Squid Angel Blessing: Toilet Humor Books For Some Light Reading This Summer

What is more natural than going poo? Just about all other natural bodily function. Still going poo seems to have a dark shadow cast over it and it taboo for many to talk or even joke about. Still there are some brave individuals out there that accept that going poo is perfectly natural. Some people even write books about it. And Pukeko created a lens with a list of books about this very subject. Take a look at her lens Toilet Humor Books For Some Light Reading This Summer.

I don’t know about you but I’d love to get my hands on one of these hilarious books and laugh to my hearts content. I’m especially interested in the Fart book. Anywho, take a look at the lens, give it a thumbs up if you like it and then forward the lens to your fiends and family. Don’t forget to save the list as a resource for gift ideas. You know someone in your family would love one of these books.

Squid Blessing: GANGS OF HAITI

Every now and then I come along a powerful eye opening lens that I wish I could bless twice. It all happened when I was editing and updating my own lens for Haiti: Haiti Your Tragedy Has Broken My Heart … Continue reading →

Squid Angel Blessing: A Variety of Food Lens

The food lens I blessed this week are not all organic or eco-friendly, but they all have a bit of uniqueness that I really liked about them. The lenses are well put together and attractive to look at as well as educational and resourceful. Take a look:

Camerons Stovetop Smoker Recipe: Smoked Pork Tenderloin (Kind of lens that makes meat eaters stay meat eaters)
by Fatherof4

Banana bread with sour cream
by Lalagrams

Basic Crepe Recipe
by Lalagrams

Recipes For Fruit Salad
by miaponzo

Quick and Easy Summertime Desserts
by LaraineRose

No Tears Crab Soup
by FarmerTom

Salsa Chicken Meatloaf Recipe
by RecipePublishing

Top 10 Favorite Cookbooks
by sockii

The Art of Steeping: Flavoring Your Own Liquor
by Ktasch

How to Make Sun Tea | Summer Drink Ideas
by NanLT

Simple and Easy Cake Recipes
by jhdelacruz

 

When you stop by any of these lenses don’t forget to leave a comment, vote in the polls, give it a thumbs up if you like it and then pass it on to your friends and family.

Squid Angel Blessing: Vegan Desserts

Slowly getting back into the swing of things I decided to update one of my Squidoo lenses The Difference Between a Cupcake and A Muffin. Searching for lenses I could link up to my lens I discovered a handful of bless worth vegan dessert lenses. Here they are:

Vegan Cupcakes by genglo

Best Vegan Cookbooks 2011 by spirituality

Vegan Desserts: 40-Plus Downright Delectable Dessert Recipes For Vegans by nDee

Vegan Cupcakes by hlkljgk

 

If these don’t inspire you to try eating vegan… you must not have taste buds. If you like these lenses give them a thumbs up and leave a comment. Then share the pages with your friends and family.

Ebeanstalk.com Review

I don’t buy my children toys very often. They have grandparents that spoil them with toys, but when I do buy them toys or when I’m searching for a toy to buy for another child (nephew) I want to be able to search for a toy online. So, I can take my time looking for fun age appropriate education eco-friendly toys. Few websites like Ebeanstalk.com make it easy to do all of this in one place and with ease.

Ebeanstalk.com is a website for safe children and family toys at a reasonable price. A good long look at the website and I can search for age appropriate toys by individual years instead of by a group of years (1-3 or 3-5 or 6-9). I love this. Kids can be so different and grow so much in a year that some toys just aren’t suitable for them. For example, a 5 year old can speak fluently, hopscotch, play patty cake, string beads… whereas a 3 year old is just beginning to learn any of this. And a fun toy for a 1 year old is much different from a fun toy for a 3 year old.

Age appropriate toys at Ebeanstalk begin at newborn and end at age 12. They also have family games–this I like, but I’d like to see age category stop 15 years of age. I know a lot of young teens who still play with board games, card games, remote control toys, science based toys, frisbees, footballs. I can search toddler toys, toys for girls, toys for boys or even search by specific toy need (travel toys, sports, musical, outdoor, wooden, puzzles, toys for building and so on).

Throughout the website there are big links, readable font, and big buttons that make it easy for anyone of any age to search for specific items, pages or categories. I like the big links like the,

Where would you like to go now?

← Return to the previous page

Create a Wishlist → and big buttons like the

Add to cart » button. This makes it easy for elderly, someone who has trouble seeing or someone in a hurry to see. There is no missing these links and buttons. The links and buttons are at the center of the page too. I don’t have to do much scrolling up or down to find a link or button.

Each toy has a specific description of how it works, how educational it is and its safety. I appreciate Ebeanstalk review before allowing toys on their site. This shows me the company cares about my children and yours. However, I would like to see the experts reviews in writing. It’s not that I don’t trust the experts it’s that I want to know why in their expert opinion they think this is a good toy and why they chose it over another. I would also like to see customer reviews too. Customer opinions matter too. There is just something about getting opinions from all sorts of people who make the review genuine.

I would also like to see more toys that encourage kids to move around. The ride along toys and scooters are great and lots of fun, but they tend to isolate 1 or two parts of the body. I would like to see more toys like Dodge Tag Shield toy or Jump Rope on the site for all age groups. Kids need to get up and go crazy having fun, so they can stay healthy and happy.

I would like to see a wider selection of ecofriendly toys too, including DIY recycling toys for older children. I appreciate the variety that Ebeanstalk has, but I find that most eco-friendly toys consist of plush toys or wooden building kits. There are few recycling kits. Maybe a little more of these recycling kits could be added. Maybe a few more eco-friendly board games for the older kids. In addition it is important for me to know the depth of a toys eco-friendliness. How eco -friendly is it? Is it locally made? Is it recycled? Is it organic too? Is the paint on the toy soy-based? A few of the eco-friendly toys on the site have short descriptions of their eco-friendliness, but unless I already know a toy companies eco-friendliness I was left wondering about their greenness.

I love the book selections. I love that there are good books choices even for 12 year olds. Forgive the greeny in me again, but by any chance are any of these books from eco-friendly publishing companies? If so, I would love to see that featured and if not I would love to see it encouraged. Here is a link to a great site called Eco-libris that encourages green publishing, http://www.ecolibris.net/.

The Grow and Learn series is a fascinating idea. I really like it. I have a niece in mind for it. I don’t know that I like the idea of a toy sent out every three months, but how about every six months or as another option, every year. This would also be perfect for the aunt or grandparent who never wants to forget a birthday. I imagine it like this: When my niece is born I set up an account for her at Ebeanstalk.com to have her receive a gift every year. I can pay for them in advance at a discount or when the time comes at regular price. Until her 12th birthday I never have to stress about buying her an age appropriate toy again, unless I want to like on her 5th birthday when I knew she really wanted a doll.

The birthday reminder is helpful too. Between my kids, my nephews, a soon to be niece and a brother in-law and a busy schedule it’s hard to remember birthday. I don’t even know what day it is tomorrow. So I know this will be helpful.

Did I mention the price? The toys here are reasonable priced. I have a big family so, my budget per kid is usually around $20 or less. I found that many of the toys on the site (good toys too) fit within my budget. That’s awesome. Now, if only the shipping cost could be discounted for my membership loyalty.

I was most impressed with the safety letter Ebeanstalk.com posted on its site for its customers. I copied a letter from the website. Most online businesses don’t care enough to ease their customers concerns:

“Dear Customers,

While we are dedicated to a child’s development and learning, we never compromise a child’s safety.

OUR MANUFACTURERS: We work with all of our manufacturers to ensure all safety steps have been made in the manufacturing process. If we are not satisfied, we remove the manufacturer from our site.

INTERNAL TESTING: Our team of child experts hand-pick every toy that is on our website and conduct their own tests to ensure that that the toy is age-appropriate. Many times a toy will be for ‘AGES 3+’ and our experts will move that toy to an older age group. Additionally, we conduct our own ‘wear-and-tear’ tests. If we don’t think a toy will stand up to the tough, daily grind of being a toy, we don’t want the toy.

RECALLS: Rest assured…” read the rest here http://www.ebeanstalk.com/toy-safety.php.

Disclosure: I wrote this review on behalf of Ebeanstalk.com. I have been compensated with a gift car to thank me for taking the time to write a review. I was under no obligation to write a positive review. My opinions are my own.

MyExtra Custom Slim Packs Review Opportunity from MomSelect

Gum isn’t just gum anymore. Not only are the textures and flavors of gum changing, now the packaging is getting a makeover too. Take Wrigley’s MyExtra Custom Slim Packs, as an example. For the first time ever Wrigley’s is allowing customer to customize the packaging of their gum!

Yeah for me! As a MomSelect Mom I was given the opportunity to give the  MyExtra Custom Slim Packs a try for free. I was sent a unique code that allowed me to order 5 FREE MyExtra customized packs. Each custom Slim Pack contains 15 sticks of Extra sugar-free gum. The available flavors are: Extra Peppermint, Spearmint and Sweet Watermelon. I chose Spearmint. Any chance Wrigley’s will ever have an authentic juicy mango flavor?

I was able to to choose the theme, add a photo, draft a message and pick a flavor. The code covered all the cost including shipping and I was grateful because it was a bit expensive for gum, in my opinion (almost $30 for 5 pack), but it didn’t take my order very long to arrive, a few days. When I opened up the package that arrived in the mail I was impressed by what I saw. The picture I used to customize my pack came out just like a printed picture. It was not distorted or dull. It looked professional and I thought something like this would make great stocking stuffers, wedding favors, gift basket items. A business could even use these for inexpensive advertisement.

Though, if I had a chance to redo my customized packs again, I’d change a few things. I think I chose the wrong color for the background it made everything a little darker than I hoped. I would also change the font color and style I used. Because of the dark colored background, the dark colored font color and style and the gloss on the picture the message I used is not easy to read unless held at an angle. On the computer preview everything was a bit lighter and easier to see. I’d like the background to look lighter like on the computer.

What I did with with my packs, I tossed one to my husband. I kept one for myself and 3 left for my kids. The picture is one of the family, the kids, myself and my husband. My husband, who loves to show off his family showed it to someone at work the next day. His coworker liked it and told him to show someone else… Later that day my husband called me to tell me that everyone liked it and they wanted to know where I got it from. I told him I’d email him the link  http://www.myextragum.com/. So, I did. i later emailed Megan from MomSelect to let her know and she mentioned she’d email Wrigley.  Isn’t it funny how word of mouth can do so much.

What I didn’t like…. I could make as many themes as I wanted, but I was limited to 5 packs and 1 set = 5 packs. If I wanted to order one of each of the themes I created I would have had to ordered 25 packs of gum.  Instead, I could only use one of the themes I made, but I would have preferred to have had the choice to have ordered only one pack (instead of set) of each of the 5 themes I made for each individual in my family.

The ordering process:  designing and ordering the gum at first was a bit frustrating. At first the page froze. I don’t know if it was my computer or the website. I tried again at a later time and the website was down. I tired once more later time and I was finally able to design and order my gum with ease. I would have liked to have had a little bit more freedom to the placement of the text and the logo.

I also worry about what happens to these customized packages and uncustomized packages when the gum is all gone. Any chance the packages are made of recycled material or that they will be? Could they be recycled? How about joining with Terracycle? Just and eco-friendly thought? Can’t help myself. Otherwise, I thought this was an interesting idea and one that could be very popular for all sorts of celebrations.

Squid Angel Blessings: Pickling Vegetables | Preserving the Season’s Bounty

Pickled food with a toasted sandwich, a bowl of fresh made popcorn, or on its own – as a snack-  makes my mind and taste buds think about lunch and then and evening movie at home with pickled jalapeno all over it. Yum!

I’ve planned to pickle veggies for a long time now, but the plan never saw the light of day. Fear of messing it up kept me from ever even taking the first step and eventually I just forgot about it. Clouda9 has a way of putting together inspiring food lens to get a person to face her fears. Take a look at her lens Pickling Vegetables | Preserving the Season’s Bounty . The lens is filled with easy to follow recipes and teasing pictures of pickled veggies. Only thing I wish is for is a little less black and white or a little more green, yellow, red throughout the lens. I’m a sucker for 1 or 2 big pictures too. I’d love to see a large pic of pickled veggies served on a dish next to a sandwich or something. For example, maybe another picture like the one in the Giardiniera section. Doesn’t that look so delicious?

Squid Angel Blessings: Memories of Snow Ice Cream

Though I’m long overdue of blessing my intentions wasn’t to bless any lens today, but while catching up on emails, including those from the RocketMom forum I came across a lens asking for critque. Now, all I can think about is snow, how I’ve never been in snow (I don’t count Houston snow) and much more have never had Snow Ice Cream. I want Snow Ice Cream. The topic is great, the easy to follow recipe is even better and the alternative option for those of us that don’t live where it snows is the “ice on the cream”.  I suggested better pictures and some rearranging of the module, but otherwise a tasty subject. Great work grandmamarilyn for your Memories of Snow Ice Cream. 

Squid Angel Blessing: Eating Organic

I know it has been a while since I’ve blessed any lenses, written any posts or even just socialized online. I’ve been going through some stuff and in doing so have lost interest in even getting near the computer unless I had to.  I’m back now. I can’t promise for how long, but for now I’m here and I’ve started with some blessings on informative and important lenses I thought deserved a good look. Take a look:

Let’s Garden Vegetables by knit1tat2

Organic Quinoa Facts, Benefits and Where To Buy by gilibean

Carmel’s Easy Real Whole Food Un-Cooking Class by Carmel_Aaron

All About Organic Food by jkvkdailey

Cranberry Sauce – From Bog to Table by happynutritionist   

Don’t forget to rate the lens and then share it with your family and friends. Leave comments too.

Good Things Do Come To an End

I’ve done a lot of soul searching this month. Earlier this week I realized someone I love isn’t going to change…and neither am I.  About a day or two late later the website I’ve been writing for for years is shutting down. Gotta go think…