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Smorty - Get paid to blog
You know me, always on the lookout for some cool new website, some fast and easy way to make a bit of cash online. I've found it in several places but the more research I do, the more I realize that only a few of these ever deserve mentioning. There are many that just don't deliver on their promises.
My most recent discovery is a website called Smorty. A friend introduced me to this just this morning. Smorty provide a service for advertisers who want to advertise on blogs. They act as a go-between for advertisers and bloggers. It is fact, apparently, that advertising within a blog post is far more effective and provides vastly more clickthroughs for advertisers than the standard advertising that we frequently see on websites. Advertisers use services like those provided by Smorty to enlist bloggers to write reviews about their own products and services.
No one will ever ask you to lie – you simply pick the things you’d like to write about, submit it to Smorty and get paid. And unlike other such companies, Smorty pay weekly. You get the cash you deserve, only faster!
This is a sponsored post
Mmmm, food
Along the theme of showing you what I had for dinner, I've taken a picture of the eggrolls we had the other night. I made chicken fried rice, spareribs and eggrolls. A real Chinese feast! Yum....
I knew that Jake wouldn't eat that stuff so I made him some chicken fingers and fries.
I guess I've realized just how much I love using the zoom feature on our new camera. Be prepared to see lots more close-up pictures!
Do I recognize you?
I keep forgetting to write about the fact that Abby has notice (and indeed, loves) her reflection in the mirror. This started about a week ago when I wanted to put my hair up. I took her upstairs with me and lay her on the bathroom counter. As usual these days, she rolled right over onto her belly and pushed herself up onto her hands.
And then she saw it. That beautiful face looking back at her. She smiled and the beautiful face smiled right back. Abby bounced with glee and squealed. And you know what? That other baby did exactly the same thing! Can you imagine?!
Now, whenever I need to go to bathroom, I bring her with me. She squeals at the visiting baby while I brush my hair.
Unfortunately, I can't leave her smiling at the baby while I pee or while I shower. The little munching sure can move and grinning baby would soon become screaming baby.
Kenneth Jay Lane Jewelry
I love making jewelry and I get my inspiration by looking around online at other people’s creations. I quickly realize that there are some things that I just cannot imitate no matter how hard I try. Sometimes, the materials are just too hard to come by and sometimes the design is so intricate and attractive that nothing but the real thing will do.
That’s how I feel about this necklace. It’s part of the Kenneth Jay Lane Jewelry line at ElectricLadyland.com and is made with pearl and crystal. I find it delicate and very feminine. And really elegant too.
This large collection of jewelry is quite eclectic but also original. It has, I’ve read, been very popular among some of the world’s most well-known women such as Princess Diana and Jacqueline Kennedy. In fact, Kenneth Jay Lane pieces have sold at auction recently for over $200,000 and 47 of Jackie O’s pieces brought in over one million dollars!
But that is just the jewelry section of the Electric Ladyland website. They also do dresses, t-shirts, handbags, shoes, and jeans. They have an extensive men’s section and their kid’s section is coming soon.
This post has been sponsored
Zero Trans Fat Menu?
Stephen touched on this subject in his blog, but I feel the need to mention it here too...
We've recently started being a bit more careful when it comes to trans fat. For those who don't know about it, it's the kind of fat that is pretty bad to eat. You know, clogging the old arteries and such. Now, I don't pretend to know a lot about this kind of stuff, but here in Canada, trans fat is making headlines and all of our food products have the amount of trans fat listed on the label.
So, if I can, I choose products with no trans fat at all. A lot of stuff has less than a gram per 100g (or like quality), but I still won't buy it if I feel like I can avoid it. Some products, like pizza, don't seem to have a trans fat-free option, so I buy the one with the least.
Anyway, we've noticed that KFC are no offering a trans fat-free menu. Great! If we're going out for fast food, they've got our business. Plus they're pretty tasty.
But during a light-hearted debate last night about whether or not their full menu was trans fat-free or whether it was just selected items, I visit their website and was astonished by what I saw. To quote the KFC Canada website:
Each 0 Trans Fat Menu Selection contains per serving:
Less than 0.2 grams of trans fat
2 grams or less of saturated fatty acids and trans fats combined per serving
15% or less of energy derived from the sum of saturated and trans fatty acids
Huh? What the heck does all that mean? Firstly, I see that their ZERO trans fat menu selections are not really ZERO trans fat. And secondly, well, all three of those statements mention trans fat! So because the amount of trans fat starts with a zero (meaning that it is less than a gram) it can legally be considered a zero trans fat product? I find that very misleading.
You know, I’m not stupid. I don’t expect to get a healthy meal from KFC. I do think that they’ve taken a step in the right directly, but their desire to capitalize on the public’s fear of trans fat has made it a little bit too easy for them to be coy with information.
Will I still eat at KFC? Oh, go on then… I’ll have a Big Crunch Combo, please.
Digital Picture Frames
Digital photos… I have thousands of them! But I rarely get them printed and framed. I’d like to have more pictures on display in our house, but choosing the best ones and then taking the time to get down the store to have them printed, well, I just keep putting it off.
DigitalFramez.com is a website that offers digital pictures frames. Hang them on your wall or prop them up on a desk. They look just like ordinary photo frames, with a beautiful, high quality finish, except that they show off digital instead of printed pictures. So you can change the image every day if you want, or set the frame up to show a slideshow of your favorite snapshots.
These cool frames come in wood or acrylic and in a variety of colors. They even come with a remote control and built-in speakers for when you choose to display your movie files.
My concern was that these frames were bulky like computer monitor – even flat-screen monitors – but they’re not. They are only 18mm thick, so they won’t look odd on a wall or up on the mantle.
Setup is easy with Digital Framez: just plug in your new digital picture frame, insert your camera’s memory card and go. No downloading. No installation. No wiring.
Simple!
This post has been sponsored.
Grandmother vs Grandmother
As a favor to his boss, Stephen working until midnight tonite. He started at 4pm. That's a full 8 hours! And I don't like it much. He and I both work part-time and our shifts are normally no more than 5 hours. Tops! So to not have him here in the evening like this... well, the house is so quiet!
Anyway...
Ten days from now, we'll have Stephen mother and brother here. We're looking forward to seeing them and to introducing them to Abby. We certainly didn't like the idea of Abby growing up not knowing her Grandma from England.
Which makes me think about my Mum: While Stephen's Mum and brother are here, we will be taking them for a trip into Montreal, an hour away. We'll go downtown, or maybe to Old Montreal, or the Old Port, and will end the day at my Mum's place for dinner.
Up until now, my Mum and Stepfather have been Jake and Abby's sole present grandparents. By that, I mean that they are the only two that are around. Although they don't see the kids weekly, they have not had to share any grandparent roles with anyone else. My Dad and Stepmother are in Alberta and Stephen's parents are in the UK.
But not for long! On Saturday the 19th of May, we'll get to see how my Mum copes with sharing the grandkids. Don't get me wrong, my Mum's not a jealous or difficult person by any means. She just likes to be the one who can calm Abby or feed Jake when he'll take it from no one else. It's not always the case that she can do those things though and you can see the disappointment in her face.
But I know that my Mum and Stephen's Mum are fond of each other. I'm sure they'll share the loads just fine.
IBackup
I’m a big believer in backing up my hard drive. All those precious files, all those cherished family photos. But this issue becomes so much more important for small businesses, whose whole existence could come crashing down with the failure of a hard drive. With my online work, I like to consider myself a small business and I realize that I need to back up my important documents more frequently and in a better way than I do now.
What do I do now? I back up my files to CD or DVD. But this has not proven to be as trustworthy as one might imagine. We see those medias as solid and infallible, but a little while ago, Stephen and I looked back at out of out CDs and a lot of files were unreadable. This could have come with damage to the CD or perhaps there was some other mysterious reason. Either way, those files are gone and we were just lucky that we could afford to loose those particular ones.
IBackup provide online backup of your files for as low as $9.95 a month. That price will get you 5 GB of space as well as a slew of great additional features.
There’s IDrive, an application that you download and install on your computer. It will map out your IBackup account as a network drive on your computer. This means that all you need to do to back up a file is to drag and drop it (or copy and paste it) into the IBackup folder on your hard drive. This feature also allows you to open, edit and save files directly from that remote folder.
IBackup have options that range from 5 GB of space, for the individual or small business, all the way up to 300 GB. Their prices are reasonable and the service they offer is so useful. Check them out.
This post has been sponsored
Shopping!
Yesterday, we went shopping at Wal-Mart and somehow spent $132. That might not seem like that much but it when you consider that we spent $102 just two days previously. On that day, we bought paint for the basement, but I can't think of anything else that we bought. See how we spend so easily? The paint was under $30!
Anyway, yesterday, I got new summer shoes. Very pretty! And a new wallet.
Stephen got a coffee maker, something he's wanted for quite a while even though he's not a huge coffee drinker.
We got a new kettle. Our old one was looking a bit worse for wear.
We bought Abby a summer hat - very cute.
We bought an ironning board, as Stephen Mum will be visiting soon and we know that she likes to iron her clothes. Us? Nah, we iron nothing! And proud of it.
We got cookies and chocolate. Bad, I know.
And there was other stuff but I can't think of what it was. We almost bought a new television. We're looking for a larger, perhaps flat screen tv. At the moment, we have a 21 incher! We looked at a 27" flat screen beauty and would have bought it if we could have fit it in the car. But we knew that we'd have to come home and drop everyone off before we could fit the tv in. It was huge!
So maybe another day... Maybe today!!
A visit to the park
We have a small park behind our house. It has a swing set, a big slide, a jungle gym and a seesaw-type thing. I like taking Jake and Abby there. It gets us out of the house and we don't have to go far.
Walking, holding Jake's hand and pushing the buggy... well, it ain't the easiest thing in the world. Especially as Jake is dawdler. He looks behind and to the side to check out his surroundings and I keep having to remind him to watch where he's going. It's very slow-going.
Anyway, so I like it when we're the only ones there. I hate it when other kids show up. Jake likes seeing the other kids, as any kid would, but he has this thing about putting himself in dangerous positions before I can get to him to avoid catastophe.
For instance, if another child is on the swing, Jake will run in front of it. He seems to be doing it to be near the other child and he probably just wants to play. But several times, I or another parent have reached out for him just in the knick of time. I can only put my heart through this so many times before I give up and bring them home.
Today, we were at the park for about a half-hour. Then we walked up and down the street. Now we're home... and it smells like nappy-changing time!
Joy.
