Happy 4th Of July

I just wanted to stop in and wish everyone  a safe and Happy 4th of July.  We spent the morning at a local parade and then headed off to do a little grocery shopping.

We decided that the fireworks were a little too late for the boys this year.  We had originally decided to take them tonight but it was sprinkling and they were crabby despite their late 2 hr nap.

I did a little dress shopping for Blogher and after trying on about twenty different items, I left with two dresses neither of which I really liked.  I bought them because they had all of them on clearance and I was afraid I would be without something if I didn’t at least have a backup plan.  What I would like to know is…why does everything have to be a sack if you are a little overweight.  Nothing has any shape to it, and everything looks like draperies.  I am in a size just above the normal racks at the store, and suddenly I am grandma who has to wear prints the size of Texas!  Cmon people I also like to be in style regardless of my waistline.  Pfft!

Clothes Shopping, I Hate It!

Did I mention that I absolutely hate clothes shopping. Even worse I hate having to find a dress for a special occasion. I almost never feel comfortable, and half of the dresses I try on give the world a view of my cleavage. It is so depressing for me to shop.

I have just spent the last hour looking at page after page of clothes for plus size people. Now granted I am only one size away from being able to shop in the regular clothes shop, but why on earth do they make everything look like a sack? I know I am fighting the battle of the bulge here people, but I don’t want burlap folks.

I know there are people that just say lose weight and I intend on doing that, but for now, I need a dress! I need pants, and a few nice things, but I hate going to find it. I don’t know what looks good on me and there isn’t anyone here to tell me. You can ask the husband and everything looks fine to them. What do you think hon? Looks fine to me babe! Gee thanks pffft!

Look At My Baby Not Even 3 yrs Old

Look at my baby, he isn’t even 3 yrs old yet and he is riding his Bike!!! How cool is that?

Wordless Wednesday

Daddy’s Shoes

Ben And Jerry’s July Is national Ice Cream Month *pint a day giveaway!*

Did you know that July is National Ice Cream month???  I don’t know about you, but I love ice cream.  Ice cream is a comfort food that I love most in the Summer time, and when you are having a blah day it is always nice to snuggle up to your favorite pint.  Well, not exactly snuggle, but a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and a spoon in hand is sure to bring a smile to your face!  When I head to the store, I always find myself staring into the ice cream case at all the different Ben and Jerry’s flavors and I can almost never pick out one flavor because something new always catches my eye.

National Ice Cream Month is celebrated by the US every July. This month was designated as national ice cream month by Ronald Reagan  in 1984. He also appointed the third Sunday in July as National Ice Cream Day Reagan recognized the popularity of ice cream in the United States (90% of the nation’s population consumes ice cream) and stated that these two events should be observed with “appropriate ceremonies and activities.” Unfortunately, many people do not even know that America even has a National Ice Cream Month.

Some of my most favorite Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors include the ever popular Cherry Garcia, Karamel Sutra, and my newest favorite and one of their newest editions Mission to Marzipan (let me wipe the drool from my keyboard).  Let’s face it you can’t just buy one pint and head home, you at lest have to get a few days worth or even a week’s worth so you don’t have to pout when you polish off a pint while watching a sappy love story, or you have had a stressful day, or just because you gotta have it.  At least you know you always have more!

I don’t know how they do it but they manage to pack the right amount of stuff into that little pint, that make your taste buds do a little dance, and make your happy endorphins go crazy.  I don’t know how they make the caramel in Karamel Sutra stay perfectly gooey in the middle but I do know that their ice cream is one of the best in my opinion!

Here at DoubleBugs, I decided that it would be fun to celebrate National Ice Cream Month and my love of Ben and Jerry’s.  We (Ben and Jerry’s and I) came up with a fab giveaway to make your mouth water and keep your freezer stocked with Ben and Jerry’s!

We will be giving away one pint a day for the month of July.  3 Lucky Winners will win a 7 day supply of Ben and Jerry’s (one pint for every day of the week), and a Fourth Grand Prize winner will win (10 pints of Ben and Jerry’s and few extra goodies too!).

I know, I know, you are gleaming with excitement!  But we are gonna make you do a little work for your ice cream.  Don’t worry we won’t ask you to sell your soul but you might consider it, since it is Ben and Jerry’s HA!

So here is the scoop (get it? scoop?) Ok, I’ll quit with the cheesy jokes.

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED

This is what you gotta do

(read carefully!!! You wouldn’t  want to lose out on a few pints)

You Can visit their site for inspiration

*For Main Entry into this Fab Giveaway, You Must Do One of The Following*

1.) Come up with your own poem about Ben and Jerrys (50 words or less) Your own ode to the pint so to speak

2.) Come up with a recipe using your favorite Ben and Jerry’s flavors

3.) Do a little dance, go crazy, make a video or send us your pictures of you enjoying your favorite Ben and Jerry’s (you can post me a link to them)

4.) Create a new ben and Jerry’s Flavor that you think you might like to see

5.) Do a little bit of everything above

Grand Prize winner will be selected based on the most creativity!!! So the more you do the better your chances! We want you to have fun with it!

***For Additional Entries(please post a separate comment for each additional entry)***

Grab the Ben and Jerry’s Giveaway Button and post it everywhere to share the love! Please provide me a link to your site  (3 entries gained when you post this)

Tweet about this Fab Giveaway

Blog about it tell people not to forget to grab the Ben and Jerry’s button to share with all their friends (please provide the link to your post) (3 entries gained).

Add me to Your Technorati Favorites

Subscribe to my blog

Contest Starts July 1, 2009 and Ends July 31, 2009

Good Luck!!!!

Cheesecake Factory Celebrate Good Times And Win A Trip To Florida *$25 Gift Card Giveaway*

I absolutely love The Cheesecake Factory, and in fact I was in mourning that there wasn’t one near me, but in the last year they opened up one about ten minutes from my house!  I love all the choices they have on their menu and their cheesecake is to die for!  I admit I am not a huge fan of cheesecake but I never pass it up when I am there.

The Cheesecake Factory is giving away a trip for 4 to Florida!   You have the chance to win, just by sharing your pictures of a celebration.  Not only that, if you share the contest with your friends you can gain extra entries in to the contest. Take a look at the awesome prizes! You must hurry the deadline is June 30, 2009!

What you can win

o Trip for 4 to Florida – Airfare, Hotel, Disney Resort Passes, and $1,000

How to Enter

During the Promotion Period, go to http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com/celebrate (the “Promotion Page”) and fill out the online entry form. Complete and submit the online entry form including a valid home address. P.O. Boxes are not permitted. If this is your first visit to the site you will be required to upload one (1) photo or image of a celebration (the “Photo”). By uploading your Photo, you agree to the terms and conditions of these Official Rules, that your Photo conforms to the Photo Guidelines and Content Restrictions as defined below (collectively, the “Guidelines and Restrictions”) and that Sponsor, in its sole discretion, may remove your Photo and/or disqualify you from the Promotion if Sponsor believes, in its sole discretion, that your Photo fails to conform to the Guidelines and Restrictions or if Sponsor determines, in its sole discretion, that removing your Photo is necessary in order to protect the name, reputation or good will associated with Sponsor or its parent, subsidiaries or affiliates.

• Photo Guidelines:
  • The Photo must be in .jpg format;
  • The Photo must not exceed 5 MB in size;
  • The Photo must contain a caption and description; and
  • The Photo’s caption and description must be in English
  • The Photo cannot have been submitted previously in a promotion of any kind or exhibited or displayed publicly through any means.
• Content Restrictions:
  • The Photo must not contain material that violates or infringes another’s rights, including but not limited to privacy, publicity or intellectual property rights, or that constitutes copyright infringement;
  • The Photo must not disparage Sponsor, Administrator or any other person or party whether or not affiliated with the promotion and administration of this Promotion;
  • The Photo must not contain brand names or trademarks other than Sponsor’s mark, which entrant has a limited license to use for the sole purpose of creating and uploading a Photo in this Promotion
  • The Photo must not contain text, images or artwork not created by entrant;
  • The Photo must not contain or depict material that is immoral, unethical, illegal, inappropriate, indecent, obscene, hateful, tortious, defamatory, slanderous or libelous;
  • The Photo must not contain material that promotes bigotry, racism, hatred or harm against any group or individual or promotes discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality, disability, sexual orientation or age; and
  • The Photo must not contain material that is unlawful, in violation of or contrary to the laws or regulations in any jurisdiction where Submission is created.

  The complete List of Rules are HERE

In honor of this celebration, The Cheesecake Factory would like to offer DoubleBugs readers the chance to win a $25 gift card to their restaurant!

All you gotta do is visit their site here, take a look around and drool a little and click on the link to  The Share Your Celebration Sweepstakes and enter if you wish!  The music is really catchy and you might find yourself dancing like me LOL!  Come back here and tell me what you love about the Cheesecake Factory and what your favorite celebration memory is.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED

For Additional Entries (*leave a comment for each additional entry*)

Add my button to your blog

Add me to your Twitter

Tweet about this fab contest and giveaway

Blog about it

Subscribe to my Blog

Add me to your technorati favorites

Contest starts June 29, 2009, and Ends July 31, 2009

Little MissMatched Winner

Congrats to the Winner of the Little Miss Matched Giveaway!

Billy Mays Dies What The Sam Heck Is Going On???

I just sat down to my computer to read over some emails and catch up when I read the news that Billy Mays the Oxi Clean dude just died!   There are no given causes for his death but I read that there was speculation that it was from a hard plane landing on a flight where some overhead luggage smacked him in the head.

I guess with head injuries you can feel fine and then something major can happen.  No one knows what exactly happened to Billy Mays but all I can say is what a week!  First Ed McMahon, Then Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson and now Billy Mays!  This is all kind of creepy!

This all just goes to show how very short life can be, and you never know what is going to happen and sometimes just thinking about that scares the crap oout of me.  I think that I have heard about enough death this week to last me for awhile.  I hope that the rule of three doesnt apply here, otherwise heaven forbid we hear of more celebrity passings.  I am not all too fond of celebrities and all the hoopla they have surrounding them, but I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.  What is going on?  This is so weird!

Picture Keeper Saves Your Important Memories *review and giveaway*

This day and age everything seems to be reliant on computers.  I know that I am on mine close to 8 hours a day and it is where I do a majority of all my writing and storing of just about everything.  Since we are smack in the middle of the digital age when it comes to cameras and taking pictures, it is only natural that you are storing them on your computer. When it comes to backing up images on your computer I bet a lot of us fail miserably.

I take tons and tons of pictures of the boys and I will have to sheepishly admit, that I don’t have too many of them hanging on my walls. Let’s face it in the digital age of picture taking, we all get lazy and get all too comfortable with the idea that we have them stored somewhere on our hard drive.  The reality of it is, that, hard drives fail and ultimately put you at risk for losing all of your precious memories.  My husband has a server in which he keeps a lot of our important files and photos on, but even then, I like to keep a disk or something that holds my pictures in a safe location far away from the computer.  Anything can happen and knowing that I have some alternate location for storing my photos eases my mind.

Up until now, there really wasn’t an easy way to gather all of my pictures on my computer.   I store all of my photos in different locations on my hard drive.  I have photo files dedicated to reviews that I do here, my photography business stuff is stored in another file, and the pictures of my boys are in another.   So everything is sort of all over, and wouldn’t it be nice to just be able to  have a device that does all the work for you and gathers all the pictures on your computer, organizes them, and wahlah, you have them all together?

Well now there is a simple solution, and what I like to call my magical anti-stress device, called the Picture Keeper. I was recently given a Picture Keeper to try and I am very impressed!  The Picture Keeper is a little USB flash drive that creates a backup of your images simple by plugging it in your computer and clicking the “start backup” button.  Then it works its magic and finds all images with jpg extensions on the computer. If you wish to backup other images with a different extension there are advanced option to where it can save additional file types.   The folders and sub-folders are copied just as they are on you computer! And it gets even better. If you have multiple computers, which I do, you can just plug it in on the next computer and do the same thing.  There is no special setting, and Picture Keeper does the work.  When you want to go back in and update your files and do another backup, you don’t have to remember what files you have or haven’t gotten because the Picture Keeper will do that all for you as well. Do they make husbands like this? LOL
Being someone who takes a lot of pictures and in the photography business, I am always conscious of the fact that I have so many pictures and that computers do fail, and having some other form of a back up is critical. The Picture Keeper is nice because I can set up a few different backups and store a few of these flash drives in various locations. I would recommend getting several,  and keeping one in your home, giving one to a trusted family member to hang on to, and maybe keeping one in another location. This way you have multiple back ups in case something happens with your home then you have all your memories preserved.  Just to see how it worked, I plugged it into my laptop and let it go.  Later when I did a backup on my main computer with all my photos, it was just as simple.

ABOUT PICTURE KEEPER
Inventor Matthew Stanchie knew there had to be a better way to backup digital images. Despite working
for Hewlett-Packard, the thought of backing up his personal photos gave him a headache, and he could
only image what others without a background in computers went through. So, he created a user-friendly
program that automates the task (making sure to get the approval of an evaluator from his target
demographic—his wife.) Picture Keeper plugs into any PC, including Macs, and copies all images with
one click. With Picture Keeper, it’s a snap to save.
Picture Keeper is available in 4GB, 8GB and 16GB sizes online at www.picturekeeper.com.

I was amazed at how fast all my files were backed up and how easy it was to use. Anything that can make my life easier, is a huge plus. The Picture Keeper is so awesome that Dr. Toy awarded them with a Best Vacation Product for Summer 2009 Award. I definitely give The Picture keeper the mom seal of approval and I applaud it’s ease of use. It isn’t a complicated gadget and yet it is worth a million dollars if something ever happens to your photos. Picture Keeper retails for 8GB ($39.99) and 16GB ($59.99).  The price is worth it when you consider how much it would be if you lost all of your photos!

Would you like to win a Picture Keeper of your very own??? DoubleBugs is giving away an 8GB Picture Keeper to one lucky reader.

THIS CONTEST IS CLOSED

Here’s what you gotta do.

Mandatory
Leave me a comment and tell me one of your worst nightmares in losing your photos or why you think you might like to have a Picture Keeper.

For Additional Entries

You can tweet about this contest

Blog about this contest

Subscribe to my feed

Add me to twitter

Add me to your technorati favorites

Grab my button

Winners are Chosen Via Random.org

If Winner does not respond in 48 hours a new winner will be drawn

Contest Starts June 28, 2009, and Ends July 31, 2009

Finally Returning To Normal

Just when I thought my life was leveling out and I was getting to where my house was clean and everything in its place, I decided to have   sale.  If you know anything about garage sales you know you have to temporarily tear things up to get it organized.  So after it was over, I vowed to have a weekend where I relaxed.

My plans were quickly dampened by a flooded basement.  We have finally gotten that squared away, sent out a mountain of trash from the flood (I am sure the garbage man appreciated that). And now, our basement is back to normal.  It is probably cleaner than it has been since we moved here!  You know that sense of satisfaction you get when its all done?  Tonight I stood in the basement and just took in how clean it was, but then I came upstairs and saw a big mess!  My job is never done.  So my relaxing weekend will be spent getting my upstairs functional and I hope that will be it for awhile.  I need a vacation.

« Previous Page — Next Page »