Is your child the next CompanyKids catalog model?

CompanyKids is the source for the most amazing kids’ bedding and room decor, in patterns and colors that will make any kid’s room truly special. I browse the site pretending I can buy anything I want and filling my kids’ rooms with coordinated bedding, rugs, accessories, and storage. Right now I am coveting the Bridgeport storage collection. It’s the children’s division of The Company Store, which sells bedding, bath, and home decor.

They also publish a catalog, and right now CompanyKids is looking for their next star of the print and online Spring 2009 catalog. Think your kid has that star model quality? Send in a photo showing them at their cutest, and they could be the featured winner! For official rules and to enter, visit the contest page at www.companykids.com/contest (copy and paste that into your browser).

Think your kid’s a star? Then just send in the cutest, most adorable picture and your little munchkin may be featured in the print and online Spring 2009 CompanyKids Catalog! For official rules and to enter please visit: www.companykids.com/contest (**Note, the contest does not officially start until May 22, 2008; therefore the site will not be updated until then. Contest ends June 20, 2008.)

The child(ren) in photos submitted must be at least 3 years of age but must not have had his or her 7th birthday as of July 30, 2008. The contest ends June 20, 2008. And there are PRIZES!

* 2 Grand Prize Winners will receive a trip to New York for the photo shoot, as well as a $500 Company Kids gift card
* 10 First Prize Winners will receive a $100 Company Kids gift card

Wouldn’t it be amazing to see your precious pumpkin in the pages of a catalog? Enter by June 20th!

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New Stations Available on HD Radio

HD or High Definition Radio delivers better-than-CD quality to a receiver in your house or in your car, all you need is a local radio station broadcasting their signal in HD. Think of how much better a tv show or movie looks when you watch it on an HD tv channel, that’s how much better music sounds on HD Radio, whether you listen to new country music stations, Top 40 stations, or classic rock.

If you have an HD Radio in your vehicle, and you are traveling to Florida this summer, check out the Florida High Definition Radio stations. Like most other states, Florida’s radio stations have been upgrading their equipment to have the ability to broadcast HD signals. So far, there are 1500+ HD radio stations.

Another cool way to use an HD Radio is by using iTunes tagging. Using an HD receiver that holds your iPod, when you hear a song on an FM HD radio station that you like, you hit the “tag” button. The song’s info will be saved from your HD Radio receiver to your iPod, and will show up in a playlist called “Tagged” in iTunes the next time you sync your iPod to your computer. So you can click, download and buy the songs you want directly from the Apple® iTunes Music Store. Very cool!

I spend such little time in the car these days that I don’t even know which stations in my area are broadcasting in HD, but now I’d like to find out so I can hear the difference for myself.

Healthy Snacking with Orville Redenbacher

Look what came in the mail the other day! It had two packages of Orville Redenbacher Butter Microwave Popcorn inside, plus some coupons. We eat a lot of popcorn for snacks, especially my oldest son, and he could eat a whole large bag by himself.

Orville Redenbacher’s is perfect for snacking, to serve to a gang of hungry kids, and it’s the perfect snack for watching a movie at home. Popcorn is a “whole grain” food, and Researchers from The Center for Human Nutrition in Nebraska found that people who eat popcorn consume more whole grains and less meat than people who opt for other snacks. The Journal of the American Dietetic Association reports that fewer than 10 percent of Americans meet current dietary guidelines recommending they eat at least three servings of whole grain foods each day.

So now we can eat a healthy whole grain snack and use a fun bowl to hold it!

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Indiana Jones: the Adventure Collection

Indiana Jones Adventure Collection DVDsWith the release of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, a new generation of kids is learning just why so many people love the Indiana Jones movies. If your kids have been asking about the first three movies in the series, you can purchase all three DVDs in one set, called the Indiana Jones Adventure Collection.

The Adventure Collection box set contains Special Editions of Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. We watched the three movies with the boys over the course of a few days, and these are the grades that my 11 year old son gives each movie:

Raiders of the Lost Ark gets an A +

Temple of Doom gets a SUPER F (“because that damsel in distress lady kept sobbing about how she was a singer and she shouldn’t be traipsing through the forest, waaah waaah waaaaah”)

Last Crusade gets an A -

Even if you agree with my son that Temple of Doom is one of the worst movies EVER, this collection is still worth purchasing. Each disc is just loaded with Bonus Features, including a new Introduction for each movie by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, Featurettes, Storyboards, Photo Galleries, and a game demo for Lego Indiana Jones. If you’d like to purchase the movie on Amazon.com, why not use my affiliate link and help me earn five cents? Come on, please? I get click throughs but never any sales, and just once I’d like to see a sale turn up on my affiliate page! So, click this link--thank you very much :)

Wordless Wednesday-BLTs for Lunch

I did it! I painted a bathroom! Go me.

You know, it seems like 41 is the age where I stop being afraid to try new things and just TRY them already, like figuring out Photoshop and changing blog themes, and this weekend, painting. I am so obsessive about things being just right, I was sure I would never be able to paint a room and be happy with the way it looks. So I was happy to prove myself wrong this past weekend when I, with a generous amount of help from my husband, painted our main bathroom!

I picked a paint from Behr called “Sonata”, a medium blue. The sample on the paint can lid looked like this:

I was surprised how dark the first coat looked, we were worried we had chosen a color that was too dark. Compared to the paint on the brush, the wall looked SO dark:

It was SUPER fun painting the wall above the shower, standing on the top step of a stepstool, because of course, shower floors aren’t flat, they curve in towards the drain. So that was a fun few minutes for me, as I am afraid of 1. heights 2. falling and breaking myself. But I did it:

After the corners dried I did the first coat and then after about three hours, Chris did the second coat. I was so surprised at how much lighter the color looked with that second coat, and now I’m really happy with the color.

BEFORE:

The lighting is bad because it’s such a small room and the main lights are the vanity bulbs above the sink, but this is AFTER, you should hopefully be able to see the difference:

I’m still trying to decide what to do with this wall, I looked for some kind of multiple-towel-holder thingy at Home Depot, but all they had was ones that hang over the door, which doesn’t work in this bathroom because it’s a pocket door, the kind that slides open and closed. So, I’m still looking.

I’m SO glad we did this! Now we’ve caught the home improvement bug. We had to restrain ourselves from redoing every room in the house while we were at Home Depot! I’ve got plans for the kitchen, OH, do I have PLANS for that ugly white kitchen, and now I’m not afraid to try it, either! GO ME!!

What Memorial Day means to me

I have had several male relatives in active service during Wars. My Mother’s Father, Harley Sullivan, was in the Army at the beginning of WWII, and all I ever was able to get out of my Mom was that when her Dad came home, he was not the same man who had left. He was angry, all the time. What he had seen on his tours to various countries had changed him, even though he sent home letters to my Grandma showing him and his buddies, arms wrapped around each other, smiling in front of their tents.

He didn’t smile when he came home. He drank. He got into fist fights. He yelled at my Grandma. He never yelled at my Mom or her brother, but he didn’t parent them, either.

He killed himself. It was never spoken about. I learned not to ask too many questions. He died when I was a toddler, so I never really knew him.

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My Father, who was born in 1934, graduated from High School in 1951 and enrolled at the University of Michigan. He rushed a fraternity and spent his first semester of school doing typical frat boy things, meaning, not studying. At the end of the semester, he had flunked his classes.

His Father informed him that a stint in the Army would get him on the right path, so Dad enlisted. He went to Basic Training and at the end, he was sent to see the Communications Officer. He was told that he had two choices-join a group that was training to be in the Communications Corp., or join the Infantry.

He chose the Communications Corp. Now, the catch was, they had three weeks to learn to type 60 words a minute. You see, our soldiers that were intercepting messages being sent in the Korean Army were typing those messages out in Morse Code. My Dad’s job would be to listen to the Morse Code and type out what he heard, at a rate of 60 words a minute. It was either that, or strap on a weapon and get shipped to Korea.

He learned to type. And for his tour in the Army, he sat in a hot barracks in Texas and typed out Morse Code for the Army Communications Corp. Which, by the way, was technically a branch of the C.I.A., so my Dad always joked that he was really a C.I.A. agent.

He spent his time in the C.C., and when it was over, the G.I. Bill paid for him to go back to college. He chose Wayne State University instead, studied History and Geography and got a teaching certificate, and married his sister’s college roommate, my Mother, in 1959. 10 years later, they adopted me.

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Sometimes when I sit and just think about what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, when I think about how 19 year olds are dying there, it makes me so sad I can hardly breathe. Because while I absolutely agree that we have to keep America safe, I think of those Mothers, watching their sons and daughters get on buses and airplanes, not wanting to allow themselves to think that it might be the last time they see their children alive.

If this war doesn’t end in seven years, it could be my oldest son getting on one of those planes. I could be that Mother wondering if he’ll come home, and then he could be that boy coming home, but changed forever. I don’t have any family members buried in Arlington Cemetery, or serving in Iraq, and today, my heart goes out to everyone who does. And if you are with your Dad today, or your Uncle or Grandpa or Aunt or whomever in your family did serve in a war and came back, please hug them tight for me, and tell them, thank you.

Her “Terrible Twos”, let me show you them

There’s this myth that at age two, children suddenly turn into some sort of evil creatures that defy all attempts at logic, and spend their days shrieking and writhing on the floor like they are covered in snakes. Fortunately for us, that just isn’t happening here at the Table for Five house. Kaitlyn is so unbelievably cute, so funny and talkative and wicked smart, that when I hear the phrase “terrible twos”, I just shake my head in disbelief.

She can recite entire scenes from Ni Hao Kai Lan. Today she lined up four of her Groovy Girls pets (sold at Target) and sang them a song from the show, something about not trying to do something all at once but doing it little by little. She is always asking me Mama, are you happy? She makes me WANT to be happy, all the time, just so I don’t disappoint her.

Now, to be fair, she does have her moments. The other evening she was playing outside with my next-door-neighbor’s great-granddaughter, drawing with chalk on the sidewalk while I snapped photos. All I said to her was “Kaitlyn, can you hug Terese and I’ll take your picture?” Next thing I knew she went stomping up the sidewalk, up the driveway, and sat down on the porch in a huff, yelling “NO!”

But if that’s the closest she’s going to get to a “terrible two” style tantrum, I’ll take it. She brings more joy into my life on a daily basis than I could have ever imagined, even when she’s pretending to be mad.

Bathroom makeover day 1- Um, yeah…

Well darnit, it’s already 5:15 pm, and I’ve done exactly nothing on my bathroom makeover project. I got up early this morning, if you consider 8:30 am early, ran out for coffee, then decided that since Chris was still sleeping, I would work on cleaning up our dining room area, which in our ranch-style house means “the one-third of the living room that is on the other side of the cut-through in the wall that leads to the hallway”. Right. That made sense, I hope.

The dining room area has my desk on one wall, otherwise known as the place where I dump everything into huge piles and immediately forget about it’s very existence, plus our sideboard, which currently holds Kaitlyn’s collection of Plan Toys dollhouse furniture, a basket full of miscellaneous junk, and the base for our cordless phone, plus a bunch of other junk spread around it. The floor in front of the sideboard houses her play kitchen, various Fedex boxes full of product review stuff, coats, shoes, crayons, toys, and possibly the lost treasure of Atlantis.

So, I decided to clean it. I got started about 9:30 am. I vacuumed, I sorted, I filled a kitchen trash bag with papers and empty packing envelopes and assorted bits of flotsam (and jetsam!), organized the desk, organized the sideboard, vacuumed some more, and by that time, I was in the groove. I dusted the entertainment center, the knickknack shelf where Chris keeps his little Wizards of the Coast figures, straightened the cubbyhole where Kaitlyn keeps books and puzzles and a basket full of tiny things, straightened up the bookshelf, made a pile of library books, a pile for a garage sale, and a pile of product review stuff.

I looked up at the clock at that point, and it was ONE THIRTY in the afternoon. It had taken me FOUR HOURS to clean one and a half rooms of the house. Ryan had completely cleaned the playroom by himself, while Nathan helped Chris put a final coat of paint on the front of the house, a project that has taken him three consecutive weekends to finish.

Kaitlyn wanted to go outside and “see Dada”, and wear her favorite dress which is like a long polo shirt with a little ruffled skirt, pink, with a Care Bear on the upper left corner. She then stuck her hand into the paint tray, splashing her face, arms, and chest with white paint. The Care Bear dress is no more. Anyone know where I can get another one?

I made lunch, put Kaitlyn down for a nap, got the boys in the car, and set out to return the pile of library books.

Did you know libraries are closed on Memorial Day Weekend? You’d think I would know that, but I didn’t. We left the books in the book return bins and went for ice cream instead. Mmmmm, soft serve chocolate ice cream, really hits the spot after a day of cleaning! After a quick trip into Payless to get Ryan some sandals, I came home to find Chris asleep on the couch and Kaitlyn STILL napping, it’s now almost three hours since I laid her down.

So, with Chris and Kaitlyn sleeping, Ryan playing “Oblivion”, and Nathan at a friend’s house, I’m surfing the web getting ideas for my bathroom. Becky from Chocolate Party suggested decorative tiles for one of the walls, which is GENIUS, thank you Becky! Martha Stewart’s website suggests painting bathrooms in pale greyish-blue or green, I’m thinking blue. I’m also thinking about wall paper for the bottom half of the walls, maybe stripes, with a decorative piece for a horizontal border. That could work, yes.

I also found, while doing Google searches for some things I need to get my flower garden going, that the U.K. version of Shopping.com carries most of the same products that we have here in America. Apparently the Brits also like things like AeroGardens and Weed Wizards and those pouches you hang from a hook that grow tomatoes. Who knew? Shopping.com is a helpful site, by the way, you can search for things by price range, type, brand name, and store. You can look for jewelry, clothes, furniture, it’s one-stop shopping!

So, today was a bust as far as the bathroom makeover goes, but I plan to start out early tomorrow morning with a trip to Home Depot to look at paint and tile and wallpaper and hopefully not drive myself nuts in the process. After all, if I don’t like it, I can always paint over it, right? Stay tuned for another episode of “Elizabeth attempts to makeover her bathroom AND clean her entire house in one long weekend without going insane”!

Why I’ll be painting my bathroom this weekend and other easy projects from Home Depot

Well, it’s Memorial Day Weekend, a time when people usually take some kind of vacation. Here in Michigan, it’s the traditional time to drive Up North and open the “cottage”, which can be anything from a tiny three-room house with Lake access to an entirely separate house on the beach. However, this year, with gas prices at an astronomical high, the Travel Industry Association has coined a new phrase for weekend plans, the “Staycation”.

More families are choosing to stick close to home this year, to explore local attractions in their own cities, and to choose activities that don’t cost a lot. Home Depot is taking advantage of that by suggesting great projects to do over the long weekend that won’t cost a lot but will help you improve your living spaces without draining your bank account.

I was the grateful recipient of a gift card that was meant for me to use for something special around the house, and I am using that money to make over our master bathroom, because it is UGLY. It’s a tiny rectangle, to get this photo, I had to stand inside the shower (there’s no tub in this bathroom, just a shower with glass doors):

Yes, it’s true, this is what I’ve been looking at every day for three years. Two boring white walls. I poked around on the Home Depot website and saw that Behr brand paint is on sale, $5.00 off on 1 gallon and $20 off 5 gallons, so that’s the plan, to paint the walls something other than white, but after that? No idea! Let’s say I paint the walls some nice bathroom-y color, and let me also add that I have NO IDEA what color a bathroom should be, but let’s say I paint. Then I’m looking at two boring painted walls! People, help me out here. What would you do with these walls if it was you? The wall opposite the toilet is tricky because if I put shelves or anything there, the males in this house will, um, bump their heads on them while standing there. So if anything goes on the wall opposite the toilet at all, it has to be something like a picture or something.

Is it appropriate to hang pictures in a bathroom? Something other than paintings of sad clowns, that is? What do you have hanging on your bathroom walls?

So, that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend, and I’ll take photos and keep you posted on my progress as I go. I’m also devoting this long weekend to CLEANING THIS DAMN HOUSE before the amount of clutter swallows me whole like that scene in Star Wars where they are in the trash compactor.

Not interested in changing your bathroom? Here’s three other ideas for weekend projects you can do that won’t cost a lot and will improve your home!

    Clean and Green Your Garage:Take everything out of your garage and give it a serious cleaning.

    Here’s some tips:

  • 1. Give your garage a serious clean-up – think power washing and wiping down all surfaces. Product recommendation: New Husky® 2600 PSI Premium Pressure Washer. This heavy duty pressure washer is designed for homeowners and includes a 160cc OHV GCV160 Husky motor and a maintenance-free axial cam pump. Try using Greenworks Natural All-Purpose Spray Cleaner for all countertops, work benches and surfaces for the finishing touches.
  • 2. Making simple, but different choices on your lawn care products can help reduce hazards in your garage when storing the excess over the fall and winter months. Product recommendation: Vigoro® Rubber Mulch is an innovative, non-toxic mulch made from 100 percent recycled rubber tires. Also look into switching fertilizers and pesticides that can be hazardous to your health. Dynamite® Organic All Purpose Plant Food is the only OMRI-certified (Organic Material Review Institute) plant food guaranteed to last up to three months reducing the need for frequent applications. Scotts® Organic Choice Soils & Fertilizers offer a few other options. Scotts® Organic Choice Potting Mix is made of sphagnum peat moss and composted bark fines, and the natural ingredients deliver twice the growth of ordinary potting soil. Scotts® Organic Choice Lawn Food is made from chicken litter and feather meal nutrients, so it is 100 percent storage safe.
  • 3. To keep your garage clean, try sealing the garage floor (paint seals the floor so spills wipe up easily). Try new Freschaire Choiceâ„¢ paint for this project, the first-and-only tinted paint to contain no VOCs (volatile organic compounds). While you’re in clean-up mode, it’s also a good idea to dispose of old paints, which slowly release toxins into your breathing air.
  • Five Steps To Savings:

  • 1. Install a new hot water heater. Help save money and the ozone by lowering CO2 emissions with a tankless water heater. Tankless water heaters heat water only when needed, which can save you 20 percent on your energy bills. They also average a 98 percent efficiency rate compared to 80 percent for a standard tank, resulting in CO2 emissions savings. (PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION: Paloma® Tankless Water Heater)
  • 2. Replace your light bulbs inside and out with energy-efficient CFLs. CFLs consumer up to 75 percent less energy and they last up to 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs. (PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION: n:vision® Compact Fluorescent Lamps)
  • 3. Repair or replace doors and windows to prevent draft. ENERGY STAR qualified windows can help reduce your energy bill up to 15 percent. For a typical home you can save $125 – $140 a year when replacing single-pain windows, or $25-$110 a year over double-paned, clear glass replacement windows. ENERGY STAR qualified windows also contains low-emissive glass, which reduces facing by up to 75 percent. (PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION: Gila 4 Ft. x 15 Ft. Titanium Heat Control Window Film)
  • 4. Install low-flow toilets, shower heads and faucets in your bathrooms. Toilets are the single largest user of water in your home, using more than 30 percent of you home’s total usage. Replacing a standard 1.6 gallon-per-flush toilet with a high-efficiency or low-flow model can reduce your water usage by more then 20 percent. Daily more than three billion gallons of water is used in showers. New high-efficiency showerheads use much less water without sacrificing pressure. (PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION: Pegasus 1.28 Cottage High Efficiency All-in-One Toilet, NEW Delta Amplifying Showerhead)
  • 5. Replace your home insulation. Heating and cooling account for 50 to 70 percent of the energy used in the average American home. Inadequate insulation and air leakage are leading causes of energy waste in most homes. Blow-in cellulose insulation, made of 85 percent recycled materials, is formaldehyde free and safer for homeowners and the environment than traditional insulation products. It fills in gaps and voids in a home, creating a thermal blanket of protection, and the insulation reduces noise, airflow and energy loss. (PRODUCT RECOMMENDATION: GreenFiber Cocoon® Blow-In Cellulose Insulation)
  • Bring The Inside Outside:

    1. Adding flowers will inject a new color palette to the yard. Make the flowers even more festive by placing them in decorative pots to line a walkway, front porch or patio.
    2. Interior designers recommend adding colored appliances to the kitchen, so why not include them in your outdoor entertainment area? Replace your grill with the new Charbroil® RED 3 Zone Infrared Grill that not only looks professional, but also it provides a wider temperature range at a fraction of the cost.
    3. Build a new deck or patio with composite decking, like Verandaâ„¢, which offers the beauty of wood without the drawbacks of corroding, splintering, termite damage or fungal decay. Plus, it never needs refinishing.
    4. Outdoor furniture is adopting characteristics from the indoors, as trends in deep seating and wicker continue to grow.
    5. If you have existing outdoor furniture and want to spruce it up, spray paint it a new color or add weather-resistant throw pillows in exciting patterns and colors.
    6. Turn your landscape into a dreamscape by adding charming accents or a retaining wall that emulate stacked stone. Today’s homeowners can choose from decorative landscaping stones that are affordable and simple to install in one weekend.

    RECOMMENDED NEW PRODUCTS:

    1. NEW Charbroil® RED 3 Zone Infrared Grill. This new grill makes infrared technology an economical option for homeowners. The technology provides a wide temperature range for searing to slow-cooking, and this grill features an attractive red, black and stainless steel design. It’s also fuel efficient: it uses 1/3 less fuel than the average grill. (Price: $599, SKU 745-367)
    2. Arrow® 10’x10’ Gazebo. This spacious outdoor structure includes luxurious elements not found in most gazebos in this price range, including a candle lantern and built-in adjustable side shelves. (Price: $199, SKU 625-683)
    3. NEW Thomasville® Summer Silhouette™ Four-Piece Sectional Set. Made of powder-coated, rust-proof aluminum and featuring weather-resistant fabric, this new collection will stand up to the elements. The set includes one right-arm sofa, one corner seat, one left-arm love seat and one ottoman. (Price: $999, SKU 688-046)
    4. NEW Hampton Bay® Kampar Five-Piece Dining Set. Besides its durability, this set will add design flair to the patio, with an attractive, ultra soft leather-look mahogany weave and striped breakfast pillows. (Price: $799, SKU 594-161)
    5. Plantation Pattern Casuals Throw Pillows. Adding throw pillows to an old outdoor furniture collection will give it new life. These 16-inch square pillows will inject excitement and energy to any set. (Price: $12.96 each, SKU 763-647)
    6. NEW Natural Impressions Riverstoneâ„¢ Garden Wall Block. Homeowners can create a wall that blends the beauty of a hand-laid natural stone wall with the ease and convenience of a stackable concrete retaining wall. (4″x12″ wall sizes priced at: $2.99, various SKUs)

    Whew! Now, don’t try to tackle all of these projects at once! I don’t want you to spend Memorial Day Weekend just on home improvement projects! I want you to spend time enjoying your family and friends, maybe firing up the BBQ grill and cooking up some burgers and hot dogs, in fact, I’ll put up some recipes on MomCooks just for cookout food.

    So please help out a home-makeover challenged blogger here and leave me some suggestions in your comment-what color should I paint those bathroom walls, and with what should I decorate them? It could be your suggestions that I look at every day for the rest of my life, so you know, no pressure or anything!!!

    thanks my dears! Table for Five appreciates you!