust more than 200,000 feet of air per hour, and the cold air that is brought into the house has to replace the air that is being consumed. It requires a home heating system to work harder for maintaining the proper temperature inside the home, and this situation leads to extra money for electricity. It is always advisable to buy high quality but cheap fireplaces to save on electricity bills. Softwoods must not be utilized This is another common perception that many people have. Many believe that burning softwoods such as pine cause a lot of problems because they contain a lot of sap that promotes creosote buildup in a fireplace. Various research studies have shown that creosote accumulation takes places from burning fires at low temperatures and it is not connected with softwoods containing resin. To have safe burning, you can utilize softwoods that are adequately seasoned to prevent the problems associated with creosote accumulation. If you want to keep the functionality of your indoor fireplaces at optimal levels, you have to get rid of these misconceptions. The most important thing is that you need to purchase a high-quality fireplace and it should be maintained properly as well.

With a massive amount of data collected by organizations across various sectors, it has become quite significant for these organizations to utilize the data collected efficiently. Right utilization of the data can help in making better business decisions and gain insights into the results of strategies adopted by organizations. This massive amount of data that aids in making strategic business decisions is known as big data. Big data comprises of structured as well as unstructured data. Thus, organizations that want to do big data analytics need to use tools that can efficiently huge amounts of varied datasets. Here are some of the popular data analytics tools being used by many organizations: Presto Initially developed by Facebook, the SQL-based database query engine Presto became an open-sourced big data analytics tool in 2013. It is being used by Netflix, Airbnb, and Teradata. Presto has the ability to handle petabytes of data. With one of the highest speeds of data retrieval, Presto can extract data from multiple data sources. Using Presto, you can run analytics across all the data systems of the organization. Apache Hadoop One of the most popular big data analytics tools, Apache Hadoop can process huge amounts of data through a distributed system. This open source software has been developed using Java. Mostly used by organizations in the banking and financial domain, Apache Hadoop uses a large network of computers to process and analyze data locally. PolyBase PolyBase is a big data analytics tool used to analyze relational as well as non-relational data. This is especially useful while analyzing and querying data obtained from systems that use Hadoop, Azure Data Lake Store, and Azure Blob Storage. Some of the biggest advantages of using PolyBase include flexible storage options, scalable performance management, and enterprise security. Hive This big data analysis tool is run on top of Hadoop. This tool is used for the management of distributed data for Hadoop. It uses HSQL to access big data across systems. HSQL or HiveSQL is a query language similar to SQL. If an organization is required to do data mining, they can use Hive along with Hadoop. NoSQL Big data is mostly made of unstructured data. To query and analyze this unstructured data, NoSQL or Not Only SQL can be used. With a better performance than most databases, NoSQL can store a huge amount of data. With a number of open source NoSQL databases available, an organization can build their own versions on top of the existing NoSQL databases. Big data in EXCEL Using EXCEL 2013, it is possible to connect with the data stored in Hadoop. You can access and analyze big data through Hortonworks' Enterprise Apache Hadoop platform. In EXCEL 2013, the Power View feature can be used to summarize and analyze big data.