"What's this about?!" is probably what you're asking yourself right about now. It's the view we had while driving home on HWY 400 south of Barrie, Ontario today. At 2 in the afternoon, suddenly the sky went dark and the rain came down, lightning galore and then hail! It got so dark... the street lights came on! Our wipers were going full speed in this shot... How did your Victoria Day celebrations come to an end?
Wordless Wednesday blog hop time!! Link up, let's have some fun.
A few days before I left for Dallas on business back in March, a giant box from Ziploc arrived on my doorstep. If you know me, you know this excited me beyond belief. Storage Solution Space Bags!! SCORE!!
Anytime I open up a closet in my home, something is liable to come spilling out. OPEN WITH CARE needs to be posted on the two linen closets on my upper floor in particular.
I so needed to de-clutter!!!
Today, the Saturday of a four-day holiday weekend, I decided was the day that a child would no longer be in danger if they wanted to get new sheets for their bed!
In true Shash fashion, I made asked the kids for their assistance. That way if I opened a closet and everything inside fell on top of me, there would be someone around to save me...
The box from Ziploc contained the following items: Combo Assortment Pack, Jumbo Bags, Cube Bags, Hanging Suit Bags, and Travel Bags for me to try out and they've offered to give the same basket of goodies to one of my Canadians readers. Pretty nice eh?! Now, I received a double basket because of the size of my desperation er, I mean because of the size of my family... :)
Space is at a premium in my house! Even though it is a home we built back in 2005... we didn't have the foresight to plan enough linen closets / storage spaces in the design for a family of our size. It all looks fine until nine (YES, 9) people move in under one roof.
Did you know that stress is directly related to clutter?! If you have boxes in the corners, clutter on the counters, linens overflowing out of closets, and clothes bursting out of drawers, your brain works overtime thinking about where all those items should properly be stored. Clutter makes it hard to really and fully relax. Did you know that clutter inhibits creativity and productivity?!!
So today was the day I reclaimed the precious space in my house!!
Many of the winter blankets went into the basement storage space, after being sucked flat of course, where they'll be safe until the cold weather returns later this year. I also put all the baby receiving blankets I've been hanging onto into a Ziploc Space Bag - properly stored so they don't get ruined. One day I will make that quilt...
Now that I've convinced you these are the bees knees, which Canadian would like to win their own goodie basket of home storage essentials?! Contest is open from now until 11:59PM ET on May 31, 2013.
My kids are sport fiends, their father is one as well, so the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. We've been blessed we have had the opportunity to enroll our kids in various club sports like hockey, volleyball and soccer. I can see the benefits sports has had on them and it's not just physically but it's also academically, emotionally, and socially.
OVA 15U Silver Medal Champions
But did you know that 1 in 3 Canadian families cannot afford to enroll their children in sports or other recreation activities like swimming or gymnastics (Vision Critical 2011)? There are a lot of kids who are missing out!
Canadian Tire Jumpstart is dedicated to remove those barriers so other children aren't left out.
We see it as equipping kids for life, because participation in organized sport and recreation increases a child’s chance for success in life.
They discover and participate. They gain self-confidence. They develop self-esteem. They learn leadership skills. Their lives become richer. This is the power of Canadian Tire Jumpstart.
Since the inception in 2005, Canadian Tire Jumpstart has given more than 582,816 kids across Canada the chance to play.
100% of customer donations go directly to help kids in financial need participate in organized sports and recreational activities.
The Canadian Tire Corporation funds all the general and administrative expenses as well as the program delivery costs of the Canadian Tire Jumpstart program.
Join us on Thursday May 23rd for the #JumpstartDay Twitter party from 9pm-10pm ET. Great prizes and a celebrity guest! Don’t forget to follow your host @CTJumpstart and your moderators:
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LINKY: Make sure to enter your Twitter Handle “@yourTwitterhandle” in the Link/Blog Title field, and Twitter URL “www.twitter.com/yourtwitterhandle” in the url Field*
How can you support Canadian Tire Jumpstart?
• Make a donation
• Host your own event in support of Canadian Tire Jumpstart
• Support a fundraising event for Canadian Tire Jumpstart
• Visit one of our partners: any Canadian Tire, Gas+, Mark’s, SportChek, Atmosphere or Pita Pit location and get your own Jumpstart Red Ball for a $2 donation
• Visit your local Canadian Tire on Jumpstart Day, May 25, 2013
• ‘Like' the Pita Pit Facebook page during May, and Pita Pit will donate $1 for every like they get to the page
• Visit Buffalo Wild Wings on Wednesdays in May, and donate 10% of your bill to Jumpstart
I haven't had access to Microsoft's Office 365 for too long, but in the time I have had it... I'm amazed. There are a few key features which have caused me to make loud, audible noises as I discovered them. My first WOW moment was at the Microsoft Canada store where they told me I could now edit PDF's. That was a very noisy discovery! :)
Learning all the new Office 365 features would have been a bit easier if I didn't have to learn a whole new laptop at the same time. There's only so many changes this old bird can handle. LOL :) I've used a MacBook for the last few years, so anytime you make me try something new... it takes me a while to get used to it. I've finally gotten to the point where I'm typing on the right keys without having to look at the keyboard...
I get to use it when the kids aren't...
I must say... the ASUS touch screen on my new laptop is absolutely titillating but I'm still getting frustrated with accidentally laying my palms down on the touch pad, changing the page or font size or completely changing the tab on myself...
Office
365 Home Premium will include downloadable iterations of seven apps: Word,
Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, Access, and Publisher. In a way, it will
also support even more than five devices, because it will also fold in Office
Web Apps. These Web Apps are limited, browser-based versions of Word, Excel,
PowerPoint and OneNote which won't require you to download Office. So if you're
working on a remote PC somewhere, and you don't want it to count as one of your
five devices, you can use Web Apps instead.
So back to some of my favourite features of Office 365:
1) Edit-ability of PDF's! Need I say more??
2) New and improved zoom feature. I can zoom into a particular spot on my Word document in a quick double-tap flash.
3) The new PowerPoint includes more transitions, better control over slide design and a revamped interface to make it easier to produce nicer looking PowerPoint presentations.
4) Full online integration. One word.... the CLOUD! Office 365 is available to you from anywhere and at anytime. It offers 20GB of FREE SkyDrive storage with purchase {which are divided into easy monthly payments vs a large annual lump sum}.
5) As far as numbers-crunching programs go... this new Excel is fantastically easy and smart! I've always been a bit afraid of Excel, but not any more. This is so much easier to use. I'm loving the data analysis abilities and all those fabulous graphs and charts!
As an added bonus, you'll get 60 FREE minutes of SKYPE calls per month. There is full functionality online! I use SKYPE on my Windows Phone all the time! The integration between my phone and laptop now is seamless. My photos magically appear and everything I've done on my phone is automatically synced to my laptop. It's super slick and smart!
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