Archive for html404

Lethal Legacy

Posted by html404 on August 11, 2012
in Books

I took a break from doing book reviews for a couple months due to not having enough time to read them, but then some interesting titles came through that I had to read! Ever get that bug? I love to read and even though I can use the excuse that reading is my “work” I still suffer from feeling guilty. Ever felt that way? But the pleasure of curling up with a good book usually wins out, eventually.

Anyhoo…on to the book…

Leathal Legacy Review

I have really come to enjoy mystery, crime or suspense fiction. I really like trying to figure out how the plot is going to play out. Irene Hannon has written a series called the Guardians of Justice. I believe I have read one or both of the first two in the series so of course I wanted to read the third and last book, Lethal Legacy.

I loved the main character, Kelly Warren’s, determination. She refused to believe her father committed suicide and displayed persistence in trying to convince the police detectives there was more to her father’s death. I cannot even fathom being able to do that in the midst of grieving, even six months later. Her character definitely lived out the motto, “Never Give Up.”

The detective on the case seemed to have lost his way when he felt God had not answered his prayer the way he wanted Him to. It was a quick reminder to me that God doesn’t always answer my prayers in the way or timing I think He should. His ways and timing are not mine.

One last thought stood out in the book – Relationships are hard work, but in the end it’s always better to mend them before it’s too late and not have to live with regret in the end.

I really enjoyed this book. It was an easy read, which is the kind I reach for when I want to relax. No heavy thoughts for me when I just want to zone out for a little while. For the most part the story kept me guessing. I was kind of surprised when the “mystery” was revealed. The romance part was predictable, but sweet nonetheless. 🙂

Two thumbs up from me!

“This book is available August 2012 at your favorite bookseller from Revell, a division of Baker Publishing Group.”

Faith and Family Reviews received the following product in exchange for writing a review. While we consider it a privilege to receive products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the product.

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Back to School Giveaway With Pirate’s Booty

Posted by html404 on August 10, 2012
in All Natural Products, Food and Treats, Giveaways, Reviews, School

It’s back to school time and that not only means school supplies and school clothing, but also packing school lunches! I can’t imagine the morning school routine we’d have if I had to get 6-7 school lunches, school bags and children ready to get out the door! Hats off to you ladies with multiple children! What do you do to make sure their school lunches don’t get boring? After all you are packing lunches for at least 180 days in most states.

Growing up I always seem to have a sandwich, apple, granola bar or sweet for my bagged lunches. My mom wasn’t heavy into convenience foods back then and made nearly everything from scratch. Nowadays, there are so many packaged snacks to choose from, healthy and unhealthy. Our family prefers to eat organic (as much as possible), all natural foods and snacks without artificial flavors etc.

One snack we have enjoyed is Pirate’s Booty Corn Puffs. They are made from aged white cheddar so they are similar to other brands of cheese puffs, only better because they have half the fat! They taste very good and are gobbled up in no time at all by our children. Love the little bags, perfect for little hands and great for travel treats too!

Consider adding Pirate’s Booty snacks to your child’s lunchbox. Their products make a wonderful “Snack Swap!” (we all know kids do this, right?) Pirate’s Booty is a deliciously baked, all-natural snack we can give our children guilt-free. Pirate’s Booty is less fattening and has fewer calories than regular fried potato chips. Pirate’s Booty is safe for kids with allergies as it is gluten, peanut and tree-nut free. Pirate’s Booty contains easy to pronounce ingredients and are made without trans-fats. Pirate’s Booty Aged White Cheddar half-ounce size multi-packs have only 65-calories per pack! A convenient lunchbox treat! You can find Pirate’s Booty Aged White Cheddar half-ounce 12-packs at retailers nationwide. They retail for about $6.99.

Back to School Giveaway With Pirate’s Booty!

You can enter to win the Pirate’s Booty Treasure Box in the above photo. It includes 2 12-packs of corn puffs, a chip clip as seen clipped to the box, 3 Pirate’s Booty tatoos, 2 pirates eye patches and two foam pirates swords. For some reason YouTube doesn’t like videos from my iPhone. 🙁 And I cannot even get QuickTime to work today. Boo, I had wanted to share a video of my boys with their eye patches and swords.

Enter the giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Little Farm Helpers – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on August 8, 2012
in Family Stuff, Farm Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

We don’t agree with child labor or slave labor, but we do desire to teach our children to work according to there age and abilities. Our little guys are not required to do many chores other than pick up their toys, help put their clothes in their cubbies and help a sibling or parent feed the animals. Yet they are often found doing more because when the older children are told to do something they trail along behind. Little farm helpers. That’s one advantage to having many children – the older ones do tend to teach the younger ones by example (and not the example they set is not always positive! 😉 ) Below is our 4 year old “Nookie” who loves helping take care of the chickens. He’s very kind and gentle and actually very good at catching them.

Our Little Farm Helpers

The diapered dude is our baby who will be two this month. My daughter captured him helping fill the chicken waterer with the hose.

Please excuse the marker all over them, markers usually end up in them coloring each other’s skin!

Our little farm helpers thrive on helping.

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$50 Amazon Gift Card August Giveaway Event

Posted by html404 on August 7, 2012
in Contests, Giveaways

Wallet running on empty? Gas prices getting you down? Back to school specials are here and you are strapped for cash? Well, sit up and take a look at this August edition of the Cash and Gift Card Giveaway Hop! 17 other blogs and I are offering you the opportunity to win over $600 in gift cash or gift cards! Each of us is giving away cash or a gift card worth $25 or more!

Woohoo! Bring on the cash, eh?!

$50 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway

Faith and Family Reviews is offering a $50 Amazon Gift Card (or code) for this August giveaway event. Please just fill out the Rafflecopter below.

Once you’ve entered my giveaway, make sure to click this $600 in Giveaways link to be taken to a list of the participating blogs.

Enter to win today!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Remember to stop by the other participating blogs to win over $600 in cash and gift cards. Click this Giveaway link to visit the other participating blogs.

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Mike the Knight

Posted by html404 on August 6, 2012
in Family Stuff, Kids Stuff, Travel, Uncategorized

We picked up our new old van yesterday. It’s big, roomy and has comfy seats! We were invited to attend the Mike the Knight show at the Renaissance Fair in Kenosha, Wisconsin for this past weekend’s shows, so we decided our first family outing in nearly 10 months would be to the Renaissance Fair. We have never been to a Renaissance Fair and were expecting something more like Medieval Times shows, rather than a fair taking place outside.

This is how my husband parked “the beast” at the hotel we stopped at to find the nearest Walgreens (Walgreens offers discounted Renaissance Fair tickets.)

The fair was very crowded and busy. Tons of people. Dusty streets, much like it would have been in the 15th century. There were little shops lining the medieval streets selling their wares. It had a air of stepping back in time. There was lots of sights to see, but due to arriving at 5pm for a 5:30pm show, we didn’t take much time to stop and look at things due to not wanting to miss the Mike the Knight show.

We arrived at The Globe Stage with nearly 15 minutes to spare. Our children sat nicely anticipating the show starting, but the younger crew did not understand what we were waiting for. There was not a huge crowd for a kids show, but we just put it off to it being one of the last shows (we later realized that there was a Joust going on at the same time which attracted a huge crowd).

The show began with an Elf coming on stage and reading a Mike the Knight story book. The Elf did not have a mic on and she/he was very hard to hear even with us sitting in the fourth row! The story took about five minutes, after which the doors of the stage opened and out stepped Mike the Knight. Our six year old questioned, “That’s a person dressed up in Mike the Knight?” We said yes.

Then the children were invited to line up to meet and greet the tall stuffed figure. None of ours wanted to. The sat quietly at our sides and still refused to go up after a couple of fair workers tried to persuade them to go up to the stage. The worker handing out the CD/DVD and coloring book was nice enough to give our children
each one even though they didn’t go up to meet Mike.

Our Impressions of Mike the Knight

That appeared to be the extent of the show. 10 minutes long and very lame. We were disappointed to be honest. This is the what we drove an hour to see. 🙁 We sure hope other Renaissance Fairs are doing something different! We expected Mike the Knight to at least act out one of his stories or something. Not just stand there wave, shake hands and high five the kids.

The Fair’s Redemption

What redeemed the fair for us was the jousting match, which we only caught part of because we were at that “other” show. It was cool and all the children said that was their favorite part.

After the joust, we attended a How to Use Weapons show. It was humorous and we stayed until it was nearly over, but our little ones were asking to go home! It was starting to get late for them.

We took our time walking back through the fair, letting the children’s (or ours!) curiosity guide us. Our oldest daughter was in writer’s mode thinking and creating as she took in all the people, the costumes, sights and sounds.

It was also really interesting to note that all the rides offered at the fair were not mechanical as in gas powered or electric. They were powered by the muscles of people. That was one of the best things to witness – the historical accuracy of the rides. Of course they all cost money too.

We thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon/evening out as a whole family. It was wonderful to just do something together away from work and home. Our four year old woke up this morning asking, “Are we going on another trip, mommy?” 🙂 I think that about says it all right there. Eating out, getting ice cream and going to the playground afterwards all made it an even better experience for our children.

New Yorkers

Those in New York or traveling in NY state this month, Mike the Knight and the Renaissance Fair will be your area the weekend August 18-19! Check out the details here.

Faith and Family Reviews received the four tickets to the Renaissance Fair in exchange for a feature. While we consider it a privilege to receive tickets, products to review, our reviews are our honest opinion and thoughts of the event or product.

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Blogging Planner from Brandcation

Posted by html404 on August 3, 2012
in Blog Stuff, Business, Uncategorized

If you are a blogger then this post is for you. If you are a blogger trying to monetize your blog, this post is definitely for you. It will help you get organized and treat your blog as a business…using the Blogging Planner.

The Blogging Planner is a neat little planner was created by bloggers for bloggers to help us organize posts, keep track of paid opportunities, PR contacts, events and so much more. It holds a year’s worth of planning, after which you will have to get a new one.

These photos say it all:

Front Cover

Brainstorming

Calendar

Monthly Focus Page

Weekly To-Do’s and Income Recording (Making tax time easier having everything in one place!)

Blog Conferences

PR Contacts

Brand Events

Goal Setting – If we don’t set goals we’ll never achieve them!

I love the planner. The concept is very well thought out and it is easy to use. However, I will admit with struggling to get myself into the habit of using it. Old habits die hard. I am use to writing things on slips of paper….and losing them. I write things in notebooks (of which I have many) and forget which notebook I wrote it in because I often grab just any ole notebook not the one I need! Or I can neglect to write something down or add it to my online calendar, which creates mishaps and mistakes to occur. You would think I would just buckle down and discipline myself to use this new tool so I have everything in one spot, but no I struggle against change and it seems like soooo much work. Ha! I know I am fooling myself. That’s why I am determined to use my Blogging Planner consistently for the rest of the year so that I am treating my blog as a business and have everything in one place for when tax time rolls around. I need to just stop procrastinating and do it!

All that to say that I do have other tools that I use to help me keep somewhat organized but they are all in different places. Not in just one spot. That’s what I think the Blogging Planner can do if it is used properly.

When I attended Brandcation in May, Trisha and Lynsey gifted all of us with this Blogging Planner, it also contained the contact info for all those bloggers attending, the PR info of our swag etc. in the front of the planner. This was a special deluxe version of the planner. The one they are selling will not contain PR or bloggers’ info, obviously. Now the planner is also available in two different sizes. I hear the large size is nice and spacious, more for your desk at home, while the smaller one is perfect to take with you when you are traveling to conferences and events.

Are you a blogger? Do you treat your blog as a business? How do you think this planner would help you?

You can learn more about the Blogging Planner or purchase it here.

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Congratulations! Livrada Giveaway Winner!

Posted by html404 on August 2, 2012
in Books, Ebooks, Gift Ideas, Giveaways

Oops, forgot to post one last giveaway winner and it’s the Livrada giveaway.

Congratulations to Amanda on Winning a Copy of 50 Shades of Grey!

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Asurion $40 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway Winner!

Posted by html404 on August 1, 2012
in Giveaways, Techie Stuff, Technology/Electronics

The third and last giveaway winner….

In case you missed it, congratulations to Lisa on winning the
Asurion $40 Amazon Gift Card giveaway!

Remember to stay tuned for upcoming giveaways, great reviews and more!

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Congratulations! Slique Kit™ Giveaway Winner!

Posted by html404 on August 1, 2012
in Giveaways, Health, Health and Nutrition

I closed out three giveaways yesterday and contacted all the winners. So I wanted to give them special acknowledgement congratulating them on winning and for all of you who entered – Thank you!

In case you missed it, congratulations to Paula on winning the Slique Kit™ giveaway!

Please stay tuned for the next several weeks as we will be offering several giveaways, but realize giveaways will slow down again in late September and early October as I have a big blog event that I will need time to prepare for and write about! I don’t know how bloggers who attend several huge events do it!

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Monkey Swinging from a Tree – Wordless Wednesday

Posted by html404 on August 1, 2012
in Family Stuff, Fun Stuff, Wordless Wednesday

A monkey swinging from a tree, oh, it’s my son swinging from a tree! 😉 Boys play and work. They set this “Tarzan” swing up last week and I think at least 3-4 of the children have come to me saying their tummy hurts. After questioning them I came to the conclusion that they were working their stomach muscles while playing “Tarzan”. 🙂