To make the bead and pipe cleaner ornaments, you need common pipe cleaners in desired colors and acrylic beads. Two types of beads are particularly effective when strung on pipe cleaners. One type are called sunburst beads, but are also known as paddlewheel beads, snowflake beads, or starburst beads. These beads have six faceted paddles spaced equally around a center that contains the hole for stringing. When several of these sunburst beads are strung consecutively, they fit against each other in an interlocking pattern.

The other type of bead that is also effective for this Christmas craft is called the tri bead or propeller bead. It has three rounded bumps arranged around the stringing hole. Like the sunburst beads, the tri beads interlock when strung consecutively. For the most sparkly and attractive Christmas ornaments, get tri beads and/or sunburst beads in translucent colors of red, green, and clear. The tri beads can also be found in metallic gold and silver which can be used in this Christmas craft as well.

Pipe cleaners can be found in silver and gold tinsel as well as chenille of all colors. For the Christmas craft, the best colors to use are the metallics and Christmas colors. The beads cover the pipe cleaners, but the ends will need to be twisted together and made into hangers, so they show.

Anyone, even small children, can string these beads on pipe cleaners. Bend up the end of the pipe cleaner so the beads don’t fall off. The pipe cleaner works like a needle, making a needle unnecessary. For best results, show the children how to alternate colors when stringing, or start a pattern of three colors. When the beads are strung on the pipe cleaners, they can be bent into different Christmas shapes. For instance, string red and clear beads alternately, then bend down one end of the pipe cleaner for a candy cane shape. Or alternate red and green beads and form a circle for a wreath. Use red pipe cleaner to form a small bow to decorate the wreath. Form a hanger for the Christmas craft or simply slip the circle over a branch of the tree.

If you experiment with clear beads and silver pipe cleaners, you can make some beautiful snowflake or star ornaments. Snowflake designs can be twisted of silver pipe cleaner only, without the beads for a simple but pretty decoration.

Bead and pipe cleaner ornaments are a Christmas craft you will find yourself using every year. Children and their parents will both appreciate this simple yet pretty Christmas craft.

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Step 1- Your Finances

Establishing credit is very important especially when you are looking to purchase a large investment like a house. Your credit reports reflects how you manage your finances. Study your credit report and your financial history so you are familiar with it before applying for a mortgage. These reports will be needed for the mortgage approval process in finding out the interest rate and other loan terms.

Step 2- Familiarize Yourself with the Mortgage Industry

Do your research. Finding the right loan and lender is extremely important to your home buying success.
Choose the lender that is best for your needs but be sure to understand the loan process as much as you can before talking to a lender so you don’t feel completely lost.

Step 3- get Pre-Approved for a Mortgage

Once you talk with a lender, you should be given an estimate of how much you can afford for a house.
Being pre approved can help you in a variety of ways. So if a home seller gets two offers, one being yours with a pre approved letter from your bank saying you have been approved for the amount offered, and then there is the other person with no letter, your chances of getting the house are much better.

Step 4- Determine what you Want and what you need

Buying a home isn’t as challenging as most think. If you familiarize yourself with the real estate market and narrow down what you want and need before buying house the process will run a lot smoother.
Be sure to understand agent duties and devotion because some real estate agents represent buyers, sellers, or both or depending on the state they can work as neutral facilitators for either party.

Step 6- Start Searching for your New Home

Your agent will most likely give you multiple listing sheets to review. You might have also picked up a real estate magazine in your area and found a house through that, shop online, or find ads in the newspaper. Other ideas can be driving around the neighborhoods that have houses for sale. Either way you look, consider these home buying search tools in your search.

Home Buying Search Tools

1. Consider houses that others may overlook
2. Get out there to see what’s out there
3. Look into public versions of multiple listing service web sites
4. Search for real estate agent web sites
5. Browse real estate search engines and networks
6. Find for sale by owner properties
7. Look at magazine and newspapers in print
8. Find foreclosed homes

Step 7- Handle Pre-Offer Tasks

When looking at houses be sure to look at its structure and features which can help determine if its something you want or not.

Step 8- put in an Offer

There’s no one specific set of instructions that cover all the differences in real estate laws and customs that exist throughout the United States, so when putting in an offer on a house, it will depend on your location.

Step 9- House Inspections and Other Tests

Some states allow home inspections before the final contract is signed where as in other states inspections take place after the contract is signed. No matter when you have to do them, it’s very important to decide which inspections and tests you want done.
Discuss with your real estate agent or if you don’t have one, then an advisor to find out when inspections should happen and if additional types of testing are needed for a specific area.

Step 10- Avoid having to Correct Last Minute Problems

As the closing date approaches, everyone involved in your real estate transaction should be checking the progress on a daily basis. That way if a problem arises it can be taken care of right away.
Step 11- Closing
Closing, also called settlement, is the event that transfers ownership of the property from the last owner to you.

Happy house hunting!

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Silver charm bracelets are now available through the CAN website to raise more money for autism research. Each silver charm bracelet comes with a silver charm heart. For an extra donation, you may also receive five additional silver charms with different designs (a boy, a girl, a cross, a peace sign, and a Star of David). This silver charm bracelet was designed by actress Rene Russo, an honorary board member of CAN. The charm bracelet is also available in gold along with other accessories that will help benefit CAN with your purchase.

In addition to the silver charm bracelet, one can support CAN by participating in a WALK NOW event. WALK NOW is a 5 K (just over 3 miles) walk to raise money and provide awareness for autism. At each WALK NOW event there is an information center where parents and others can learn more about autism and what the current research has found. There are also arts, crafts and other activities to keep the children entertained. There are several WALK NOW events every year in different locations to give a chance for everyone to participate.

Another way to help CAN is to become a corporate partner. CAN is always looking for corporate sponsorship. Some of CAN’s current corporate partners include Johnson and Johnson, RBC Mortgage, and MBNA America. If you have a company that would like to become a corporate partner, CAN would truly appreciate any help you can offer.

You can also help out CAN by creating your own fundraising event or campaign. This method takes a great deal of planning and organization, however, it is a way that you can let your imagination run wild. One of the more creative fundraising events for CAN was the “Express Your Love” Motorcycle Ride in Chicago. However, there are some guidelines and procedures from CAN that must be followed if you want to create your own charity event.

Lastly, if you would like to make a cash donation but are not interested in a silver charm bracelet, there are several other ways to make a monetary donation. You can do it online, by mail, or through United Way. You also have the option to donate appreciated stocks and mutual funds or you can even include CAN in your will. CAN will appreciate any way that you can possibly help them out financially so they can continue to provide quality autism research.

Purchasing a silver charm bracelet, participating in a WALK NOW event, becoming a corporate partner, creating your own fundraising event, making a donation are all ways that you can help support CAN in the goal to find suitable treatments for autism. With this research, there is hope for tens of thousands of people to find decent treatment or possibly even a cure for autism. CAN works to bring hope.

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1)Mortgage Rates might be lower now. The biggest reason that people refinance their mortgages is to save money. No matter what has happened to you, there is always a good reason to start saving money. A lower rate on your mortgage can help you stretch out the payments so that every month you are paying less to live in your house than the previous month. When interest rates are low and you had previously locked your mortgage into a higher price, it might be a good idea to shop your rate around to see how low you can get it. The early 2000′s have been an environment of very low mortgage rates which make it a good idea to shop around to see if you can refinance your mortgage.

2)You need money and need to stretch out your payments. Maybe you’ve recently filed for bankruptcy and therefore need more money to get back on your feet. Maybe you’ve switched jobs and therefore need to refinance your mortgage in order to make your monthly payments lower. No matter what people say, it’s always a good idea to have more money in your pocket than less, isn’t it? Refinancing your mortgage might be a good idea in this situation.

3)There may be better deals out there than you think there are. Finding a new mortgage company or bank to refinance your mortgage might be a good idea just to kick the tires of the industry and see if you could get a better deal. If you’ve been spending a lot of money and paying off the balances on your credit card on a monthly basis there is a significant chance that your credit score has increase recently. An overall better credit score is better for everyone including your lenders. If a new lender sees that your credit score has increased recently, she might be in a much better position to give you a better deal on your mortgage than you think. She could refinance your mortgage by shopping the deal around at more banks and finding the best one for you. Shop your refinancing around, it can’t hurt.

4)Mortgage refinancing as a sound business decision. If you own a small business of any sort and need a capital infusion, then investigating mortgage refinancing might be a very smart thing to do. If your business is truly small and you run it out of your house, then the line between your personal and business expenses might be thinner than you are reasonably comfortable with. Clearing up a little extra capital, through refinancing your home, every month might be the difference between investing in some new small equipment and not investing. Everything that is an expense should be lowered if possible. Refinancing a mortgage might be a fantastic idea to increase capital reserves and to plan for future investments. Many business owners who work out of their homes constantly try to decrease their monthly payments so that when it comes time to pay their business bills, they have a little extra capital. Always check with a CPA or attorney to determine what is deductible and what isn’t. But, more money is more money, even if you are lending it from yourself to your business

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Unfortunately, many parents ignore a simple financial back-to-school basic. They often buy the latest gadget for their kids but then fail to carry a critical component for their family’s future and their children’s education — namely, adequate life insurance coverage.

“If a parent is worried about his or her child’s education, he or she should also worry about having the financial protection underpinning those plans that life insurance can offer,” says Todd Gillingham, JD, CLU, ChFC, a partner with Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. “Without adequate insurance protection, every parent’s best laid education plans will fall apart under the financial burden left on their surviving children.”

Regardless of your income or assets, life insurance is the key to protecting the financial future of your loved ones and “should be the foundation on which other goals are built,” says Gillingham.

Surveys show that roughly one-third of American adults have no life insurance protection and, of those with coverage, nearly one-third have coverage that is less than one time their annual income — not nearly enough for long-term family protection. Four in 10 single parents have no life insurance coverage of any kind. Perhaps this is why the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education found that nearly half of Americans (48 percent) say they are worried that if they die tomorrow their loved ones would not be financially secure.

“Various funding vehicles such as 529 plans and Coverdell education accounts can often grab the headlines,” says Gillingham. “While these are important ways of saving, they can lead parents to mistakenly ignore their life insurance needs. Such an oversight can be financially devastating.”

Without the protection life insurance offers, financial security is often illusory. In the case of premature death, life insurance helps families pay for living expenses — including mortgage and education payments — when the income of a loved one is lost. Without this protection, the resulting financial stress frequently undermines all other goals.

Beyond daily expenses, life insurance protects against sharp reductions in future pension and social security payments by replacing assets cut short by premature death. For example, anticipated assets in an individual’s retirement plan may be reduced by 50 percent or more simply because the individual’s death interrupts the long-term growth of the assets within the individual’s plan. Business owners and those with significant assets also use life insurance to pass those assets to their children in a tax-efficient manner or as a vehicle for charitable gifts to nonprofit organizations. Without life insurance’s special tax privileges, many families would lose the family business or not be able to leave a lasting legacy to the cause or organization of their choosing.

“These benefits aside, the fundamental reason for life insurance remains the protection of your family and your financial programs,” says Thrivent Financial’s Gillingham. “Death often strikes when we don’t expect it, so goals that require continuing funding such as a child’s education are especially vulnerable to death’s effects.”

While shopping for school supplies this fall, remember this back-to-school lesson — the essentials come first. Says Gillingham, “adequate life insurance is one back-to-school basic parents should simply not live without.”

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Mortgage Quote Tip #1 Bid for Quotes
The best way to get a mortgage quote online is to visit the sites that ask for some general personal financial information and then submits it to various lenders. Then, all of the lenders respond with a mortgage quote for your personal financial situation. Once you receive the mortgage quote it is up to you to forget it or contact the lender that provided you with that particular mortgage quote.

Mortgage Quote Tip #2 Professionals
You want a professional and real mortgage quote, so make sure you are dealing with a professional company that will provide you with a legitimate mortgage quote online. If not, you will be wasting your time and risking your investment by dealing with a sketchy company.

Mortgage Quote Tip #3 Realistic
While you want the lowest mortgage quote possible, you need to make sure the mortgage quote is realistic within the scheme of things. If you receive a mortgage quote that is several percentage points lower than the lowest mortgage quote you have seen, you might want to question it. While there are many reputable online mortgage quote companies, there are those out there that are not professional.

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Today, there is a growing realization of the need to offer home loan products that are specifically designed for borrowers with an imperfect credit or financial history. Mortgage programs have been created especially for borrowers who have gone through a bankruptcy. In fact, those with a bankruptcy discharged for even one day may apply for a home loan. That’s right, if your bankruptcy was discharged yesterday, you can qualify for a mortgage today!

Now you are probably thinking that although you are eligible, it will be difficult to qualify. The truth is that qualifying is much easier than you think. The fact that you have been through bankruptcy is not even considered in the evaluation of your credit. Any liens, collections or judgments that appear on your credit report will also not be used in the evaluation of credit and will not need to be paid off.

What is important and what will be looked at is your credit score. Now here is the good news: with a minimum FICO score of 500, you are qualified to purchase a home with a 20% down payment. Having a credit score between 550 and 579 will allow you to borrow up to 95% of the purchase price; and with any score above 580, you are qualified for 100% financing.

With the competitive rates that are available on mortgage after bankruptcy programs, you are able to realize the dream of homeownership with a mortgage payment that is affordable and fits easily within your budget. Along with the traditional benefits of owning a home, such as equity building and tax benefits, you will most importantly be rebuilding your credit profile. Additionally, you may also benefit from the current strong housing market and its appreciating home values.

So now you know the following: that you can qualify for a home loan today, what the credit requirements for a mortgage are, and that you can rebuild your credit and financial life through homeownership. Gone forever are the days of waiting two years and living with the dim prospect of obtaining a mortgage after bankruptcy. You have worked hard to discharge your bankruptcy and have the fresh start that you were looking for.

There is empowerment that comes with the knowledge that you can purchase a home today even if your bankruptcy was discharged yesterday. So get qualified for a home loan, start searching for a home and begin packing those boxes!

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