Tim And Angi's Blog » General

Multimedia Remotes And Laptop Movie Time

Angi — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 23:01:10 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Lenovo for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Do you watch movies on your computer as a family? We have and let me tell you, it’s very tight cramming four bodies around one computer monitor. We’ve been contemplating attaching our laptops to our TVs so we can stream movies and TV shows. And until I heard about the Lenovo Enhanced Multimedia Remote, I never thought about how we would control the videos. One of us would have to keep getting up and down to pause or switch between movies. I’m glad someone solved that problem before it became a problem for our household. And they made the handheld multimedia remote small enough to keep in the laptop case so even if we’re traveling we could have a remote for laptop movie nights.

So what is the Lenovo Enhanced Multimedia Remote and what makes it enhanced?

As you saw in the video – you did watch it, right? – the original design was good but left room for improvements to make it great. The backlight makes it so much easier to use when you have movie night with the lights off. But the best improvement is the case not showing fingerprints as easily as the original version. Plus, I love that the USB tucks right between the batteries so it won’t be floating around to get lost.

Do you have an Xbox, PlayStation 3 or Wii? This remote can control these devices as well. That might just be another pro for upgrading our PlayStation the next time it dies.

Way Back Wednesday – More Shirley Temple Part 3

Angi — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 07:01:48 +0000

Welcome to Way Back Wednesday where we’ll be sharing classics books, movies, memories, and commercials that all fall in the public domain.

And you’re invited to link your own Way Back Wednesday post each week in the comments.

The Rules:
There are no rules. We’d love if you link back to Way Back Wednesday and follow us to find out what classic we share each week. And of course, it would be fantastic if you visit others who share their own classic. That’s it.

Banners can be found here.

We’ll be posting holiday themed books and movies for the next few weeks starting with Christmas. And don’t forget to enter our current giveaways while you’re here.

Book: Mamma’s stories about birds
Book: Marigold garden

Movie: To The Last Man starring Shirley Temple

[See post to watch Flash video]

We Bought Over 60 Pounds of Produce

Angi — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:57:07 +0000

That’s right, we bought over 60 pounds of produce in one shopping trip.

30 pounds of yellow onions (Early bird special)

12 pounds of tomatoes

Plus 1 bunch of bananas (Thursday Produce Day), 4 pounds of oranges, 12 avocados (Thursday Produce Day), 2 pounds of jalapenos, 3 pounds of carrots, and 2 bunches of cilantro.

This all started out because the onions were part of the early bird special at 11 cents a pound at Pro’s Ranch Markets. That is the cheapest we have ever seen onions in the store so we jumped at a chance to stock up.

The first thing we did was make a huge batch of salsa then the following night we used our food processor to chop up all remaining onions (we used a couple in the salsa) and put them into snack size zip top baggies for storing in the freezer.

And the best part, we only spent about $15 for all of it.

What is the best deal on produce you’ve found lately?

Image Credit: Onions by zeafonso | Tomatoes by zeafonso

Way Back Wednesday – More Shirley Temple Part 2

Angi — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:01:17 +0000

Welcome to Way Back Wednesday where we’ll be sharing classics books, movies, memories, and commercials that all fall in the public domain.

And you’re invited to link your own Way Back Wednesday post each week in the comments.

Banners can be found here.

We’ll be posting holiday themed books and movies for the next few weeks starting with Christmas. And don’t forget to enter our current giveaways while you’re here.

Book: Disorderly girl
Book: Edwin the young rabbit fancier
Book: Effie and her strange acquaintances

Movie: Poor Little Rich Girl starring Shirley Temple

[See post to watch Flash video]

WWE Supershow

Angi — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 04:13:38 +0000

Sunday night, we went to see a local WWE event. It was originally sheduled as a RAW house show but changed to a Supershow when the a Smackdown event was cancelled due to weather issues.

Bouts

Battle Royal (Participants JTG, Skip “Ryback” Sheffield, Epico, Primo, Drew McIntyre, Santino Marella, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, David Otunga, Mason Ryan, R-Truth and Alex Riley)
Battle Royal Winner vs. Cody Rhodes (Intercontinental Championship match)
Jack Swagger vs. R Truth
Kelly Kelly and Eve vs Beth Phoenix and Natalya Hart (special guest referrer Brie Bella)
Ted DiBiase Jr. vs. Wade Barrett
Big Show vs. Daniel Bryan (Heavyweight Championship match)
John Cena vs. Kane
CM Punk vs. The Miz (WWE Championship match)

Review

The battle royal was finished fairly quick. Sheamus came out the victor after eliminating David Otunga.

Shortly after Sheamus was announced as the winner Cody Rhodes music hit and he came out to start the Intercontinental Championship match.

Sheamus was disqualified for not releasing Cody when Cody was caught in the ropes.

Jack Swagger came out with Vickie Guerrero. They challenged anyone to come out and fight Swagger. R-Truth came out and ended up being Swagger but Otunga came ringside to declare it a non sanctioned match and that Swagger was still champion.

The next match was a divas bout with special referee Brie Bella between Beth Phoenix and Natalya against Kelly Kelly and Eve. This was a quick match and Kelly Kelly pinned Natalya for the win.

Wade Barrett came out on how he destroyed Randy Orton in December and he has been out of action since. Ted DiBiase came out and just stood at the ramp when Randy Orton’s music hit. Barrett. Kofi, Primo, Epico, JTG and Santino came down to the ring to try to separate Orton and Barrett. Everyone received a RKO except Santino.

Big Show took on Daniel Bryan for the World Heavyweight Championship. Big Show won via disqualification but the title belt can only transfer upon a pin fall or submission so Daniel Bryan retains the World Heavyweight Championship.

Kane and Cena were up next. This was a decent match surprisingly. Kane dominated the entire match and ended up being disqualified when Kane hit Cena with a steel chair. The crowd was into this match and was pretty evenly split with two chants. “Let’s Go Cena” and “Cena Sucks”. Kane almost left the stage area but returned to beat on Cena some more when Cena hit him with the Attitude Adjustment. Kane carried Cena well throughout the match.

The main event was next between The Miz and CM Punk. The crowd was really for Punk on this one. Even Little T who used to be a Miz fan turned against him and was for Punk. Punk hit Miz with the GTS for the pinfall. Punk stayed ringside signing autographs for over 20 minutes after the show.

Tim was the cameraman, as usual, for the family. You can see more of our photos over on our Google+ page. Why not +1 our page while your over there?

Disclosure: Tickets were purchased by ourselves. Read our full disclosure here. Links may contain my affiliate ID.

Guess Where We Are?

Angi — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 00:00:29 +0000

Tim, the boys and I are somewhere and it’s your turn to guess where?

Here are a few hints.

Leave a comment and tell us where you think we are?

Why Do Millions Oppose SOPA And PIPA?

Tim — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:01:08 +0000

Currently two bills are before Congress. The bills are PIPA(Protect IP Act) and SOPA(Stop Online Piracy Act) which will censor the internet and may force American businesses to have to close up shop or move out of the country taking away more American jobs. Either way this bill will cause more job loss in a time when we need to be growing our economy and not shrinking it.

Please take the time to tell Congress not to censor the internet and harm the US economy.

Vote For The Net

Google

Image credit: Google image search

Way Back Wednesday – More Shirley Temple Part 1

Angi — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:01:31 +0000

Welcome to Way Back Wednesday where we’ll be sharing classics books, movies, memories, and commercials that all fall in the public domain.

And you’re invited to link your own Way Back Wednesday post each week in the comments.

Banners can be found here.

We’ll be posting holiday themed books and movies for the next few weeks starting with Christmas. And don’t forget to enter our current giveaways while you’re here.

Book: A Child’s Dream of a Star
Book: A Child’s Garden of Verses

Movie: Parden My Pups starring Shirley Temple

[See post to watch Flash video]

Walgreens Prescription Savings Club – Up to 75% off

Angi — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 02:02:08 +0000

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Walgreens for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Source: Chance Agrella via Free Stock Photos

For the past year, Walgreens and Express Scripts have been under negotiations for a new contract for Walgreens to continue as part of Express Scripts pharmacy provider network. Those negotiations were unsuccessful, and the contract expired on Dec. 31. As a result, Walgreens is no longer part of Express Scripts’ pharmacy provider network as of Jan. 1, 2012. This includes all Walgreens pharmacies nationwide and Duane Reade pharmacies in the New York City area.

What does that mean for Walgreens prescription users?

Only patients with certain prescription insurance plans managed by Express Scripts are impacted. If you have coverage through Tricare, the military provider, you will most likely be impacted. It is best to check with your local Walgreens pharmacist to find out for sure if you’re impacted.

If I am impacted, what do I need to do?

To continuing having Walgreens fill your prescriptions, you may benefit from the Walgreens Prescription Savings Club. And to help minimize disruption to Walgreens customers, an individual can join during a special January promotion for only $5, or $10 for a family membership, and receive savings on more than 8,000 brand name and all generic medications. More than 400 generics are available with a three-month supply for less than $1 a week. Regular annual membership is $20 for an individual and $35 for a family.

Follow Company

Walgreens Site
Walgreens on Twitter
Walgreens on Facebook

Kitchen Conversions Using Google

Angi — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 16:32:27 +0000

My secret weapon in the kitchen is conversions. I have a little cheat sheet magnet on the side of my microwave that tells them the common conversions. But what happens when I need to slash a recipe in half or maybe double it for leftovers?

That’s not too bad in most cases but what happens when I only need a portion of the recipe? Usually I make the recipe and then try to work the extra into the menu but with Google, I can easily divide up a recipe into a smaller portions so I can waste less especially if it’s a new recipe that makes enough to feed our family twice.

If the recipe calls for one cup of an ingredient and makes 12 servings, I can use a half cup to make 6 servings but what if i want to make 8 servings?

Does your brain hurt yet? Didn’t realize that math truly would pop up in your daily life, now did you?

Enter this in Google and see what it tells you:

1 cup / 12 * 8 = ? cups
0.666666667 US cups – That’s 2/3 cup

What if i wanted to make 20 servings?

1 cup / 12 * 20 = ? cups
1.66666667 US cups – 1 2/3 cups

Let’s break down the Google search terms:
1 cup – the amount the original recipe needs
/ – divided by
12 – the number of servings in the original recipe
* – times (multiply)
20 – the number of servings I want to make
= – equals
? – the number I don’t know
cups – the unit of measurement I want used for the answer

So not only can I figure out how many cups I’ll need to cut or increase a recipe, if the answer got to small I could convert to a smaller unit – say tablespoons or teaspoons.

For example – What if I wanted to make just one serving of this recipe? Oh that’s simple – 1/12 of a cup. Now where did I put that 1/12 cup container? What, you don’t have a 1/12 cup container? I guess we’d better put it in something you do have.

1/12 cup = ? tsp
4 US teaspoons

That’s better.

You can convert between many different units of measurement of height, weight, and volume – just to name a few.

How many centimeters in an inch? 2.54 centimeters
How many milliliters in a cup? 236.588237 milliliters
How many cups in a gallon? 16 cups
Liters in a gallon? 3.78541178 liters
Inches in a foot? 12 inches
Centimeters in a foot? 30.48 centimeters
Grams in an ounce? 28.3495231 grams

Oh the possibilities are endless.

LTE Has Arrived At Sprint

Angi — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 18:45:54 +0000

Earlier this week, Sprint announced its two first LTE phones; Google Nexus and LG Viper.

They also announced the first LTE cities to receive the 4g upgrades. They will be Denver, Kansas City, Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and parts of Chicago. An additional 10 markets per month will be added once the initial roll-out is successful.

We will be upgrading our phones within the next couple of months. It looks like we will take the Nexus for us and the Viper will be a good economy phone for our parents.

I have a few droid apps I have been wanting to add to my outdated HTC Hero but it just doesn’t have the processor or memory support for them so this will be a nice upgrade. Both of our parents currently only have feature phones too so it is time they go to a smartphone and the Viper seems like a good starter smartphone.

Way Back Wednesday – Winter Holidays Part 3

Angi — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 07:01:45 +0000

Welcome to Way Back Wednesday where we’ll be sharing classics books, movies, memories, and commercials that all fall in the public domain.

And you’re invited to link your own Way Back Wednesday post each week in the comments.

Banners can be found here.

We’ll be posting holiday themed books and movies for the next few weeks starting with Christmas. And don’t forget to enter our current giveaways while you’re here.

Book: Yule-tide Stories

Movie: Managed Money starring Shirley Temple

[See post to watch Flash video]

Cream Soup Base Recipe & Our Weekly Menu

Angi — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 23:38:51 +0000

The other night, I realized that I was out of cream of mushroom soup when I needed a can to prepare our steak stroganoff. I searched and searched and compiled a few recipes to come up with a substitute version that could be modified to make any type of cream soup. It took only a short moment to whip up a enough for one can of soup and there was little difference in the end result, excluding that I had no mushrooms so it ended up being a cream of beef type soup.

Cream Soup Base

Ingredients

Print the recipe here.

2 tbsp butter
3 tbsp all-purpose flour
1/2 cup chicken or beef broth
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp onion flakes
1/8 tsp basil
1/16 tsp thyme
1/16 tsp pepper

Instructions

Melt butter in a saucepan over medium-low heat.
Stir in flour; keep stirring until smooth and bubbly.
Remove from heat and add the chicken broth and milk, a little at a time, stirring to keep smooth.
Return to heat.
Bring sauce to a gentle boil; cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens.

Variations

This cream soup base can be varied by using vegetable broth, sauteed chopped celery, celery seed, or sauteed chopped mushrooms. Adjust herbs or seasonings, as desired.

Preparation time: 5 minute(s)

Cooking time: 10 minute(s)

Number of servings (yield): 10.5 ounces, approx 1 can of cream soup

This week we opted to try out a few new recipes. We tried a fantastic one last night and I’ll work on getting that ready to share soon.

Lunches:

Salad, potato or bread
Leftovers x4
{missing one lunch}

Dinners:

Steak, carrots, some sort of potato
Beefy nacho crescent bake (NEW), 7 layer dip
Three Pepper Pasta (NEW), french bread from the breadmaker
BBQ pork sandwiches, fries
Sloppy joes, fries
Sweet and sour pork, curry chicken, rice

This post may appear at Menu Plan Monday, Mouthwatering Monday, and Full Plate Thursday.

Way Back Wednesday – Winter Holidays Part 2

Angi — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 07:01:14 +0000

Welcome to Way Back Wednesday where we’ll be sharing classics books, movies, memories, and commercials that all fall in the public domain.

And you’re invited to link your own Way Back Wednesday post each week in the comments.

Banners can be found here.

We’ll be posting holiday themed books and movies for the next few weeks starting with Christmas. And don’t forget to enter our current giveaways while you’re here.

Book: Holidays and Happy Days

Movie: Little Princess starring Shirley Temple

[See post to watch Flash video]

2012 Word Of The Year

Angi — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 01:32:16 +0000

Last year we picked health for our word of the year. We ate out less. We made food from scratch. We used local ingredients with some coming directly from our own landlords farm. We attempted to grow our own food. We have become accustom to the slow moving country life.

And while health is still something we will continue to work toward our entire life, I thought we’d pick a new word this year. After thinking about things that we have in store this year, I choose…

Expand

ex·pand [ik-?spand] -verb
transitive verb
1: to open up : unfold
2: to increase the extent, number, volume, or scope of : enlarge
3a: to express at length or in greater detail
b : to write out in full
c : to subject to mathematical expansion

intransitive verb
1: to open out : spread
2: to increase in extent, number, volume, or scope
3: to speak or write fully or in detail
4: to feel generous or optimistic

Since we’re eating healthier, we probably won’t be expanding out waistlines. But we will focus on expanding our blog, expanding our experiences, expanding our knowledge and expanding our world.

So, what is your word of the year? Or if you make resolutions, what ones did you make this year?

Tim And Angi's Blog » General

Multimedia Remotes And Laptop Movie Time

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Way Back Wednesday – More Shirley Temple Part 3

You might also like:

We Bought Over 60 Pounds of Produce

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Way Back Wednesday – More Shirley Temple Part 2

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WWE Supershow

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Guess Where We Are?

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Why Do Millions Oppose SOPA And PIPA?

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Way Back Wednesday – More Shirley Temple Part 1

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Walgreens Prescription Savings Club – Up to 75% off

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Kitchen Conversions Using Google

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LTE Has Arrived At Sprint

You might also like:

Way Back Wednesday – Winter Holidays Part 3

You might also like:

Cream Soup Base Recipe & Our Weekly Menu

Cream Soup Base

Ingredients

Instructions

Variations

You might also like:

Way Back Wednesday – Winter Holidays Part 2

You might also like:

2012 Word Of The Year

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