Happy New Year!
Tag: "holidays"
Jan 01, 2010 | 0 comments | View Post
Be Fire Smart
Did you know that almost 47,000 household fires happen each and every year during the holiday season? Yes, that’s during the holiday season alone. Like now. Liberty Mutual is aware of that statistic and is encouraging everyone to visit BeFireSmart.com as this holiday season begins. Like now. It’s important.
BeFireSmart is an interactive site designed for children, parents and educators. The goal of the site it to educate and promote fire safety awareness. The site offers valuable, often overlooked, tips to stay safe. Are you cramped for room and have your decorations up anywhere and everywhere? Are your lights so old they’re becoming worn? Are you outlets or surge strips overloaded and looking like an octopus giving birth to five babies? If your answer to any of these is yes then you’re at risk of having a fire.
The BeFireSmart site is attractive and easy to use. When visiting you can learn how to decrease your risk of fire and how to create a family escape plan. You can even get the kids in on it to help them learn about fire safety by downloading the free coloring book or showing them the free online games. The site offers tips and educational resources for year round fire safety.
Liberty Mutual takes this so seriously that they put together an interactive exhibit called “Where’s the Fire” at Epcot in Walt Disney World, Florida. You know if it’s in Disney it’s good. “Where’s the fire” is the nation’s largest interactive fire safety education experience. If you’d like to check out this exhibit for yourself enter the Liberty Mutual Fire Smart Sweepstakes for a chance to win a 4-day/3-night trip for four to Walt Disney World.
Thanks to Mom Central for giving me the heads up on this must see website, and for reminding us to put safety first, even at the holidays. Thanks to Liberty Mutual for reminding us all that it’s our responsibility to Be Fire Smart.
O Christmas Tree
We got a Christmas tree today. I honestly hadn’t been planning on getting one because money’s really bad and I don’t want to be without something for family members on Christmas. My 13 year old son asked me if we could get one because he said it wouldn’t be Christmas without one and he knew there wouldn’t be many presents. It made me sad and glad at the same time that he’s being so mature and understanding. I can’t help but feel that sometimes I fail at trying to maintain composure and calm. Anyway. I looked in Lowe’s yesterday because I’d heard real trees were reduced 25% and artificial trees 75%. The Lowe’s near us had no real trees at all and only two floor model artificial trees at almost $200 and not on sale. I sent hubby to Home Depot today and he got a small tree. I believe we’ll be decorating tomorrow.
Dec 17, 2008 | 2 comments | View Post
Wreaths Direct review and giveaway
Every year, towards the middle of December we put up a real Christmas tree, the only kind of tree I have ever had. One of the things I do every year on Black Friday is start decorating the house for Christmas. Inside we put up some animated figures and hang cards and other decorations. Outside we hang lights and hang a wreath on the door. We switched to an artificial wreath several years ago because for the three previous years we couldn’t find real wreaths that were nice enough to justify spending $30-$50 on. That little artificial wreath may have gone into permanent retirement this year, thanks to Wreaths Direct.
Wreaths Direct is part of Grandma D’s Tree and Wreath Farm, a family owned business situated in the Silverton Hills of Oregon, adjacent to Silver Falls State Park. Grandma D’s and Wreaths Direct sells trees, wreaths and centerpieces and ships anywhere in the United States.
From the website - “As fifth generation family owners, we take pride in our products and services. We supervise the production of our products from seed to the final array of beauty that arrives at your door. Whether you are interested in a single product or several hundred, we offer the freshest and finest greenery in our industry. If you would like to raise money for your group or school, we have a solution for you. Our fundraising program is a safe option for selling with a high return and great rewards. This year, we have added fun new incentive programs for top-selling groups and individuals. Our goal is to provide our customers with superior customer service and the finest greenery possible. And we guarantee your satisfaction.”
The wreath that we received to review arrived quickly and safely in a box sized just right. When I opened the box I was surprised to see that there weren’t needles all over the box. The wreath smelled so good.
The wreath was attached to its frame with heavy wire and not one single branch had gotten loose. The wreath was decorated with a red velvet ribbon as well as berries and pine cones. There were even bells attached! Jimgle bells, jingle bells….
At 24” the wreath is quite large, and looks terrific hanging on my front door. I love the way the different colors of green give the wreath a great look and texture. I must say it’s really quite thick, and much nicer then the thin, poorly made ones that I’ve seen selling locally. The $29.95 that it sells for is a good value in my opinion, considering it’s high quality and workmanship, and the fact that it will last all season and requires no care.
I’m thrilled with my wreath. I’ll gladly recommend Wreaths Direct in a heartbeat. To learn more or to buy one of these gorgeous wreaths, visit Wreaths Direct and Grandma D’s Tree and Wreath Farm at http://www.wreathsdirect.info. Grandma D’s and Wreaths Direct is generously offering my readers free UPS Ground shipping if they mention code W0834 when ordering.
SURPRISE! What would Christmas be without little surprises? I’ve got a giveaway to go along with this review. The winner of this giveaway will receive a copy of the Discovery PC Game by Mumbo Jumbo. You can earn entries for spreading the word about this giveaway by stumbling, twittering, blogging or posting in a forum. One entry for each, four entries per person maximum. US addresses only please. The giveaway will end on Friday 12/12/08 at 11:59 pm est. The winner will be selected at random and have 72 hours to respond claiming their prize. Good luck everyone!
THIS GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED.
Dec 05, 2008 | 16 comments | View Post
How to make Ultimate Party Meatballs
Am I the only one that has last minute guests around Christmas time? When we have company I like to be able to put a little something out, like some appetizers. But how can you serve freshly prepared appetizers to last minute guests if you didn’t know the guests were coming the weekend before when you went to the grocery store? There is a way to do it, and this week I learned how thanks to Mom Central. Wanna know how to do it?It’s easy. Make Ultimate Party Meatballs.
Ultimate Party Meatballs are a recipe that Heinz and Ocean Spray cooked up as a quick and easy appetizer. The recipe only calls for three ingredients, one pot and less than a half hour. Here’s how you make them.
Buy these three things - 1 can of one 16-ounce can Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce, one 12-ounce bottle Heinz Chili Sauce and one 2 pound bag of frozen, pre-cooked meatballs. Grab a big sauce pan.
Combine the Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce and the bottle of Heinz Chili Sauce in a large saucepan.
Cook this over medium-low heat, stirring until smooth. Add in the frozen, pre-cooked meatballs. Cover and cook for 15 minutes or until meatballs are heated through, stirring occasionally.
Serve with little toothpicks or forks. This recipe makes 30 appetizer servings. If you wanted to cook this in a crockpot instead of on the stove you’d just place the meatballs in a slow cooker, combine the sauces and pour that over the meatballs, cover and cook for 4 hours on high. Sounds easy right? It is.
I tend to think very much in the box when it comes to certain things. When I read this recipe the first thing I thought was that cranberry sauce and chili sauce would be gross together. Good thing I didn’t bet on that because I loved these meatballs. The Ultimate Party Meatballs reminded me of Sweet And Sour Meatballs but different. The sauce was sweet and a little tangy. I didn’t find it spicy at all, which is good because I don’t like spicy things. The recipe was super easy and very quick to make, keys to convenience for a working girl like me. The recipe didn’t cost much, I got my bag of meatballs on sale for $3.49. I’ll be keeping one of each of these ingredients on hand from now on, and I’ll be prepared for any surprise or last minute guests. Maybe they’ll think I’m some sort of great chef with super powers, being able to come up with something so good in no time at all.
If you’d like to find more recipes and entertaining tips visit the Ultimate Party Meatballs website http://www.ultimatepartymeatballs.com. There’s a sweepstakes going on right now of which the winner will receive $3,000 so that they can throw the ultimate party.
VistaPrint Holiday Photo Cards review
Regular readers know that I like Vistaprint and recommend them highly. I think their products are some of the best values in stationery products out there. Many people don’t know that along with business cards, post cards, note cards, calendar magnets, business card magnets, window decals, address labels, rubber stamps and pens, VistaPrint also offers holiday photo cards.
VistaPrint has many styles of holiday photo cards. They have flat photo cards, folded photo cards and foil accented cards. They even offer collage cards that can show up to six pictures. All of the cards can be personalized with your own photos and text of your own.
Cards are easy to customize. The first step is to select your card from the hundreds of available designs. Then upload your picture (or pictures). The recommended resolution is a minimum of 300 ppi, and the maximum size the picture file can be is 10 mb.The next step is to enter the greeting you want on the front of the card. Then specify if you want the back of the card to be blank or contain text. That’s it! That’s all there is to making personalized photo holiday cards at VistaPrint. When checking out you’re shown any matching related products and given the option to add them, as is standard with any VistaPrint purchase. Last, choose your delivery option and pay and you’re finished.
I love photo cards. They seem so much more personal then text cards. I’m running late this year, I have to get to work on our holiday cards today or tomorrow. Have you written or sent our your holiday cards yet?
Nov 30, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post
How to make the perfect Thanksgiving turkey
In my family the Thanksgiving holiday means togetherness, accompanied by a giant family meal prepared by yours truly. There’s a ritual that I use to get the turkey just right, but I’ll get to that in a minute. If I’m serving a big family meal for the holiday it means several things. Dirty pots and dishes. House cleaning. Three birthdays in two weeks. The beginning of the Christmas holiday, which means figuring out what the perfect gift is. (May I please have a helping of stress please?) Shopping and money. (Those two things come together, so make that a double helping.) And let’s not forget family. With my family, every holiday is memorable. (Order of stress to go please.) Add all of those things together and you’ve got a typical Thanksgiving in our house.
Turkey. It’s pretty standard stuff and yet somehow every year I have a problem. I’m no gourmet cook. I didn’t learn anything about cooking from my Mom when I was young. (This might actually be a good thing since she has started a fire boiling water.) I remember making my first big Thanksgiving dinner twenty years ago as clearly as if it was yesterday. I did everything according to the directions. Yet, on Thanksgiving morning the turkey was still partially frozen. I called my Dad, which is who I call whenever anything goes wrong to this day. He came over and spent hours sitting with me getting the turkey taken care of and trying to teach me how to make one. Who knew you had to pull a bag of gross stuff out of the turkey’s butt?! Dinner turned out fine. Dad didn’t know it then, but a ritual had been born.
Every year now I call my Dad on Thanksgiving morning at about 6am and tell him I need his help with the turkey. Once in a while I actually do. Sometimes I do. Okay, I usually do. My turkeys are still usually not thawed enough. Sometimes they have feathers in them. Frequently the turkey I’ve picked up has no popper. One year they had extra bones we couldn’t figure out where they came from. One year my baster broke. Another year I couldn’t fit the damned bird into the oven.
After the turkey is underway we chat for a bit and he heads home. Then I finish cleaning while hubby peels the potatoes and gets the veggies going. A couple of hours later Dad comes back and he helps me make the mashed potatoes. Ten pounds of potatoes are heavy for a delicate flower such as myself you know. Seriously, my Dad makes the best mashed potatoes ever. It’s now about 2 pm and hubby or Dad carve the turkey and we can finally eat.
It’s well known that turkey makes you sleepy, but except for my sister in law there’s no nodding off at my house on Thanksgiving. There’s always something crazy going on. For years the first thing that we did after placing the food on the table was to let it get cold. Why ? Because we were waiting for the brother that’s always late. (We finally stopped waiting for him about 2 years ago.) On to the actual meal. Odds are good that I might be spotted crying at some point during the course of the meal. It isn’t unusual for someone to somehow start a HUGE argument with my Mom. We’ve usually got someone that’s had too much to drink. We’ve had a vehicle stolen. Well actually it wasn’t stolen, it was accidentally repossessed. We’ve had a food fight (started by my Mom, I might add). If you think this sounds interesting, wait until you see what happens when I invite a friend to join us. It actually gets worse, because since more people are there things get louder and of course you have to add the embarrassment factor!
It’s hard to believe that this will be the twentieth anniversary of cooking my first Thanksgiving dinner. If there had been a Turkey TalkLine back then, or if there was and I knew about it, I might not have called my Dad and started a ritual. No matter what happens, I’m sure this year will be interesting.
So. You wanted to know how to make the perfect Thanksgiving turkey? I don’t know. Mine dinners have never been perfect, but they are always memorable. Just like a perfect meal should be.
This post was written for Parent Bloggers Network as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by Butterball.
Nov 07, 2008 | 3 comments | View Post
Getting a jump on the holidays
Today I heard from a coworker that over the next couple of weeks some of the local retailers will be offering secret sales with 2008 Black Friday type bargains. I think it’s terrific, particularly if the stores won’t be mobbed and crazy like they are on Black Friday. I don’t usually go to the stores on the day after Thanksgiving because they’re just too crazy for me. I always take the day off and take my Mom up North to the cemetery to visit my Grandma and then go out to lunch. Do you brave the stores?
Nov 07, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post
Top Toys Guide review
Are you ready for the holidays? Do you know what new toys have been released? I’ve noticed that kids seem to know about the hot toys before many parents do. There have been years I didn’t know something was popular until I saw an ad for it on tv. Then, when I tried to buy it I couldn’t find it. And even I don’t watch enough tv to figure out what all of the hot kids toys for this year are going to be. The Top Toys Guide website tries to address that very problem.
The folks at the Top Toys Guide site keep up to date on the top toys and their popularity, quality, value and safety as well as awards received. What parent wouldn’t want to know what kids toys are going to be hot this holiday season! You can bet they’ll be on many kids lists, which will make them sell like crazy and be hard to find. Top Toys Guide puts the toys on the website with the information we need to know, including a picture and description of the toy and the availability of that toy in major online stores.
The site is brightly colored, attractive and easy to navigate. The top ten toys are right on the front page so you don’t have to look very far to know what’s going to be in super high demand. The four main categories visitors will find are top toys for boys, top toys for girls, top toys for toddlers and top toys for babies. Within each of these categories are the top ten toys overall for that category, as well as the top toys in different toy types. Visitors can also shop by age and toy type. Anyone interested in learning what toys will be hot this year will find this site helpful, particularly if they have several children to shop for because everything is all in one place.
Sep 28, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post
Halloween’s just around the corner
I stopped at the party supply store this past weekend to pick up a couple of things for my son’s 9th birthday party. I was shocked to walk in the door, on the fifth of July, and see an aisle with Halloween costumes. The girl behind the counter told me they were starting to bring in more stock for Halloween. I can see the advantage to selling them this early. People that buy early can choose what they want and not fight the terrible crowds that start forming in September.
I don’t dress for Halloween on a regular basis because I never see many costumes I’d be interested in wearing. I did find one I liked in the couples costumes section on the Halloween Adventure website. The costume is for adults, one half of the couple dresses as bacon and the other half of the couple dresses as eggs. I love bacon and eggs! I think that’d be a fun costume to go out in with someone else, even if it was to just walk the kids around.
Halloween Adventure is a website that sells anything you can think of for Halloween. They carry costumes for adults, children and even pets. They also carry accessories, makeup, hats, wigs, masks, decorations and props. They even carries costumes for other holidays and events. All of the costumes are categorized. The advanced search feature is very nice, it allows search by category, size, material, price and keyword. Halloween Adventure has locations across the United States and sell online as well. The selection is huge, much bigger than anything you’ll find in a department store. Get a jump on the crowds and start your Halloween planning and shopping now, at Halloween Adventure.
Jul 07, 2008 | 0 comments | View Post
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