Monday, October 31, 2011

Healthy Halloween Trade-Ins & Giveaway!

Happy Halloween from the Hines family! 

I will reveal our costumes to you on Wordless Wednesday, for now I want to share some candy trade in deals going on. 



FOR MY LOCAL FRIENDS IN RALEIGH, NC:

Some other suggestions:
  • Trade candy in for later bedtimes, extra TV, or other favorite healthy snacks.
  • Check with your local dentist to see if they do an exchange, some even offer cash!
  • Check this Facebook page for local posts!
WIN!!!
For those of you who eat your kids candy, I'm offering a healthy teeth kit for one adult winner! It comes in a cute little zip pouch you can reuse as well!




    Wednesday, October 26, 2011

    Wordless Wednesday! I can walk!



    Ok, a few words, mostly "good job" and "yea!".  One more video to share! Here is my 10 month old learning to walk!

    Tuesday, October 25, 2011

    My 10 Month Old Kiwi


    Logan loves bath time, playing chase, and is learning to walk. He took 27 tiny baby steps yesterday! I can't believe he will be one in six weeks! Time flies! Here are a couple videos from this month:

    Thursday, October 20, 2011

    In Honor Of The TaTas Giveaway

    Gifts

    October is Breast Cancer Awareness month and you don't have to look far to find someone affected by breast cancer. It impacts us all. I lost my grandmother Pauline, affectionately known as "Nana" to breast cancer in 2006 after a 7 year battle with the disease. I'll never forget how spunky and fun she was, and her lessons on frugality and the power of a coupon have stuck with me all these years and help me save my family money. This month I honor her. I love and miss you nana.




    To make a donation and help find a cure visit

    Now on to the giveaway!! Up for grabs from our sponsors are:
    Pink Hair Bow Holder, Letter of choice, by Two Little Sea Stars
    Pink Baby Bows, Set of 3, and Pink Headband by MyBowsAndThings
     
        
    Here is a list of the all the blogs participating, to enter for the above prizes, see the Rafflecopter form below the list!







    My Husband's Ranting Corner

    "The Fakeness is Overwhelming"

    I can't take the tastelessness anymore. Every time I'm out driving I see all these vehicles, some nice, some absolute junkers, that are apparently driven by absolutely taste-impaired individuals. I've seen this phenomenon on econoboxes, ricers, junkers, Camaros, minivans, trucks, you name it.


    Perhaps you've seen it too....


    OOOO!!! Fake stick-on body vents! Your G6 is SO COOL! 
    That was bad enough, but then as I neared home, I saw an even more blatant lack of style. It was a PT Cruiser that had at least 12 of these fakey-vents all over the car, including the C-pillar (!), along with some super-awesome chrome flame stickers. I mean, COME ON PEOPLE! What are you thinking? Are you even thinking?
    Do you honestly think that fake vents make your car look awesome? Who told you to do that to your car? Did aliens suck out your brain and replace it with silly-putty?
    For all of you that have fallen prey to this atrocious faux-pas (emphasis on faux), let me clear this up. This is where these things belong:
    That's right. On a BUICK! Not on your Pontiac G6, not on your PT Cruiser, not on your Explorer, Camaro, or nineteen-colors-of-primer-and-rust 92 Civic. In fact, if the vent didn't come from the factory, it shouldn't be on your car!

    They are fine if they're functional, meaning that they actually contribute to moving air in some fashion. So if you have legitimate vents on your ride, more power to you. I do admit to thinking these things were interesting the first time I saw it, but then everyone started putting them on everything. (Remember that fad some years ago where everyone was putting those stupid lights in their windshield washer nozzles? Same principle here.) These are not an instant pass to coolness. If you think your car needs these vent sticker thingies to look cool, you're wrong. Either your car can stand on it's own and doesn't need them, or it's too trashy/plain/ugly for something stupid like this to help. Simply because it's chrome and you can afford it does not mean that it should go on your vehicle!

    Finally, what drives me even more nuts is that it seems like the majority of those who think fake vent stickers make their car cooler, or faster, or whatever, are also the same people who have no concept of a straight line. How many of these have you seen where it looks like the person stuck them in the dead of night while being drunk to smithereens?

    Please, for the continued sanity of those of us who have at least an inkling of design sense and an appreciation for aesthetics, stop with the stickers already!


    Wednesday, October 19, 2011

    Shutterfly Review & Giveaway


    Shutterfly recently provided me with the opportunity to create an 8x8, 20-page Photo Album using their All-New Custom Path feature, and let me just say I love Shutterfly. We used it last year to make our Christmas cards and birth announcements and I was very impressed with the quality of their products, so I was excited to work with them both in creating my album and in hosting my giveaway (keep reading for more details).

    You customize your photobook-page by page


    Add, move and resize pictures and text anywhere
    Extensive collection of new backgrounds, layouts & embellishments
    1-25 pictures per page (up to 1000 pictures)
    Five sizes starting from $12.99  

      My family and I just went on a 2 week vacation, driving an RV and camping in the mountains of Idaho. I decided this would make the perfect photo book project for this reveiw. I am excited about having a professional-looking photo album without all the hassle of glue, glitter, and scissors. It seems that so many memories get lost in the extensive files of photos on my computer, so this will be a great way to keep the memories fresh and fun to show off. I love to scrapbook for real, so I can really appreciate all Shutterfly allows you to do when creating a custom photo album with their great online interface. It's like scrapbooking without the gluing-your-fingers-together part (which, being klutzy, I sometimes do!). Plus, it is so much faster and of course one of the greatest benefits of a Shutterfly album is that you can quickly make multiple albums as gifts (try that with real photos!) I will definitely have to order additional copies of this album for Christmas gifts for the grandparents and great-grandparents who also came on vacation with us.


      I really enjoyed the custom path and all the photo book features. After I selected the book theme I uploaded my pictures in less time than it takes to upload to Facebook and got started. First, it gave me the option of arranging my photos by date for me. I chose this option because it would mean less work to do later grouping related photos together. The system then provided some useful tips before I got down to the nitty-gritty of page layout.


      When I began arranging my pages I noticed that I had uploaded a picture that needed rotating and I was able to click and rotate as well as crop and adjust for red eye as needed. There was also the option to add photo effects such as black and white. And this was only the beginning of all the great things the Custom Path allowed me to do.

      It gave me several layouts to choose from, but from there I could further customize each page beyond the basic layout by adjusting sizes, zooming in or out on my photos, or moving the placement of the photo on the page. If I didn't like the background or layout, I could change that as well. I could swap which picture was in the foreground of a group, and I could even set a picture as the background for the entire page. I love how the cover turned out and I finished my first 5 pages in about an hour, embellishments and all. I can hardly wait for the finished project to arrive so my husband and I can sit down with a cup of cocoa by the fire and remember our trip as we flip through our photo book together.

      Get started on your own custom photo book by visiting Shutterfly.com today! While it's still early, now is a great time to make some Christmas gifts that will be extra special and meaningful to your loved ones. 

      Shutterfly will be giving one of my lucky readers an 8x8 20-page Photo Book of their own. 
      Enter to win by filling out the Rafflecopter form below!

      Wordless Wednesday!



      It's a rainy day here in North Carolina, makes me wish I had some hot chocolate or maybe a gooey smore....

      Friday, October 14, 2011

      $100 Amazon Giftcard Giveaway


      $100 Amazon Giveaway!!

      Win a $100 Amazon Gift Card!

      How it works:

      • There are 10 blogs hosting this giveaway. You can visit one blog or all the blogs. Entry will be with Rafflecopter and there is a different form on each blog, so the more blogs you visit and enter on, the greater your chances of winning. At the end of the giveaway, all entries will be added up and one winner will be chosen
      • Open worldwide
      • This giveaway ended on October 28, 2011 at 11:59 pm EST:
      • The winner is: Ivana B with #1126 on Musings From a Stay At Home Mom
         
      Here are the host blogs:
      Good luck!
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