Articles by Neil Street

As the weather turns warm, homeowners across America start preparing for summertime fun: dragging the grill out of storage, cleaning off the lawn furniture, opening the pool, and visiting the hardware store for everything from lawnmowers to bug zappers.

The American love affair with hardwood flooring has never been stronger -- after hundreds of years, this traditional flooring choice for American homes is more popular than ever. Traditional wood flooring -- exemplified by styles like wide plank flooring, rustic or antique flooring, delibarately distressed floors, even reclaimed wood floors -- is appearing in homes across the country.

If you had to guess, what era would you say the girl's name 'Freelove' comes from Most people would probably guess the 1960s, the decade of the hippie movement, the time of slogans like 'make love, not war,' and Haight-Ashbury's 1967 'Summer of Love'.

Food, like fashion, has its own trends, and 2008 is shaping up to be an exciting year for wedding catering and other celebrations. These are some of the new directions in catering to watch for in the coming year.

Fads come and go, but the preppy lifestyle is almost as old as Yale University. 'Preppy' is so cool that it just never goes out of style. With this in mind, it seemed only logical to put together a list of baby names that preppy parents could really count on.

They didn't garner quite the media hype of 2006, but nontheless, celebrity baby names in 2007 continued to fascinate and engage the press and the public alike. With names like Heaven Rain (Brooke Burke's daughter); Alabama Gypsy Rose (Drea de Matteo); and Ptolemy John (Gretchen Mol's son), 2007 had its share of celebrity baby names that people love to call "weird.

Take a glance at a bookstore's baby names shelf, and you'll see that Irish baby names are a very popular category. But for many prospective parents, Irish names can be very confusing. Many different races have settled in Ireland over the centuries.

A unisex or androgynous name is one which is used by both males and females. Sometimes parents choose a name because they know it's a unisex name; other times, perhaps more frequently, parents are unaware that their chosen name is also popular with the opposite sex.

How many times have you heard an expectant Mom or Dad say something like "we're trying to come up with a unique baby name - you know, something a little different..." Many expectant parents, when they're trying to choose a baby name, start at that very point.

One of the most important decisions you'll need to make, when planning a wedding or large event, is the overall color scheme. It's a big detail that is sometimes overlooked, yet it is a crucial element in the overall event.