To hot to cook!

As a part of the Life Made Delicious team, I get to cook up yummy different foods and write about them.  With how hot its been out for the last few weeks nobody seems to want to crank up the stove and start cooking.  I know we ordered pizza tonight because I didn't take anything out for dinner and it was far to hot.  Hot out of the oven dinners are not the only option out there though.  There are so many good recipes on Life Made Delicious for a nice refreshing cool dinner.

How do you feel about a Thai noodle salad with shrimp?  I can't handle much spice but you can alter how much spice is in this salad.  The kids and I love prawns, we could eat them everyday.  Lucky for us my girlfriend and her husband catch a lot of prawns and keep us filled up with prawns.

How about broccoli salad with steak or hot dogs on the grill, I am a huge broccoli salad fan.  Lots of floret's, stems to because they are so tasty, grapes, bacon, not the fake stuff, and some toasted almonds.  Some coleslaw dressing and you are done.  So good, Brandon and I love it and eat if for breakfast lunch and dinner!

Another great easy salad is fruit salad.  There are so many different fruit salad recipes on Life Made Delicious to choose from.  We love fruit salad, great for a quick breakfast, to pack for lunches and even to go with anything for dinner.  I am off to pick some cherries with the kids tonight and am going to can some of them as a fruit salad.  Just cherries, they are the best part of the store bought fruit salad so I am going to pit them and throw them in the jars and add a light syrup.  Then all winter whenever we want to have fruit salad we can just open the jar, drain, and pour in some delicious cherries.  So much easier than the cherry jam I made last year without a pitter :)  Horrible idea!

Disclosure: I am part of the Life Made Delicious Blogger program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own!

Dyson Air Multiplier

If I had to choose a favorite brand, of all time, not choosing a category, just picking things that I see around my house and use frequently.  I would choose Dyson hands down.  You can find me talking about my DC43 vacuum and my new AM02 tower fan!  I vacuum all year long but right now my daily baby that keeps me cool is my new AM02.  I couldn't function without it the last week or two.  My living room stays at an OK temperature until the heat gets over the mid 20's and then its unbearable. 

 

The kids and I are living in front of the AM02 and its been cool :)  I have the AM03 pedestal fan in my bedroom that I reviewed last year and it hasn't been turned off in almost 2 weeks.  Its the only way I can sleep.  The living room gets cool enough by nighttime but not upstairs.  I even remembered to dig out the AM04 Dyson heater that doubles as a fan for Kristina's room.  She is in a loft bed so its even hotter up there.  Brandon however just has a cheap fan that doesn't really do anything except blow the hot air around and make me nervous because he wants to touch it :(  At least he isn't uncomfortable though as hes still sleeping in pants and not complaining at all, apparently he likes to sweat :)

 

Back to the start, when the AM02 arrived I quickly put it together.  It literally took about 5 minutes.  I love that you can pick one up at the store in the middle of a heat wave and not start sweating just from having to put it together.  I know Brandon's cheap crappy fan took me about 15 minutes to put together and I had to hunt down my screwdriver.  I love that when my girlfriend comes over because her house it to hot and her dog sniffs out the AM02 fan and then proceeds to stick his head right in the middle of it and there is no concern about him getting hurt.

I love that the AM02 is tall and narrow so it doesn't take up much room at all.  I use the circle shaped AM03 in my room because I have tons of empty space up there.  I love how light it is so that I can easily take it from room to room depending on the breeze, time of day and where we are hanging out.  If you are looking at picking up a new fan for the Summer make no mistake, nothing can compete with the Dyson!

Yo Ho Let’s Go! Summer

Now that its Summer and the weather has finally hit we are outside all day every day.  When the kids are at daycare they spend a lot of time outside and my days off almost are spend outside.  We go to the water park, run through the sprinkler or just chill in the shade.  The other night I set up the sprinkler to occupy the kids so that I could cook dinner in peace and quiet.  Turns out Brandon decided that it would be funny to turn the sprinkler up and down by way of the outside tap.

Somehow he managed to unscrew the entire handle right off of the tap.  Needless to say the kids were screaming for me so I ran outside and saw water shooting right out of the wall.  So I tried to screw it back on without getting wet.  Easier said than done.  I was starting to get wet and didn't want to get totally soaked so I asked Kristina to try.  Well she tried but she just couldn't do it.  So back at it I went and man did I get soaked.  The kids and I had a good laugh, the kids did more than me, but it sure did end up being funny.

The back door to my place was right in front of the huge waterfall so I send Kristina the long way around to the front door to go in and stir dinner before it burned.  I got the tap reattached and the kids and I went in to change and eat.  We made memories that night for sure.  That's what life is about, making memories!

One of the kids favorite things to do is to cuddle up on the couch with popcorn and watch a movie or some TV.  I love having them cuddled up to me, they open up and love to talk when we do this as well.  They also open up and talk lots at bedtime.  As long as I take the time to lay down with them, read them a book, they open up like their own book.

So when its to hot to be outside or when the kids get up or before they go to bed you can tune into Disney Junior and check out some great new episodes of your favorite shows!  For all of July and August on Monday nights at 5:35 ET you can see a new episode of your kids favourite series followed by a movie or special presentation!!  Can't get any better than that!  At least we don't have to sit through a rerun ;)

Disclosure:  I’m part of the Disney Junior Mom program and I receive special perks as part of my affiliation with this group. The opinions on this blog are my own

The Healthy Shopper Picks for Spring 2012

Randy Boyer and Andrea Donsky are the co-founders of The Healthy Shopper, a coupon book that makes healthy shopping more reasonable.  As someone who uses coupons, the one thing I struggle with is that there are rarely coupons for fresh meat, produce, or even organic products.  There is the one one you find but its usually free fruit when you buy something processed.  If you are trying to cut processed foods out of your life standard coupons are not going to help you out to much.

In steps The Healthy Shopper!  A great coupon book full out coupons for some amazing products that I had the pleasure of trying out!

Kiju juice, delicious, the kids loved it, and it comes from only 100% organic fruit, pesticide free and no added sugar or color!

Natracare, healthier by nature.  A line of totally organic feminine products.  They work just as well as any other brand full of chemicals but they are 100% organic.  When you are putting something inside of your body, you certainly don't want it full of chemicals.  With things like Toxic Shock Syndrome out there you certainly want to think a little bit more about what you are using.

Simply Natural Organic, a line of organic food products.  They make ketchup, pasta sauce, salsa, mustard, vinegrettes and more.  We tried the pasta sauce and it made the other brands taste bland and boring.  It was so good, and of course good for you.

Ecover, a line of natural cleaners.  I tried the dish soap and loved it, I have tried a few natural dish soaps that just don't work.  They don't bubble, don't cut grease and just don't work but now Ecover.  It worked great.  Now that we have a dishwasher I don't do dishes by hand a lot anymore though.  The Ecover dishwasher tabs have been used for the last month.  I really didn't think that they would work, there are no commercials about them, you don't really hear about them.  Holy man, they have been in my dishwasher daily.  Pasta, scallop potatoes, chicken on a cookie sheet, dried cereal on bowls, everything has come out sparkling!  I couldn't believe it.  They are awesome. 

You can check out the Healthy Shopper here and you can look at whats in the coupon book here.  You can even print some coupons off right here.  I looked through it and there are some good coupons in there.  I still would like to find coupons for apples and oranges and regular old milk but in time :)

There are some other great aspects on this site.  They have some great recipes on their as well as some other product reviews. Randy Boyer and Andrea Donsky even have a great new book out, Unjunk your Junk Food, check it out with a cup of coffee and let me know what you think!

Dezign with a Z with a Giveaway

We are all settled into our new place and couldn't be happier.  The kids are adjusting well, amazingly actually.  We have had some bumps along the way for sure but they are doing amazing.  I had some dressers from the kids old rooms but had to start over with all of their other furniture.  I found Kristina a loft bed and a great captains bed for Brandon and have picked up bits and pieces along the way.  They both wanted to paint but we are renting so it really wasn't an option.  Our landlords are amazing but I didn't want to have to deal with repainting when we one day move again.

I didn't want posters all over their walls, making holes, so the only option out there is wall decals!  I am a huge fan of wall decals.  They are easy, fun, don't damage the walls, can look so much more amazing than a picture or poster and last untill you are sick of them and really want to change your decor.  Even then you just peel them off and start over.  No muss to fuss.

Kristina is a huge soccer fan, she has played for a year now and loves it.  She begged and begged for soccer wall decals and the only place we could find something soccer related was at Dezign with a Z.  They had a few to choose from, this really cool one of a girl, or they is a boy one as well, kicking the soccer ball.  She finally decided on just the soccer balls.  She was so surprised that you could get the soccer balls in any combo of colors, you didn't have to go with just black and white.  She did end up going with just black and white, classic, but it was pretty cool that you could have pink soccer balls. 

She has been nothing but thrilled with the soccer balls, everyone who comes over gets hauled upstairs and she shows off her soccer balls to them, anyone who will look!  I am thrilled with how they turned out.  They were so easy to install.  After dinner one night we went to town.  They came in two sheets, each with 16 soccer balls on them so we cut out, each ball, very roughly, and sorted them into piles.  Then we started with the biggest ones and put those up throughout her room.

All you do is peel off the white side, rub the decal on the wall, it came with a great plastic card like piece to rub with, you can also use a credit card, and you rub it on the wall really good.  Then you peel off the plastic side.  So easy to do and you don't touch the sticky side of the decal at all which ensures that it doesn't lose its stickiness.  I like to rub the decal again once the plastic is off, just to ensure a good clean stick.  You want to make sure that you start with nice clean dry walls, and if they are freshly painted you want to wait at least a week to ensure its totally dry.

3 out of 4 of Kristinas walls are regular painted drywall walls but one is brick.  We put a few decals on the brick but it was a lot trickier to do as brick is a lot more textured.  The ones we did put on the brick have stuck just as well as the others but I didn't want to do to many just in case it didn't work!

If you are looking for different, funky and fun decals for your kids rooms or your own decor you need to check out Dezign with a Z.  I have a friend who ordered from Dezign with a Z and she gets nothing but compliments on her kids decals and was thrilled with the results she got.  So unique and fun!  While you are there pick out a favorite piece because I have a great giveaway for one of you!  Personally I would love this tree in my room :)

One lucky winner will get a $30 gift certificate to spend at Design with a Z!!

To Enter:

Go to Dezign with a Z and tell me what peice you would choose if you won

(This must be done for additional entries to count)

Additional Entries:

- add my Fun and Funky Mommy button to your blog (2 entries)

- follow me publicly (2 entries)

- subscribe to Fun and Funky Mommy

- like me on facebook (leave your first name and last initial so I can find you)

- blog about this giveaway with a link to me

- follow me on twitter @Funfunkymommy AND tweet about this giveaway for one entry (can RT daily for another entry)

***Feel free to Retweet this***

Win a $30 gift certificate from @DezignwithaZ @Funfunkymommy http://funandfunkymommy.blogspot.ca/2012/07/design-with-z-with-giveaway.html

***** Contest will end on July 31st at 8:00 PM. I will use Random.org to choose the winner. The winner will have 72 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen. Make sure that your profile is set to public or that you include your email in your comments because if I can't get a hold of you can't win! Contest open to Canada and the USA*****