“Time waits for no man”

Not only is that a quote that has arguably more sources than the alphabet does letters, but it’s something that most adults will argue becomes truer after becoming parents.

Here I sit almost a week after Halloween and I've realized that Halloween has come and gone and I look at my calendar and see the looming November and December months waiting ahead. It’s like driving into a dark tunnel, you know there will be light at the end of it all, but the thought that you won’t make it out is always in the back of your head. This one weekend of Halloween festivities was exciting and fun but it was hectic and chaotic at times, and the thought of that lasting for 2 months straight, accompanied by travelling, shopping and cooking, tied in with Christmas parties and festivities and everything else that comes along with the Christmas cheer – scares me.

Every year seems to spin by faster and faster, leaving me less and less time to do things I need to get done, let alone the things I want to get done.
But, with every year before, I look ahead as I sit the week after Halloween, and then halfway through the thick of it, I realize that I’m having fun and it’s not really as bad as I thought it would be.

So, I think I’ll spare myself the grief for the next week or two and just jump into the looking forward to egg nog (and brandy) and have myself an old fashioned Griswold.. er.. whatever.. Christmas!

St. George Scenery

This is some video that was forgotten about on my Flip until today, so I just wanted to share with you a little of what I consider to be Southern Utah's beauty.

Tattooed & Curly

At least for now.

See, I have an inner fight with myself & my curls and well, right now the curls have won.

But we will see for how long.

But for the meantime, you can read all about my curls here and at my other wonderfully neglected blog.. A Girl and her Curl

Video killed the blogging star...

It’s been a while since I’ve last blogged and I blame video for that. I am looking to go almost all vlog format now and keep my text posts to a minimum, and I still have all intentions to do so, however my little nit-picky self made it to a point that I was spending entirely too much time on the editing part of the video that by the time I got a video where I liked it, it wasn’t relevant anymore!

So.. I think I’m going to stick to my spontaneous posts in text and vlog – it seems to work much better for me in the long run. I may not have the fun little graphics and whatnot but at least it’s relevant and timely, plus you get a lot more material to make fun of me for when I wing it.

Behold, the suitcase destink-a-fyer!

Almost a year ago, we went on a family vacation to Myrtle Beach to have some family portraits done and while there, we bought my son a very cool Lightnin’ McQueen suitcase (which now, I can't find a picture online to save my life, so I'll have to snap one later to post) from the Disney store at Boardwalk at the Beach.

Upon getting back to our rented house and opening the suitcase up, we found there was an absolutely gag-i-fying (which in real people vernacular means it stinks big time) smell in the suitcase. It smelled like burnt plastic wrapped in sweat, in 100 degree weather, near a landfill. You get the point.

I was certain this wouldn’t be a problem, so I just drenched the bag in Fabreeze and went on my merry smell good way. The next day I check the bag and now it smells like burnt flowers, wrapped in burnt plastic, wrapped in sweat… and so on and so forth. Literally, over the past year, my husband and I have tried everything. Baking Soda didn’t work. Vinegar didn’t work.. in fact that was a big mistake. Airing it out for days didn’t work. I was really getting concerned that the bag was going to just sit in the attic because I couldn’t get the smell out.

In the meanwhile, I bought a new luggage set off of Woot! for our upcoming trip out West and when we opened them… there was that exact smell again!! What’s the odds? It must be something in the way they are made! But now… it’s not just one Lightin’ McQueen suitcase, it’s now a total of 3 suitcases!

Then, last week my husband sends me a link to Tap-A-Drop on Amazon and asks me to order it, that he was going to give it a try – I mean, really what did we have to lose. So the Amazon box arrived on Tuesday and we ripped open the box and ran upstairs to the bonus room, as if we had just acquired some secret spell book and was about to perform some life changing ritual.

This is the cut to the chase, how to de-skink-a-fy stuff!!
We took one cotton ball and a safety pin (and I say we, meaning my husband did while I watched) and we doused the cotton ball with the Tap-A-Drop and then pinned it to the inside of the suitcase and zipped it up.

Fast forward 2.5 days (today!) and we open the bag to smell… NOTHING! In fact, it smells… GOOD! I’m so thrilled, it’s only taken a year and, who knows how much money, for us to resolve the stinky suitcase issue but it’s done.

And that my friends, is my gift to you… the power to defunkify your suitcases!! I'll be posting a review on Amazon for it as well because it's just that awesome!

218-724-2094 who?

For those of you who didn't know, a few months ago I got a brand spankin' new cell phone, the superlicious LG EnV Touch and with that came a nice, clean phone number.

You know, the number that no one has, that you have total access control to. Or so I thought.

I started getting random calls from 218-724-2094, I would never answer because I didn't recognize the number. And they never left a voicemail so it was just one continuous cycle of calling and not answering.

Well I googled the number and found out from 800notes.com the following:

This number is in fact Teleresources. They are calling on behalf of either Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, Allstate Insurance Roadside Service, columbia House, J J Keller, Centele Telephone. Basicially if you are now or were a subscriber to any of these services and your subscription has run out, Teleresources is calling to see if you want to re new your subscription. To find out why they are calling you simply call the number back and punch extenstion 111 to be removed from the list.

So, I called the number back, pressed the 111 extension and talked to a very friendly person who said he'd take my number and put it on their "do not call list" and that within 24 hours the calls should stop.

It actually went very smoothly.
Now, let's just hope I didn't activate my number on some random, weirdo porn company's list of "haha we got 'em" who they end up calling once a week with strange voicemails.

Don't let "Guide To Pirate Parenting" Walk The Plank!

Guide To Pirate Parenting

Find Guide To Pirate Parenting on Amazon

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Also, if you really are bored and want to see why I will never be able to do live reviews.... watch this:

Slippy Slide Fun

LG enV® TOUCH

I’m going on day 3 of using my LG enV Touch, and I have to say I didn’t want to like this phone, I really didn’t. I wanted to have a legitimate gripe about it so I could guilt trip my husband into driving me over to AT&T and guying me an Apple iPhone.

What? At least I admit it!

But, it turns out that I like the LG enV Touch. (I really really do!)

My quick review is: The LG enV Touch isn’t an iPhone, but I’d consider it to be 2nd best to on if that’s what you like!

My long review…

Looks: it’s pretty, the design is great. It has a 3.0” external touch screen that is second to the iPhone when it comes to touch-technology. Also, the screen has touch vibration so you can tell when you touch it. Because its sleek design hides the full QWERTY keyboard, when it’s closed, it’s very minimal.

Functionality:

Touch Screen: the touch screen works wonderfully and the screen adjustment when you turn the phone from vertical to horizontal is fast! It does take a little getting used to if you aren’t used to using a touch screen and for the first little while you end up opening applications instead of scrolling over them, but once you get the feel for it, it’s super easy.

Camera/Video: The camera is a 3.2 megapixel camera which has video capability. My one complaint was resolved when I realized I could use the “Camera” button to start and stop taking videos instead of the touch button which was difficult to access when doing a “self video”. The camera offers autofocus, flash, self timer, and an image/video editor including color effects. Not to mention you have the option of 4 different resolutions up to 2048X1536.

Music: the enV TOUCH also can be used for MP3 playback. You can supposedly synch your PC to your phone but I haven’t been able to do that yet, only because I haven’t had time to try. I’ll post about that function once I get to it. The playback of music (the preloaded stuff) is nice though, doesn’t sound too bad for being a phone.

Bluetooth: Nuff said.. Bluetooth is Bluetooth and it works, that’s all that matters.

Apps: My one complaint about this phone (compared to the iPhone) is lack of 3rd party apps. However, since it has a nice web browser, V CAST Videos and Music with Rhapsody, Mobile Email, Mobile Chat, VZ Navigator (which I’m not using) and visual voicemail.

Tools: the phone comes preloaded with a calculator, tip calculator, calendar, alarm clock, stop watch, world clock, note pad, drawing pad, document viewer (which actually reads MS07 stuff!), and voice recognition. I do have some issues with the calendar, I wish it had a little more functionality, but for a standard calendar and appointment keeper, it’s not bad.

Overall I give the enV TOUCH 4 out of 5 stars!