With the Ziploc Prize Pack Giveaway over, I checked Random.org and the winner was #11.
Checking the comments, this was Cheryl F. (The Lucky Ladybug). I contacted her and she’s already replied with her address. Congratulations, Cheryl!
It’s no secret that I love taking photos. I’ll annoy my kids, wife and everyone in a five mile radius just to get that perfect shot. Once the photos are taken, I’ll select the very best to put online to share with others.
But, as much as I love taking photos, I secretly hate printed photos. I never remember to put them in their frames, they never seem to find their way into photo albums and the ones I have up wind up old and outdated. If you were to visit my office, you’d see shots of NHL from when he was under a year old. He’s 7 now, but I just never seem to get around to replacing those photos.
Photobooks, are another story. The photos in them don’t go out of date the way a 4×6 framed photo will. You don’t need to find an album to put them in (since they are already in a book) and you can easily tell which photobooks are for which events.
I was given the chance to review LuLu’s photo books. I’ve put photo books together on other systems and had even made a LuLu.com one awhile back (for a charity project, though I never got around to ordering one for myself). In the time since I had put my last LuLu.com photobook together, though, they must have changed systems because I don’t remember it being this easy… or fun!
First, I choose the theme of my book. I had decided to compile photos of every character we had met while at Disney World and Six Flags. I chose my photos, narrowed them down to eliminate duplicates and logged into Lulu.com. From there, I named the book, chose a cover and a design. I went with one that, I thought, felt like a travel journal. I was able to move photos around and choose different page layouts with different photo sizes. Before too long, my book was done and ready to be printed.
When it arrived in the mail, I eagerly opened up the package and was pleasantly surprised. The book looked even better in my hands than it did on the screen.
I really liked how some of the photos seemed to be "attached" to the page, as if I had glued them in by hand while others seemed to be floating slightly above it (as if they weren’t glued in completely). We’ve taken this book to family events to show off. Cousin S, who will be going to Disney World soon, especially loved seeing all the Disney characters in the book. We will definitely look to LuLu for future photo book needs (and we have a few photo book ideas).
Giveaway:
Thanks to LuLu.com, one lucky winner will receive a free 20 page, 8.5 square hardcover photo book. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What types of photos would you fill your photo book with?
You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.
To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, September 30th and ends at Noon EST on October 14th, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. only.
Disclosure: I received a free 20 page hardcover photobook and some other merchandise complimentary of LuLu.com in order to facilitate this review. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. LuLu.com is also providing the giveaway item to my readers.
NOTE: Due to a Typo (read: me copying and pasting and forgetting to update a section of text), the "@Luludotcom/Lulu.com" part of the tweet requirement wasn’t listed for awhile. So I’m going to be lax on that requirement. (Not fair to disqualify entries for not adhering to a rule that wasn’t spelled out properly.) Tweets should still name @TechyDad and have a link here, though, since those requirements were listed correctly.
Oops! With all the Jewish Holidays and family trips and everything, I nearly forgot to select a winner for my Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner giveaway. So let’s consult the crystal ball (also known as Random.org):
Ah! Lucky 29! This means that Michelle Simons is the winner. Michelle has been notified and has 48 hours to contact me back. If she fails to do so, I’ll select another winner. Congrats, Michelle and check your inbox!
With school here (and me continuing to bring lunch into work), we’re going to be sending in a lot of lunches and snacks. This means that I’ll be packing a lot of items in either Ziploc bags (which I try to reuse as much as possible to reduce waste) or Ziploc storage containers.
I was sent a Ziploc sandwich bags, slider bags (both Quart Storage and Quart Freezer) and Smart Snap storage containers. All three of these come in handy around the house. The obvious use for the sandwich bags is lunches, but we also use them to help keep small items together. For example, Box Tops For Education which Ziploc, and many other national brands, participate in. Instead of having those clipped box tops lying around (and possibly getting lost), we’ll toss them into a Ziploc bag and keep them all together until they can be sent in to our school. The Ziploc containers come in handy for storing leftovers and transporting them to work for lunches. As a bonus, we toss them in the dishwasher and use them over and over and over. (There’s that Reuse in Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.)
The freezer bags, obviously, get put to use keeping items frozen. I like to take fruit that is heading past its prime (which I know we won’t finish before it spoils), cut it up and stick it in a Ziploc freezer bag. Then, once frozen, it can be used later on for smoothies or other dishes. The Ziploc storage bags are handy for corralling various items around the house (similar to the sandwich bag example above, but bigger items like batteries).
You can find Ziploc brand storage bags and containers in your local supermarket.
Giveaway:
Thanks to SC Johnson, one lucky winner will receive a Ziploc prize package containing:
To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What would you store in a Ziploc storage bag or container?
You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.
To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, September 20th and ends at Noon EST on October 4th, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only.
Disclosure: I received a Ziploc package (containing the products described above) complimentary of SC Johnson in order to facilitate this review. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. SC Johnson is also providing the giveaway item to my readers.
If you’re anything like me, you have a love/hate relationship with cleaning. I love a clean house, but hate how much time needs to be put in to clean the house. I’d rather be spending that time playing with my kids or having a date night with my wife. Still, if you don’t put in the time, the house begins to take on a rather unsavory appearance.
One of the worst jobs has got to be scrubbing the toilet bowl. First, you need to squirt that foul-smelling cleaner around the rim. Then, you need to wait for it to soak in. Then, you need to remember to go back and clean it off. And you just know that, during the soak-in time, a little one will run up needing to use the potty!
That’s why I was excited over the prospect of the Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. You attach it to the toilet bowl and a sensor detects when the bowl isn’t in use. When the sensor identifies the appropriate time, it sprays a cleaning solution around the entire bowl’s surface. The next time the toilet is used, it is clean. That’s the theory, anyway. So how did it work?
I took the automatic cleaner out of the packaging and set it up. I was half-afraid that this would be complicated, but it was actually quite simple. I just clipped one end to the bowl and suspended the other end from the toilet’s tank. After putting in the bottle of cleaning solution and giving it a “test fire,” I let it do it’s job.
We have hard water and, as such, will often get hard water stains on our bowl. I knew this was coming so I purposefully left them in place to see how it would do. Unfortunately, it didn’t get these off by itself. After scrubbing the bowl, though, I haven’t seen any sign of new hard water stains appearing (going on 2 weeks now).
The cleaner does a very good job of firing off only when the toilet isn’t in use. In fact, for awhile, I was wondering if it was working at all. The bowl was clean, but I never heard it fire. Then, I realized that the cleaning solution was steadily going down. So there was actual proof of it working even if it was a very stealthy cleaner.
You can purchase Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner from Amazon.com (affiliate link) or from Drugstore.com. But wait, there’s more!
Giveaway:
Thanks to Edelman and SC Johnson, one lucky winner will receive a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner. To enter, simply leave a comment below answering this question: What is one household cleanup chore (besides the toilet) that you wish you could automate?
You can also earn bonus entries by doing any (or all) of the following items. Just be sure to leave a separate comment for each item that you complete.
To enter, please follow the rules above within the comment section. Contest starts today, September 2nd and ends at Noon EST on September 16th, 2010. You do not have to be a blogger to enter, but must leave a valid e-mail address for me to contact you for mailing address once the giveaway is over. I will select the winner using random.org and contact you via e-mail. You will have 48 hours to claim the prize. If there is no response, another winner will be selected. Open to U.S. and Canada residents only.
Disclosure: I received a Scrubbing Bubbles Automatic Toilet Bowl Cleaner complimentary of Edelman and SC Johnson in order to facilitate this review. No other compensation was given. The opinions expressed above are my own. Edelman and SC Johnson is also providing the giveaway item to my readers.
