The Fourth of July holiday will shortly be upon us; the holiday that seems to be the official launch of summer, sunburns, and water fights. With all the fun comes parades, BBQs, family reunions—the things we look forward to all year long. Whatever the event, you’re going to need seating and Lifetime has what you need. One of my favorites is the Lifetime 6-Foot Picnic Table. This sturdy table has been on my patio for years. Although it’s foldable for storage, I rarely put it away during the winter and it still looks great. The kids use it for projects, birthday parties, and general mess making (as you know how kids are). But with a quick wipe-down or spray from the hose it looks good enough to use a...

I love the autumn. The trees are changing colors, the heat of summer is gone. The garden is growing "cool weather crops" again. And, BackyardsInc.com (the website for the Official Lifetime Products Outlet Store) just got a major overhaul! Okay, honestly, why should you care about us re-releasing one of our websites? Simply put, we make our websites for you! In this revision of the site, we started from the ground-up, building the site with ASP.NET MVC2, HTML5, CSS3, and even a custom JqueryUI theme thrown in. All this equates to a faster website that takes less time to load, can display more information in a much more timely fashion, and takes ad...

I had the very unpleasant experience recently of dumping excess lawn clippings directly into my garbage can. The can set out in the sun for a few days before I brought it into the garage. A few days later, WHOA! The can smelled like a skunk had stepped in dog doo-doo, rolled around in raw sewage, and then died in there. I was reminded once again, that lawn clippings should not go directly into the garbage can! I have a composter and do a fair amount of composting. To which, I add lawn clippings when I have brown material to balance it out. The ratio is 1 part green: 20 parts brown.  I am often asked by people who don’t compost if the compost stinks. The answer is no. That sounds strange because of the waste product that goes into making good compost, but it’s true. If the proportions of green and b...