Sock It to Me, I'm Back!

Hello Everyone,

I know it has been a long while, like 4 years since my last blog post. I thought I had reached a point in my life where it was time to move on to other projects, but then I realized that I really did miss writing in this format. So for those of you who are returning with me: Thank you for your patience. I am excited to get back to this. For those of you who are just discovering this blog: Welcome! Now lets have some fun.

When I was a little kid the absolute worst present I could get were clothes. The excitement and mystery of a wrapped gift fading and souring a little as I pulled back the wrapping paper only to discover fabric of a nice shirt, or (heaven forbid) socks and undergarments. Birthdays, Christmas, any other holiday, it did not matter. To my little kid brain, clothes were not impressive; they were not fun, or exciting. That is not to say that I was an ungrateful child. I DID appreciate the fact that someone took the time to get me a gift, but lets face it, to a child clothes vs. toys? Toys will win out every time.

When did that all change? I love receiving clothes now, especially socks. I love a fun sock (and yes, socks can be fun.) I recently found a company that specializes in socks. Not just any socks, SockThat will take any photo that you want and turn them into socks. Imagine having kooky, one-of-a-kind socks that are specific to you. You and your bestie have an inside joke? Put it on a sock! You could wear your favorite meme, or even have your pets featured on your feet. I know that when I see someone with unusual socks I stop them to ask them about it. Most of the time, the sock wearer is more than happy to tell me about them.


Your socks can be an icebreaker to get conversations started or they can be a statement piece!

With SockThat it is more than just socks with them. They are also dedicated to the finer details. The subtle touches. A celebration of the understated sock should also be about love, giving back to people who need it the most, and turning the ordinary into the extraordinary. SockThat works closely with various charity organizations, LGBT communities, as well as local arts and cultural communities providing them the help they need to receive the support they need to prosper.



You can check them out at SockThat! or on Facebook or Instagram. And should you be so inclined to give the company a try, use the discount code Bell$5 for $5 off your purchase!!

Happy sock-making and designing!




As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update.

Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.

The Stone Bearers

Ashira, just received the worst prophecy of all time. She, who longs for travel and adventure and maybe even a prince to marry, had all her hopes and dreams dashed when the Seer told her the best path for her would be a "life of no renown".

But how can life be so unfair? Her sisters had already received fantastic prophecies and were living much better lives than those of a potter's daughter should.
Determined to make her own destiny, Ashira volunteers to follow a Stone Bearer and learn more about the magic in the world. By living in the temples and learning about magic, Ashira does get to travel and have adventures. However with a demon on the way, has she wished for more than she can handle, and would she have been better off sticking with her life of no renown?

Stevens does a fantastic job of bringing the characters and the magic of the world to life. I was fully enveloped and by the third chapter was engrossed. The first few chapters are little slow and difficult to get into but are needed to set some of the foundation of the story. Stevens does manage to bring everything together by the end of the book and have everything make sense.

For a limited time, The Stone Bearers is available for purchase at 90% off to celebrate the launch of the new title. You can get your copy at the link below at this price until the end of the day of March 16th, 2016.

http://amzn.to/1TtXBeE



 As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update. Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.

Potty training sequence initiated

Minion number 3 is finally approaching one of his first rites of passage. We are exactly one month away from the 2nd annual celebration of his existence and to prepare for the challenge we have already equipped one bathroom with a miniature potty and we have the "big boy" underwear stocked.

There seems to be only one major roadblock. He has developed potty anxiety. While to he wants to emulate mommy, daddy, and his siblings, every time I try to sit him on the potty alone he starts to cry. However, if I sit on the big potty, he will come and sit down on his little potty and everything is ok, until I try to take his diaper off.

At the suggestion of one of his day care teachers, I have gotten a book and started making that his potty book. The book is a simple alphabet book that takes photographs of everyday objects that happen to look like letters.

 

This hardcover book features full color glossy pages of real life photographs. The book is a collection of a ten year old's art project. All the colors are vivid and the pictures give me plenty to talk about with my little guy while we wait for him to get comfortable while using the potty.

You can read more about this amazing ten year old boy and see more of his art work at his website.

http://www.adambsolomon.com/


Another thing that I have used to help make him feel more comfortable on the potty is to provide some simple snacks, usually fish crackers. To help keep them contained, I use SnackCubby's little re-usable snack cylinders.



Generally,  Snack Cubby containers are awesome and are just the right size for packing that salty or sweet snack in a lunch box. The sides are silicone and offer a little more protection than the standard zip-top bag, but if really put through activity you will end up with a container full of crumbs. I have yet to have a container randomly pop open but with the design that is my number 1 worry (as I mentioned, it has not happened yet).

They do come with caps that you can use to make large Popsicles however they would be too big for my kids at this point in time (my oldest are 9 and 6). I do look forward to using them later to make large yogurt popsicles.



The only next hurdle I foresee  may be to teach him to pee standing up. Although with such devices as the "P-thing" I may be able to teach him without the assistance of daddy.

The "P-Thing" is a funnel like device that was created to level the potty playing field between men and women. The funnel makes it possible to women to pee standing up. The only hard part about using it is to maintain aiming while giggling.






The "P-thing" funnel is made out of a soft silicone. This makes it easy to clean and easy to store. I have stashed it in my purse while traveling, in case of "road-side emergencies (no more squatting and accidentally wetting part of my pants) or to save me from public restrooms that are not as well kept as they should be.

 As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update. Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.

Cats and Grooming

I love my animals, my pets. They have become an extension of my family; each one having their own unique personality. I would not trade my four-legged companions for anything in the world. However, as part of owning a pet I have come to accept some of pet-ownership's less rewarding aspects. The main one being pet hair. All of my animals shed their coats supposedly twice a year, although many times it feels as though it is a constant battle. And yes, it is a battle, a battle to keep them looking nice, to keep the random hair from forming together and forming an army of dust bunnies, to keep the cats from getting sick with excessive hair balls. To make things worse the cats seem to despise being brushed. I can tell when they jump in my lap and I try to brush them they suffer an internal conflict. On one hand they really want attention from me, but on the other they don't appear to enjoy the sensation of getting brushed. I can usually brush them for a few minutes before they finally get fed up and jump down.

However I have found a grooming glove that makes things a little easier.

PetNov has developed a grooming glove with nubbs that brush the cats' hair gently to where they don't seem to mind as much. The glove also generates a little static charge as you pet the animal to where the hair that comes loose clings to the glove.

Here is my cat Charlie who is normally pretty skittish especially around the minions enjoying the attention. (Please excuse my stuffy voice, I am trying to recover from a head cold.)

As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update. Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.

The Feelings Edition

As a way to follow up on the Valentine's Day Edition, we are going to talk about feelings today.

We are always told "Don't shoot the messenger" and most of the time we abide by that. Except when it comes to our emotions. According to the creator of feelings magnets, our emotions are the messengers that deliver important messages, and when we ignore them they persist until we can no longer ignore them.

I used to be guilty of bottling my emotions. One particular instance of this and the negative consequences that occur as a result was when my younger brother died while deployed. I was sad and grieving, but as a mother I had to put all those emotions to the side in order to perform my day-to-day functions. After ignoring those feelings of sadness and grief they started to leak out and manifest in many negative ways. I progressively became more and more moody, prone to irritation and anger. Eventually, I sought out help with handling the grief and by exercising those emotions and allowing myself to listen to them I was able to bring myself back into balance.

The feelings magnets are a tool to help one focus during a quiet meditation session. I like to sit down with my kit once or twice a week and really think about how I feel. As an adult, I find my emotions are usually complex consisting of several emotions simultaneously. The feelings magnets kit allows me to address each feeling individually and work through them.









There is also a version of the kit for children. This version of the kit while it has few emotion tiles (I guess children are supposed to have simpler feelings) they are more colorful and fun. The case for both kits are metal so the magnets can be used on them or on another magnet compatible surface.

The website for the feelings magnets also allows users to sign up for feel exercises to be done with the kits. These short exorcises teach different ways to use the kits and range from identifying the emotions you are feeling as well as listening to why you are feeling a particular emotion to finally coming up with a strategy or action plan to work through a difficult emotion.

My oldest minion is nine years old and so far as a family we have not made that big of a deal before of talking about our feelings, and this maybe by far one of the biggest oversights we have made as parents so far. I hate to say it, but I do see him struggle with managing his feelings, especially those of angers and disappointment. Not only did we find that he had a hard time describing them, but they also usually controlled him, causing a full on meltdown. For this kind of behavior to be manifesting now, so early before the tumultuous teenage years is a bit terrifying.





We started using the Feelings Magnets kit with him. I was a little surprised that even with the children's kit there were some emotions that he was not able to identify with. I worked through a few exercises that were emailed to me and we are working on expanding his emotional vocabulary. Our next step will be to start putting together a plan for him to work through his more extreme emotions so that he is not getting stuck in a vicious cycle.







You can check out the Feelings Magnets Kits available as well as sign up for the email emotion exercises at the website below.

http://www.feelingmagnets.com/


As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update. Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.

Sharing something that I have accomplished

I often feel like everything I am doing in life is for nothing. I feel like I work so hard to accomplish absolutely nothing. In the meantime I over look the little things and neglect to give myself credit. And when someone points out an accomplishment that I have done, I find myself writing it off. "Oh that wasn't me or by my effort that got that task accomplished". 

I often under value the effort and work I put into this blog. (Yes, I mainly write it for myself, but still.) Did you know that I started this blog at the end of September of 2015? This blog is less than 6 months old. In the short time that I have been sharing funny parenting stories and product reviews, this blog has accumulated almost 900 views. (I am trying to think of a fun way to celebrate once the blog reaches 1000) And to be honest, I didn't think the blog would take off like that. For this to be my first blog, I am kind of impressed.

Additionally, I also been sharing my reviews on Amazon.com. I started writing reviews for the items I receive for free and discounted as well as for the items I buy about the same time I start this blog. Amazon keeps track of your reviews as well as how many other people find your reviews "helpful" and they create a sort of stack ranking. These rankings are updated about once a week. My first ranking on Amazon was around 1.5mil. (yeah, you ultimately want that number to be low) This week however, my ranking on Amazon as a reviewer is #33,134. That is a huge improvement. I am now officially in the top #50,000.

You can check out my Amazon Public Profile at the link below:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/profile/A2L2WTRMI4FJAK

I know this may not mean a whole lot to you, but for me...this is me recognizing my own accomplishments, which I don't do nearly enough.




As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update. Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.

The Valentines Day Edition

There are many different stories regarding the origins of Valentine's day. The one that I find most intriguing is the theory that Valentine's Day with the Christian martyrs is celebrated in the middle of February as a way to Christianize the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

The actual fertility celebrations get a little weird with women and crop fields getting slapped with strips of goat hide that had been soaked in dog's blood (I couldn't make this up even if I tried).

Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity and but was outlawed—as it was deemed “un-Christian”–at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

All of this information and more can be read in its entirety on the History Channel's website.

Thankfully in my house, there is no slapping women with goat hides dipped in dog's blood (and after three children I definitely do not need any more fertility). Instead we go for the more mundane tradition of giving gifts to each other.

Wine Glasses

 

My Therapy

As funny as this may sound, this glass accurately sums up my experience with wine. Had a bad day at work? A glass of wine will help calm you down and let it go. Kids driving you crazy? Put them to bed and enjoy that warmth and fuzzy feeling a glass of wine can provide. 









 


 What Night?


Another great and funny wine glass that helps me gauge how much wine is needed after a long day.  Most of the time, all I need is just a good night or maybe a great night. Sometime, though after a really long and trying day with work and/or my minions a what night? is needed to help unwind.

Both glasses are from GotMeTipsy and are a great quality for the price. Other glasses I have purchased at this price point felt thin and fragile. These glasses, while not overly thick or heavy feel appropriate for every day use. The designs on them are white and printed on the glass instead of etched in making the designs easy to see and read whether you are drinking a red, blush, or white or you need a refill. Best of all they are dishwasher safe so the design is not going anywhere.






Coffee Mugs 

Go Away

Much like the What Night? wine glass this coffee mug is marked with different levels communicating to everyone around you whether you are approachable or not yet. This is particularly handy after a night of indulging in "What Night?" levels of wine drinking or if you are generally just not a morning person. It is a great tongue-in-cheek gift for anyone who is not a morning person or is a coffee addict.




 

Favorite Child

This mug makes for great subtle bragging rights in large families. I have a lot of sibling and I like to joke that I am my mother's favorite. So it only seemed fitting for me to get this mug. I like to break it out during family gatherings just to show off a little to my brothers and sisters. 

 Much like the wine glasses listed above, these coffee mugs are also from GotMeTipsy. They sport the same screen printing technique for the design making them easy to read even when the mug is empty. Also just like with the wine glasses, these are dishwasher safe so the design is not going to just come off with one washing.

Both mugs, while made of glass are fairly weighty and feel well made and the handles are well crafted and not a seam can be found.



Wrist Rest


I work extensively at computers, both at my day job as well as with my hobbies.




Lately, I had started getting a little concerned because it seemed as though my hands were "falling asleep" more frequently than usual. I had also started noticing shooting pains from my wrist to my fingers not terribly often nor would they last too long, but long enough to have me concerned.


I watched my mother and her journey with carpal tunnel and it is not something that I am anxious to repeat. I know that the damage that is already done, is most likely irreversible but hopefully with the right gear I can slow down its progression. That is why this gift means so much to me.

The wrist rest pad does help me to keep my wrist in line while typing and the filling is supportive but also soft enough to yield a little to the weight of my hands. That plus the soft covering makes for a really comfortable experience. The bonus mouse pad is made of the same material and is just as comfortable.

Since I started using these items, I have not noticed the shooting pains and my hands are not falling asleep all the time. Hopefully I have bought myself a little bit of time before I will have to got for medical intervention for carpal tunnel.



My gift to everyone else was rolling sushi by hand.

Sushi knives

As with most things, what may seem like a hard task is made much easier if you have the proper tools. For example rolling and cutting sushi can be quite disastrous. I have tried to do this in the past with my other knives, and while I love them and they are great at what they do, they are not a good fit for cutting sushi rolls. They tear the wrap and all the sushi rice sticks to the blade preventing a good clean cut. This sushi knife is super sharp and slices right through the wrap. The shape and thickness of the blade is such that it helps reduce the amount of rice that sticks to the blade. The knives are lot lighter than my normal cooking knives and the balance feels just slightly off. My only other complaint is that the way the tang of the blade fits into the handle I am worried about the knife's longevity but so far it has not been an issue.




Complete with mixed drinks made with a new cocktail shaker.



Bars N Roses has a beautiful stainless steel cocktail shaker kit. The lid of the shaker fits down nicely into the bottom and the cap comes off for easy pouring through the strainer. The kit also included a smaller jigger for measuring as well as an ebook with drink recipes. Now my house is equipped for me to play bartender.






As always feedback, questions, comments, and suggestions are always welcome. Please remember to follow the blog and register your email address at the top of the page to have new posts delivered right to your email inbox and never miss an update. Disclaimer: please be aware that any item mentioned in this blog may have been received for free or at a discount in exchange for a fair and honest review. The opinions expressed in this blog are my own regardless of how the items were acquired.