I wish I had a battery operated fan a few years ago when Hurricane Katrina came through. It would have been really handy. Since the hurricane, we have picked up a few things that will be helpful with no electricity. These battery operated fans are hard to find in our area. I’ve seen battery operated televisions, wind up flashlights, but not many fans.
I had picked up at a thrift store a stroller battery operated fan from Fisher-Price. It works OK but is really loud. We took it with us to an outside auction and it really helped to keep Rae cool while she sat in her chair. Sadly it doesn’t fit our stroller, so we can’t really use it on our walks.

Also at the auction, someone did have a nice size battery operated fan, so they do exist. I just have to find one. This one was the perfect size to sit by your feet and keep cool. It also helped her that she was in the shade, so the unbearable heat might not have been that bad.

Well, apparently to find one I just need to check Amazon.
Now that I’ve found one, I just need to place my order. It will still be hot for months to come and hurricane season still lasts for months to come.

We bought the Leapfrog Fridge Farm magnet set for Raegan for Christmas since she had started taking an interest in the refrigerator magnets. It was a very smart move on my part since she loves playing with the toy.

The set comes with 8 different animals, each has a front piece and a back piece. Place each piece in the right spot on the front and then press it for sound. If you just do have an animal, you get the message “blue sheep” or whatever color and animal magnet it happens to be. Put both halves in and you get a little song about matching a match. If you put in the front of the cow and the back or a horse, you get a personalized song for your creation. First the voice will say in a questionable tone, “A cow horse?” Then she will sing a little rhyme song about the silly cow horse.

You can also press farmer Tad sitting in top of the barn to listen to his banjo. This is Raegan’s favorite button of all since you don’t have to put the magnet pieces in for it to work. She really loved it before she could get those pieces into the magnet. Now she is a pro at putting those magnets in and out of the right slot.

There is on off button and volume control, two big pluses if you ask me. It’s been a great toy to keep her occupied while I’m cooking or just whenever. She will forget about it for a few days, then it’s like a new toy. Leapfrog makes some fun toys and this the Fridge Farm is definitely one of them.

I’m in need of a toolbox for my truck. A truck toolbox would make a great addition to my truck. There probably won’t be that many tools in the toolbox, but it will have a lot of purpose.

Having a truck is great as it means if I find a deal on a large piece I can just load it up to bring it home. But when you drive a truck, you really lose a lot of storage space. A truck toolbox will be like trunk space, a great spot to put sporting equipment or bags of groceries. The style of truck toolbox that I really like are the ones that are plastic and sit on the bed of the truck. They are easy to mount, plus some even have cup holders on the lid. I always thought this would be great when watching movies sitting in the back of the truck at the drive in or at the beach.

Best of all, they are not that expensive since you can pick up one for around $40. Not bad, especially considering just how much will fit into one of those toolboxes. Driving a truck has some great perks, and with the installation of a truck toolbox, some of those negative aspects will not be so bad.

We have a ton of comic books and trading cards to sell, so after some thought I opened up en eBay store. I signed up for the basic store, which is $15.95/month. I listed my first item yesterday but have many more to do.

So, my tackle today is to organize what we have so I can start listing more items. I have have to take photos of everything and need to set up a semi-permanent picture taking station to make it easier. Hopefully this will be a great way to make a little money and get rid of all of our unwanted stuff.

I’ve entered a contest hosted at BenSpark.com for an XShot. Here is my XShot post entry.

The XShot is one cool product. It is a handheld tripod that allows you to take better pictures of yourself or other subjects. We’ve all stretched our arms and snapped a photo of ourselves. They usually turn out less than great. The XShot extends the reach of that arm shot picture by up to 37 inches. Here are a couple of more pictures where an XShot would have been useful.

Raegan might very well be my only child since it took nearly 6 years of trying for her to get her. I don’t have another six fertile years left, so I want to make sure I’m in as many photos as possible. Voting is easy. Just head on over to BenSpark.com and look for the poll in the right column. You can vote once per day and the poll closes July 27th at High Noon.

I was one of ten lucky winners for a NeatReceipts Scanalizer. The contest was held at 5 minutes for Moms and was thrilled to learn I had won.
We have been saving our receipts this year and it’s creating quite the paper trail. Each month I sort through them and staple like-ones together. Then I stick them in a folder to get to later. This month I want to go through each of the previous months to see exactly where we are spending our money. The NeatReceipts will make this so much easier since I will be able to scan the receipts and use the data electronically.

Once I receive it, I’ll do a full review of the NeatReceipts and how it works.

When I worked at the local television station, it seems we were always planning potluck meals. It worked out especially great for us that worked evenings to not have to trample into town for food. The TV station was located a good 10 miles from anywhere.

One of the anchors made taco soup for one potluck dinner. It was really good, so another anchor had asked her for the recipe. She obliged and gave it to her. Well, a few months pass and some organization is putting together a local cookbook and asked the local celebrity anchors to contribute a recipe or two. The anchor is received the taco soup recipe submitted that one and another recipe to the cause. The anchor is who had given her the taco soup recipe was a little miffed that she turned in a recipe given to her as her own. Not only had she turned it in but to a cookbook that the first anchor might have even submitted the same recipe to.

In hindsight, it’s kind of funny to think about it. Although I’m sure the taco soup recipe original holder is still livid and shocked by the other anchor’s actions.

This taco soup recipe isn’t that taco soup recipe, although it is pretty close to it.
Read more… »

Here is another use for Band-aids. Our rearview mirror fell off the windshield, so I bought a kit to reattach it. You had to let the silicone glue set for a day so it would bond and dry to the mirror mount. Since he couldn’t find any tape, my husband pulled out the auto first aid kid and used a band-aid to hold the mount in place.

Macgyver would be so proud.

This week’s Photo Hunters challenge was shadows. Rummaging through my digital photos, I found one with our other cat, Calisto. I do take pictures of other things besides our cats I promise. That fake Christmas tree(from the last photo hunters) is even in this photo, too.

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