html404 - Faith and Family Reviews

Archive for html404

Monday Motivation with Faith and Family Reviews

Posted by html404 on July 19, 2010
in Monday Motivation

mondaybutton

I cannot believe it is time for another Monday Motivation here at Faith and Family Reviews! Time is flying by!

This week there is a lot that I want to accomplish, especially since time is winding down for this baby’s gestation. 5 more weeks – give or take days or weeks. So my list may overwhelm even me!

Last week was fun with Do Good Day, and I want you all to tell me if you happened to do any in your own communities. Please leave a comment letting me know what it was and I will enter you into a drawing for a $20 gift card. I haven’t decided whether or not to do a gas card, a Visa card or what, but it will be a $20 gift card. Don’t forget to leave me a link to your post about your Do Good Day activity, ok?

Last week’s progress report:

~ To make it through the week! Seriously, I have been feeling awful, baby has been pressing up on my diaphram and it is very uncomfortable to move these days. I made it thru! Thanks to some special help of probiotics, barley greens and enzymes! A couple of friends recommended these three things to settle my tummy and it appears to have worked. I not only made it thru the week, but also am eating more.
~ Work on client projects. Starting with a new client this week and have a training session tomorrow afternoon. Training went well and I am ready to start assignments.
~ Work in our garden as weather permits. I am sure we have summer squash in need of picking since I forgot to remind Robert and the boys to pick when they went out to the field! We weeded a little bit and harvested and watered a lot in the 90 degree weather.
~ Come up with name for baby! Ongoing until we agree on a name.
~ Work on getting my iron up more. This will be ongoing until even after the baby is born.

Still working on the last two. How are you doing?

This week’s Monday Motivation:

~ Work – there is always something to do for clients and this week is a my first week with a full load for my newest client, so that will be something new.
~ Help out friends who just had a preemie baby a week ago at 26 weeks gestation. Baby Huck weighed only 1 lb. 8 oz. He was born via c-section so his mama is still recovering from surgery. This is their first child. They are organic farmers and we plan to help them on their farm a couple of days, plus deliver a couple of meals too.
~ Deliver a meal to friends who just had their seventh child – they have seven children 9 and under! Their baby was born a week ago Friday.
~ Name our baby
~ Harvesting, weeding and hopefully starting some fall planting at our garden. Plus other business that needs to be done for our own farm start up.

{No comments}

Paula Deen, KRAFT Give Away $40,000 in Prizes for “Real Women of Philadelphia” Recipe Contest

Posted by html404 on July 19, 2010
in Contests, Food and Treats

More exciting news from our great PR folks and Paula Deen and Kraft! Starting July 19, Real Women of Philadelphia begins a new opportunity for both men AND women- a new recipe contest with $40,000 in prizes to be won. At the end of each week, 5 recipes will be chosen, and each recipe will be awarded a $500 cash prize- that’s $500 per day of the contest!

paula_deen_kraft[1]

All you have to do is submit your favorite recipes made with Philadelphia Cream Cheese, according to the recipe category and theme for that particular week.

And like I mentioned, this contest is open to both men AND women!

PAULA DEEN, KRAFT GIVE AWAY $40,000 IN PRIZES FOR “REAL WOMEN OF PHILADELPHIA” RECIPE CONTEST
Enter for a chance to win July 19 –November 7

Grab your mixing bowls and oven mitts!

Paula Deen and PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese are teaming up to give away a total of $40,000 as part of the “Real Women of Philadelphia” recipe contest. Men and women nationwide can enter for a chance to win $500 and the opportunity to contribute to the Real Women of Philadelphia cookbook by submitting their favorite recipes made with PHILADELPHIA Cream Cheese. Each week there will be a new recipe category and theme requirement for entries. One recipe will be chosen daily Monday – Friday from July 19 through November 7 for a total of 80 winners.

To enter, register at the Real Women of Philadelphia website at www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com.

Additional contest information, recipe themes and requirements is available at: http://www.realwomenofphiladelphia.com/recipecontest-rules

The contest is part of the Real Women of Philadelphia community which launched in March 2010. Members have created their own site profiles, uploaded pictures, written articles and self-produced over 5,000 entertaining short videos showcasing how they use PHILLY in their favorite dishes. The site has received more than 590,000 unique visitors and the cream cheese-based recipe videos have received millions of views across various media channels and the RWOP site.

{No comments}

Review of My Vintage Baby Clothing

Posted by html404 on July 18, 2010
in Baby Products, Children's Clothing

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

Family June 2010 149
Family June 2010 155
Family June 2010 166
Family June 2010 158

I received this gorgeous outfit from My Vintage Baby. It is from their Summer Days collection (scroll down to Summer Days) and we really love it! It is a two piece capris set that is teal with pink flowers. We think it looks darling on our daughter and she loves it because it has pink in it! She is always asking to wear this adorable little outfit. 🙂

The outfit did not seem to shrink when we washed it, but we didn’t dry it in the dryer or outside on the line because I didn’t want the colors to fade. So the dryer may cause some shrinkage, but I cannot tell you for sure that since we didn’t use ours.

To find our more about My Vintage Baby please visit this link.

{No comments}

Book Review of Courting Morrow Little – A Revell Blog Tour

Posted by html404 on July 18, 2010
in Books

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

Courting Morrow Little

Courting Morrow Little was an intriguing novel based in the frontier time. I really liked the story line, as tragic as that time period was with the unrest between the Native American Indians and the settlers. The main character, Morrow Little, was no stranger to tragedy either.

The story touched on many issues prevalent in that time period. However, the issue that stood out to me most was Morrow’s struggle to deal with the past and move on from her own personal tragedy to embrace her future.

I really enjoyed Morrow’s love story and how the author intertwined it with her personal conflict. It was interesting how Morrow learned who her real friends were, but yet it corresponded with how we all realize at some point or another who our true friends are and who are not. Life lessons often come with some hurtful knocks along the way. True friends need to be treasured because they are hard to come by and need to be nurtured to some degree to keep the bonds close. Other friendships will come and go.

This was another riveting story that I stayed up late to read.

“Available July 2010 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

{2 comments}

Product Review! Mineral Cosmetics From Aroma Leigh

Posted by html404 on July 17, 2010
in All Natural Products

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

I received for review a sample package of 25 sample eyeshadow and 4 full sized eyeshadow from Aroma Leigh but I am just going to share with you 3 out of the 29 that I received! Normally I don’t wear eyeshadow but decided to this time since it has NO chemicals and I wanted to try it!

aromaleighinctutu

Tutu: This delicate light pink eyeshadow is very soft and is a nice shade when blended with Jewel. It has a soft pink violet plush matte base with a soft golden copper highlight. It is very sparkly! This collection was modeled after ballet colors.

jewel

Jewel: This color blends nicely with Tutu. It is very nice and one of my favorites! It is a cool purple with shimmers of coral gold contrasting the purply goodness. This collection was modeled after the famous botanical gardens at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas.

glowingluna

Glowing Luna: This collection was modeled after butterflys and I think that the name suits the colors don’t you? It is very shimmery color, and is a pigmented warm green yellow… or yellowish warm green? You choose. Sparks of copper and pink add an ethereal dimension. I LOVE this color!

And I bring this review to a close with some bad news, and good news. The bad news is that Aroma Leigh is closing. The good news is that she is offering us 35% off of everything in store and in stock! Here is the link.

{No comments}

Touching the Clouds Blog Tour

Posted by html404 on July 16, 2010
in Books

I received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

Touching the Clouds

Touching the Clouds was written by Bonnie Leon. It is story based in Alaska. The main character is Kate, who is a female pilot. She has an independent spirit, yet I detected that she was “escaping” more than she was searching for adventure as a bush pilot. One of her co-characters, Paul, seems to have the same escape mechanism.

I think many of us can relate to that because how often do we just wish to run away from our problems or circumstances when things aren’t going the way we want or think they should? I know I can. The thing is God doesn’t want us to just “escape”, He desires us to know who He is amidst our difficulty. He wants us to know that His thoughts of us have not changed just because our feelings and circumstances have.

Through events and circumstances, Paul and Kate learn not only how to trust themselves again, but also the Lord. It was a good read.

“Available July 2010 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

{One comment}

Update on Do Good Day

Posted by html404 on July 16, 2010
in Blog Stuff, Giving Back/Charity, Travel

Do Good Day was an event sponsored by 77 Kids/American Eagle and TheMotherhood.com that we were privileged to participate in on July 14th, 2010.

Sorry for the delay in getting our update for Do Good Day posted. The last couple of days have been crazy to say the least.

On Wednesday, July 14th, we headed out of our driveway at about 8:40am to head to the city of Chicago to one of the four Ronald McDonald Houses (RMH) located in the city. I thought I was giving myself enough time to account for traffic and construction, which is happening everywhere it seems. However, I actually did not enter the RMH until 11:00am – a half hour after the scheduled time. It took me a half hour to find parking! Thankfully, a delivery truck freed up a parking spot a couple house down from the RMH. I also took the wrong way in so I had to call my GPS husband to get me to where I needed to be from Lakeshore Dr. The children oohhed and ahhhed over the sailboats and Lake Michigan – Note to self: It’s been a long time since we took the children into the city! We need to visit more often! Thankfully, my detour wasn’t what made me late because I arrived at the house at 10:25am. It was the parking. I didn’t allow extra time for parking! Note to self: If I ever drive in the city again, allow time for parking!

Do it Good Day 2010 002

At the RMH, we baked thimble cookies and a cake for the families staying at the house. The children had fun baking, playing in the playroom, looking at books, as well as putting together about ten goodie bags for the families we met in the RMH. We couldn’t disturb the families in their rooms, but those we saw wandering in the halls we could give them the treat bags. We also wrote up encouraging notes to leave around the house, but guess what? We forgot to leave them!

Do it Good Day 2010 021

Do it Good Day 2010 032

Do it Good Day 2010 049

Do it Good Day 2010 088

Do it Good Day 2010 091

Do it Good Day 2010 044

After we clean up from our baking fun, RMH staff member, Abena, shared with us a bit of the history and purpose of the RMH and then she took us on a tour of the house. It was very interesting and our children enjoyed it.

Do it Good Day 2010 105

Upon leaving the RMH shortly after 1:00pm, Abena took a photo of three of the five mom bloggers and their families in front of the RMH. Then we all headed our separate ways. We arrived back in our hometown to pass out our $77 at our local grocery store at about 2:30pm.

Do it Good Day 2010 108

You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to give away a dollar but it was! We spent about an hour at the grocery store before giving up and heading elsewhere. By the end of that hour, my husband was with us to relieve me of being on my feet. Since people were not being very receptive of receiving a dollar my husband suggested going to Walgreens, which only has one door so the innocent folks of our town had no chance of avoiding us with nine people surrounding the doorway!;-) They were much less skeptical as the children shared about their trip to the Ronald McDonald House and more willing to take the money when they found out that it wasn’t the children’s money we were giving away.

Do it Good Day 2010 112

In spite of the rejections, once the children gave away the dollars in their hands they came back for more. It was a very good experience for all of us. After all the good they did for Do Good Day and being real troopers in the heat (90 degrees!) we treated the children and ourselves to a frosty from Wendy’s!

Thank you 77 Kids and TheMotherhood.com for the opportunity to partner with you for Do Good Day!

200x200_DoGoodDay

{No comments}

Book Review of The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book

Posted by html404 on July 16, 2010
in Books

I received the following book in exchange for writing a review. While I consider it a privilege to receive free products to review, my review is my honest opinion and thoughts of the book.

fambb

When I read this book I was rather surprised that this was not yet another cook- book filled with un-healthy recipes but rather that even though this is a baking cook-book it had some relativity healthy recipes that looked delicious!

I thought that I would share some of the Food Allergy Mama’s story:

I am a mother of four young children in suburban Chicago. My second child, John, was diagnosed at age one with severe dairy, egg, peanut, tree nut and legume allergy. He also is asthmatic, so the likelihood of a life threatening reaction from food is increased. I spent a few years learning the ins and outs of food labels, ingredient and product information, and most importantly, how to cook and bake for not only my son, but for the rest of my family as well. t has become my life’s purpose to raise awareness and increase funding for food allergy research. I am passionate about not only keeping my son safe, but alive. A food allergy diagnosis is scary; it is the fear of the unknown that keeps us moms of food allergic children awake at night.

The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book is a wonderful guide for any mom with children that have food allergy’s this cook-book has recipes for severe dairy, egg, peanut, tree nut and legume allergys. It has recipes from muffins, to cakes, to goodies, and more!

To order The Food Allergy Mama’s Baking Book you may order it here for $19.95 plus S+H.

{No comments}