I know a lot of people (mostly men) don’t like certain Holidays because they feel that they are “made-up” or “Hallmark” holidays. And to a certain extent I agree with some of those holidays. I’ve never been a big proponent of Sweetest’s Day and have always told my husband not to bother and he happily obliges. I can never seem to remember Grandparent’s Day, Boss’s Day or other days like that however, there is a “made-up” holiday day that I just might remember – February 18th. What is February 18th you ask? Well, it is Drink Wine Day! If that isn’t reason enough to raise a glass of your favorite grape blend and toast with a spouse or friend, then I don’t know what is!

I do love my wine, so this Drink Wine Day, is right up my alley. A while back I posted a few wine related items: The Baggy Winecoat (one of these would certainly make the many kids sporting events I attend much more interesting – just kidding!)  and the best boxed white wine I’ve tasted. While I did write about the virtues of a great boxed white wine that I thoroughly enjoyed, I really am much more of a red wine aficionado. I do lean toward white wines in the summer though, as there is nothing further from my mind than a room temp glass of red wine on a hot day – yuck!

And speaking of red wine, my husband and I are very lucky in the wine department. We have a friend who works for a wine distributor. He is very kind to us and sells us wine directly. We give him a wholesale per bottle price range and let him pick out a good one for us. We have had tremendous good fortune in his picks. The first he got us was Three Saints Cabernet Sauvignon, the next was Fire Station Red Cabernet Sauvignon and our latest, which could be the best one yet, is Educated Guess. (I’ve only had 2 glasses, I need to have some more to make more than just an educated guess to know if it is better thank Fire Station Red.)

So on February 18th, be sure to raise your glass (P!nk song playing in the background optional) and drink wine. Why? Well because someone made up this holiday. But who cares? Do you really NEED an excuse to have a glass of wine? I didn’t think so.

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Want to learn about Social Media Marketing and Digital Marketing focused on business? What are you doing on Friday, November 16th?

Attend Social Media AZ (Social Media for Businesses in Arizona)

SMAZ5 is a business focused event designed to help businesses understand, improve and learn about Digital Marketing, with a Social Media focus. Covering Social Media, Search, Mobile and more.

Learn policies, processes, tool sets, and monitoring techniques from the experts. Presenters are from Fortune 200 executives, Social Media authors and SEM architects, all with years of social media experience who share their challenges & rewards of implementing various social media strategies. Bring your questions and meet the right people.

• Why join us? Focus on Real World experiences!
• Learn from and meet the best in the business!
• Mobile, video, search, social, measurement, and more.

The major Digital Agencies will all be there. Everything from the 101 session, Small / Medium Business to Enterprise. Join our panel of experts in a comfortable environment allowing for direct interaction.

• Hear and see how other companies are approaching Social Media, the challenges and successes.
• Case Studies will be emphasized, real world information!
• What tools are being using?
• How do you measure success?
• How do you convince your management?
• How to address corporate policies around Social Media?

Meet others with similar goals and make new connections. Oh and there’s some great food too. Exceptional prizes are being given away as well!

For additional information please go to: SocialMediaAZ.org (Use #SMAZ5 on Twitter: SMAZ conversations on Twitter)

Location: 730 S. Mill Ave Tempe, 85281

Date: Friday, November 16, 2011 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM (MT)

Register TODAY!

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A yummy treat for the whole family!

My almost 6 year old daughter loves to help me cook and help me in the kitchen. A couple weeks ago, she brought home a kids cookbook from school. It only had a few recipes in the book and only a couple that she was interested in trying out. One struck me as a particularly good sounding one and as something we would all enjoy. Snack bars.

Snacks are the bane of my existence. If I had a dime for every time I heard “Can I have a snack?” My bank account would rival Oprah’s. I thought these No-Bake Energy Bars sounded like something we would all like, would be fun for us to make and something the kids could get themselves.

Turns out, I was right! Below is our version of the bars that we made. Furhter down are the other/original recipe ingredients, but as with almost every single recipe I use, I change things up and make it my own.

No Bake Energy Snack Bars

1 cup chocolate chips

1 ½ cups rolled oats

2 cups Rice Krispies

½ cup raisins

½ cup peanuts – slightly chopped

¾ cup peanut butter

¾ cup brown sugar

¾ cup maple syrup

In a large bowl, mix the chocolate chips, oats, Rice Krispies, raisins & peanuts together and set aside.

In a sauce pan, mix peanut butter, brown sugar & maple syrup. Heat until the sugar is melted.

Pour melted mixture into large bowl and mix together until everything is coated (the chocolate chips will melt and help to hold everything together)

Press mixture into a greased jellyroll pan and refrigerate for 3 hours. Cut up and enjoy!

The original recipe called for coconut instead of raisins, almonds or walnuts instead of chopped peanuts, and an additional ½ cup of sunflower seeds. We used the ingredients we did because we were out of coconut & sunflower seeds and my daughter likes peanuts more than almonds or walnuts.

My daughter loved making this. She was able to measure, pour & mix the ingredients and stirred the cooking mixture. She loved mixing it all together and seeing the chocolate melt, but her favorite part was pressing it all into the jellyroll pan and then once done, licking the remnants off her hands. Eating the finished product was great!

This was a great recipe to make with kids – easy, fast and tasty! This is one we will make over and over again as all four of us in the house are enjoying them. And it can be made with just about whatever you want to add in there.

Try it & enjoy!

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Have you tried popchips yet? If not, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR!?!?

These are the best snack out there. For those that do not know, popchips are a popped (duh) potato snack. They are all natural so no preservatives or artificial flavors. They have no cholesterol, zero saturated fat or Trans fats and Gluten free. A healthy portion of 19 chips is only 100 calories and has 3 grams of fat.

They give you the salt & crunch of potato chips but without all the bad stuff. They kind of remind me of the snack Munchos that I used to eat when I was younger, though Munchos even worse regular potato chips in the fat & calories area.

Unfortunately for me, an open bag of popchips is an empty bag. They come in seven different tasty flavors – regular, barbeque, sour cream & onion, salt & vinegar (my FAVORITE!), cheddar, salt & pepper, parmesan garlic. All of the flavors are good and everyone has their favorites. Salt & vinegar is my absolute favorite, but they are a tad hard to find around me, which is a serious bummer. I also really like the regular flavor and salt & pepper is quite good too, though there is bit more pepper in there than I would like. My least favorite flavor is barbeque which seems odd as I normally love bbq chips, but I just don’t love the flavor of these barbeque chips.

As far as the best snacks out there go, popchips are it! Of course, a number of popchip-esque snacks have now come onto the market, but nothing I’ve tasted is as good or comes in the flavors that popchips does. The Trader Joe’s version is the best competitor, however they only have regular or plain flavor.

Try a bag today, you will not be disappointed! Well, you will be disappointed but that is only because the bag will be empty before you know it, leaving you wanting more.

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We purchased our cute little home about 7 1/2 years ago. The previous owners lived there for about 5 years and the owners before them had completely remodeled the house. They finished the basement, updated the kitchen, replaced all the old windows and more. The previous owners said they never had any problems with the house, which was great. We were so excited when we moved in.

Shortly after that, we heard another “pop” from another bedroom – this one being our 1 year old son’s room. An inside pane of one of the windows in his room broke now too! We were completely shocked. How the hell does this happen once, but twice?? What is wrong with these Hurd windows? Wasn’t Hurd a really good brand?

We called someone from a window company in our town and they came out. They said there was some sort of a defect in the windows from the time period that these were bought and installed in. Fantastic. We have 7 more of these horizontal windows and 12 vertical ones, are they all going to implode? The window company was great. They brought us windows, we painted & they installed. Hurd backed the windows with a warranty and we only had to pay for installation. All fine and good, but I would rather not have dangerous windows in my house. Thank-you-very-much.

The following winter, another window implodes in the guest bedroom. And again we call the same local window company. Hurd backs the window, we paint a new one & they install it. Everything is as good as it can be with imploding windows throughout our house.

Here are the two latest broken Hurd Windows. Left has inside pane broken and ice on the inside of the outer pane. Right window is the broken outer pane. Nice huh? These are NOT quality windows that is for sure.

For 4 years we do not have another incident. Then last winter, again early one morning, I heard the all too familiar “pop” and I know another window implode. Where was it this time? I run to my daughter’s room and sure enough, there it is. Broken Hurd Window #4. I am really dumbfounded now. Why after all this time did it spontaneously implode? So, now I’m really PO’ed as it has been 4 years since the last incident. I am livid and want to call Hurd Windows and give them a piece of my mind but I come to find out they have gone out of business during that time span. (Shocking, seeing as how they sell imploding windows.) However, they were purchased by an acquisition company and they are making windows again. We talk to several helpful people that distribute Hurd Windows and find that our same local window place has them again. We contact them and they have all our information from the 3 previous broken Hurd Windows. 

However, they mention that since Hurd went out of business all warranties are null and void. Nice. So we have all these windows that are dangerous and I am terrified are going to implode and potentially hurt my family and the warranty is no good! A real stand-up company, I can see why they went out of business. The window company was actually were the best part of this whole ridiculous ordeal. Again they got us a new window, we painted it and they installed it. And because they felt bad for our situation and knew our history with our imploding craptastic Hurd Windows, they gave us a very good deal on our replacement, which they did not have to do. But obviously they understand customer service, something that Hurd Windows obviously knows nothing about.

So cut to this winter, about a month and a half ago I was awoken from my bed with that wonderful “pop.” This time however, we were mystified as the broken window was now in our living room. One of the 12 vertical windows we have has as now imploded. Terrific. Again the inside pane. And then about 3 weeks ago I was awoken in at 1:30 am by a different sound. My husband and I ran around looking for the source of the odd “ping” we heard. He suggested a window. I said no, this was a different sound and the other 5 windows that broke (yes 5) were all around 6 am. We didn’t find anything and went back to bed. In the morning, I go out and find yet another broken window. This one was right next to the living room window that broke a month earlier. The perplexing thing about this one is that it is the outside pane that broke.  I find this one particularly disturbing because it is the outside pane couple that with the fact that we have 10 more of these windows that could possibly break.

This is so damn ridiculous! Who has 6 windows in their house spontaneously implode?  I do, because of the terrible Hurd Windows that are in my house. I would rather have the 60 year old windows in my house than these 13-14 year old piece of shit Hurd Windows.

Whatever you do – DO NOT PURCHASE HURD WINDOWS! Or you too could have unsafe, downright dangerous windows in your house, manufactured by a company that does not stand behind their bad product or care about their customers.

About 3 weeks ago, I sent an email to Hurd Windows at the terrifically ironic email address of perfection@hurdwindows. As of publishing, I have not received any type of response or acknowledgement. Nice customer service. I would expect them to be out of business in the near future again.

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Ahh, Christmas is such a wonderful time of year. Everyone seems outwardly happy even though they are probably inwardly stressed to max. But again people seem happier & friendlier. I love all the lights, get togethers and just general Christmas cheer. I don’t love all of the “I want, I want, I want” but the commercialism of Christmas is a whole ‘nother blog, or 2 or 10, and I’m not even going to go there.

One of the other great things about Christmas is all of the yummy treats that creep up and make the lbs creep up as well, but that is what New Year’s Resolutions are for, right?

Here are a couple super treats that I like to make with my kids for Christmas

Christmas Crack

• 1 package of Chocolate Chips – I use Nestle Toll House ones, I always have them on hand
• About 2/3 package of Oreo Cookies – crushed
• 2-3 teaspoons Peppermint extract

Melt the chocolate chips in a medium to large microwave safe bowl. Stir every 30 seconds or so until melted. It takes about 2-3 minutes total.

Mix in 1 teaspoon at a time of extract until you get the desired taste. Some like more minty flavor, others may like less. I usually use 3 teaspoons

Mix in the crushed Oreo’s. I normally put the cookies in a Ziploc bag and take a rolling pin or meat tenderizer mallet to the bag and crush up into little bits (This is a great reliever for Holiday aggression as well! Chocolate & tension relief – talk about a win-win!!)

Mix thoroughly and then spread thinly and as evenly as you can on a cookie sheet lined with wax or parchment paper. Pop in the ‘fridge to harden (or I just stick it outside for a few minutes)

Then break it up into little pieces and TRY not to eat the whole bag.  You will have to force yourself not to eat the entire batch, but really don’t - it will make you sick.

The other Christmas baking fun at our house is Cut-Out cookies. I love these cookies, they taste so good and are fun to make. This recipe is a great one and quite easy.

Cut Out Cookies

Preheat oven to 350

• 6 cups flour
• 3 teaspoons Baking Powder
• 2 cups butter at room temperature
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (or whatever flavor you like Almond is good)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Cream butter & sugar until light & fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well. Mix dry ingredients and add a little at a time to butter mixture until flour mixture is completely incorprated and the dough comes together.

Take dough & place a glob between 2 sheets or wax or parchment paper & roll to desired thickness. Place on cookie sheet & put into fridge. Continue to to do this until all dough is rolled out. By then the first piece should be chilled enough and ready to go. Cut out shapes & place on cookie sheet. Keep scraps of leftover dough and repeat the process.

Bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 8-10 minutes or until just beginning to turn brown on edges. I cut this recipe in half because even the half recipe makes about 4 dozen cookies with my cookie cutters.

Once cooled then decorate.

Glace Icing:

• 1 lb Confectioners Sugar
• 3/8 cup milk
• 3/8 cup light corn syrup
• flavoring as desired (almond extract is the best in here I think)

This is the recipe she gave me. I tend to just kind of “wing it” when it comes to the frosting, but is turns out fine.

Enjoy! And a big thanks to my friend Mandy for giving me these recipes a few years ago! My family thanks you.

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Since the Christmas season is upon us, I wanted to share with you a few tips on picking out a Christmas tree in hopes that no one ever again has to deal with the issue that plauged our tree (and therefore our house) last year.

We have for the past 8+ years purchased our tree from our local High School hockey team. It is a fundraiser for the kids and obviously a good cause. We always had trees from the HS hockey team growing up because my 4 older brothers all played hockey (as did/does my husband), so it was a no-brainer for us to support the team.

We go and pick out our tree last year like usual. The first issue is the trees are bound and you cannot see what the look like, so we basically just point to one and say “that one looks good.” I look to make sure that the tree has a nice and straight bottom so it will go into the stand.  We’ve had that issue in the past, and a crooked trunk is no fun. I also look for one that is not too fat – we don’t have a huge area for the tree, so one that is a little trimmer is best. I find one that fits my straight trunk & narrower frame and we are good to go. I get it home, set-up and a couple days after it has had time to “fall” from being bound up, decorated. It looks beautiful!

A few days later I begin to notice droplets of something on my nice velvet tree skirt. I take a closer look and it is sap. The tree is dropping sap all over. It was nasty. I was cleaning it up often as it is not good to sit on hardwood floors and the sap is completely ruining my tree skirt, which is now just covered with little sap balls.

A few days later now I come home and notice all sorts of little “things” around the tree. I have no idea what they are, but they are little light brown things. I have no idea where they came from, but I don’t see anything else anywhere and just vacuum it up. About a week later, I begin to notice a few black dots around the tree skirt. I investigate and find that it is a little black bug. It must have come out of tree. I get rid of it and each time I come back I find another one or two. Each day I’m now finding more and more.

By the time Christmas week is upon us the little black bugs were everywhere. I had the vacuum residing next to the tree and everytime I walked by the tree I would vacuum. I even was vacuuming the trunk of the tree!

It was CRAZY! 

I figure the bugs were frozen in the sap that was on the trunk of the tree. When the tree warmed up in my house, the sap came off (all over my floors & tree skirt) and then the bugs were free. This probably normally happens in the spring, but since the tree was in my house, it happened there – lucky us.

I prepped the kids, who like my husband & I, were rather grossed out by the whole ordeal, that I was taking the tree down right after the present opening. I told my mother-in-law, we had to start breakfast a little later as I had to remove the tree before we went anywhere. And literally the minute after the last present opened and the wrapping paper was in a bag, I had the ornament box open and was removing ornaments. The tree was at our curb by 10 am Christmas morning.

Gross, gross, gross. I still shudder when I think of that tree & the bugs. Oh yuck! I vacuumed, every inch of the living room & dining room several times and disposed of the vacuum bag. Which, by the way, I was super thankfulto have a vacuum bag and not a bagless vacuum in this instance.

Needless to say, I got a call from a new kid on the hockey team, asking if I was going to order a tree this year. I explained to him what had happened last year and said ”I don’t think so.”

We have a lovely tree from Wisconsin, that was cut just a couple days prior to us buying it and I was assured had no bugs. I thoroughly checked it out and my new Christmas tree skirt & home are safe and tree bug free.

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I am a thirty-something happily married mother of two very active and busy children and a big old black Labrador retriever. I work full time for Mint Social, a social media marketing company. I/we live in the northern suburbs of Chicago and have for basically my whole life, with the exception of being born in a different state & going to college in a working for 1 year after college in a different state.

I enjoy being outside, sports, being active in general, traveling, photography, cooking and socializing with friends and my big family. Some of my favorite times are gathering at our house or friend’s house, letting the kids run amok and us parents cooking, cocktailing and chatting away. If a nice fire is going outside, it is even better. Though the absolute best time is when we take that scene down to the Florida beach for our annual Spring Break trip.

I am a true soccer & hockey mom. My daughter plays soccer and I am a coach. My son plays hockey and my husband is a coach. I volunteer in their classrooms for parties, reading time and whatever else I can swing and help out with the PTO as much as I can. The Halloween parties are my favorite because I love seeing all the kids all dressed up. Each year I make skeleton head cookies and have the kids decorate them. They are so fun and yummy to boot! I love watching my kids get older and discover new things, watching their personalities emerge more and more and watch them come into their own. What a joy of parenting!

I hope you enjoy reading my blog. I try to fill it with useful info and tips here and there, product reviews and just general fun stuff. Cheers!

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I wanted to take my kids apple picking this fall, I wanted to last fall, but I guess we never got around to it. So I set off to research and it was like we were the old saying of “a day late & a dollar short.” It seemed that most places around us and actually for the Midwest in general, apples came in early and most orchards were already closed for the season. I did find one that had a small variety still on the trees and we went there. Harvest Time Orchards in Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. I think it is literally on the IL/WI boarder. They still had a few varieties, but were pretty well picked over. And the Golden Delicious apples had some hail damage, which equates to red spots, dents and even red holes in many of the apples. But we were able to get our bag full. The kids were happy and they had fun. Now I’m on the quest for any and all yummy apple recipes to use up the bounty that we picked.

A friend of mine gave me this recipe and OMG, it is divine. Working at home with this pan of treats in the refrigerator in the next room, is truly a testament to my will power.

Carmel Apple Bars

 Ingredients:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• ½ cup butter (softened)
• ¼ cup shortening
• 1 ¾ cup flout
• 1 ½ cups quick oats
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 4 ½ cups coarsely chopped & peeled tart apples
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 1 14 oz bar carmel

Heat oven to 400. Mix brown sugar, butter & shortening in large bowl. Stir in 1 ¾ cups flour, oats, & baking soda. Reserve 2 cups of oat mixture. Press remaining oat mixture in ungreased rectangular pan 13x9x2.

Toss apples & 3 T flour, spread mixture in pan. Heat carmels over low heat, stirring occasionally until melted. Pour evenly over apples. Sprinkle reserved oat mixture on top, press lightly.

Bake 25-30 minutes or until topping is golden brown & apples are tender. Store in refrigerator.

I cut a corner out while they were still warm, and that was super tasty, like a carmelly apple crisp, but it was crumbly. These are bars and the bottom was not set, so they need to cool before you can get them out of the pan in bar form. My advice would be to try them warm and let them cool and eat them cold.  

I also made homemade applesauce. That was super easy partially because I used my crockpot. I just cut up a ton of apples, in several varieties, I like mixing apple types as I think it helps the flavor and put them in my crockpot. I added probably about 1 Tablespoon of both cinnamon and sugar and then about a cup of fresh apple cider that we got at the orchard. (and got to watch them make, that was cool!) Then I turned it on Low and let it cook all day long. What a wonderful smell wafting from my kitchen all day! Then about 6 hours later, the apples were very tender and it was quite saucy in the crockpot, but still there were a number of chunks & pieces. So I took out my handheld wand mixer and pureed most of the apples in there. I left a few chunks, just to remind everyone that I made it.

It was super tasty and everyone loved it.  Most recipes for applesauce I found had a cup or sugar or so. I honestly don’t know why sugar needs to be added to applesauce. Apples are naturally very sweet and contain sugar, so more really is not needed. Instead, I used the fresh apple cider and a touch of sugar just to help them breakdown. It was all that was needed. The applesauce it was plenty sweet, naturally.

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Now I think I have seen it all. I am all for going green, recycling and reusing as much as possible, but also within reason. I do not rinse & dry out plastic bags or cut toothpaste containers in half to get every last drop out, but I do use up as much as I can of things as well as throw as much as possible into our huge recycling container until it overflows every week. But I think recycling may have gone a little far on this one - recycled elephant poop paper.

I pride myself on knowing a lot, but is there a big demand for this that I am unaware of? And if there is, please explain to me the great desire to write on poop!

All joking aside, I really admire these people for coming up with a way to recycle what probably is a very large amount of waste per year and using part of the money earned to give back to the animals that are creating the “paper” by-product in the first place. It is definitely a very clever solution to the never ending poop supply from the animals. Plus, the results are very nice looking paper and stationary products. While they are a bit pricey you can get the piece of mind that you are doing the earth good, not to mention sending quite a conversation starter to someone when you send a note on paper that had originally come out of the business end of an elephant.

They have all sorts of products, plain writing paper, note cards, journals, photo albums, greeting cards, book marks and soon will have flowers. Roses made of poop, now there is the ultimate gift for the person who has everything! A dozen poop roses.

Check out their poo-tique and see these fun and interesting products for yourself. They even sell these products at Target so you can see and feel them for yourself.

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