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Vacations
This is a sponsored post.
Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
My husband and I have been talking about vacations lately. He is itching to go on vacation and now we have a huge garden to tend! I told him we can still get away for a weekend or just wait until fall if finances work out. We have discussed going to Canada, Utah and even Florida. We have an old friend who has invited us down to his home in Florida, so that would be savings there having a place to stay but our friend has stipulated it be “sans des enfants” – that means without children in English. Many will think us weird but there is a part of us that just cannot leave our children and go on vacation by ourselves. To us vacations are family affairs. Maybe we will feel differently once they are all older and we don’t have to rely on outside help to care for them.
We actually met in Florida nearly 18 years ago. We have only been back once and that was in 2001, so it is extremely tempting to return. There are just so many places to go and things to see down there, plus the memories and the warm water beaches are another draw!
Image: Jennifer Renee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A Vacation package to Disney World is even appealing with all of its commercialism because of all the activities available, the onsite accomodations and the location of Orlando. There is Sea World, Disney World Theme Parks ((Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom, EPCOT or Hollywood Studios), Disney Wide World of Sports, Disney Quest and Universal Studios. Not to mention getting a vacation package to Disney World that includes a Park Hopper option allowing you to hop from park to park during your visit.
Just thinking about it and seeing pictures of the beaches makes me long for a vacation too. We’ll just have to see how our growing season goes and what the upcoming months hold. Maybe a vacation isn’t as far off this year as we thought…
One thing is for sure, it takes a bit of planning and I certainly appreciate advance warning when we are going anywhere for more than a day, but that has not stopped my husband from deciding a couple of hours beforehand that we are going out-of-state! He likes to do that! He is more spontaneous than I am, I like to have everything mapped out and planned.
Where do you like to vacation or what do you consider your “dream” vacation?
Freschetta Pizzas
I received the following product for free 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.
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I was rather excited when the opportunity arose to receive five coupons for five free Freschetta Frozen Pizzas - pizza is our family's favorite meals. We generally eat homemade, unless we are visiting family and they order out. Frozen pizzas are a rare convenient treat that we buy when on sale. But these were pre-made and would come in handy on a busy night.
We tried the NEW Zesty Italian Flatbread, Brick Oven 5-Italian Cheese and a 4 Cheese Naturally Rising, since the store we shopped at had a very limited quantity. I really wanted to try their other NEW pizza Garlic and Spinach, but the store did not have it.
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Most of our family preferred the Zesty Italian, it just had more flavor. I found the sauce flavor of the 5-Italian Cheese odd, but I am use to a sweeter homemade sauce that we make ourselves using a puree or tomato sauce with our own sea salt, organic cane sugar and spices. As my son would say, homemade is BEST! Our girls really liked the pizzas and the opportunity not to help make dinner! It certainly saved us time on clean up and preparation the night we had these Freschetta Pizzas, even though it isn't a very healthy meal. But on a night that we were crunched for time, these pizzas certainly came in handy to get us out the door on time!
As much as I appreciated the convenience of the Freshetta pizzas that we received, I have to say that they were not the best frozen pizzas we have ever tasted. Our family tends to be pizza connoisseurs and know what we like about pizza, whether it is take out, frozen or homemade versions! Like I said though, it is a very easy meal.
Visit www.freschetta.com for more information. They even have some coupons available on their site.
You Gotta See This Video Contest
This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Incendia Health. All opinions are 100% mine.
Abbott Medical Optics Inc. (AMO) is sponsoring this post. They are a global leader in laser vision correction. They recently annnounced the winners of the “You Gotta See This” iLASIK Video Contest . People actually made videos sharing how improving their eye sight has made their lives better and because of their act of bravery (it takes bravery to make a video of yourself, doesn’t it?) they have the opportunity to win some serious cash and/or prizes – like the $5,000 Grand Prize.
If you are curious about all the brave souls and want to see who the winners are, they may be viewed at www.GottaSeeThisNow.com. You can also register to receive valuable eye care products.
Here are the winners, by category:
The Prizes
$5,000 Grand Prize
“You Gotta See This Music Video” by Alex
Category 1: My Contacts Are Getting In The Way Of My Good Time
First Prize: “You Gotta Be Kidding Me! A True Story” by Robbo (HDTV package — a $2,500 value)
Second Prize: “Contacts Stink” by windysail (Flip UltraHD™ camcorder — a $199.99 value)
Category 2: My Favorite Sport Or Activity Would Be So Much Cooler With Better Vision
First Prize: “iLASIK Would Make Surfing More Enjoyable” by jhbmw007 (HDTV package)
Second Prize: “Foggy Riding” by Snowman (Flip UltraHD camcorder)
Category 3: You Should See Life After The iLASIK® Procedure
First Prize: “Orbs Of Perfection” by Danny V (HDTV package)
Second Prize: “Army LASIK” by ahowalton (Flip UltraHD camcorder)
So take some time to relax and see how the iLASIK Video Contest winners vision has improved and how well they did in making their videos. They won some great prizes for their valiant efforts didn’t they?
A Child’s Treasury of Prayers, Poems and Verses
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 featured product.
The photos in this book are beautiful. We happen to love the old-fashioned look though. One of our daughters said she thought this handwriting book was cute and she really liked the poem about the baby titled, “God is Giving Our Family a Baby” (Page 70) written by Joy Marie Dunlap, owner of LightHome Publications. It is very appropriate for our family since we are expecting our eighth child this August. Very precious, uplifting verses, prayers and poems to fill our hearts and minds with.
Most of the verses, poems and prayers in A Child’s Treasury of Prayers, Poems and Verses are God, family and character centered, as it is a Christian penmanship book. It is geared for the K-3 grade level. If you click on the red link it will take you to a product page where there is a product preview to allow you to look at a portion of the ebook before you buy it.
Grandma’s Childhood Home
In April we made the six hour drive to Rice Lake, WI to visit my mother-in-law’s childhood home – thus the title of our Wordless Wednesday post. We were quite happy to report to her that it has been very well kept, as you can see from the photo. It was a beautiful drive up north going through all the farming communities.
Rice Lake is only a town of 8,000 or so but compared to some towns with the population of 8,000 Rice Lake seemed to have the monopoly on business. We assume it is because of the distance that everyone has to travel. I mean they had a Super Walmart, a health food store, a Farm and Fleet and a bunch of other stores that we were surprised to see in a town of that size.
The town has changed in big ways since the 30’s and 40’s I am sure, but my mother-in-law was unable to make the trip with us to tell us exactly how it had all changed.
It was an incredibly windy day (but sunny and beautiful) the day we visited, but we managed to show the children how to “skip” rocks despite the choppy lake. We had a picnic lunch which kept blowing away, but we endure it to make some happy memories of our short time in Rice Lake.
Artistic Nature Magazine
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.
American Deserts is the November-December 2009 issue of Artistic Nature Magazine. It is a magazine published by LightHome Publications, which is owned by a homeschooling family. It is a Christian magazine written for kids. One unique thing is that it has a creative focus in each issue and teaches children how to draw. It contains both fictional and true stories about the monthly topic of the magazine. For example, American Deserts taught us about American Deserts.
We also received the August-September 2009 issue on Sea Mammals and the January-February 2010 issue on Animal Homes. Then we decided to buy a subscription, currently only $10.50 for 6 issues! So we won’t even miss any issues this year since we also have the current issue about Australian Animals.
Each magazine is reproducible for each family’s home use, which really comes in handy when you have multiple children like we do.
Here are our older girls thoughts about these magazines:
“I think these magazines are great. I really liked the deer and coyote stories.”
“I think these magazines are really interesting. I had never heard of manzanita berry! I haven’t heard of a lot of different types of trees, bushes, flowers and animals mentioned in these magazines.”
“I thought that all 3 of the magazines were very informative. They told us about many types of different things that we have never heard of before! I also like the fact they included a lot of coloring pages, puzzles and games tha tyou can print off for your younger siblings. They had a lot of color photographs, which is great if you have a color printer (we don’t though!).
Inside the American Deserts magazine it talks about everything from dangerous snakes, Native American Indians, Cowboys to many different animals.
In the Sea Mammals issue it talks about dolphins, sea otters to all sorts of whales.
Animal Homes talks about everything from bat homes, crab homes to squirrel homes.
All of these magazines are a really great resource and I liked them a lot.”
A Little Piece of Earth – Book Review
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. This review was originally written and published at AlternativeConsumer.com
A Little Piece of Earth – how to grow your own food in small spaces
A Little Piece of Earth is a short book written by Maria Finn. As the title of this post indicates, it is a book about how to grow your own food in small spaces. No space is too small. As we have learned 2.5 acres is enough land to feed 100 people and to make a living on. So there is no reason why people in urban and suburban areas cannot grow enough for 2-4 people in their backyards with a little bit of creativity. This is what Ms. Finn shares in her book, along with little stories about the people she’s helped with her gardening experience.
From roof tops and window sills to indoor gardening, Maria Finn provides the beginner and veteran gardener plenty of food for thought.
Such as this line, “Edible gardens not only provide food, but also connections – to the earth, to the past, to the culture and to one another.”
And this a funny tip: A raccoon deterrent is an Oreo cookie with a jalapeño pepper inside! Can you believe that? She also said that aphids do not like hot peppers so grow a few extra to keep them at bay.
Another idea was to grow a grapevine privacy wall between you and a nosey neighbor, which seemed not only a neighbor/privacy solution but a way to grow grapes in a small backyard too.
I loved her section on children’s gardens, like using the Weeping Plum tree as a reading/tea party nook or the Pink Jasmine Tepee that would be more cost effective than many of the commercial tepees on the toy market and would smell a whole lot prettier too!
This book supplied me with enough intriguing information on multitiered worm composters, yummy recipes to try, different kinds of heirloom plants, garden design ideas, precious space saving techniques and even seed saving tips to make me want to study each of these subjects in more depth. After all, this little book is more of a quick study/pocket reference book with only 212 pages in its 8”x 5” covers. I would definitely recommend it to those wanting to use their space more wisely.
Editor’s Note: One thing I did not mention in my original review was the fact that there were a couple of little things that I think the author would have been better off leaving out, but overall this book is very useful to gardeners just beginning or to those looking to save space.
