Check out the Bzz Campaign for Burt's Bees Skin Solutions for Sensitive Skin - you can get free products by writing reviews and sharing your experience with products. There are tons of campaigns at any given time. You can choose what campaign is of interest to you and participate!
Check out this awesome site Fun Family Crafts that we are featured on! It's a really neat site where you can take 30 seconds to sign up (login name, password, e-mail address required), so that you can have your own Craft Box on the site and store tons of cool ideas to make later. I already found some easy to make Smurf Cookies, so exciting!
Sylvia mentioned in a post a few days ago that for our anniversary (which was the 20th - 5 freaking years!) that we indulged ourselves in a little heavy metal mayhem that is Metallica. This concert marked my fourth Metallica show, and Sylvia's second. I myself got into Metallica back when I was 14, when one of my best friends introduced me to their older stuff (as I was familiar with only the Black Album at the time). Sylvia has liked them for quite some time too, but swears that it wasn't me who got her into them...which may be correct, but I think that I pushed it a little more. Whether it be from me or not, their song Nothing Else Matters is special to us as it was our first dance song at our wedding (now THAT is love - my favourite band as our first dance song.)
So anyway, on with the concert. The concert was called Rock the Hill, which is apparently supposed to mark the first of an annual event, and also featured the likes of Death Valley Driver (local band who won a battle of the bands), Matt Mays, Protest the Hero, Seether, and Coheed and Cambria (all of which, surprisingly, I haven't seen before). All the bands were fantastic. Seether was a real stand out, because I wasn't too sure what to expect, but they had a fantastic set. They were a true warm up act, as the whole crowd really got into them.
I was also all stoked to see Coheed and Cambria. Their set was balls to the wall fantastic. I got really into the set. They were all business. They came out and played the hell out of an hour. The crowd got pretty intense when they came on, because everyone started to surge forward, likely to get up close for Metallica. I was surprised though with how many people I talked with afterwards that have never heard of Coheed and Cambria, and most weren't very impressed with the set. Me - I really want to see them where they are the headlining act.
Finally, the time had come for Metallica to hit the stage. They played a blistering 2 hour set which left me with no voice and a ringing right ear - just like old times. The only thing I thought was surprising was that they didn't play Battery, but I guess that is OK because they did play Hit the Lights. It was amazing. I could do it every week and never get tired of it. All in all, it was a great time. I can't wait to see them again.
We opened one of Lexie's 1st birthday presents as a pre-birthday gift for bath time this morning. It's the Star Founain by Munchkin. It's a bath toy. It comes in pink and blue, but when we bought it, only the pink version was available at our Wal-Mart. I think we paid around $8 for it. It takes batteries and has an on switch. Once it's on, it somhow sucks water from the bath tub in and sprays it out like a fountain. Lexie was not scared of it, but also wasn't too sure about it, as she isn't quite able to escape the water, yet, so she gets sprayed in the face. Olivia, who is over 3 years old, loved the toy. I think it's pretty cool so far, but I'll keep you updated!
Package Contents (missing the little modeling tool) & what the dough should look like.
The adding of water & mixing of dough mixure.
Some time before Christmas, I bought this 3-pack of Yummy Dough at Costco because it looked really fun. I think it only ended up being about $3 a box or so. Yummy Dough caught my eye because of what it says on the box: "Shape it, Bake it, Eat it - Edible Modelling Dough!". I mean really, what sounds more fun than that to a little one? The dough is edible not only when it's baked but also when it's raw. It's also nice to know that Yummy Dough is constantly quality tested and that its colouring agents are all vegetable, per Wikipedia. Anyway, I finally got around to trying it today and it was pretty awesome!
I wasn't sure if Yummy Dough is available anywhere else other than seasonally at Costco, but I googled around a bit and found it online here at Chapters.ca. I'm not sure if they also carry it in store.
The tasty Yummy Dough Lion
I was totally excited to find out that this dough (originally called Essknete, which is German and literally translates to Eatable Dough) was actually invented in Germany in 2005 by a man, who credits his two daughters to have given him the idea, as they wanted to not only be able to play with dough, but be able to eat it at the same time. I think it's neat that Yummy Dough's website is in German, English and Polish.
The cupcake was a favourite of my daugther's - she's got a sweet tooth - what can I say?!
All the items you need in order to make your fun pieces with the modelling dough, are included in the Yummy Dough Box. There are four packages of dough mixture: green, blue, yellow & green, a syringe (which is used to ad 20ml of water to each mixture) and a modeling tool. It took me about 30 minutes to knead all the doughs to the right consistency and then the fun began. I logged onto the Yummy Doug website and followed some of the step-by-step instructions in order to make little masterpieces. This is especially great for people like me, who are not very artsy. The Yummy Dough website also has instructions that you can print off, put under the parchment paper and by tracing, create your shapes that way.
Strawberry - Flower - Mushrooms (ran out of red, so these are Super Mario ones) - Butterfly
I made these cookies with my 3 year old daughter and she helped by pouring the dough mixtures into the bowl, syringing the water and then stirring it. She had fun. Other than that, she mostly played with one of the balls of dough that I was not using, creating her own creations with lots of imagination. However, she very much enjoyed herself.
What I really love about Yummy Dough is that it's:
entertaining
educational
easy to use
affordable
yummie
unique
fun
All our cookies before they went into the oven.
The final product - my daughters favourites were the ice cream cone, cupcake & lion.
I think out of all the play food that my daughter (age 3) has, this is her favourite. She plays with it every single day. Her favourite thing, is to put all of the items in seperate bags or cans or whatever she can find to put the items in and carry them around. Then she re-bags the items and can play like this for 30-40 minutes or so. She also uses the Melissa & Doug Food Groups with her KidKraft Kitchen. She doesn't really sort the food group items yet or anything like that, but here are the reasons why I really like Food Groups by Melissa & Doug.
*It's wooden
*It's affordable (~$20)
*Includes 22 food items
*Includes all food groups
*Nice colours
*Comes in 4 baskets, so food items can be sorted into different food groups & stored easily
*Encourages healthy food choices
*Encourages imaginative play
We got it for our little girl around 34 months and she's loved it ever since. The Manufacturer's recommended Age is 3+. Do you have this toy also? What do you think of it?
So most everyone has heard of this product to effectively (for the most part) remove stains from clothes, but what about in other places? Well, I find that Spray n' Wash (the kind in the picture below) is most useful in removing stains in carpets. If you are one of the lucky few that doesn't have carpets in your dwelling, well, I am jealous and you can go and make one of the fine recipes found on this wonderful blog. But, so the rest of you, Spray n' Wash is a fantastic solution to carpet staining problems.
I used this little bottle of joy today to remove a few old stains that were spotted on the carpet that I finally said "OK, I will try to clean them" after many weeks of looking at them and saying "I should really clean those up." I used to use a product called Prosolve Pet Stain Remover because a)we have a pet and b)you would think that pets would produce the toughest stains. This product worked OK. You spray it onto the effected surface, wait 5 minutes, and dab off with a moist sponge or something. Most of the time, it worked fine, but there were still some occasions that it did not remove all of the stain. Enter the Spray n' Wash.
In my quest for cleanliness, I decided to use some of the Spray n' Wash pictured above. It has to be the Oxy stuff, as the other kind doesn't work as well. I mixed about 4 parts water with 1 part of the Spray n' Wash in a little bowl and use a little scrubber brush to work into the carpet fibres, wait a few minutes and dab up. Every stain came off of the carpet.
So, why buy a specialty carpet stain remover when you can use something that you likely have in your house in the first place?
