Friday, July 20, 2007

क्रेडिट, पोंट्स, purchases

Accumulating Credit Card Points In Exchange For Travel Miles

Credit, points, purchases

The convenience of using credit cards for everyday purchases has allowed a lot of people in the US to get the services offered by credit cards. Credit cards these days are used in almost everyday purchases as it offers more security because people won’t have to walk the streets anymore carrying bundles of cash in order for them to go an appliance store to buy a brand new HDTV that may cost thousands of dollars.

Credit cards also allow flexibility and manageability to its users. Also a way of lending money, credit users can buy a brand new PC and thru the use of interest rates, they can borrow money now to buy PC and pay off the balance in installments with the credit card company adding on interest rate charges to finance the purchase.

By proper management of credit card finances, individuals will be able to maximize the use of their credit by being able to buy the necessary things they need now and may able to pay off their balance in the short term.

As credit card users frequently make purchases for their daily activities, credit companies also provide rewards points for their purchases. Awarding of points for these purchases may vary depending on the items they buy, the special features of their credit cards and the reward items that their accumulated points can redeem.

There are credit cards offered in the market today that offers rewards points in the form of air travel miles. As a card user makes regular purchases, equivalent points in the form of travel miles are awarded. Usually, one air travel mile is awarded for every dollar spent on card purchases.

The air travel mile points accumulated over credit use doesn’t necessarily equal actual miles required to make the travel. It usually depends on the destination, the card company offering the travel programs and the airline companies that the credit card companies are working with. This information can be obtained from the credit card company’s hotline numbers, their consumer websites and from the promotional brochures that they send to their customers.

A frequent traveler can benefit lot from the use of his credit card if he opts to redeem his accumulated points into air travel miles. They can use their travel points and redeem them for travel promotions of their card companies and later on use them in a planned vacation in the future.

They’ll just monitor their accumulated points in order for them to determine how many more points they’ll need in order to get that vacation they’ve planned or if they can use the points as additional help in purchasing plane tickets for sudden travel plans

Sunday, March 25, 2007

Period Rooms

Period Rooms

WE use the term "period rooms" with full knowledge of the difficulties involved, in defining Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Directoire, Jacobean, Empire, Georgian, Victorian and Colonial decorations। Each period certainly has its distinctive earmarks in line and typical decoration, but you must realize that a period gradually evolves, at first exhibiting characteristics of its ancestors, then as it matures, showing a definite new type, and, later, when the elation of success has worn off, yielding to various foreign influences। By way of example, note the Chinese decoration on some of the painted furniture of the Louis XVI type, the Dutch influence on Chippendale in line, and the Egyptian on Empire।
One fascinating way of becoming familiar with history is to delve into the origin and development of periods in furniture। The story of Napoleon is recorded in the unpretentious Directoire, the ornate Empire of Fontainebleau, while the conversion of round columns into obelisk-like pilasters surmounted by heads, the bronze and gilded-wood ornaments in the form of the Sphynx, are frank souvenirs of Egypt।
period, whether ascribed to England, France, Italy or Holland, has found expression in all adjacent countries। An Italian Louis XVI chair, mirror or appliqué is frequently sold in Paris or London as French and Empire furniture was "made in Germany।" Periods have no restricted nationality; but nationality often declares itself in periods।
is to say, lines may be copied; but workmanship is another thing। Apropos of this take the French Empire furniture, massive as much of it is, built squarely and solidly to the floor, but showing most extraordinary grace on account of the amazing delicacy of intricate designs, done by the greatest French sculptors of the time and worked out in metal by the trained hands of men who had a special genius for this art. At no other time, nor in any other country, has an equal degree of perfection in the fine chiseling of metals so much as Approached the standard attained during the Louis and the Empire periods.

If in your wandering, you happen upon a genuine bit of this work in silver or ormoulu, buy it The writer once found in a New Jersey antique shop, a rare Empire bronze vase, urn-shaped, a specimen of the very finest kind of this metal engraving। The price asked for it (in ignorance, of course) was $2.50! The piece would have brought $40 in Paris. But the quest of the antique is another story.

When one realizes the eternal borrowing of one country from another, the ever-recurring renaissance of past periods and the legitimate and illegitimate mixing of styles, it is no wonder that the amateur feels nervously uncertain, or frankly ignorant. Many a professional decorator hesitates to give a final judgment.

To take one case in point, we glibly speak of "Colonial" furniture, that term which covers such a multitude of sins, and inspiring virtues, too! We have the Colonial, which closely resembles the Empire, and we have what is sometimes styled the Chippendale Colonial, following Louis XIV, XV and XVI. The Chippendale of England. Our Colonial cabinet-makers used as models, beautiful pieces imported from England, Holland and France by the wealthier members of our communities.

Also a Chinese and Japanese influence crept in, on account of the lacquer and carved teak wood, brought home by our seafaring ancestors. It is quite possible that the carved teak wood stimulated the clever maker of some of the most beautiful Victorian furniture made in America, which is gradually finding its way into the hands of collectors.

Some of these cabinet-makers glued together and put under heavy pressure seven to nine layers of rosewood with the grain running at every angle, so as to produce strength. When the layers had been crushed into a solid block, they carved their open designs, using one continuous piece of wood for the ornamental rim of even large sofas.

The best of the Victorian period is attractive, but how can we express our opinion of those American monstrosities of the sixties or seventies, beds in rosewood and walnut, the head-boards covering the side of a room, bureaus proportionately huge, following out the idea that a piece of furniture to be beautiful must be very large and very expensive! It is to be hoped that wary cabinet-makers are to day rescuing the lovely rosewood and walnut wasted at that time.

The art of furniture making, like every other art, came into being to serve a clearly defined purpose. This must not be forgotten. A chair and a sofa are to sit on; a mirror, to reflect. Remember this last fact when hanging one.

It is important that your mirror reflect one of the most attractive parts of your room, and thus contributes its quota to your scheme of decoration. It is interesting to note that chairs were made with solid wooden seats when men wore armor, velvet cushions followed more fragile raiment, and tapestries while always mural decorations were first used in place of doors and partitions, in feudal castles, before there were interior doors and partitions.

Any piece of furniture is artistically bad when it does not satisfactorily serve its purpose. The equally fundamental law that everything useful should at the same time be beautiful cannot be repeated too often.

Period rooms which slavishly repeat, in every piece of furniture and ornament, only one type, have but a museum interest If your rooms are to serve as a home, give them a winning, human quality, keep before your mind's eye, not royal palaces which have become museums, but homes, built and furnished by men and women whose traditions and associations gave them standards of beauty, so that they bought the choicest furniture both at home and abroad.

In such a home, whether it be an intimate palace in Europe, a Colonial mansion in New England, or a Victorian interior of the best type, an extraneous period is often represented by some objet d'art as a delightful, because harmonious note of contrast.

For example, in a Louis XVI salon, where the color scheme is harmonious, one gradually realizes that one of the dominant ornaments in the room is a rare old Chinese vase, brought back from the Orient by one of the family and given a place of honor on account of its uniqueness.