Let's Keep Our Dogs Healthy!

This post brought to you by Hills Pet Nutrition. All opinions are 100% mine.

To say we love our dog Coy would be an understatement.  He came into our lives totally unexpectedly, and he was spared the fate of a shelter dog. 

 

Being a lab mix, and still being a puppy in lab years (he's 1!), we do our best to keep Coy active. He has boundless energy!  We have a small house and back yard, so that means frequent walks and visits to a friend's pasture and pond.

I was excited when I learned about Hill's Healthy Mobility Challenge.  Hill's food can increase your dog's mobility drastically in just 30 days.  This company realizes how important mobility is to a dog's health and happiness.  You should read up on Hill's Pet Nutrition if you're concerned about your dog's mobility and want to keep him/her active!

As owners of a larger dog, we're especially concerned for Coy's mobility, as labs and other similar dogs tend to experience hip and other joint pain as they age.  Such problems severely limit mobility and can lead to weight and health problems.  Hill's food addresses these possibilities by specifically including ingredients in their food that increase joint health.

Worried about affording a premium pet food?  You can download a Hill's Healthy Mobility Coupon to get you started.  Register to receive $30 in coupon offers and automatically be entered to win Hill's sweepstakes.  They're giving away FREE PET FOOD for a year to 30 people!  That's a lot of mobility!

Are you a Facebooker?  So is Hill's!  You can learn more about the Healthy Mobility challenge by checking out Hill's Pet Nutrition on Facebook.

Let's keep our dogs healthy!  They do the same for us. :)

Two Giveaway Winners!

Two giveaways ended tonight.  Chosen by Random.org, the winners are...

Grammy Goodwill for the Trudeau kitchen gadgets giveaway, and Ashley for the Natural Scents soy candle giveaway. 

Congrats!

Thanks to all those who entered, and please check back tomorrow to enter the next great giveaway!

Save Money with Straight Talk

This post brought to you by Straight Talk. All opinions are 100% mine.

My husband and I are cutting corners any way we can (that house down payment doesn't save for itself!).  This has caused us to examine all of our bill statements.  One that particularly frustrates me is my cell phone bill.  Sometimes I ask myself, why am I paying $70 a month in a binding cell phone contract?  I feel like some of that could be going towards our house if I switched to Straight Talk, a service provider that offers no-contract plans but still guarantees nationwide coverage and great reception.  They offer reputable phone brands like like LG, Motorola, Kyocera, Nokia, Samsung.  And with Straight Talk, there's NO contract!  So that means no early termination fees.  There's also no credit check and no surprise bills and fees (which I HATE).

Just consider the "All You Need" plan.  1000 minutes of talk, 1000 texts, and 3 MB of data per month.  That's a lot for only $45 per month!   If you like the sound of that plan, you can get it for an entire year for just $499!   And this includes calling, texting, pictures messaging, and web access.  All of that, plus free 411, and no activation, reactivation, or termination fees. 

Everything you need

Straight Talk also offers long distance plans at low rates.  You can make long-distance calls from your home, office, or cell with a flexible prepaid service.  Call a friend

One drawback to other prepaid services is lack of phone selection.  Not so with Straight Talk!  Reconditioned phones are available for as low as $10, and they come with features such as camera, mp3 player, mobile web access, and BlueTooth capability.  What a great option for children and young teens!  You can also choose from smart phones that have touch screens, cameras, video recorders, music players, instant messaging, and BlueTooth.  Straight Talk even makes the Android phone affordable!  Android on Straight Talk

It's also the favorite of the Fantasy Fly Fishing team!  Hook, line and sinker

For more information, take a look at this video: 

Homestead Sign

Do you think of your house as not just a building to live in, but more of a homestead?   For us, it's a place to live, rest, play, garden, build, worship, work, entertain, and pray.  A place to call our own.

A homestead.

So as I pondered what to put on my latest sign as I decorate for Black and White Fall, I decided that "Homestead" was the perfect word.

I have used stencils and graphite-transfer techniques to make signs in the past, but for this project, I used a glue-transfer technique (Becca was also the inspiration for this sign.  So pefect for my black and white theme.)



This technique definitely works, but you have to be thorough, gentle, and patient (three things that I'm prone to not be!).  You must follow the instructions to the letter (yep, not me again...).  But I did manage to get this to work, and here's how:

1.  Sand away the rough edges of your board, and wipe clean.

2.  Paint your board black and then white.  I used two coats of white, which allowed a little of the black to show through here and there and give the board an antiqued look.

(I do all my painting on my den floor.  With three pets swarming around me.  I'm a risk taker.

3.  Sand the areas of the board where you want the black paint to show through.   (Note: this is somewhat difficult/time-consuming to do by hand.  Alas, I have no electric sander, but it is definitely possible by hand.  You just have to keep at it.)

4.  Paint printer paper with Elmer's Washable Glue.  Make sure you cover the entire area where the image will be printed.  Let dry completely.  When the pages were dry, I stacked them between some heavy books to straighten them out a little and ensure they'd feed smoothly through the printer.

5.  Print out your image on the glue side of the paper.  You need a laser-jet image for this project.  Also, be sure to print a mirror image of your graphic if you are using words.  In Paint.net, you select image, and then flip horizontal/vertical.

6.  Position your graphics on your board to decide where they should be placed.    (The beautiful wheat pictures came from The Graphics Fairy.)

 (Check out the monster mistake I almost made....pretty sure "homstead" is not a word....)

7.  Paint Mod-Podge onto the areas where your graphics will go.  Place them ink and glue-side down, press the graphic onto the board, and smooth out all the bubbles.

 8.  Let the graphics dry to the board overnight.  Removing them too early will result in improper transfer of the ink.  Mine dried a little over eight hours.  I used a wet rag to moisten the graphics and rub the wet paper away, revealing the graphic transferred onto the wood.

9.  I then painted the whole piece with Mod Podge to disguise the areas around the graphics where it had been used to tranfer the image.

That's it!

More than just a home.

Review and Giveaway with Trudeau Kitchen Products

Trudeau gets it.

Cooking can be stressful.  Not necessarily because of following recipes or cleaning up messes or worrying about your family's reaction to a new side dish.  Sometimes, we just don't have the right tools to make cooking easy.  Case in point, last week, a malfunctioning can opener added ten valuable minutes to my prep time and subtracted a little piece of my sanity.

Meet Trudeau's Stress Less line of cooking tools.

"Trudeau reinvents the joy of cooking with the new Stress Less line of kitchenware designed to reduce stress while you prepare your favorite meals. You can now get the most out of your kitchen tools with the least effort."  (Trudeau homepage)

Pictured below are the Stress Less pepper mill and garlic press, two items in this line.

For this review, I received the Stress Less can opener, rotary cheese grater, and pizza cutter.  My first reaction to the products were that they appeared to be of great quality.  It proved to be true! 

The can opener was great timing! (See can opener story at the beginning of this post.)

The pizza cutter will be used more than I like to admit.  It's huge compared to our other cutter and much more substantial with a better blade.  (And we're no longer advertising for an insurance company every time we cut pizza.)

We love cheese 'round these parts.  But we hate grating cheese 'round these parts.  Or at least I do (my husband doesn't do any grating, of course!).  The rotary grater makes it so much easier and much faster, and it eliminates accidentally grating your fingers (been there, done that).

I'm definitely stressing less already!   You can Stress Less to by entering to win your own can opener, rotary cheese grater, and pizza cutter from Trudeau.  Here's how:

TO ENTER:

(Please leave a separate comment for each entry.)

Mandatory Entries:

1.  Be (or become) a follower of Till Death Do Us Part via GFC.

2.  Tell me what stresses you out most about cooking!

Extra Entries:

3.  Like Trudeau on Facebook.

4.  Follow Trudeau on Twitter.

5.  Follow Till Death Do Us Part on Twitter.

6.  Tweet about this giveaway or post it on your blog.

7.  Enter the Natural Scents giveaway.

Seven ways to win!  Giveaway will be open until Sunday, September 18 at 10 p.m. CST.  U.S. residents only.  Winner will be chosen via Random.org and announced here asap!

Good luck!

Saffron Marigold Giveaway Winner!

The winner of the Saffron Marigold table runner is #29, Tanya, of Bright Bird!  Congrats, Tanya!  Thanks so much to all who entered. 

You can still enter the Natural Scents soy candle giveaway here! 

Cozy Crocheted Afghan

I love to crochet.  My grandmother taught me when I was little, and I've been a-crochetin' ever since.

Embarrasingly enough, I started this afghan over a year ago.  Moving (twice), blogging, crafting, pets, jobs, and my husband (not necessarily in that order!) sort of got in the way.

For me, the edging on this one really steals the show.  And my grandmother made herself a blue and white one in the same pattern, so I'll always think of her when I use it.

Cheerful and bright.

Cozy and warm.

Perfect for those cold winter days ahead.