Free ebooks!

I recently found out from a post on Facebook by one of my friends how you can get free and inexpensive ebooks from Amazon for Kindle.  I do not have a Kindle, but I do have an iPad 2. Amazon provides a free Kindle app for use on the iPad, Android tablet, iphone, ipod touch, Windows phone 7, and Blackberry.  You can also download the free Kindle app to your computer, Mac or PC. I personally prefer to read while on the couch or in bed or while waiting for an appointment, so portable is better for me.

Here is the link to Amazon's free Kindle apps.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=sv_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&docId=1000493771

Here is the link to the website where you can subscribe to the daily emails from Pixel of Ink that show the newest free and bargain Kindle ebooks.

http://www.pixelofink.com/

You can browse by genre, i.e. business, Christian fiction, cookbooks, fantasy, historical fiction, horror, mystery, nonfiction, romance, and science fiction, or by age, i.e. children's books and young adult.  They have different e-mail subscriptions for some of the different categories.

You need to visit the different websites to subscribe to the different e-mails.  I am currently subscribed the the regular Pixel of Ink and the Pixel of Ink-Young Edition daily e-mails.  I won't be running out of reading material for the rest of my life, between these free ebooks and the library!  You do have to be careful though.  Make sure that the title you want to download is still free before you click the "Purchase" button.

Happy Reading!!

Melinda's Baby Shower

This is Melinda's 4th baby boy, so she doesn't really need anything other than diapers and wipes.

I made these invitations to hand out. I made them with Stampin' Up! My Digital Studio. My sister, Melinda, is a demonstrator. (different Melinda) 
Then I had them printed at Walgreen's using a coupon code for a discount.

Melinda supplied the beautiful picture of her beautiful baby.

Here is a link to my sister's Stampin' Up! website.  http://www.stampinup.net/esuite/home/melindas/ 

Kristin and Terra helped me A LOT with decorating and food!

Look at them working hard while I'm taking pictures...

Then Terra got to hold baby Samuel.  What a sweet baby!

I think the guests had a lot of fun chatting and eating and holding the baby.

This is a picture of me with Melinda (and baby Samuel), Kristin and Terra.

The baby shower turned out very well and Melinda felt very loved!  

That is the important thing!

I couldn't have done it without Kristin and Terra!

Our New Couch

This is our new couch! We bought it at Costco.

We love it!

It is so comfy and it looks great in our family room!

It really helps to open up the room.

It feels so much more inviting!

No Soliciting!

In our neighborhood, we have A LOT of solicitors! It really gets annoying after a while.  

No, I don't want to remodel my kitchen that is 4 years old!

No, I don't want a $5000 fence in my backyard!

No, I don't want them to inspect my roof!

No, I definitely DO NOT want a new Kirby vacuum!

If I do want any of these things, I will call them!

So, I had a great idea one day.  I made a No Soliciting sign to put in my window next to my front door.

I love it!!

It is so simple.

I really do want to support Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and 

I have A LOT fewer unnecessary doorbell rings!

I have had a smelly bathroom for a long time.  I didn't know what to do about it.  I would clean the entire bathroom and it would still smell bad. Then I realized the smell was probably coming from the shower drain.  I would clean the cover to the drain with a toothbrush (an old one for cleaning!) and clean out as much hair and gunk as I could, but it just wasn't enough!
Last night I decided to google "how to deodorize a shower drain."  Man, I just love the internet!!
Who knew there were that many stinky shower drains?

These are the links that I found:

www.sheknows.com/living/articles/808474/clean-out-your-shower-drain-without-chemicals

www.ehow.com/how_5616661_deodorize-smelly-shower-drain.html

I used the process from the first website and the amounts of baking soda and vinegar from the second website.

It has really made a huge difference already!!

I still had to clean the inside of the pipe with the old toothbrush to get the rest of the crud down the drain, but after using the baking soda, vinegar and boiling water, it came right off.

Now maybe when I clean my bathroom, it will actually smell clean! I will make myself a note to do this at least every 6 months. (Clean the drain...I plan on cleaning the bathroom a lot more often than that!)

Happy cleaning!!

Here is a picture of my clean shower drain.  I had to crop the picture, though, because now I need to google how to get stains off of your shower floor.  I scrub and scrub and scrub and it still shows grime.  Oh, well, another day, at least it smells better!

Hunger Games/Christmas Tree

Ryan, Nathan and I went to the midnight showing for Hunger Games when it first came out.  We had a lot of fun! Nathan and I have read all of the books. We thought they did a good job on the movie.

We didn't start on our way home until about 3am.

I had just gone to my dad's house in Keokuk to visit them while they were there for Spring Break.  My dad asked me if I wanted a little Christmas tree. 

 I told him no...again.  He had asked me the last time I visited too. Then I thought about Goodwill.  I told him that if he really wanted to get rid of it, we could take it to Goodwill.  He said that would be great.

So we did! At 3am! Ryan propped it up against the front doors.  We thought it was so funny! Well, it was, at 3am!

Naked Eggs

This is an experiment in osmosis.

We think it is pretty cool!

You start with raw eggs, vinegar and clear jars.

Use as many eggs and jars as you want.

Fill the jars with vinegar and carefully put the eggs in the jars.

Wait 24 hours......

Then, empty the vinegar (carefully) and pour in more vinegar.

Wait another 24 hours...

Your eggs should look like this.  The vinegar has dissolved the egg shell. 

You can carefully rub off any remaining shell with your fingers.

Then, we put corn syrup in the 1st jar, tap water in the 2nd jar, red food coloring with water in the 3rd jar, blue food coloring with water in the 4th jar, green food coloring with water in the 5th jar and tap water in the 6th jar.

Wait another 24 hours....

The shriveled egg was in the corn syrup.  Water is sucked out of the egg by osmosis.  The corn syrup has less water in it than the egg, so it balances itself out.

The 2nd egg was in water. There is more water outside the egg than inside, so the egg sucks the water into it.

The 3rd egg was in vinegar, so it should have stayed the same as it already was.

This is the egg from the corn syrup. It looks kinda gross! And the yolk is very firm.

These other eggs are gushy and squishy.  Kinda rubbery and fun to play with. 

But be careful not to pop them!  What a mess you would have then!

The next 3 eggs are really cool!  They look like really bright Easter eggs.

The water isn't nearly as colored now, because the color was sucked into the eggs along with the water.

Nathan is looking at the red egg...

After we popped the red egg, we felt the membrane.  It looks and feels like a popped balloon.

We dropped all of the eggs in the sink at various heights to see how high we could get them before they popped.  This is a messy part, that's why we did it in the sink.  We had 6 eggs because we originally intended to pop just the 6th egg, but then decided we might as well pop them all! More mess, more fun!

Because these eggs have been out of the refrigerator for so long, and because they were soaked in water, vinegar, corn syrup and/or food coloring, we strongly suggest that you do NOT eat any of the eggs from the experiment!