I do a lot of regular printing here at home of college texts and also printing for the kids, coloring pages and the like. I don’t do a ton of professional printing but just recently I needed to get a couple things, business cards with my new logo and also a shirt to match to wear for Brandcation! I went with a site I used before but I wish I would have taken the time to look around a little more and used a site that was new to me. I need to do that more, start branching out to sites I have not tried. I am too used to going with the familiar!

Case in point I could have got some snazzy postcards made up to match and they would have been very noticeable at Brandcation. I just didn’t think about it. I use custom postcards to attach the the bows I make and sell to and they work very well! Also I have never been one to print brochures but I have been thinking about doing something beyond business cards to describe what I do as a blogger so that when someone asks me what I do, I can hand them a brochure. Its just an idea at this stage. I have to make sure I want to market this blog before I reach out locally and advertise. I don’t gossip or talk bad about anyone on this blog but its still my place to speak my mind and well, its a popular blog but locally its not all that well known. I am still kind of shy and in real life I am private about my blog. Ironic huh?

The moral of the story is there are a million zillion sites for services and sometimes it pays to look for the smaller sites because sometimes you can get a better deal and a more personal experience than using a bigger site

Disclosure – http://cmp.ly/3/q5qwqr

I just finished school shopping for my kids and smehow got dragged into THREE pair of shoes for my daughter. Actually two pair of shoes and a pair of boots. The boots were my idea. Since then I have been obsessed with girls shoes. The sad truth is my daughter definitely has more shoes than I do. What can I say? She is stylin! Also because she is still growing we get her feet professionally measured every 6 months. Right now she is a 2 but I always buy a 1/2 size bigger than she needs because there is nothing I hate more than shoes that barely get worn!

Of course here in Michigan we have the added expense of snow boots. And my daughter loves snow play still so we need tomake sure she has nice warm boots. I can say this for sure, boots these days are WAY cuter than they were when I was a kid. Remember moon boots? Yeah, I had a pair. Ugly as all get out but oh man did they keep your feet toasty! We get her measured for boots too because we do put thicker socks on her. It gets below zero in the winter here so we want to make sure her feet stay warm. And because 3 months isn’t a long time to wear boots, we don’t want to waste money getting the wrong size for those either!

I have this video I want to share with you too. It shows how to properly measure feet at home. A lot of parents hesitate to order kids shoes online because they don’t want the hassle of an ill fitting shoe, but this video is pretty thorough and shows step by step how to correctly measure a foot.

Disclosure: http://cmp.ly/3/q5qwqr

Classes started this past Thursday. I had been battling flu and then bronchitis for over 2 weeks and still was nearly as energetic as I should have been. And when they say you should eat a decent meal before school there is some truth to that too. Algebra was ok, i like my instructor. He’s been teaching for 25 years so he is older but hadn’t taught at the college since 1994, so he was as rusty as we were. The 2 hours went by fast. Because we voted to not have a break in the middle of class, we get to get out ten minutes early which is perfect because I have another class right after math but now I get 20 minutes to eat and have a break before Bakery Production. I SHOULD have taken the time to eat a lot more between classes but I didn’t and paid for it. Bakery class is 5 hours long. We spent half the time listening to the instructor talk and the rest running around like crazy people. We were made to make food on the first day! But wow, I will say this. I really like my instructor. He knows I am not getting a degree or majoring in food service but he knows not only do I have a passion but I am prepared. I pretty much decided I am going to challenge him and say his job is to make me love baking and believe in myself enough that I will want to change majors. I have been baking since I was a teenager I am a natural but common sense tells me that medicine is secure. There is a shortage of chefs believe it or not.

I just don’t know yet if its the path I would want to take. To help with that I signed up for the culinary club, maybe some extra curricular cooking competition will tell me. He is a good instructor and I love the subject matter but is it enough to sway my plan? Its too early to tell. And because I had no food I didn’t quite have my brain all there and was confused a little and seemed slow. Lesson learned, I will eat before that class! We made Focacia bread and we have to bring the food home so I did that and my family went crazy for that bread. They loved it so much they asked if I could  use the recipe and make it at home to make pizza dough. I will admit it was good. Just the right amount of basil and garlic. It was supposed to rise more but we didn’t have time so the finished product was just like eating bread sticks. This week I am taking my camera

Well I have to dive into my anatomy class and do homework while I don’t have kids underfoot but I wanted to stop in and give an update!

Finally after working for hours I am satisfied enough to unveil! The graphics are a mixture of stock and digital scrap elements edited by yours truly and made into my new logo, and this one will be staying a while! I hope you enjoy the new cleaner layout and can find things easier. Its just so much easier to look at isn’t it? I love it! I may still tweak some colors and things but there shouldn’t be any down time again for a long time! Also for giveaways since this theme doesn’t lend itself well to numbering comments, I will be using the “And The Winner Is” plugin to choose winners. Still random, just not random.org

I know I have been lax on posting winners but hey I had college to prepare for so you can forgive me. After the 2nd email I received asking where I post winners I decided to post them here. This is the last few contests but I will post winners from here on out directly in the posts. Cool beans? I thought so

CLR Winners are, Cynthia, Eileen, Tiffany, Holly and Shelly

Dakota’s Gifts Winner is Jennifer T

Indulj winners are Eileen and Rachel (sugar cookies and popcorn) and Tiffany (product of choice)

Slim Perfect winner is Tiffany

We have a couple repeats but that because these giveaways had pretty low entry numbers so chances were very good at winning. Congrats to all the winners!

Eyes are a really miraculous invention. They open up the world so you can see everything AND in varying shades of hues and contrasts. The truth is there are very few people who at some point in their lifetime won’t ever require eyeglasses. Even for someone like me who even at age 32 has 20/20 in each eye, its going to be inevitable that I will need them.

Most of my family wear them, or are supposed to be wearing them. My son and husband both have prescription glasses but rarely wear them.  I have to fight my son to wear them and now that he is 13 its even worse. I am pretty sure its time to think about contacts for him since I can’t trust his eyes not to get worse.

My daughter got her first pair of glasses before she was even 2 years old. They thought they could fix her strabismus but instead she had to have surgery. She has to wear them for reading still its just very slightly weak but other than that she is good. I was so scared to have to puther through surgery but she was amazing. And her eyes are perfectly straight now thanks to it!

I have been thinking about ordering glasses online because I heard you can get a pair for under 50 bucks! Our eye docs office charges an arm and a leg for cool looking glasses and we don’t have that kind of money so we have to settle for mediocre. Which is probably half the reason our son won’t wear his glasses. He wants to look cool. I found a code to share with my readers that will save an extra 10% off at glassesusa.com: mommy10 . It looks like they have a Facebook page too! http://www.facebook.com/GlassesUSA.

Lesson to be learned. The environment and natural fatigue over time are going to affect your eyesight so try to take care of those eyes when you are younger to help slow the process as you age. Wear sunglasses and visit your eye doc year yearly!

Disclosure : http://cmp.ly/3/q5qwqr

I have been lucky to try Uneaks shoes once before. My daughter loved her first pair so much she was upset when i had to retire them! I got to break the good news to her that Uneaks was sending her another pair and she was delighted! Along with the double sided socks we loved so much, this time we got a pair of Valley shoes in white. These shoes look sharp with the black and white contrast.

They have the see through windows that show off the designs on the socks, and each pair of socks can be switched to the other foot so a completely different design shows through the windows. One side has stripes the other has spots!

And the shoes are made well and they LOOK good too! When my youngest is big enough he is definitely getting a pair! My daughter is a big fan for sure but I admit I like them too. She can choose what design she wants for her socks. She can even get crazy and mix and match the designs if she wants. She is trying so hard to wait for school to start to wear her shoes because she wants to keep them nice for her first day of 2nd grade. But for now I let her wear them for a fashion show!

(camera was wonky the shoes are not half pink lol)

Buy It: Get your own Uneaks at the Uneaks site and many styles are also available at Shoebuy.com!

Win It! Uneaks is giving away one pair of Shoes and 2 pair of socks!

Mandatory Entry: Go to Uneaks and tell me what pair of shoes and which socks you would pick if you win! (This is mandatory, extra entries will not count unless you do this and please refer to this post if you have questions)

Extra Entries: (you must leave a separate comment for each entry!)

• “Like” Uneaks on Facebook (1 entry)
• Follow Uneaks on Twitter
• Follow me on Twitter (1 entry)
• Enter any other current giveaway (1 entry)
• You can tweet about this giveaway 4 times per day! Leave the link to your tweets! Win a pair of Uneaks shoes from Serendipity Mommy @candyclc http://bit.ly/ajmQmR Ends 9/9
  
• “Like” Serendipity Mommy on Facebook (1 entry)
• Sign up for email updates or RSS (1 entry)
• Post my button on your sidebar or blogroll page. (1 entry)
• Blog about this giveaway (5 entries)

This contest ends at 11:59 PM on September 9th. US entrants only, no PO Boxes!

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Disclosure: This was not a paid post and honest opinions were given. Thank you to the company for providing the products for this review.

Sorry about the delay! List your giveaways here!!

I have a couple ending soon and a couple more going up this week woooo!

Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce 8/26
Squinkies Prize Pack (6 Winners) 8/31 (US/Can)

I love pot pies. I grew up on them. They are cheap and tasty. When they made them so you can use the microwave it was a stroke of genius! Now they have an even better invention, Fruit Pies! These can be made in the oven OR in the microwave. I had them both ways and in the oven they come out more home made but they are just as tasty from the microwave and cook faster to save me time. They come in three flavors, Apple, Cherry Berry, and Peach. I liked the apple the best but I was uber naughty and paired it with a scoop of Vanilla ice cream. I like the pies because you don’t have to mess around making a big pie that may not get eaten fast enough. With the banquet pies they are just enough! I think it was a natural evolution of Banquet to come out with fruit pies, and they are as delicious as the pot pies in my opinion!

Buy It: The fruit pies are located at any local supermarket in the freezer section!

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I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Banquet and received free coupons to facilitate my candid review. Mom Central also sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.