Why Are Gas Fire Pits Such a Hot Trend?

gas fire pits

If you are currently browsing available fire pit options, you have surely noticed how extraordinary wide and rich the array of available gas fire pits is. The reason for that abundance is that gas pits are among the most popular types of fire pits today. Here are some of the features of these appliances that account for that popularity.

Great Styling for Your Outdoor Space

Gas fire pits come in a seemingly endless array of styles and sizes, which also means that you will need to take your time to check out as many sizes and options as possible and to make sure that the pit you have purchased is the most suitable indeed. A properly selected gas fire pit will add a touch of style to your patio or back yard and it will bring together the appearance of your entire landscape by creating an organic link between your building and your landscape.

The Opportunity to Create a Special Atmosphere Whenever You Decide to Turn on Your Appliance

Gas fire pits usually come with features that allow you to control the intensity of the fire. That feature is not only great for enhancing the safety of your appliance, but also for finally adjusting the flames to create the right atmosphere. The shorter or taller flames of the fire in your gas burning fire pit will set the tone for your evenings spent in your garden or yard, creating wonderful opportunities to entertain your guests well after the sun has set.

Added Functionality

Many gas burning pits can be used for much more than just adding some atmosphere to your evenings. Some of them come with accessories that can instantly transform them into grilling equipment, while others come with lids or covers that transform them into a table when not in use.

Allowing You to Use Your Outdoor Space for Longer

Most people use their backyard or garden for outdoor activities between spring and fall, when the weather is nice. A gas burning fire pit can easily make that period much longer by enhancing your thermal comfort when the weather is cool or cold. The fact that gas burning fire pits emanate heat will make it possible for you to spend some wonderful time around your pit even in winter – all you need will be a set of warm clothes and a warm blanket.

A Great Asset to Improve Your Social Life

A gas fire pit is an excellent investment into transforming your social life as well. An attractive fire pit can make your parties much more exciting – the pit will allow you to prepare some delightful grilled dishes for your guests and it will also make it possible for you to entertain them in a cozier atmosphere. The light coming from the flames in your fire fit will make your landscape easier and safer to navigate at night, too, which will make your guests want to stay and never leave or will make them want to come back as often as possible.

New Ideas for Cooking with Mushrooms

mushroom spores

You might be thinking of acquiring some mushroom spores in order to grow your own mushrooms at home, or you might just want to buy the best looking mushrooms at your local supermarket. Many experts will say that it doesn’t matter that much. What matters most on the other hand is how you actually cook your mushrooms. The taste and the health are both in that, and you’ll definitely find a few surprising opinions regarding both.

Uncommon Methods for Cooking Mushrooms

If you ever saw a Portabello mushroom up close, you’ve probably already noticed that its cap is just the right size to top off a burger. In case you’re looking for ideas on how to make your hamburgers less fattening and add some healthy nutrients and protein to the mix, you might actually want to consider a mushroom cap on top of them. It really can’t be worse than the bun – and in fact, it will taste a lot better than you might imagine.

Another unique way to cook mushrooms is by chopping them into fine, tiny pieces and adding them to appetizers. The best “amused bouche” is a treat that not only looks amazing, but will also leave your mouth watering from a single taste. Mushrooms have the magic of unique flavoring that can achieve that, and in the hands of a skilled chef, you’ll find that this simple action of reducing mushrooms to the tiniest possible pieces will make them more appealing than you think.

Have you ever had mushrooms with chicken in a refined, creamy sauce? If not, you might want to consider visiting a restaurant that has some quality creamy chicken and mushroom fricasse when you next want to dine out. This meal looks pretty much like a cross between a white stew and some pizza topping, with a myriad of ingredients such as onions, thyme, carrots and celery flowing together quite beautifully and dancing around the best combination of gold and brown that the mushrooms and chicken will create. Best of all, the taste is amazing!

Following Science for Healthier Mushroom Dishes

When in doubt, follow the science! Recently, studies have shown that mushrooms can be extremely healthy because of their high content of Vitamin B1, B2, B12, as well as C, D and E, along with trace minerals, low fat and high fiber content. However, there’s a catch: you have to know how to cook your mushrooms in such a way that they’ll retain all of their awesome nutrients and health benefits.

Surprisingly, researchers have found that boiling and frying mushrooms can actually lead to a lower content of these healthy nutrients, while also leading to higher antioxidant activity. On the other hand, when you grill or cook them in the microwave, the antioxidant activity diminishes and the mushrooms are actually healthier. The biggest surprise was that, when frying mushrooms, they actually lose a high amount of healthy protein and increase in fat. So that definitely says a lot about how we’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to figuring out how to make our food truly healthy.

Why Your Marketing Should Include Branding with Custom Banners

The principal goal of your marketing efforts should be to create brand awareness and to reach out to your target audience in a way that is appealing to them, thus creating a strong relationship based on loyalty. Today, the range of the marketing tools available to achieve your branding goals is incredibly wide and varied – you can choose to have a variety of digital solutions as well as marketing materials in printed form and published a cross a variety of outlets. There is, however, a type of marketing material that has been around for long and is likely to stay around in future, too and that is the humble, yet still very efficient custom banner. Here is why your marketing mix can never be complete without a set of properly designed and informative banners.

Inexpensive Materials

While many marketing solutions, including digital as well as physical ones, can run incredibly high costs, banners, whether large or small, are always on the affordable side. Usually executed from some kind of durable and resistant synthetic material, such as vinyl, your banner will be inexpensive even if it features a very complex graphic element. Same goes for step and repeat banners – the largest and perhaps the most complicated type off banners usually surprises not only with efficiency but also with the low cost involved.

step and repeat banners

Variety In Terms of Usage Options

Branded banners are suitable for being used indoors as well as outdoors. When designed for indoor usage, consider hanging your banners from the ceiling or attaching them onto a wall. Outdoor banners are also varied and versatile, giving you the option to use them above your entrance or installed into a frame and placed on the side of the road.

Suitable for Including All Relevant Details

You can use your banners to feature your logo, to guide potential visitors towards your premises as well as to inform people about your promotions. Your banners can include any type of information, from the details of your promotion to your contact details and from nicely formulated holiday wishes to an announcement about a upcoming event that you are hosting.

To make the most of your banners, it is a good idea to have not only banners that announce particular events or promotions, but also general ones that you can reuse for a long time. Your general banners will serve you well in your actual shop and they can be taken anywhere else in case you move to a larger location as well.

Quick and Easy Execution

Custom banners are not only easy to use – they are also very easy to make. All you need is a professional design – the materials that banners are printed on are widely available, so the partner that you are working with in the field of marketing materials will probably be able to deliver your new banners within hours or days. This also means that you can quickly and affordably refresh the appearance of your shop whenever you feel it is necessary.

Why Are ‘Chicken of The Woods’ Mushrooms Loved by Chefs

Also known as chicken fungus, chicken of the woods is a mushroom variety that can thrive among any climate conditions and is one of the most preferred mushroom varieties for chefs, professional and amateur alike. The name should not be confused for “hen of the woods” – another variety of edible mushrooms native in the northwest of the US and Japan, appreciated for its size (some mushrooms can reach the weight of 100 pounds).

spore syringe

Chicken of the woods is not only spectacular in appearance – it is also a variety highly appreciated by chefs, professionals as well as amateur cooking enthusiasts, for the characteristic chicken taste that gives these great fungi their name and for the varied cooking options they offer. Here are some things that are worth knowing when preparing to use chicken of the woods in the kitchen.

Identifying Chicken of the Wood and Harvesting Tips

Chicken of the woods mushrooms are easy to recognize – they are the large, yellow and orange or yellow and red masses that thrive in the woods on the trunk or at the base of dead trees. The masses consist of multiple, large, shelf-like formations that have a frilled shape and are orange colored with yellow edges. You need to know that only young mushrooms are good to eat – to make sure that you have only young ones, look for mushrooms that feature bright colors

Chicken of the woods are very common in woodlands, they can grow on practically any tree variety. While they are safe to harvest from most forests, you should avoid chicken of the woods coming from conifer or eucalyptus trees because these trees secrete toxins that the mushrooms can absorb, becoming toxic themselves.

Why Chicken of the Woods are so Great in the Kitchen

Chicken of the woods are easy to work with and they can be added to a variety of recipes. Cleaning them is easy – all you need to do is to remove any dirt with a mushroom brush, then to soak the mushrooms into cold water for a few minutes (not for more, to ensure cleanliness without letting the mushrooms absorb too much liquid), then to dry the mushrooms with a paper towel.

Chicken of the woods can be used in many recipes – here are some ideas from an online company offering many mushroom spore syringe varieties:

  • Pates and spreads – just chop the mushrooms into small pieces, sauté them in a large pan to remove excess water, add shallots, garlic, salt, pepper and herbs for more flavor and keep stirring the mix until the desired consistency is achieved;
  • Sauces – chicken of the woods make excellent ingredients in pasta sauces. You can prepare them exactly like you would cook sauces that contain minced meat;
  • Roasted chicken of the woods – putting your mushrooms in the oven with some herbs is another great way to prepare them;
  • Sautee them for an elegant side dish – despite their meaty flavor and texture, these mushrooms go great with meat dishes. They also cook very fast, so they are a quick alternative to rice or potatoes.

Why Should I Hire a Tax Specialist for My Small Business?

tax specialist Highlands Ranch

Running a small business involves lots of work, not only tasks related strictly to your core activities and customer service – there are many administrative tasks to handle as well, including some that most small business owners are new to, such as doing taxes. To save on costs, many entrepreneurs are trying to handle everything, including tax accountancy, on their own, even though trying to perform any activity related to taxes without in-depth knowledge of tax laws and accountancy best practices involves the risk of making very costly mistakes. If you approach the issue of who is handling your taxes from this angle, you will see that hiring a Highlands Ranch tax specialist for your small business is actually an investment into your peace of mind that your numbers are calculated correctly and your tax documents are always filed in in time, but the benefits of working with a tax specialist does not stop with peace of mind – here are some more.

Saving Time and Energy

Trying to do your taxes yourself will involve many hours of actual work as well as many hours spent trying to figure out how to do it right. All that time spent doing your books is taken away from and lost for your important business activities and it is also time that can be saved, should you decide to hire a tax accountant.

Reduced Overall Expenses

There are two ways to have access to the tax accountant services you need: you can either hire a full-time or part-time employee to work on your taxes from your own business building or you can hire an out-of-house, independent tax specialist or a specialized firm. While the first option is very expensive, indeed, and usually not something that the volume of the transactions handled by the small business would justify, the expenses related to turning to a licensed, independent accountant are deductible and will usually cost less than an employee.

A Wide Range of Services

Many tax specialists provide not only services related strictly to preparing tax documents, but other types of accountancy services as well, such as bookkeeping or payroll. If you turn to a specialist who offers such an extended service range, you can have the major activities related to managing corporate finances handled by the same specialist, which makes collaboration much easier and that also gives the specialist a better, more detailed image of how they could help your business grow.

Avoiding Fines

Doing your own taxes might not only take up precious time – it might also incur high costs if you make a mistake and you get a penalty from the IRS. Hiring the best tax specialist Highlands Ranch has is the best way to avoid such penalties and fees – by investing into the rates charged by your accountant, you be sure that your tax documents will be filled correctly, in a way that meets all the requirements of the authorities regarding the form and the contents and that your documents will be filed by the deadlines they need to meet.

My Neighbor Gets His Grass So Green with Richlawn Turf Food

If you are the proud owner of a lawn, a patch of land covered in a soft green carpet, but whenever you look over the fence, you see that your neighbor’s lawn is even greener and softer, here is how the contents of those large bags labelled Richlawn Turf Food that you also see there help your neighbor achieve those results. And here is how that excellent fertilizer can help your turf, too.

best fertilizer for grass

The Features Offered by Richlawn Turf Food

Richlawn Turf Food is an all-around, organic based fertilizer for lawns, suitable for being used on new lawn as well as on established turf. Often know in the Colorado area as the best fertilizer for grass, this fertilizer features a 10-2-5 analysis, which means that the product is a complete fertilizer that contains 10% of nitrogen, the element essential for strong, green leaves, 2% of phosphorous to help the roots grow strong and resistant and 5% of potassium to promote hardiness. Richlawn Turf Food also contains iron – a mineral that provides further help to develop strong green leaves. The fertilizer comes in 25 lb bags – a quantity that is suitable for covering an area of 2,500 sq ft. Richlawn Turf Food is derived from dehydrated poultry waste and formulated in a way that guarantees slow release and safe treatment that does not pose the risk of burning the lawn.

The Benefits of Richlawn Turf Food

The organic base and the special, nutrient-rich formula promotes the growth of strong, green leaves, thus reducing the amount of thatch that you will need to remove to maintain the health of your grass. The product has been developed to meet the special requirements of Rocky Mountain soils as well as for other types of difficult soils, such as for areas rich in clay or sand, therefore it can be used to improve the fertility of the soil in these problematic areas by improving the soil’s ability to retain water as well as its nutrient contents.

Richlawn Turf Food stands out when it comes to safety as well. The product releases its nutrient contents slowly, thus guaranteeing that the plants get only the amount of nutrients that they need and they are not exposed to the risk of getting burned. The product is also completely safe to use around pets and kids and it does not harm the environment or wildlife either.

How to Use Richlawn Turf Food

The slow-release formulation of the product ensures not only extraordinary efficiency, but also a reduced amount of work. Ideally, the fertilizer should be applied every 4-6 weeks from the middle of March until early September. The usage of Richlawn Turf Food should stop at the beginning of fall, when plants start preparing for the dormancy period that lasts until the next spring. In terms of watering needs, your lawn needs to be watered normally after the application of the fertilizer. When applying the product, pay attention to avoid concrete areas – when the fertilizer that has landed on concrete comes in contact with water, the concrete might get unsightly stains caused by the iron content in the product.

Why You Should Let the Experts Implement Your SharePoint Intranet

Communication, sharing and content creation should not be a difficult task in your company. Whether you have 2 or 20 employees – or even 200, for that matter – it’s very important to make sure everyone can share relevant documents securely and quickly, while maximizing their productivity and minimizing costs and efforts.

That is precisely what a SharePoint intranet is for. Designed as a rich and powerful solution for communication, project management, content creation and employee management, SharePoint can literally become the glue that keeps your company together; so long as it is implemented correctly.

SharePoint intranet service provider

Understanding the Benefits and Uses of SharePoint

Since SharePoint is a Microsoft product, it’s important to understand its comprehensive set of applications and services before considering whether or not it can help your company grow. In most cases, just about any company – no matter how small or large – can have a lot to gain by using a SharePoint intranet service provider.

First of all, SharePoint is a cloud based service provided by Microsoft as part of Microsoft 365. As a result, it can easily be integrated with your Office documents and used as an easy to install service hosted by Microsoft’s own service, rather than a complex installation that would require its own dedicated server.

Documents, websites and all types of helpful and relevant content can be created, managed, stored and shared through your SharePoint intranet. Your organization can even deploy your own Microsoft SharePoint server at short notice using nothing but your Office 365 Enterprise subscription, and you will gain all the relevant features and benefits that you’ll need. These will include, advanced search, modern lists and libraries, and full integration with PowerApps and MS Flow.

Additional benefits include the SharePoint Designer app, which is a free bonus made available since 2013 that can help you build impressive workflow-enabled solutions for your business, as well as easily edit externally provided content. You can also use advanced cloud storage solutions such as OneDrive, which is Microsoft’s most advanced application designed for that purpose. 

What Goes Into a SharePoint Intranet Installation

SharePoint is far more than a simple app that you can install and offer access to through your office network. Depending on your network architecture, how many employees will need access to it, what applications you will require and what devices you will want to connect, a secure connection to the SharePoint intranet can be difficult to obtain.

By hiring Microsoft SharePoint consulting services, you can gain quick access to the intranet and effectively diminish the learning curve. Your employees will have easy access to SharePoint and all the necessary tools, apps and services that your business requires, and aside from the aforementioned benefits, you will also get business-specific services and tools such as employee performance management, employee tracking, project management and collaboration tools, a centralized knowledge base and repository for news and documents, and AI-powered content personalization.

Tracking and improving your content, communication and employee activities has never been easier. Contact local SharePoint intranet service provider experts today, and find out just how quick and easy the installation and secure integration  of your fully functional SharePoint intranet can really be.

How You Can Use Your Portable Outdoor Speakers to Have Fun on Camping Trips

When it comes to going on a camping trip, you can always have a lot of fun by bringing along your favorite outdoor speakers. Designed to be portable, easy to use, fashionable and sometimes even waterproof, wireless speakers can be your best companion on even the longest and most difficult camping journeys. They will play music, help you make calls and keep you in high spirits without needing much in terms of energy or setup.

 

Taking Your Speakers with You

 

As you go on a camping trip, there are a few important things you need to consider whenever you bring electronics around. The following are some of the main ones:

 

  1. Are they small and portable enough?
  2. Will they be light enough to be easily transported across longer distances?
  3. Will they need a lot of energy?
  4. Do they require a complicated setup?
  5. How likely are they to be damaged by the elements, especially in a camping setting?

 

When you ask all of these questions about most household electronics or those that require a regular extension cord to get power, you’ll usually have to give a negative answer to at least some of the questions above. However, unlike most electronics, good quality outdoor Bluetooth wireless speakers will fit the profile perfectly.

 

As you bring your speakers with you, they will fit easily just about anywhere, including your personal backpack. Once you get to the camping site, the speaker itself could be the first thing you set up, since it’s extremely easy to do it. You can even hang it on a tree or place it on some other surface and have it play your favorite songs from the moment you started setting up the camping site.

 

If you’re there with friends or family, your Bluetooth speakers can help you have a truly wonderful time and even enjoy a party or two. Their quality is excellent, and you’ll find that many of them also come with 5,000-10,000 mAh+ batteries that can last a very long time. If you also packed a portable battery pack to serve as additional power, you can probably end up playing your music almost non-stop during a short camping trip, without wasting all the power.

 

Finding the Right Speakers

 

As mentioned, it’s good for your speaker to be easy to carry and light, and you might want to make sure that it has a cord for your backpack and a waterproof design in case it rains. The design should also be resilient. You never know when you might need to defend yourself against wild animals and your Bluetooth speakers could be caught in the middle; or they could just be dropped by somebody who isn’t too careful.

 

Regardless of the situation, finding the right speakers can be a difficult challenge, but you’ll definitely find enough products out there to pick and choose your deals. With a little patience and research you could find the absolutely most suitable wireless speaker or set of speakers available on the market.

What Is a Psilocybin Mushroom and Why Do You Need to Get Informed About It?

mushrooms psilocybin aka penis envy

Also known as “magic” mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms are a type of hallucinogenic mushroom that can be used to induce a state of relaxation or one close to various altered states of consciousness that were known in the past to Native Americans. Because of the fact that they can induce hallucinogenic effects, magic mushrooms are pretty much banned in many places. The only exceptions are Brazil, the Netherlands, Vietnam and Jamaica.

What Is a Magic Mushroom Anyway?

The name psilocybin comes from the main substance associated with the mushrooms. Psilocybin is produced by the Psilocybe cubensis and Psilocybe semilanceata species of mushrooms which can be found to be naturally occurring in a number of locations throughout Europe, North America and Central America. Psilocybin mushrooms aka penis envy mushrooms have been used as part of ancient traditions throughout Europe and the American continent for thousands of years. Although missionaries have began the practice of discouraging their use, the mushrooms themselves are alive and well and still used by certain cultures quite freely.

As the name would suggest, magic mushrooms can induce a “magical” state of consciousness in which you can end up hallucinating and having visions. Depending on what perspective you look at the matter, these might be considered delusions of the mind or visions of spirits and otherworldly phenomena that were considered by our ancient ancestors to be part of the initiation to the shamanic path. As such, magic mushrooms have been linked to various potent healing properties as well.

Unfortunately, whether the mushrooms themselves are magic or not is pretty much irrelevant. The fact of the matter is that they can lead to dangerously preventing someone from remaining fully aware of their actions, so they are regarded as generally unsafe. Unlike cannabis, which has been regulated somewhat, and is now legal to some extent in a pretty significant number of states, psilocybin mushrooms are still illegal in most of the USA – except for Colorado, Oregon and parts of California.

Why You Need to Be Aware of This Information

The term “magic mushrooms” is commonly used in many places to describe the unique hallucinogenic mushrooms that we have just depicted. However, not many people know exactly what they are, what their history says and whether or not they are legal.

Getting informed is a very important prerequisite if you plan to start using these mushrooms, or even if you just want to buy them for a friend. You might live in Oregon, where they are legal, only to find out that you’d get into serious trouble if you try to ship or take some mushrooms to a friend in Nevada or in parts of California where it’s still illegal.

Learning about magic mushrooms is also important because of their historical heritage and their use as medicinal mushrooms. That’s right, our ancestors weren’t in it simply for the high, but they have discovered many of the medicinal secrets of these remarkable ‘shrooms, and nowadays modern science is beginning to catch up fast. Some experts believe that, as more scientific studies will be done to show the healing potential of psilocybin mushrooms, more and more states will be open to permitting them to be used at least for medical purposes, if not for recreational use as well.

How Do You Go About Interviewing a Professional Business Broker?

business brokers

The importance of finding a good business broker often transcends other priorities in trying to sell or buy a business. In many instances, the expertise and dependability of the business broker you hire to help you with your M&A requirements will be decisive when it comes to the pursuit of finding a good candidate to buy from or sell to, as well as to the aim of getting more of a profit or a leverage following the transaction.

As a result of all this, interviewing a business broker can be one of the main actions you should consider when you want to sell your business, as well as purchase or merge with another business.

Understanding the Position of Your Business Broker

When you consider business brokers or an M&A advisory company to help you out, you have to keep in mind that they don’t actually have the ability or function to manage the business merger or transaction for you. Instead, their role is more that of a mediator who brings the two parties together, helps to negotiate the best price and terms, and gives advice for smoothing things over, preparing paperwork and ultimately closing a favorable deal.

While all these issues can be managed by an M&A advisor, many can not:

  • Firstly, they can’t make your decisions for you, they can only provide advice, support and knowledge to help you make your choices yourself.
  • M&A advisors and business brokers are not legal advisors, and they cannot act as a valid substitute for proper legal counsel from an attorney.
  • They typically do not handle any kind of underwriting activity.
  • There is a very real difference between what M&A advisors and business brokers can help you with, as the latter are more specialized in mediating smaller transactions.

Important Questions You Have to Ask

Keeping all that in mind, there are some important questions that you have to ask whenever you consider the option of hiring a business broker. Many of these have to do with their ability and expertise, but it’s also important to talk about credentials and references.

In fact, the first question you should ask – at least, according to most experts in the field – is, “what are your qualifications and credentials?” You should look for a CBI (Certified Business Intermediary) designation and credentials from the International Business Brokers Association (IBBA) that show the advisor has completed their relevant education and is qualified to help mediate your business merger or purchase.

Next, it’s important to look to see just how interested and motivated the broker is to help you with your transaction. Will they help you negotiate properly? What is their approach to finding, researching and talking to the prospective companies that you should be doing business with?

Finally, make sure you inquire about the details of their process. Not all business brokers handle matters in the same ways, and some might be less conventional than others. Do some research on how the negotiations and advisory work is normally conducted by most business brokers, and then make your own decision on whether or not the process that your broker provides is up to par with your specific requirements.