Arts Cow is offering 400 free prints and a custom 8X8 photo book just for signing up and trying their service (you pay shipping and handling). The shipping appears to be reasonable so this could be a pretty good deal:

http://www.artscow.com/default.aspx?Ref=346908

Promotion ended: The offer is in the lower right-hand corner on the website below. Just click the link and complete the short survey and they’ll mail you a coupon for a free can of dog food.

http://www.mightydog.com/home.aspx?sid=1&pid=1

Promotion ended.

http://www.nutroproducts.com/yourfamily/

Free 5 lb. bag of Natural Choice cat or dog food.

Promotion ended: Bio Spot is offering a 3-months supply of flea and tick control for your pet. Just go to the following link and complete a short survey (while supplies last I’m sure!):

http://mybiospot.com/signup.aspx

I’ve always had an interest in herbs and their healing and detoxifying properties. Recently I purchased a box of Dr. Stuart’s Detox tea for $3.99 for 20 tea bags.  I have to tell you, I felt great after drinking it - and of course as most detox teas do, it had a diuretic effect causing some instant “slimming”.  But considering how absolutely little tea was included in those little tea bags, I couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that I could make it myself for a fraction of the price.

So after reviewing the percentages of the herbs listed on the box, I set out to find a way to recreate this tea myself.  The four main detoxifying herbs in this tea are dandelion, burdock, spearmint, and peppermint.  I have spearmint growing in my herb garden currently, so that was an easy find - the others I had to shop a little bit online but found The Herb Corner (www.theherbcorner.com) — then I found out that The Herb Corner also offers their herbs through ebay.  So, for $8.38 (including the $5 shipping) I purchased 1 ounce each of burdock, dandelion, and peppermint.  Plus, when the package arrived, I found that the wonderful sellers at The Herb Corner had tossed in an extra ounce of peppermint for free!

So after mixing all of the herbs together, I now have 4 ounces of loose tea (which is yummy and appears to be just as effective) for around 1/2 the price of the Dr. Stuart’s detox tea.

I’ll try to be a little better about posting for the rest of the week while we are out on vacation.

Here are a few pictures from the last week.

Hot tubbing it….

**BTW — for those of you freaking out on me for putting my baby in the hot tub, we turned the temperature wayyy down so it was more like a pool at this point**

Thats my niece in the baby float and little man is there…and…a less than flattering view of my backside

Little man showing off a flower he picked.  His boo boo is healing…

And…checking out some turtles

I’ve fallen into the bad blogger trap…no posts in a week…

My apologies! I took a couple of weeks off to head to the Outer Banks.  I had fully intended to keep blogging along, but then fell into the rest and relaxation trap

We’ll still be vacationing over the next week, but I’ll be posting soon with some pictures to show you just what we’ve been up to!

Last night we had a terrible scare! I drove into the driveway with little man and got him out of the car.  We then had a lengthy discussion about why I felt that he should leave his “too cool” sunglasses in the car (because he’d be sad if we forgot them in the house and he didn’t have them the next time we got in the car).  Finally I gave up and let him take the sunglasses and a matchbox car out of the car.

I turned around for just a second to get the mail out of our mailbox and all of the sudden heard him fall and start to cry.  I assumed that it was just a scraped knee but instead found his head and nose gushing blood and his mouth full of blood.  He had fallen directly on one of the ear pieces from his sunglasses and it had gone right into his forehead — then he busted his nose.  I didn’t know it at the time, but apparently head wounds bleed like crazy — but since I didn’t know this and I was completely freaked out that he was going to bleed to death, I put him back in the car immediately and drove him to the nearest fire station. By the time we got there both of us were covered in blood - my entire arm was drenched and shirt, pants, and shoes were covered.

After pounding on the fire station door, they carried him in and got him cleaned up and then called the ambulance.  It turned out that the blood in his mouth was from his nose.  Thankfully, the EMTs said that he would be fine but that he might need some stitches.  The ER however felt that a butterfly band-aid would be better since the stitches would probably freak him out.

We stopped by Walgreens to pick up some extra band-aids and the employees there were SO nice.  (Remember we were still covered with blood) They got him a candy bar and they even went to the back and got him two helium balloons to cheer him up.  Between getting to see the fire truck, the balloons, and the pizza that I picked up he was feeling fine by the time we got home.

The frame was just a black dollar store frame that I painted with terra cotta colored acrylic paint. Then I stuck Sandylion Essentials scrapbook stickers all around it and covered it in several layers of mod podge. Then I sprayed it with acrylic sealer.

Probably the sweetest moment of my 2nd mother’s day was this:

My husband asked Little Man to tell me “Happy Mother’s Day”.  In response, Little Man began to belt out a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday to you”

I love this age!

It’s a little early but I pretty much only get in the “spirit” way before or way after the holidays for some reason…so I bring you a hockey ornament. No, my husband and I are not huge hockey fans…but I was in the mood to make an ornament and hockey was on my mind for some reason. So, ta da!

This was REALLY easy.  Make a salt-dough using the following recipe:

4 cups flour

1 cup salt

~1 1/2 cups warm water

Mix and mash together until you get a well-mixed clay.  Forget the civilized spoon stirring — you need to use your hands.  One you get a good clay consistency, roll the dough out on a flat floured surface and use a hockey cookie cutter to cut out your shape.  I used a drinking straw to poke the ribbon hole.  One you’ve got your shape, bake in an oven @ 200′ until done (depends on the thickness - this one took 20 minutes).  Once cooled, paint with black and silver acrylic paint and spray with an acrylic sealant. A perfect gift for that hard to buy for sports fan.

I don’t want this blog to become a commercial…but when something is good, its good - and I’ve decided to share about another really great product (antacid) that I tried today. It’s called Ultra Xcid and I ended up trying it because I had too much chili and I had just received a free sample of it. It’s from the same people that make Zicam — and I’d provide an Amazon link, but amazingly they don’t have it for sale on their site yet.

Anyway - it IS a liquid, which I normally avoid.  BUT — its a really GOOD liquid. Like keep-it-out-of-the-kids’-reach-because-it-tastes-like -candy good.  I don’t know if it comes in other flavors or not, but the flavor I tried was “Strawberry Cream Soother” — and YUM.

Oh…and I guess it is important to call out that it worked like magic too

The flower centers are all chipboard circles painted with acrylic paint and covered in glitter.  The flowers were made from scrap paper (you might recognize it from my Springtime banner) and glued around a green pipe cleaner. They’re stuck in a bowl of potpourri so they all sit mostly upright. (Ignore the plastic rock in the picture. I took it out of one of little man’s toy sets because it looked like a choking hazard and haven’t figured out the appropriate place to put it yet…)

A great way to recycle the boxes food come in (like pasta or cracker boxes) is to cover them with patterned paper (like you would wrap a present but tuck the top into the box and tape down with double-sided tape).  To make the handles, punch holes with a paper punch and thread ribbon through.  Knot the ends of the ribbon on the inside of your bag-box to keep the handles in place. It’s a much appreciated way to wrap any gift - but especially great for the environmentally conscious.

This started out as a Dollar Tree notepad purse holder but I figured why not add rhinestones, ribbon, and a flower…and some more pink.