Halloween was our one-year anniversary of homeownership. It’s taken nearly that long to unpack all of our stuff, but now that we finally have, we’ve been focusing on sprucing up our house. It’s the little things that make a house a home. Last week I talked about mailboxes, so today I turn my attention to address plaques.

Right now, our address plaque isn’t very useful. It’s small and hard to read; I may have bad eyesight, but you have to have 20/20 vision to see our address sign from the street. I want something bigger and bolder, with large numbers and maybe a smaller font with our street name (it’s a pretty name). So I’ve been shopping around, and JustAddressPlaques.com has a wide selection of address signs of all shapes, sizes, colors and styles. Your address plaque is one of the first things people look at when they’re coming to your home. I think it says a lot about your house, so I want something that really represents us. We may not buy until spring, but it’s never too early to shop around and get ideas!

My sister-in-law gave birth in July, and the first thing they had to rush out and buy was a baby car seat. Unbeknownst to them, the one they were planning to use was ruined when part of their house flooded, so they had a new baby and no way to get her home.

Thankfully, shopping search engines like ShopWiki make it easy to shop and compare products, all in one place. I love that you get all the shopping listings from around the Internet (not just paid placement) and also that you get informative pages about shopping, like this page for convertible car seats. That attention to detail and editorial content is missing from so many other sites, even Google.

So, my sister-in-law did get her car seat, and she saved a lot of money too. Now that Christmas is coming, we’re using ShopWiki again to find the best deals on presents for our new niece, with shopping advice for baby toys, accessories and essentials like cribs. We’ve already saved on some toys and are fully intending to spoil our new niece–and save money too–this holiday season.

Security has become an issue in our neighborhood lately, with things going missing from our front yard. It makes me nervous about a lot of things, not the least of which because this is our dream home. I also worry about our ability to receive mail when we need to; although many of our bills are paid online, we have a home business so a lot of important documents are mailed to us. It’s imperative that they get to us securely.

So we’ve been looking at better mailboxes. I like the idea of Blomus mailboxes because they look great and are unobtrusive. They aren’t garish and they don’t draw attention to themselves, but they securely do the job until you can check the mail. In particular, I think stainless steel mailboxes look great and can stand up to all the rainy weather we’ve been having lately.

Even though our house is older (circa 1930s) we’ve been looking at more modern mailboxes because that’s where we’re taking the look of our house. Nothing too fancy, but something that does the job for security and looks great too. It would be nice if we could have an open mailbox like I grew up with, but it’s just not feasible where we’re living.

What kind of mailboxes do you prefer?

Teaching hospitals are a core part of doctor education. It’s the circle of life: New doctors learn from their more-experienced peers, then go on to teach new grads, who do the same, and so on. But a great doctor isn’t necessarily a wonderful teacher by default. In fact, education courses are not required in medical school. So where do doctors turn to improve their teaching skills?

Oxford Medical is one option. They run a medical teaching course for doctors in a teach the teacher format. The course gives experienced doctors the skills needed to instruct other doctors in their area of expertise, and the teach the teacher course style makes it approachable and relatable even for seasoned doctors.

One day, education courses may be required for all doctors, given the nature of the seniority system and teaching emphasis of their jobs. Even so, a medical teaching course offers specific skills for medical professionals that the doctor can use in their day-to-day teaching tasks. No time is wasted on education skills that are more fitting for a school teacher than a teaching doctor, and the classes are geared towards the medical profession.

As a small business owner, I am inundated daily (no, hourly) with offers: Printing, office supplies, outsourcing, accounting. Everyone wants your attention. Web hosting is no exception.

So, how to choose? I’ve had a few web hosts in my day and I can offer two pieces of advice:

1 – Do not shop on numbers. The “100TB for $1″ deal only sounds better. You’ll never use it. You and ten of your friends will never use it.

2 – The company matters.

The second point is the most important. You will need support at some point, whether it’s before you buy or while you’re a customer. A company like Superb Hosting, for example, offers a dedicated accounts manager on their managed hosting plans. Yes, that’s someone who gets paid to work for you. Compare that with the nightmare experience I just had with a certain web host (not Superb) who ignored my tech support emails for over a week, and you’ll see why this is important. A week is a lifetime when something goes wrong.

Finally, upgrade potential is important. Maybe right now you’re okay on a shared hosting plan. But when your business grows–and we all want that–the right company can take over your IT needs with secure colocation and tiered options to suit all sizes of business… perfect for when your SMB becomes an MNC.