If you are looking for a unique gift for either yourself or your family, then allPopart is a place you need to check out. They take pictures that you send in and turn them into beautiful pieces of art. We personally chose the 4 panel Warhol style for the kids pictures. However, they have so many styles to choose from that you can easily spend an hour or two deciding what you want (trust me, I know from experience). The next hardest part after deciding what style is deciding what pictures to use! Once you have those two decisions made, the rest is breeze. Everybody loves this picture. Madison thinks it is the coolest thing ever to have this on the wall. Will just says “see” to everybody, so they look at it. I am currently waiting for Bill to hand it in the basement. However, for now, I have it on the ledge:

It loks awesome there too, and it completely goes with the color scheme we have down there. I have had several people already ask where we got it from! This is an excellent heirloom to pass down and a great way to mark your children’s youth. I highly recommend allPopart for their quality and for their customer service. I am 100% satisfied and have told everyone they need to get some art for their house from allPopart!
Tags: allPopart, basement, Bill, breeze, christmas, color, coolest, Countdown, customer, Everybody, everyone, experience, family, gift, heirloom, hour, house, ledge, Madison, panel, part, picture, place, quality, recomment, rest, scheme, service, style, thing, trust, Wall, Warhol, way
Posted by Lisa
in Gift Guide, Home
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I love Lands End. They have some of the greatest products. They are priced great for the quality you get. In case you don’t know, Lands End has more than just clothes. I have a Lands End jacket (I did a review of it a while back), luggage, and slippers too!
Madison picked out these really cute kid slippers herself. I was leaning more toward some that looked like ice skates, and she was like “no mom, I like the penguins”, so as you see, she won that argument. We were in the market for some slippers for all of us for the basement. As you may know, we remodeled and put down tile on the floor. However, that tile gets really, really, really cold, and it hasn’t gotten below 0 yet. Also, my house is pretty much all hardwood floors. Socks don’t work well, because everyone ends up slipping and sliding and falling all over. Madison told me they were super warm and then makes me touch her sweaty feet when she shows me (the joys of being a mom).
Now, Mommy took care of herself too. I picked up a pair of these travel slippers. They are extra flexible for easy packing and are super soft. They also have a slip resistant outsole. Since I go to quite a few conferences, these will come in really handy. Also, I have been using them around the house. These also save my feet from my ice cold floors (both upstairs and downstairs). My husband is liking them since I am not sticking my ice cold feet on him anymore.
Another piece we have added to our travel arsenal is this wheeled duffel bag. Can I tell you how awesome it is? Without anything in it, it is small enough to fit under my bed. Space is it a premium in my house, so that is so helpful! It also comes in extremely helpful when we go up to visit my parents. We are trying to get 4 people in two tiny bedrooms, so space is limited there too! It is made out of denier ballistic nylon which is resistant to tears, abrasion, stains, and moisture. Basically, it wil take a lickin’ and still look great! You can even get it monogrammed!
Now, all I know you want to know how to get your hands on this stuff, so I am having a giveaway. The winner gets to pick which item he/she wants! Here’s what you need to do:
1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know what you want and why!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc. (1 entry for each social network).
For 5 additional entries,
1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

This giveaway will end on December 5 at 8:00 pm CST is available to US residents only. Good luck!
Tags: abrasion, anything, argument, arsenal, bag, basement, bed, blog, blogging, Care, case, duffel, everyone, floor, giveaway, hardwood, house, husband, ICE, item, Jacket, Lands End, lickin, lori, luggage, Madison, market, moisture, mom, mommy, nylon, outsole, packing, pair, piece, post, premium, quality, review, stuff, Stumble, tile, Travel, upstairs, URL, US, while, wil, winner
Posted by Lisa
in Home, contests
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One of best cameras I have owned is the Sony Cybershot. It is awesome that you don’t have to carry around a ton of luggage to take this camera with you. You can easily slide this slick phone into either your purse or your pocket. The 4GB of internal memory can store up to 40,000 VGA-quality photos or 1,000 8-megapixel pictures. You seriously don’t need a memory card to make this camera work. You also don’t need to read the manual that comes with to make it work. The part that impressed me the most is that the pictures are awesome.
This camera takes the best pictures of any of the digital ones that I owned before this. On my other blog, I chronicled my entire basement remodel using this camera. I use this camera when we are out and about with the kids. The menu is done by touchscreen, so you don’t have forty thousands buttons to figure out. If you are in the market for a new point and shoot camera, I highly recommend a Sony Cybershot!
Tags: basement, blog, camera, card, Cybershot, forty, luggage, market, megapixel, memory, menu, part, phone, pocket, point, purse, remodel, Sony, ton, touchscreen, VGA-quality, work
Posted by Lisa
in Technology/Gadgets
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Summer heat in Chicago has been so hot lately (yes, I am complaining about those 90 degree days with 90% humidity). With our newly remodeled basement and the Wii we just bought, we are definitely have some fun down there. Since we have no games for our newly acquired Wii, we headed over to the nearest game store. I luck out that we live less than five minutes from mall. I also luck out that we have two Gamestops in our mall (one on each end). We checked them both out. One did seem to have more kid games; the other more adult games. We are not sure if this was on purpose or just happened to be that way when we were there. I liked that we got to check out the Wii there before buying it. Madison immediately picked up a controller and started playing a Sonic game, so we knew she would adapt quickly. The other thing I really liked about Gamestop was that you can buy used games. You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg on games then. We don’t care how old the games are as long as they are fun. I was afraid that they wouldn’t work, but we were assured that they were guaranteed to play. We were also told that we could bring in some of our old games and get credit to buy some new ones (and we have a stack of games nobody ever plays!). I found that the workers behind the counter at both stores were extrememly helpful, and they didn’t mind too much that my four year was picking out ten games she wanted us to buy (we settled on Wall-E). I would highly recommend Gamestop as your one stop game shop (they also have gaming systems and accessories, so you can get those there too!).

Tags: adult, arm, basement, Chicago, controller, counter, credit, degree, end, fun, game, Gamestop, Gamestops, gaming, humidity, kid, leg, luck, Madison, mall, nobody, purpose, shop, Sonic, Summer, thing, Wall, way, wii, year
Posted by Lisa
in Games
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