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As many professional people now work from the home the aim to create a business environment that is both comfortable and attractive as well as functional and practical is very important.

If you are budget conscious then you can create a professional environment in which to work and receive your clients quite easily but if you want something a bit more extravagent, as pictured left, then get yourself a furniture catalog from Boyles of North Carolina.

They have a range of discount furniture as well - for those budget minded people - as well as top of the range pricier fittings. And their furnishings are not just for the office, you can create a very stylish home environment as well.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Now that house buyers in the UK are starting to breath a sigh of relief after the recent short and swift boom the market is now becoming one in favour of the buyers again. That kind of leaves us property owners a little bewildered right now but that’s real estate for you…I think we can just thank our lucky stars that we who own homes, and are not strangled by our mortgages, have a pretty safe fence to sit on for now.

It was especially crazy in Northern Ireland where in many cases property values went up one hundred percent in a period of just six months; our own Belfast property was valued last July at three times the purchase price we paid back in 2002. Auctions were doing a roaring trade and I am starting to wonder what those folk, who paid those hugely inflated prices during that period, are going to do when they wish to sell up or they cannot manage the large mortgage they obtained to buy in the first place.

Now getting down to the point of the post; there’s a great website for prospective property buyers which allows them to not only price what’s around but also check what price the past owners paid for the same property, or those in the vicinity.

The website is Your Property Finder and if you click on Compare previous sales at this address the link will take you to the Land Registry data for that particular street.

Popularity: 2% [?]

We meet a lot of people who visit France and stock up on their wine during their trip. As wine itself is really quite cheap if you buy it from the caves around the vineyards you can do really well even if your budget is rather tight.  But even if you buy the locally produced vin for next to nothing you will want to store it properly when you arrive home just as if it were a more expensive brand.

Some tips:

Red wine - store at room temperature in a cool-ish type environment. Never put red wine in the fridge - yuk.

White wine - keep it in the fridge as white wine should be drunk cool and crisp; but not at too cold a temp.

Rose - same as for white.

Now, what do you have in the way of wine storage? if not a cellar as such then have a look at some wine refrigerators; there are many on the market that will store just a few bottles of something more serious if you are an avid collector or have a cafe/restaurant. Most today are also environmentally friendly in that they don’t put out those harmful gasses and will come with full details as to how to store which wines you have.

Smaller compact size for your kitchen/entertaining area

Larger size for the serious wine buff or business owner.

Popularity: 6% [?]