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If you are trying to find the best Denver assisted living community for your situation, you need to know what your options are. You need to know what the criteria is for assisted living, you need to know what the different options cost so that you can determine if your financial resources are adequate for the time period you need the service, and you need to know which community is closest and/or has the service that you need and want.

Too often, I have Denver families come to me with questions that should have been answered months and years ago. For example, two days ago I received a call from a distressed lady in Denver who had been caring for her parents in her home. Her mom is “brittle diabetic” and her father’s dimentia is progressing rapidly. She is is stressed out and to the point that she is frustrated with her father’s behavior, her mom needs some peace and quiet in order to heal properly from a recent injury, and she (the daughter) is not enjoying her relationship with her parents as much as she was before having to care so much for their needs. She is becoming exhausted. Finances were definitely a concern although she still wanted to look into assisted living options.

I put her in contact with Springbrooke Retirement since they are inexpensive when compared to larger communities. I also spoke to her about a company that provides Denver home health and hopsice. It’s a company that I’ve used as an administrator in my assisted living community and have had nothing but the best service and care for my residents. Because her mother is brittle diabetic and receiving insulin, she qualifies for home health and this allows a registered nurse to come to her their home, take the blood sugar as needed each day and then provide insulin as needed as well. They can potentially provide a C.N.A. to come in and help with showers a few times a week and offer other valuable services that are all covered by Medicare. Options were given, choices were made, and she is now able to get some relief and assistance in this stressful time her life.

Prior to our conversation, she had no idea that these options were even available. At Springbrooke Retirement we are happy to share the years of experience in assisted living and in the healthcare industry with those that are in need of the information that will save time, money, and stress.

Springbrooke Retirement is a Denver assisted living community that offers independent living, assisted living, respite and memory care retirement home facilities.  Visit www.springbrookeretirement.com for more information.

In the world of RVs, knowledge is not just power, it is money in your pocket.

If you are a Denver or Lakewood, Colorado RV owner then this article will help you with your RV repair and if you can’t do-it-yourself then we can point one to someone in the Lakewood area who can.

As Medicare only pays for a short nursing home stay, after a major medical incident, seniors and their loved ones must evaluate if they want to private pay to stay in a nursing home or seek for alternative Denver in home senior care services.  Alternative senior care choices include options such as a 24 hour live in providing a Caregiver and Care Management in the home or relocating to Assisted Living.

Most Denver Nursing Homes accept Medicare and Medicaid patients but there are a small percentage of nursing homes which only accept Medicare patients.  At the same time, some nursing homes only accept Medicaid payments after a patient has spent all of their assets and qualifies for Medicaid.  They will not accept new Medicaid patients.  In 2006, 48% of nursing home care was paid for by Medicaid which matches the trend industry experts report:  seniors are seeking an alternative to nursing home care.

Reasons seniors may opt for in home senior care to staying in a nursing home:

1) Staff to patient ratio:  nursing homes often staff one Nurse’s Aide to 12 to 15 patients.  The nursing aide is the person responsible for assisting with personal care, such as  showers and bathroom visits.  Each patient’s care depends on the ability of the aide to juggle the needs of multiple patients. 

2) Cost:  although the daily rate for care may be acceptable, sometimes the additional fees for everything from hair cuts to transportation can add up and cost much more than the cost of paying for an individual Caregiver in the home or a private apartment with part-time care in an Assisted Living Community.

3) Care needs:  many times a senior will recover from medical conditions which require rehabilitation in a nursing center, such as a stroke, heart attack or hip replacement, and be able to function on less care.

4) Specific care needs:  seniors who may need more specialized care for conditions such as memory loss or diseases such as Parkinson’s Disease, may opt to find a community which specializes in this type of care.

5) Quality of nursing facility:  sometimes hospitals discharge patients to a nursing home for rehabilitation and do not consult with the patient on which facility they will be transferred to when they leave the hospital.  The nursing home may not suit the personal desires of the senior and this is often when families begin their search for elder care.

Ohomecare are experts on Denver senior healthcare, home respite care and in home snior care services.  To have your questions answered  about all of these aspects of elder care to assist seniors to find the right option for their home healthcare needs visit www.ohomecare.com.

The stakes were high for my 3-year-old son Bode’s first time on skis at Loveland Ski Area, a Colorado ski resort. The child was, after all, named after World Cup skiing sensation Bode Miller.

Better to live up to that than my namesake Forever Amber, a novel about a 17th-century prostitute.

I had never skied Loveland before and immediately fell in love because of its terrain (93 trails on 1,570 acres), affordability (discount tickets are $52) and proximity (just 53 miles from downtown Denver, directly off I-70).

This is the first year both of my children are old enough to ski so I enrolled them in the Loveland Ski and Ride School in Loveland Valley. A full-day lesson, lift ticket and lunch are $91, a veritable steal compared to other resorts. Enroll your child (or beginner adult) in three classes and they will receive a free season pass to work on their turns all season long.

Children may not start group lessons until they are 4 so we put Bode in a private lesson. He was tired and his check-in process did not go smoothly when he tried to walk around in his awkward ski boots.

I started wondering if we’d need to go with Plan B and put him in the on-site childcare center. While certainly not a bad option, we really wanted to get him on the slopes.

My husband Jamie and I left him there (as all good parents do), promising to check on him after his lesson started. The lift connecting Loveland Valley to the resort was not operating so we hopped on the free shuttle to Loveland Basin where we grabbed some demo skis and hit the slopes for the first time this season.

It was glorious…and a very cold -10 degrees Fahrenheit. We huddled up on the chairlift as we marveled at the sweeping views of the Continental Divide. It was early-season so only about 20% of the terrain was open. We didn’t care and found enough powder stashes off Lifts 1, 2 and 3 to keep us happy. The highest chairlift (Lift 9) soars to 12,900 feet so conditions are sometimes cold and windy but always epic.

After a couple of hours, Jamie and I fearfully rode the shuttle back to Loveland Valley. We weren’t sure what we would find. Bode crumbled up on the snow in tears? Screaming bloody murder? Or maybe he wouldn’t even make it to the slopes.

We were shocked and delighted to find our little Olympic hopeful grinning from ear-to-ear with his private (and utterly delightful) instructor Terry. His earlier discontent was forgotten. He rode the magic carpet like a pro and under Terry’s careful supervision, he skied down the bunny slope by himself.

As he zoomed past us at the record-breaking speed of 0.05-mile per hour, he squealed, “I wike it!”

He then pointed to the chairlift and steeper slope behind him. “I want to go dere,” he told his instructor. He spent the rest of the day on the more advanced terrain.

Hadley and Bode claimed lunch was “delicious” with corn dogs, tater tots, apples and cookies, followed by a surprise visit from skiing Santa.

Who was evidently slacking off from his duties that Christmas Eve.

Loveland’s Family-style Eats

If I were to have a tagline for Loveland Ski Area, it would be “We’re not fancy…we’re about family,” which is exactly how Jamie and I felt while eating lunch at their only lodge. The cafeteria was like a huge reunion as people reconnected while eating hearty sandwiches, Mexican food, savory pastas, homemade soups, made-to-order pizzas and more.

We ate at the Wedge Bar, appropriately named because it was wedged in the middle of the busy room. I ordered chili and a salad while Jamie opted for the Kobe Beef Sliders.

The next hour was spent in conversation with uproarious ski school instructors Mark and Michael, who were enjoying a day off. They divulged their favorite areas to ski (off Lifts 8 and 9 and Over the Rainbow) and the best thing about Loveland (everyone is very tight-knit and not pretentious).

When we picked the children up at the end of the day, they were jubilant and exhausted. As the youngest child in ski school, Bode had been adopted by some over-protective tweens. One of them told me, “If I had a little brother, I’d want him to be just like Bode!”

An appropriate sentiment at a resort where you feel like family.  Looking to ski or snowboard in Colorado this year?  Loveland is a Colorado Ski Resort with the best skiing and snowboarding just minutes from Denver.  Visit www.skiloveland.com.

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Ski and stay: While Loveland Ski Area is not known as a destination resort, it does offer lodging packages. Prices start at $115 per night for one night’s lodging and two lift tickets.

Understanding how home financing works in Denver can be the difference sometimes in getting a loan

Sometimes loans don’t close when they are supposed to close. What exactly can cause your loan closing to be delayed? In today’s environment, a refinance can get moved with the blink of an eye. You’ve been bumped! But a purchase, too?

You are all packed, and it’s the eleventh hour before closing. Your phone rings and it’s your home financing lender with bad news. Your loan’s not going to close tomorrow. Everything’s ready, the utilities are being turned off tomorrow, and the movers are showing up! Why is this happening?

There are so many moving pieces to a puzzle of a loan closing. Everything has to be coordinated to make it go smoothly. For instance, get the requested documents to your lender as soon as possible. If you dilly dally, you may run into problems. You see, your lender has a whole pipeline of loans, as do all the other mortgage lenders that work for that particular company. All of these loans have to be reviewed by an underwriter. So, basically, your loan has to take a number. And if you’re not prompt, your loan may go to the back of a very long line. Most people want their loans to close at the end of the month, so you can imagine the huge glut and back up that occurs. Thus, be prompt and responsive to your lender’s requests to allow everyone time to do their job.

Also, don’t quit your job and expect to close because your approval depends on you receiving proven income. On the day of closing, a lender is going to make a call to ensure you’re still employed. Funny, but your ability to repay the loan is important when someone’s fronting you thousands of dollars. No job, no moola.

Make sure you choose a Denver home financing expert.  There are lots lenders out there but make sure you have one that you can trust to get your loan done on time and understand’s the Denver market.

If you’re selling your home in Denver, be sure you’re ready for that final walk through. If the buyers are expecting you to leave the bathroom mirrors and the curtains, then don’t pack them up. The house should be broom clean (unless otherwise noted in the contract) and there shouldn’t be any new damage or sudden repairs needed that previously didn’t exist.

Weird things can happen, too. I know of a loan that was delayed in closing because two days prior to the deadline the title company found out that the builder/seller had filed bankruptcy. It seems that he was not in a position to sell the home anymore, and he failed to tell anyone (however, the new owner who got the property in bankruptcy was happy to sell, but closing was delayed). Another odd tale was that of the seller who failed to disclose he had a $49,000 tax lien outstanding on a property. He didn’t feel it necessary to mention this situation to anyone. It was pretty much a deal killer, as you can imagine.

Another thing that can cause a hiccup is failure to alert anyone that that one of the parties (buyers or sellers) will be out of  Denver for a closing. These situations aren’t insurmountable, but they require careful planning and coordination. Sometimes, the contract changes and the lender isn’t notified until after the loan is fully underwritten. Contract changes usually require a loan to be shot back through underwriting. Remember, you get in the back of the line.

With today’s refinance boom, the majority of lenders can’t give their customers a firm closing date when scheduling their refinance closing. Purchases will typically take precedence in this environment. That means although your refinance is waiting line patiently, it can get bumped. Like an oversold flight at the airport. You just have to be patient and get re-routed. Within reason of course. Just don’t lose sight of the end goal!

The moral of the story is to listen to your Denver home financing lender and keep an open line of dialogue going. Keep the him/her aware of changing situations. Email is great tool for use in accomplishing this purpose. It takes only a minute or two and can save everyone lots of heartache in the long run.

To being your Denver home financing visit www.jerrybeckerandassoc.com.  They are Denver’s experts in home loans.

For the average consumer social media is a private, intimate space where the hard sale is generally not accepted or appreciated. Mommy bloggers, some of the most influential bloggers on the internet, want to tell their story, build relationships and share ideas with other bloggers in their blogosphere. Mommy bloggers, in particular, are very protective of their space because many of them don’t want to exploit their children or family through their blog. Because of this mommy bloggers are considered a very valuable source of information on products and services by other women.

The key to any successful social media campaign is to gain the trust of the audience and then have the opportunity to make the offer forproducts or services. Every business knows that a referral is worth 10x more than a cold call. The challenge that Denver businesses face is figuring out how to crack into the massive online social media space and at the same time not violate the trust of the consumer.

The advantage that Pixo Web Design & Strategy brings to the table is that we have cultivated and built the trust of top national, Denver and Colorado mommy bloggers by being bloggers ourselves. Through these deep relationships we know who the influencers are and are allowed opportunities to share products and services for review by these bloggers.  Ask Colorado Ski Country USA what we did for them with our mommy blogger social media campaign.

By tapping into the Denver mommy blogger space Pixo helps businesses market their products and get reviews through mommy bloggers.  To learn more about mommy blogging advertising campaigns visit their website at www.pixoinc.com.

Denver Carpet Cleaning tips and advice from the steam cleaning experts.

Prevention is always better than cure and if your carpet accumulates a lot of dirt and dust, it will be a nightmare to clean all of it and bring back the fresh look to your carpets. Here’s why regular carpet cleaning is so important. You can follow these tips to make sure that your carpets are clean throughout the year.

Vaccum Your Carpet – be sure that the vacuum that you use at least 3 times a week has HEPA – High Efficiency Particulate Cleaner. As well, use a vacuum with a powerful beater bar to lift up the soils from deep in your carpet fibers. Regular vacuuming is the most important thing you can do for the life of your carpet.

Store Stain Removal Chemicals – Make sure to have some stain and dirt removal shampoo in stock so whenever you notice a stain on your carpet, you can use them to easily remove the stain immediately. If you have a busy work schedule, you can’t rush to a shop for such products.

Professional Denver Carpet Cleaning – This should be done every 18-24 months as per carpet manufacturers recommendations. In fact, in many instances, if you fail to have your carpet professionally cleaned routinely, your warranty may be invalid. Carpet manufacturers will typically recommend you keep up with carpet maintenance in order to keep your carpet looking beautiful. Regular maintenance is highly recommeded for lighter colored carpets that are sold today. In some light colored carpets that appear to be over all soiled, there may be some residual dammage that can’t be completely corrected with cleaning.

The steps given will deffinitley help keep your Denver carpet clean, but through out the year there will be an accumulation or fading to your carpet.  A Denver Professional carpet cleaning services will assist you in bringing back your carpet’s shine, at a low cost.