REVIEW: Dinosaur Train: Dinosaur Big City

THE cartoon for dinosaur lovers is off to the Dinosaur Big City for a conference where they have great adventures.

Synopsis: Join Buddy and the Pteranodon family as they gather all their Theropod friends together to travel to the big Theropod Club Convention which is being held in Laramidia, the “Dinosaur Big City!” Among the travelers is King Cryolophosaurus, who’s more than a little nervous about giving a concert in front of his biggest audience ever. Can Buddy and Tiny help him overcome his fear of performing?

With a total run time of over 100 minutes, you will find all four parts of Dinosaur Big city as well as four other adventures.

My girls love Dinosaur Train and in fact so does my husband. He started watching it before my children did. It was him who introduced them to it.

We love that after the cartoon, Dr. Scott the Paleontologist teaches us about the kind of dinosaur we saw in that day's episode.

Dinosaur Big City was especially fun as we got to see what a big city like New York City or Toronto would look like if we were Dinosaurs.  That and the special features King Cryolophosaurus (the Elvis of Dinosaur Train) who I love.

The DVD comes with some special features including an Interactive game, coloring pages, a Dinosaur reference guide, information for parents and Dr. Scott's Segments.

SRP: $14.99 U.S./$15.99 Canada.

Do You or Your Kids Like Dinosaur Train?

*Disclosure: I received the product(s) mentioned above free of charge by the company or PR representative for evaluation purposes. No other compensation was provided. See my Disclosure Policy for more information. 

Finally Fall Paypal Giveaway Winner Announced!

Congratulations to Linda Brooks!!! You are the winner of the Finally Fall $100 Paypal Cash Giveaway!!! You will be receiving an email from Jennifers Savings. Please respond within 72 hours or we will have to draw another winner. Thank you all for the entries! We will be having some more exciting giveaways coming up soon, so make sure that you check back often!!!!!

INFO/GIVEAWAY: Teacher Monday: Cash for Classrooms

I posted about Teacher Monday 2010 and it's time again. Del Monte is trying to get school children to eat healthier by hosting the Teacher Monday Cash for Classrooms contest. Sixty school children from North America will win $1000 cash to purchase school supplies and fresh fruit for the classroom. Several winners will also get a Del Monte Fresh Fruit Field Day at their school with special activities and fruit to eat.

To win, teachers must register online and submit a short essay on how they will incorporate healthy eating and living messages into their lesson plans. Ten winners will be selected each Monday starting October 3 to win. You can read all the details at the Del Monte website.

To help spread the word, I have a backpack of school supplies and coupons for free fruit to giveaway. This is how the prizes will breakdown:

1st Prize: Backpack of School Supplies + 5 X $5 Del Monte Fresh Fruit Coupons (CAN ONLY)
2nd and 3rd: 5 X $5 Del Monte Fresh Fruit Coupons (CAN ONLY)
4th-7th: 5 X $5 Del Monte Fresh Fruit Coupons (US ONLY)

If you win the backpack of school supplies, please share with your child's teacher as there are lots!

You can enter below using rafflecopter. Just click Read More if you can't see the entry form. Also please spread the word to your children's teachers so they can enter!

If you've never used rafflecopter before to enter giveaways, check out this rafflecopter guide.

Rafflecopter Roundup: The Tiniest Tiger Book + Colouring Book (US/CAN/AU/EU)

I'm happy to be participating in the Rafflecopter Roundup event from Sep 21 - 25, hosted by Makobi Scribe and Simply Stacie. I've been using rafflecopter for a month or so now and I love it. I love entering using it too. In fact I've barely entered any giveaways not using rafflecopter since it came out and I've noticed my giveaways get more entries too.

My prize is a Signed hardcover copy of  The Tiniest Tiger plus colouring book. I reviewed The Tiniest Tiger on my book blog previously.

Book Description: Children and adults will revel in this charming and brilliantly told tale of a forlorn and scruffy little kitten with a black stained nose and a striped tail that tries to find a home among the “big” cats that reside at the local zoo. Young readers will especially delight in this truly literary and fully illustrated lesson that advocates the protection of endangered species. When a stray kitten loses her way and is displaced from the only alley she has ever known, she squeezes her tiny body under the fence at the zoo and begins a long and tireless hunt for a home. Her search leads her to a tiger and into a lion’s den by way of a cheetah, clouded leopard, puma, jaguar, bobcat, and an ocelot. She learns a lot about what she isn’t, but gets no closer to finding a home until she is spotted by the zookeeper’s daughter and learns that there is truly a special spot for every cat—even the tiniest tiger—under the sun. - from http://conservationcubclub.com/

The colouring book has 16 pages for colouring and 4 puzzles. If your child likes cats, wild or domestic, this would be a great prize. If you've never entered with rafflecopter before, check out this video. Let me know in the comments if you have any problems. You have to click Read More below to enter if the widget isn't showing up.

After you enter my giveaway, be sure to check out all the other giveaways using the linky below!

Also be sure to check out The Tiniest Tiger Conservation Cub Club blog, a great blog for any pet lover!

REVIEW: Lovable Labels Wire Tags

Lovable Labels is a great way to keep your family organized, whether it's their clothing, your food containers in the kitchen, books, bags or even your garbage bins.

They stick very well and won't come off if they get wet and should last a long time as they aren't easily worn down. You can easily order personalized labels online and have them delivered to your door, anywhere in the world. 

Lovable Labels carries all kinds of different labels from ones made for shoes, to bag tags, clothing labels, household labels, stationery and even id bracelets or bracelets for kids with severe allergies.

One of their newer products is wire tags.

Designed to go around the various power cables in your house, they will help you see at a glance, which cord to unplug from the mess behind your entertainment stand and desks. (It's not just like that in MY house is it?)

They are long and skinny stickers with the name of the cord on both sides so when you fold it over the cord it sticks to itself and it says the name on both sides.

The kit comes with labels for every cord you could imagine. My camera wouldn't take good photos so I got permission to use another blogger's photos. Thanks Sweet Peas and BumbleBees!

Article: Saving Money with Everyday Purchases

If you want to focus on saving money, it has to start with everyday purchases. It is always good to revisit your insurance and other monthly bills to try and save on them, but you need to make sure to get the best price on household products, clothing, appliances and other regular items you need for your home. The best way to go is by shopping online. Avoid the hassle of driving to the store and searching for what you need. Then if you don’t find the item you want, or the price seems too high, you continue going from store to store.

Online shopping simplifies the process with search bars, categories and sale sections. If you are looking for top products, look no farther than Sears. They have top name brands like Craftsman, Lands End, Die Hard, Kenmore and many more. There site has deals of the day and sale items. All these products can be combined with Sears Coupons to enhance your savings and make shopping online the best option. In addition, Sears also owns Kmart, so they have similar items on their site along with a clearance section. Combine the discounts with Kmart Coupons and you will have money to spend on more fun and exciting endeavors like travel and leisure. Save yourself time and money, check online deals at all the major retailers before driving out to the store. Even better is that you can get free shipping coupons to have it delivered at no cost? Hope this helps in your savings effort.

Monique Rowe is a guest writer for My Coupons.com and also writes about thrifty living on her own blog: The One Income Dollar.


Disclosure: This post brought to you by Monique Rowe.

Finally Fall Paypal Cash Giveaway (9/13-9/23)

I have teamed up with Jennifers Savings and MyCouportiera and 16 other bloggers to host the Finally Fall $100 Paypal Cash Giveaway!!! The giveaway starts on September 13th and runs through September 23rd at 12:01 a.m., the 1st day of Fall! All you have to do is follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter widget. A winner will be picked with Random.org via the Rafflecopter widget. You must have a Paypal account before the end of the giveaway to win the prize. The $100 prize money will be awarded in US dollars. Check out these great sites and see what they have to offer! Thanks and Good Luck!

Just click Read More below if you don't see the widget.

REVIEW/GIVEAWAY: KinderGlo NightLight

Elephant Nightlight

My girls (ages 4 and 5) share a room upstairs. We've had a nightlight up there mostly because of the 4 year old and I was hoping to get rid of it as it ends up on all the time. When I heard about KinderGlo night lights, I knew I had to get one. It's an LED rechargeable light that doesn't get hot so your child can take it right into the bed.

It charges during the day and at night, she takes it up to bed with her. She can have it constantly changing colours or it can stay red, blue or green. By default is stays on for 30 minutes and then shuts off but you can set it to stay on all night long.

Lit Up Green

So the elephant my daughter chose comes in the mail and my 4 year old is ecstatic. So am I, no more night light right? Wrong. Now my 5 year old all of a sudden "needs" a nightlight. I think I know what I'll get her for Christmas!

The charger is a little blue platform that plugs into any wall socket and will charge your nightlight. If you have it set to turn off after 30 minutes, one days charge will last a couple of days. My daughter has forgotten to bring it to me to charge a few days in a row and it's still worked. However if you set it to be on all night, make sure you charge it during the day. An older child could be responsible for putting it on the charger in their own room but I have my charger downstairs as I figured they might play with the nightlight during the day and then it wouldn't be charged. 

Want to Buy It?
KinderGlo has given me a coupon code for $5 off each item purchased. Just enter
ZZO2RUM7KBN1 when you checkout.

GIVEAWAY

I am happy to say that KinderGlo has donated one nightlight of the winner's choice to giveaway to a US/Canada reader.

You can see what you can choose from below. You can find out more about KinderGlo at their website.

If you've never used rafflecopter before to enter giveaways, check out this rafflecopter guide.

Giveaway ends Sept 26, click read more below if you don't see the rafflecopter widget.

Finally Fall Paypal Cash Giveaway Staring Sept. 13

I have teamed up with Jennifers Savings and MyCouportiera to host the Finally Fall $100 Paypal Cash Giveaway!!! The giveaway starts on September 13th and runs through September 23rd, the 1st day of Fall!  (So check back then) Check out these great sites and see what they have to offer! You are welcome to go ahead and follow us also! Thanks and Good Luck!

Winner of The Social Picnic 2nd Edition Has Been Announced

I meant to post this earlier, but the winner was chosen for The Social Picnic 2nd edition. Congrats to the winner and welcome to all my new followers. You will have more chances to win great prizes for being a follower, stay tuned!

The Social Picnic $500 and Tablet Giveaway #SocialPicnic2

**This post is a sticky until Sept 9. To see if there are any new posts, scroll down.**

The Social Picnic event is finally here, hosted by This Lil Piglet and Family Approve. To enter the giveaway, the Rafflecopter giveaway form will be located on participating blogs September 1- 12:01 AM EST - 8th 12:01 AM EST

*Guess what? I'm a participating blog! You can gain entries for following on Google Friend Connect, following on facebook, subscribing via email, subscribing via RSS and following on twitter. You can gain another 3 entries by following SMS Book Reviews (my other blog) on Google Friend Connect, following on facebook and subscribing via email. That's a total of 8 entries just for my two blogs! You can gain many more entries by following many other great blogs!

I will be away from the computer Sep 1-4 but will try to check in. If Google Friend Connect isn't working, you'll just to keep trying back. It's out of my control unfortunately.

Enter to win...

$500 Cash via PayPal

Next6 Android Tablet

If you like reading books, browse the internet, listen to music, view your favorite photo albums or videos, Next6 is your new best friend. Its sleek design, touch screen feature, 7 inches color display,and WiFi is nothing short of amazing. As an added bonus, Next6 also comes with 25 free preloaded books. With one touch, you can open your favorite book and enjoy it anywhere anytime. When fully charged, you can read for up to 10 hours.

Your new Next6 will come with the EBook Store App, so you can download eBooks directly from the web. Its crystal clear capacitive screen is easy to use and gives you crystal clear images especially when playing HD video. If it’s games that you prefer, there are thousands of free 3rd party apps available for you to download. Next6, it is all you need in a tablet!!

Rules and Regulations of the giveaway:
1. Each entry gains you one entry towards the winning prizes

2.The winning entry will be checked to ensure they have complied with their entry. If it is found that the winning entry has not completed the entry requirement, a different winner will be selected.

3.The $500 Cash prize is open Worldwide. The Nexbook Next6 Tablet prize is open to US and Canada residents only. One winner will be chosen and will win ALL prizes. If the chosen winner is located outside the US and Canada, they will win the cash prize only and a second winner will be chosen for the tablet.


Tips: If you've never used Rafflecopter before, it's an easy way to enter giveaway's. Keep in mind that Rafflecopter is run using Javascript so you must enable javascript on your computer to use. If you are having trouble, try a different browser or make sure you have updated your computer and browser.

 Because of the amount of entries for this event, we suggest bookmarking this page and spreading out your entries throughout the course of the event.

Have fun and Good luck!

Road Trip from Hell and Smart Phones to the Rescue

What did you do for labour day weekend? We went camping.  Sounds fun and relaxing right? It did NOT go as planned.

The warning signs we ignored:

• My brother mixed up what date we were going and for a while wasn't sure if he could go.
• My dad's work made a mistake when giving him vacation days and we didn't know till last minute if we could go Thursday or Friday and you can't reserve without knowing the days.
• It was calling for rain all weekend.
• We had a hard time deciding on which campground to go to because we wanted one that allowed the dog on the beach if possible and we wanted one close to Waterloo, ON. We were hoping for one that allowed alcohol but the ones close by didn't allow alcohol during Labour Day Weekend. 
• We had a lot of stress trying to figure all this out.

What Went Wrong:

• I woke up the day we left for camp with a migraine. 
• We were shocked to find a bag of wood cost $8! Ice was $2.75
• The Sobeys in Waterloo, ON we shopped at had higher prices than we are used to here.
• That bag of wood? Not dry. Wet wood doesn't burn. We couldn't cook on the campfire (thank goodness we brought a stove) We also didn't get to sit by the campfire.
• Not only did I have a migraine, but my migraines last 2-3 days so I had it Friday and Saturday and Sunday we left camp at 1:30 and we spent the whole time packing so I was pain free only a few hours at camp. Oh and I'm nursing so I couldn't take anything strong so the pain wouldn't ease up and it was horrible. I was nauseous and dizzy too. I spent a lot of time laying down or napping. 
• Remember that rain I mentioned? Friday was beautiful but Saturday we had torrential rain for about 20 minutes (instant flooding) and more thunderstorms later in the evening (which were luckily almost nothing, they were predicting severe storms.) We were lucky as St. Jacob's Market (very close by) was hit by an almost tornado.
• My husband almost got sprayed by a skunk. He was sitting by campfire when something brushed against his leg. He saw a flash of white and thought the dog had got out of the tent. He quickly realized it was NOT the dog. It lifted it's tail and my husband hissed at it and it ran away. Whew! 
• We went swimming in their little beach (an area roped off, only chest deep.) Fun right? It was alright till we got out and saw my youngest daughter had leeches on her!

Okay time to go home. Bad luck is over right?  WRONG!

• For those who don't know, Waterloo is approximately 3.5 hours away from me here in Windsor. I mentioned above we left at 1:30 pm. When did we get home? 9 HOURS LATER! Why did it take 9 hours for a 3 hour drive? Keep reading.
• 8 People including 2 children and a baby plus the family dog were piled into the minivan for the trip. So we were squished which was bad enough.



(c) Flickr user Highways Agency

• About 20 minutes after leaving camp, we blew a tire on the trailer. We pulled over to the side of the road.  The guys changed the tire (we had a spare) and we got back on the road. Not even 5 minutes later, the replacement tire blew. We rode the rims to the next exit where we determined the other tire on the trailer wouldn't last much longer either. Out came the smart phones.
• We searched for the nearest Canadian Tire stores to find replacement tires. My mother didn't even have to enter the city we were in. With a touch of a button, it knew where we were with GPS and located the nearest stores. With just one more touch of a button she was able to call the store, without entering the phone number. Unfortunately they weren't very helpful. We called Uhaul to see about renting a trailer but they didn't have the kind we needed. It took over an hour just to figure out what to do. The guys finally drove back to Waterloo to look around. The rest of us stayed at the restaurant. Luckily the guys had some luck at Princess Auto and found new tires and rims for the trailer and were able to come back and replace both tires. We were off!
• Between all that and a few pit stops because of the kids, it had been a long evening already. We were just outside Windsor on the 401 when... wait for it... a tire blew on the van!
• Out the guys got again. It took them over 30 minutes to get the spare tire out of the van as it was stuck. Smart phone to the rescue again. The flashlight app on my husband's phone came in real handy as it was dark by this time. It provided light for them to change the tire. Another hour had gone by, by the time we got back on the road. Have you kept count? That's 3 tires in one day!
• And so 9 hours later, at 10:30 at night, we arrived back home. Thank goodness for smart phones. Now I just need to get one!

GIVEAWAY: $20 Paypal - Fill Out Survey to Win - WW

I need some feedback. One person will be selected from those who provide a name and email address at the end of the survey to win $20. You must have a paypal account or be willing to open a paypal account to win. This giveaway is open World Wide. You can enter the survey without entering the giveaway. There are only a few questions.

NOTE: I wanted to clarify something from looking at some comments. I will be buying my own domain name but want to decide first if it should be callistasramblings.com or something else. I'm also probably moving to wordpress so I would have a new url and new look anyways so if I do change the name, I have to do it now. My concern with the name is now there are many blogs with ramblings in the title, it's not original anymore.

Survey and Giveaway open until Sept. 19, 2011 11:59 PM EST. Winner will be chosen and contacted that week and I'll try to remember to announce it as well. (see comments below about winner)

CONTEST CLOSED

Swagbucks is Celebrating Labour Day - are you a member?

*This post contains affiliate links. If you click on the Swagbucks links or the image you will be signing up under my referral and I will earn more swagbucks.**

This is my first post about Swagbucks because although I signed up quite a while ago, I wasn't really using it. I was using MyPoints to earn points from searching and since I'd built up points there, I didn't want to lose all those my starting with swagbucks. For a while I tried searching with both but then I realized something.

With Mypoints, you have to earch over 75 times a month to earn any points. With Swagbucks, I earn for every few searches I do. It quickly added up and I've earned enough for a $10 amazon gift card already (although I'm saving up.)

I now recommend Swagbucks more. They have lots of ways to earn points, some of which work only for the US and of course like Mypoints, some require you to spend money first but I'm here to tell you that JUST by searching and nothing else, you can still earn enough for rewards in a few months time, depending on how much you search.

Swagbucks has a special Labour Day/Labor Day set of 5 swagbucks that you can earn from searching. If you earn all 5 before September 5, you will earn an extra 10 SB (swagbucks.) You can keep track in your account area.

You can expect more Swagbucks posts from me as I want to share all about it!