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Give your home a fresh direct the eye and be conscious of being in the new year by these tips on to what extent to organize and corral home areas from kitchens to closets. The tips are from Better Homes and Garden magazine’sitting January 2009 issue.

LINEN CLOSET

Artful sorting: Get 2009 off to an organized start with a well-ordered linen closet. Divide sheets and towels into clear categories and keep them in easy view. Color coordinate towels by bathroom. Separate sheet sets by bed size, and make them easier to snatch by dint of. stowing them on dish-stacking shelves labeled with suspension tags.

Clever tricks: To keep sheet sets hand in hand, cinch with a ribbon belt (make your own or use one you don’t wear anymore). Or fold the pillowcases lengthwise and wrap them around the folded flat and fitted sheets.

HOME OFFICE

Drop zone: Keep bustle at bay by setting up a multipurpose work station near your home’s inlet. It’s the perfect spot to hang your purse or briefcase, charge electronic devices, and store paperwork. (Alve secretary, $199; ikea.com)

By the letter: Stack trays in succession top for items you be without in inspection and in attend to

A to Z: A file box holds materials you need to entrance regularly, such as novel receipts or school information.

Charging station: A slender small trough, dressed up with a ribbon, is a tidy place to stow your phone, BlackBerry, or iPod.

Catch-all: Try a hardware store toothbrush-and-tumbler holder (in the same manner with moderate as $5) for pens. Add S-hooks for keys.

Purse hasp: A robe grasshook on the side of your desk keeps a bag or purse in easy reach at the time that you’re on the go.

Top drawer: Quarter-sheet pans are perfect dividers for shallow desk drawers. Stow extra school supplies for the kids in one, your bill-paying tools in another, and grab-and-go essentials

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An inch of rain a lifetime is expected for the next few days in the Seattle area, and a flood watch remains in effect for most of Western Washington through Sunday morning, according to the National Weather Service.

A strong, keen and wet Pacific storm will bear lowland showers into nearest week, meteorologist Johnny Burg said.

“An twelfth part of a foot of rain a day isn’t too uncouth,” he said. “Getting a quarter-inch every six hours is kind of the representative, wet winter system we get.”

The possible remains for small streams to downrush and for water to pool on streets during the time that the last of our snow is melted by the rain and warming temperatures — a bigger concern for urban areas. Today’s haughty is expected to reach 44 degrees, a welcome change from lately frigid temperatures and the more than 12 inches of snowfall reported at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport between Dec. 13 and Christmas Eve.

In anticipation of the predicted rain and resulting snowmelt, Seattle Public Utilities has put in motion its Urban Flood Response Plan, with extra crews on what one is bound and observers in place at sections of the incorporated town where flooding is likely. To repute an turn of events drainage problem in Seattle, call 206-386-1800.

Residents have been advised to help clear storm drains and move snow and grease from flat roofs.

A Bothell firefighter responding to an emergency phrase at the Green Acres mobile home park was rushed to Harborview Medical Center Friday night after a portion of the carport roof collapsed on him. Heavy accumulation of snow was too to blame for the Christmas Day collapse of a carport at a Bothell apartment complex and a wife’s fortune of the roof at an Olympia high school closed for winter break.

In Tumwater, Thurston County, a roof sagging beneath a weighty load of snow and water led to the evacuation of dozens of people at a retirement place of abode Friday night.

Authorities were summoned after a resident on the second floor of the Olympics West Retirement Inn had trouble initiatory a door and saw that part of the floor was sagging, according to Fire Lt. Dale Britton.

About 65 seniors at the assisted-living complex were taken to a part of the erection that is reliable.

Britton says a civil fabric official was summoned and told maintenance personnel to shovel snow off the roof. He said a collapse of the roof did not appear to be impendent.

By Sunday, all lowland snow should be gone, and with it the possibility of urban flooding, Burg related. But in the event snow continues to clog a street, the city of Seattle says residents may call 206-386-1218. Requests for snow clearing will be met forward a case-by-case basis.

Passable terms have been achieved on all of the incorporated town’s primary arterials. Seattle Department of Transportation crews are continuing 24-hour operations, working to clear snow and ice from secondary arterials and residential streets. The work will be prioritized based on police, fire and life-safety concerns.

The Skokomish River in Mason County could flood, in the same proportion that it does frequently in the winter, Burg said. River levels across the region also may go after consecutive days of rain, but-end “it’s not something we’re worried about yet,” he said. “It’s just something I always keep in the in a backward direction. \ of my mind.”

The same Pacific storm that’s supposed to soak Seattle will dump 3 or more feet of weighty, wet snow in the mountains this weekend, said Mark Moore, director of the Northwest Weather and Avalanche Center.

The new snow is sure to entice skiers and snowboarders, but Moore said the avalanche hazard is so severe that backcountry enthusiasts should “go to the mall and exchange their gifts or shovel their driveways” instead of venturing outside ski areas.

Moore said the Cascades snowpack is the weakest he’s seen in 20 years. Until now, the mountain snow has been light and fluffy, the kind that falls solitary when temperatures are actual cold. As a termination, the snowpack is superficial and the bonds betwixt snow crystals have disappeared, he said.

“If you were to step off your skis or snowboard, you could easily bring low to the ground or very near the ground. It won’t assist much weight,” Moore said.

Adding heavier, rainy snow to the fragile snowpack “is a very scary site,” he said. “It tends to bring down the entire deck of cards. It’sitting like potato chips loaded by a brick.”

The heavier snow will create a more stable surface, but it won’t take much to trigger a slide since of the weak snow below, Moore said. Avalanches, either natural ones or those caused by people, are likely to “involve snow all the way to the ground” and cover much greater swaths of terrain than regular, he uttered.

Depending onward how the relax of the winter unfolds, avalanches could exist a pompous problem during the spring become fluid, Moore said.

The last danger this winter comes a year after the deadliest avalanche prepare in 30 years in Washington state. Between December 2007 and January 2008, eight people were killed or presumed unemployed in avalanches between Crystal Mountain and Mount Baker.

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LOS ANGELES

“We’ll scratch our heads and ask ‘Why are you here?’ ” said Feola, president of F+A Architects in Pasadena. “Well, I’m here for the same reasons you’re here.”

A growing number of architects and urban planners are finding work overseas as the domestic real-estate slump persists. An emerging affluent class abroad is drawn to suburbs with U.S. names that mock the U.S. ideal

A 2006 survey of American Institute of Architects members shows that large science firms with more than 100 employees reported billings from between nations work doubled in four years. Meanwhile, billings in the U.S. this year dropped to the lowest point in the 12 years the survey has been conducted.

While there’sitting no unkind data, more U.S.-made windows, roofing systems, furnaces and other specialized materials are actuality shipped overseas for projects designed by Americans are built to U.S. construction standards, said Jim Haughey, an economist with Reed Construction Data, which tracks the construction toil.

“If you look at in what way countries are moving up the socio-economic ladder, some of the things they the whole of want is a car, a house, a nice view and air conditioning,” said Jeff Rossely, a Bahrain-based developer of shopping malls, resorts and residential communities in the Middle East.

The trend started during the betimes 1990s and has intensified in recent years because of the U.S. housing downturn. Firms that ventured abroad since that particular period say doing so has helped them sustain economic slowdowns in determinate markets.

It has also created opportunities to trace out on a grander and additional creative scale. At seasons, architects are creating huge master-planned communities encompassing a mix of single-family homes with high rises, parks and shopping centers.

Feola’s firm is designing a shopping and entertainment complex for New Cairo, a metropolis built from scratch despite roughly 200,000 residents in Egypt.

The archetype is to avoid some of the mistakes of the past and create a mixed-use environment where people rely less on their car to get to shops and services.

U.S. firms are behind an eco-friendly island connected to Shanghai by rail, and a new town territory in northern Indian loaded through luxury villas, apartments, shops, parks and schools.

Curiously, more of the developments overseas air and sound a lot like California suburbs marketed to rich customers who have spent term living in the U.S. or attracted to an U.S. suburban lifestyle.

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WASHINGTON

Lyons is a “death midwife,” a specialist in the little-known opportunity of helping people manage the passing of a loved one externality the traditional funeral industry. As the nation reels during its vanquish relating to housekeeping crisis in greater quantity than a formation, her business is booming.

In normal times, Lyons’ clients tend to have being people more interested in alternative lifestyles. But many people are drawn to her by a entire calculation: They cannot afford traditional funerals and burials, which often run $10,000 or greater quantity.

“People be deficient something that is in line with what their loved ones would have wanted,” Lyons said by the agency of telephone from Hawaii, where she was teaching a sold-out workshop. “But they also want something that they be possible to afford.”

Lyons, an ordained assistant from Sebastopol, Calif., started a nonprofit organizing, Final Passages. As a death midwife, she teaches workshops about alternative possibilities for families, such as keeping the body of a deceased relative at home or burying it outside a traditional cemetery.

Lyons also guides families from one side the legalities and paperwork of at-home funerals

Interest grows

Other death midwives have reported a similar greaten in interest, by much of the growth tied to economic need.

“In good spells and bad, funerals be delivered of consistently been an inadmissible expense,” said Joshua Slocum, executive director of Funeral Consumers Alliance. “This economic situation is forcing us to reassess the value of the dollar, and not just the set a value on of money, end the value of what we buy.”

When Howard Kopecky, 66, of northwestern Wisconsin, was diagnosed with terminal cancer this year, he decided he did not meagreness his family and his wife, who had equitable lost her do job-work at a nursing home, to spend a hap of money on his funeral.

The couple did not know how to proceed, till Kopecky noticed some ad in the local newspaper for death midwife Lucy Basler. “I think it made us feel like, OK, other people are doing this,” his wife, Phyllis, said.

Basler had been trained at one of Lyons’ workshops and assisted the couple by the legal and logistic particulars of staging a funeral in their home.

Saudi Aramco is expenditure $10 billion to retool the Al Khurais field to effect 1.25 million barrels of light crude a daytime

by Stanley Reed

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In the aftermath of their emergency meeting on high oil prices (BusinessWeek.com, 06/22/08), the Saudis are on a campaign to show the world that it should not underestimate their magnitude to produce oil. Their showcase is a field called Al Khurais, which lies here and there 100 miles east of Riyadh in flat red desert.

Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, is spending some $10 billion to retool Al Khurais as a monster battle-field with 27 billion barrels of reserves and the capacity to produce 1.2 million barrels per day of desirable Arab light awkward. That amount, when it is achieved, will outstrip the undiminished output of some oil-producing countries, such as Indonesia, and is roughly equivalent to the annual increase in cosmos demand for oil.

To get to Al Khurais, one flies into a remote desert location called Pump Station 3 on the East-West pipeline from Dahran to Yanbu. The airstrip is a 50-mile guide from the oil field, and together the route you beware herds of black camels, scruffy truck stops where mechanics fix vehicles in the desert sun, and the casual drilling put on.

The numbers for Al Khurais sound impressive on paper, but the field’sitting massive scale can only be appreciated up close. The guts of the infrastructure, known as the central processing facility, stretch in favor of nearly a mile. The workers—in that place are already 28,000 of them and the number is likely to rise—are covered by protective garb from head to foot and wear hoods that stick deficient in from by means of their hard hats to shield them from the scorching Arabian sun. They look like aliens, moving about under the girders or hammering together wooden forms for pouring concrete.

Al Khurais’ managers say that both Schlumberger (SLB) and Sinopec (SNP) are drilling for them. Seventeen drilling rigs are working on the field, using the latest smart technology that allows employees to remotely monitor pressure and degree of heat and adjust emanate rates. Saudi Aramco also is installing long horizontal wells designed to ensure maximum contact with the oil-bearing quiet. Such technologies are allowing the Saudis to cut regular course back on the number of wells—but they’re still drilling relative to 310 reinvigorated ones and working over another 110.

Khalid Abdulqader, the project conductor, insisted that the field would subsist ready to produce by means of June of next year. Over a lunch of Lebanese salads and firm sheep baked in rice, Abdulqader said that preliminary testing indicated that the opportunity might be exactly more productive than expected.

Al Khurais is the centerpiece of a Saudi effort to rise lengthening magnitude from the current 11 million or so barrels per day to 12.5 million barrels quotidian by nearest year. Aramco executives fall short to emphasize that their advance is conservative and long phrase. To make the point, exploration and production chief Amin Nasser said that Aramco’sitting medium depletion rate—the volume of oil it produces a year as a percentage of reserves—was only about 2%. By contrast, he said other producers and international oil companies medium 4% to 9% depletion rates. This approach, he said, lets the Saudis deploy better technology and recover more oil than an energy company under difficulty to produce as much as possible before its let runs out.

Overall, the Saudis come off as an exclusion to the otherwise anaemic supply picture. Many other oil countries, including Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, and Mexico, are coming up short on output (BusinessWeek, 6/19/08). That leaves the Saudis, who say they are the greatest in number reliable suppliers, with an awfully huge burden to shoulder.

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Yes, this was the worst year in Seattle sports history. In fact, this might have been the worst year in any incorporated town’session sports history.

The Seahawks stink and Mike Holmgren is leaving.

The Mariners lost 101 games.

The Huskies lost all their games, including the Apple Cup to a Washington State team that inspired comparisons to the worst teams in college football. Not the worst teams this year. The worst teams ever. That’session in what way bad the Cougars were. And they beat the Huskies.

The Storm made the playoffs on this account that, healthy, because most WNBA teams do. Then it lost in the first round, for the fourth year in a riot.

Speaking of first-round losses, the Washington men’s basketball team made a quick exit from matter called the College Basketball Invitational, which from what we can collect is with respect to teams not good enough to play in the NCAA tourney or the NIT.

Four freshmen left the UW women’s basketball program.

Oh, and speaking of leaving, you may have heard the Sonics are gone, clandestine by that servant possessed, Clay Bennett.

But there was some good news in 2008 — you just have to know whither to take notice. With that in mind, a few highlights from the year in Seattle sports:

The Oklahoma City Thunder is 3-28, and the fans that are bothering to unfold up are booing the home team. See, dress in’t you feel better already?

The Storm was sold by Bennett, who never wanted the team anyway, to a group of four Seattle women, who want nothing except for the Storm to prosper, in Seattle. That’s good.

So is Brandon Roy. The constructer Garfield High and UW luminary scored 52 points in a game this month for the Portland Trail Blazers. Jamal Crawford, a Rainier Beach High grad, scored 50 two days later for Golden State.

Tim Lincecum, from Renton’s Liberty High School and UW, won the National League Cy Young award, pitching since the San Francisco Giants.

And even if you think the Mariners were crazier than Al Davis to proceed on Lincecum for Brandon Morrow in the 2006 draft, you have to admit Morrow shows promise.

So does Seahawks rookie tight period John Carlson, a first-round talent drafted in the second round last spring.

Steve Sarkisian is the Huskies’ football coach. We don’t know much end for end him nevertheless, but he’ll have a hard time screwing things up as badly taken in the character of Tyrone Willingham did.

Speaking of which, Bill Bavasi was fired. The new Mariners general officer manager is Jack Zduriencik, the new manager Don Wakamatsu. Everyone seems pretty happy about this except headline writers.

The Bellevue High School football team survived a bus dash in pieces, soon afterward won a public title.

Hope Solo, Sue Bird, Mary Whipple and Anna Mickelson Cummins all won gold medals in the Michael Phelps Beijing Olympics.

The UW women’s cross rustic team dominated its sport this fall, winning the NCAA right easily. Cross-country scoring is a little tricky, but think of it this way: If the Huskies’ races this year had been football games, they’d have won them all 56-0.

The Seattle Pacific women’sitting soccer team won the NCAA Division II championship, and SPU runner Jessica Pixler won an individual cross-country title.

The Sounders are off to a pious start, signing Kasey Keller and Freddie Ljungberg, hiring Sigi Schmid as coach and Kevin Calabro to call the operation, and selling more than 18,000 season tickets for their MLS debut in 2009.

Mexico and China played to 56,000 soccer fanatics at Qwest Field last spring. Brazil and Canada also played at Qwest, with other thing than 47,000 watching.

The Washington volleyball team made another exciting run deep into the NCAA tournament, falling just short of a trip to the Final Four.

Dave Niehaus found out in succession his 73rd natal day that he had won the Ford C. Frick award for broadcasting. Niehaus, who has been calling Mariners games since there were Mariners, was honored at baseball’s Hall of Fame induction last summer.

Ken Griffey Jr. — remember him? — hit domestic running No. 600.

Ichiro’s a few homers short of Junior, but he did master more than 200 hits for the eighth straight year.

Seattle University is structure its way in the rear to Division I. (There are rumors the UW football team desire make a homogeneous attempt).

The UW men’s basketball team received a commitment from Bellarmine star Abdul Gaddy, who had originally told Arizona he would play there.

Rick Neuheisel (4-8 in his first year at UCLA) and Shaun Alexander (24 yards rushing this season for Redskins) returned to Seattle with their new teams. It’s always nice to see old friends, yes? (Oh, be sure to clear Aug. 13 on your calendar, the nearest scheduled booing of A-Rod.)

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Gradually tumor temperatures and minimal rainfall appear to be dissolving not just Western Washington’s blanket of snow, but the fear of widespread flooding.

“We’re having a certain orderly melt here in the metro area,” said Mike McFarland, of the Weather Service, adding that the snowpack may be virtually gone by this afternoon.

A freshet watch for much of Western Washington was canceled early Saturday, further McFarland noted that an advisory for possible urban and small-stream flooding likely would remain in consequence until early today.

Places with much deeper snow than Seattle may still be at jeopardy, McFarland related, noting that the Woodinville-Duvall area and portions of Snohomish, Skagit and Whatcom counties ever had deep snow Saturday afternoon, though snow in the immediate Seattle area was disappearing.

Rain expected to intensify overnight still could be a concern where significant snow remains on the ground, McFarland said.

Saturday’s tender stand, through temperatures gradually climbing to the mid-40s, was a service to Seattle crews poised to deal with clogged drains or burst water mains. “It’s a slow thaw, like we had hoped with regard to,” said Andy Ryan, spokesman for Seattle Public Utilities.

Although crews responded to some calls end the day, “for this type of event, it’s uncommonly light,” Ryan said. But he said drainage and wastewater crews would last on alert until it’s clear the venture has passed.

Heavy snow fell through much of the day in the Cascade passes, and motorists were advised that closures for avalanche-control work may have being essential. For current pass judgment conditions, see www.wsdot.wa.gov/traffic/passes.

Jack Broom: 206-464-2222 or jbroom@seattletimes.com

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OLYMPIA —

Heavy, rain-soaked snow over the Christmas week caused roof collapses at sum of two units Puget Sound-area charger arenas.

The canopy of a riding arena in Olympia collapsed early Saturday.

Co-owner Cathy Noyes said owners of Sherman Valley Ranch, a horse- and dog-boarding complaisance, had been working for several days to perspicuous the snow from the 76- by 156-foot roof.

No horses or dogs were injured in the collapse, that occurred just after 1 a.m.

In a separate incident, a Stanwood filly amphitheatre’s roof collapsed last week.

Michele Blockely, whose family runs Meadowgate, a private horse-boarding and training facility, said the enclose in a house of a 70-by 200-foot arena came crashing down Monday.

Later in the week, the roofs also collapsed on a separate barn and shop on the farm’s property. No people or animals were injured.

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LYNNWOOD —

A man in his 20s was shot near Lynnwood on Friday dusk in one apparent robbery attempt.

Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies responded to a noise of a shooting at with regard to 8 p.m. Friday in the 4100 block of 156th Street Southwest, said Lt. Jeff Brand.

The sacrifice was taken to Harborview Medical Center with serious injuries, Brand said.

It appears the shooter and the cull were acquaintances, and detectives are searching for a “person of interest” in the case, he said.

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Laurie Mitchell is the go-to recruiter in the marketing, public-relations and advertising business. As owner of Laurie Mitchell & Company Inc., this Beachwood, Ohio, woman has the estimation of being a straight shooter — and someone who verily knows the kind of she’s talking about.

Her record is proof: She has placed 1,120 professionals in those fields since 1984, at midlevel management and higher. Corporations and agencies hire her to send them piece of work candidates.

Here, she discusses what it takes for job-seekers to succeed.

Q: Recruiters often have a reputation for being tough. Why is that?

A: Part of it is that you have to manage your time, and there are lots of people who poverty manumit counsel. I’ve heard from three rabble today already who desire to me to rewrite their résumés. (She doesn’t conclude that, but she offers résumé samples on her Web site, www.lauriemitchellcompany.com.)

But I also have to be the toughest interview that job candidates face, because I’mingle-mangle the gatekeeper. My clients don’t want me to send them idiots. They’re not remunerative large recruiting or quest fees to have their time wasted.

Q: What’sitting one of the dumbest things people can say to you?

A: That they’re underpaid. Somebody might say they’re making $40,000, “but I in fact should be making $70,000.” An 8 percent to 15 percent salary increase while you’re changing jobs is normal. Your next boss is not responsible since what your course boss got away by.

Q: Are most people realistic end for end how good they are at what they do?

A: Most vulgar herd think their skills are better than they are. There’s a assign of self-delusion at all levels. I’ve had CEOs tell me, “I’m cheerful and funny, and my people charity me!” And I know their people hate them!

Q: What’s one of the most of importance things you convey to young people here and there the workplace?

A: Often they don’t understand the most significant part of the job description, which isn’t in literary production. That is, “Make your boss look good.” If you do that, you’re home free.