Making Your Own Family Christmas Card

It is one thing to go to the store and buy an impersonal Christmas card however no matter how expensive or heartfelt it is this is exactly the kind of card that quickly ends up in the garbage bin. This is because simply buying a greeting card in a store does not seem very sincere or intimate to others. A photo Christmas card however conveys the message that you have spent some money and gone to a little more effort to impress the person that is receiving your holiday greeting.

Thanks to advances in digital photography and computer photography sending a family photo is no longer a big deal. Digital cameras allow you to take the photograph immediately and retake any photographs that don't turn out well. Real film is rarely used anymore to create a photo card so they are quite cheap to have created professionally or to create yourself. Making your own family photo christmas card is especially a snap thanks to simple design programs (both online and that you can buy) that allow you to attach a photo to your own design and print it right off of your computer. That is yet another thing that technology has saved us all from recently – the time, anxiety and expense of waiting for ages for a printed photo christmas card set to come back from the printer's.

There is no right way to create a christmas photo for your card. In this day and age the more creative and more casual the card is, the more fashionable it is. The design of the photo Christmas card has come a long way since the family had to line up all in arrow dressed in their Sunday best. Nowadays you are more likely to see a photo Christmas card where the whole family is dressed up as Santa, or performing an activity that has little to do with Christmas such as waterskiing. In fact nowadays, the less the card has to do with the Christian form of holiday greeting, the more politically correct it is. The traditional sight of snow and Santa and references to the Christ Child may be left out of the card's message altogether.

It is quite easy to create your own cards. Many people creating do-it-yourself photo Christmas cards get inspiration from scrapbooking ideas or simply by looking around on the Internet and graphics and different fonts. The idea is to keep the project as simple as possible. Most beginning designers make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew and then abandon their do-it-yourself photo Christmas card when it proves to be too difficult to complete.

If designing your own card is beyond you, then you can always farm out the creation of your photo Christmas card to a professional who can make sure it is designed and printed properly for you.

Helping Your Hirstute Teenager

I have a daughter with a bit too much facial hair. It is hereditary on my husband's side of the family.
All I really remembered from mown experiences with this is that there was electoloysis around to help treat this problem. I remember too that it was expensive, painful and the hair could easily grow back if the procedure as not done right.
Then I discovered laser epilation. It is pain free and it gives my poor embarrassed daughter some relief from the embarrassing hair growth.
Laser epilation is performed by IPL epilators. IPL is short for 'Intense Pulsed Light.' This fast method of hair removal came into existence in the 1970s. However the actual technology for laser epilators has been around since the 1950s.
The odd thing about laser epilators is that they technically cannot even be properly defined as 'real laser.' Instead they are what are known as xenon flash lamps.
This type of laser hair removal is accomplished through photo thermolysis which selectively only heats up objects that are darker, specifically darker hairs against whiter skin. This is why dark hair on dark skin or blondish hair on darker skin does not always successfully get removed.
Coarse dark hair on light skin is easiest to fix using a laser. Finer hair and hair on darker skin is more difficult to remove and may require more sessions with the laser. The face sometimes needs several different treatments as the hair is more difficult to remove .It did take two tries before it was successful on my daughter.
Most adults need between three and eight treatments before the hair will be permanently removed which can make the treatment more expensive over time. Usually the first treatment gets rid of the majority of the hairs and subsequent treatments are 'touch ups' that perfect the job. The treatments are also usually spaced two to three weeks apart to avoid damaging the skin in any way.
Lasers with a large spotlight are used to remove as much hair as possible in one are and in just one treatment. The point is to have the radiation of the laser emit enough power to do damage to the hair follicles but not to the skin.
Compared to electrolysis, which is a slow process where individual hairs are plucked out one by one with an electrical tweezer laser hair removal is said to be sixty times faster and the results are also said to be more permanent. I highly recommend this no muss or fuss way to get rid of hair.