I received a lot of baby powder my baby shower and still have plenty left. We have been battling fleas for a while now. We have used foggers, powders, and vacuumed. There are definitely less fleas but still some left.

I ran out of the flea powder and the carpet flea killer powder. Since I have a surplus of baby powder, I have been sprinkling that down on the carpet, floors, and upholstery. If the idea behind flea powder is to eventually dry out the fleas, then baby powder might work. Also I feel more comfortable having baby powder all over the house instead of flea killer powder.

Even if it doesn’t work, at least I feel like I’m doing something else to fight to fleas that is harmless to us and smells nice.

Losing weight is one of my goals. I want to drop a few pounds, eat healthier, and exercise more. I know to do this I much start calorie counting as well as make a conscious effort each day to exercise. Tracking my progress not only helps to keep me motivated but is a good reminder to see if my new routine is working.

My Fitness Pal is a free calorie counter and more. You can keep a food diary, track your exercise progress, and monitor your progress all from a clean, user-friendly interface. Sign up is simple and took less the 2 minutes.
Here is a look at the add an exercise screen. After searching for an exercise, you will be taken to a page where you choose your exercise and put in minutes how long you performed it. My Fitness Pal will then show how many calories you burned.

When updated, you can check out the exercise tab to see how your exercise for the day stacks up with your daily and weekly goals.

The Food Diary is broken down into sections: breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack. Click the add link to search for a food to enter into your food diary. You can also put notes as well as keep up with your water intake. If a food is not in the MyfitnessPal database then you can add it. Just grab the nutrition label to have all the information at your fingertips.

You can also run reports to compare your nutrition, fitness, and overall progress for a certain calendar period. If you are geeky like me, graphics and charts are always fun. MyFitnessPal.com is not only a calorie counter but offers moral support through their community forum. It’s free, fun, and easy to use, which makes MyFitnessPal a great tool with any weight-loss regime.

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Here is my little girl learning to blow bubbles.

Last week I tackled the bookshelf in Rae’s room. This week I tackled two bookshelves in the office. These were much more challenging since they had a lot more stuff on them.

As you can see from the photos, my husband is a big ole gamer. One shelf is just his role playing books and paraphernalia. He has more notebooks, maps, and dice than anyone I know. The dice are store in a nice clear storage box. I used a tall clear plastic storage box for loose paper and his maps.

The other shelf is a mix of books and office supplies. I have put a lot of the books we use but not everyday or even monthly on the very top of the shelf. These books are great for reference so it’s important to know where they are but is not books we use that often.

We went out of town for Memorial Day weekend so today I hope to finish tackling these shelves. Our office is a disaster area but is looking better. Tackling these shelves really helped with that.

Here is before

Here is “after” or more like in the middle

When I was pregnant, I developed dark spots on my skin. After a little research I learned it was something called the mask of pregnancy. Basically when you are pregnant you have more pigment in your skin. Getting out in the sun can leave darker spots on your skin. I have the mask on my face. With time it usually fades but sometimes it doesn’t. If mine doesn’t completely go away I might be making a visit to an Orlando cosmetic surgery facility.

Luckily my mask has become less noticeable. I’ve heard that chemical peels or other skin rejuvenating treatments can help reduce the appearance of the dark spots. Personally I haven’t tried it yet but am considering seeking help. So advice if you are pregnant, use your sunscreen each and every time you go outside. I don’t spend a lot of time outside like gardening, so my time outside when I was pregnant was just traveling to work and back or running errands.

Wearing sunscreen is just a good habit to get into applying before heading out into the sun. Protecting your skin is important since it will be very costly to repair sun damage.

Housewife Rating — 6 out of 10

Cute guitar and fun music. It’s a very loud toy that can become very annoying really fast.

The Backyardigans is a cartoon on Nickelodeon that my daughter for first exposed to this weekend. It’s colorful and has a lot of music which kept her attention. Their line of toys include a guitar. Since Rae loves the guitars of Guitar Hero we wanted to get her a guitar of her own. The Backyardigans guitar stood out because it has buttons on the fret and has a strummer.

It plays a couple of songs. While the songs are playing if your you can strum along or press the fret buttons to add a guitar riff or interject words into the song. It’s a cute guitar, and Rae loves it. My only complaint is that there isn’t a volume control. The speaker is located on the backside of the guitar, so when it plays music it is extremely loud. It can become annoying. The guitar would be so much better with a volume control since Rae loves playing with it but Mommy can only take so much.

DonorsChoose.org is an organization that helps teachers across the United States. By donating money you can help teachers get the much needed supplies they need. It’s amazing how many school items teachers will buy with their own money and never get reimbursed for. Imagine if you needed something at and had to purchase it but your company didn’t pay for it. It’s a practice in business that is practically unheard of but for teachers they have to because they are only given so much money to spend on their room that is apparently in inadequate amount.

The BlogCatalog community is uniting to bring recognition to this plight. The donation page below will tell you how you can help a teacher out. There are several requests listed, and you can choose which one to help with your donation. A lot of the requests are from teachers in Louisiana whose school was affected by Hurricane Katrina. The goal is to raise $25,000 to fund 9 proposals. Have a look and help a teacher in need.

Help Public School Kids by Funding by Participating in the BlogCatalog DonorsChoose Challenge

I saw an Oprah episode a while back about finding the perfect pair of blue jeans. I was amazed at how many jean types that are on the market and how finding the right pair of jeans can really compliment your figure. Seven 7 jeans for all mankind reminded me of that episode because when you find a jean that fits your figure and height it can be a great addition to your wardrobe.

It was amazing how the right pair of blue jeans really flattered women on the Oprah show. I had given up on finding the right pair of jeans but was inspired after viewing the show. I hadn’t realized the even details like the location of the back pockets on a pair of jeans can affect how they look. Also that boot cut pants are best suited for those who are 5’4 or taller.

The right pair of jeans can be a great addition to any wardrobe. The hunt for that pair may be long and tiresome but will be worth it.

When inserting images into your website, be sure to remember to use the ALT tag. The ALT tag is used to display text that explains the image. The ALT tag will show when the image is not available.

Using the ALT tag will help make your website more accessible to a wider range of visitors. Alt tags are useful for visitors who are using a text-based browsers or have graphics turned off because of a slow Internet connection. If an image fails to load, the visitor can get an idea of what the image should be.

There are also other benefits to using the alt tag on your images. Since the alt tag is text-based, Google and other search engines will index your images. Therefore your images will show up in image searches and consequently bring more visitors to your site.

Here is a sample using the alt image tag:

img src=”http://www.yourpage.com/picture.jpg alt=”Image Description”

The alt text loads before the image. To test if the alt tag is working with your image, let your mouse hover over the picture. A yellow box should pop up with the alt text in it. If it doesn’t, check your code to make sure you use the correct syntax.

The Political Graveyard is a great resource to find information on political figures living or deceased. From John McCain to George Lindemann you can find links and other information.

I’m not much into politics but I like to follow some of it just to keep up with the news of the day. My husband follows politics more than I do, so I like to keep current to be able to talk to him.

Keeping up with politics is so much easier with the Internet. It seems every speech and appearance by political figures is documented and preserved online. It makes finding where politicians stand on an issue or their voting record just a click away. I’m not much into politics but it’s nice to know anything I need to find I can probably find it online.