You know how on those cold winter days, when nothing sounds better than a hot mug of Cocoa.  You would have to heat up the water or milk over a stove or in a microwave.  And if you were making multiple cups for others, you would be at the microwave for what seemed like hours, heating and stirring and heating and stirring.  After all that work of stirring, it was never good enough, there were clumps and it never tasted like the Hot Cocoa you would get in a cafe.  Even though it wasn’t quite the best, we did it any way, those were our options for Hot Chocolate made at home.  But now, lucky for us Hot Chocolate lovers, they have finally invented the Dream Machine and it’s called the Bialletti Hot Chocolate Pot and it’s exclusively from Williams-Sonoma.

Bialetti Hot Chocolate Pot

You will absolutely love this Hot Chocolate Pot.  It is so easy to use and makes the best tasting hot chocolate. All you do is add your milk, shaved chocolate or favorite cocoa, and then sit back and watch as the pot creates a perfect blended mixture. The best part is that it creates a rich foam and creamy froth.  So this winter and holiday season you can sit back and enjoy in your own home, great tasting hot chocolate.  What more could you want?

Right now the Bialetti Hot Chocolate Pot is on sale, was $99.95 and now $79.99.  So it is a little pricey, but well worth it.  For those frugal shoppers I did find three similar items.  They all got great reviews.

The first one is found at Target.  Called The Bodum Hot Chocolate Frother for $39.99

Bodum Hot Chocolate

The second one is found at Bed Bath & Beyond. Called The Back To Basics Cocoa Latte for $29.99

Back To Basics Cocoa Latte

And the third one is found at Walmart.  Called The Mr. Coffee Cocomotion for $23.84

Mr. Coffe Cocomotion

They all accomplish the same thing which is,  automatically heating and mixing hot chocolate into a frothy, creamy, tasty drink.  So which ever one you choose from, the Bialetti Hot Chocolate Pot or the ones I found at the other retailers, you will be pleasantly happy with your purchase.  Chocolate has never been Hotter!

Image Sources: William-Sonoma, Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, Walmart, and flickr.com

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Chocolate is sometimes considered sinful. We are encouraged to stay away from it-resist it and the calories it gives you. Women especially are tempted by it’s sweetness and what it does for the soul, even though it’s not always great for our bodies. Well thanks to Compartes Chocolatier out of Los Angeles, you can be your own advocate and cancel out the sin by doing good when you treat yourself (or others-although personally I have a very difficult time sharing my chocolate) to their yummy chocolate goodness. Purchase their limited edition Chocolates For A Cause and your money will go towards funding the only women’s center in Darfur through Relief International. Compartes has teamed up with Relief Beads to provide this opportunity through chocolate bracelets. So now you can team up with chocolate and indulge in your cravings or satisfy that person on your Christmas list without guilt by doing GOOD!

Images: Officedog.co.uk and Compartes.com

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Christmas is almost here and most of us are already preparing. Setting up the decorations, shopping, planning parties, and just getting in the Spirit of the Holidays. I love this time of the year so much that I start planning for Christmas the day after Halloween. I know, I’m one of those holiday freaks. If I could have my house like The Griswold’s, from The Christmas Vacation, I would. But I made a promise to my neighbors I would never take it that far.

In order for me to get in the spirit of the Holidays and start all the preparations, I start listening to Holiday Music, literally the day after Halloween. I can’t get enough of it. So I wanted to share with you my 15 favorite Holiday Soundtracks. I would’ve added like 50 more but I had to cut it off at some point. There are so many choices out there that it’s hard to pick my absolute favorites, but I did my best. This list includes some of my favorites from the past and some new ones just released this year. I hope that you’ll check some of these out and that they will become some of your favorites as well. You can get these at Amazon, iTunes, or your local Walmart or Target.

New Releases This Year:

1. What A Night! A Christmas Album by Harry Connick Jr.

Image Source: Amazon.com

2. A Swingin’ Christmas by Tony Bennett

Image Source: Amazon.com

3. A Lovely Way To Spend Christmas by Kristin Chenoweth

Image Source: Amazon.com

more…

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*FOR HER*

Where: VictoriasSecret.com

Sale: 20% off your Entire Order

Ends: December 3rd

Super Find: $15 Turtle Neck Sweater (was $38) *All sweater purchases come with a free scarf. OFFER CODE: LUXE08

*FOR HIM*

Where: Menswearhouse.com

Sale: Designer Suit Sale. Buy 1 Get 1 Free. Plus Free Shipping.

Ends: Ends Today!! November 30th.

Super Find: $399.99 Taupe Multi Stripe Suit + One other Suit for FREE

*FOR LITTLE HER*

Where: GarnetHill.com

Sale: Up to 70% off children, women, men and home items.

Ends: December 1st

Super Find: $9.00 Party skirt (was $42)

*FOR LITTLE HIM*

Where: KbToys.com

Sale: 60% off games plus other sales for girls and boys.

Ends: December 1stSuper Find: $24.99 Spider-Man Electronic Pinball Machine

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Thanksgiving is almost here. Which means there’s a lot of planning and preparing that needs to be done. With all that work, it helps to have some good kitchen tools. So I chose six of my favorite must haves to help prepare with the Thanksgiving feast. I found my items at Williams-Sonoma. Most of the following items are Williams-Sonoma exclusives, and can be purchased at their store or online. You can also shop around and find similar items at places, such as Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, or Macy’s.

Turkey Roaster

The top of my List would have to be the All-Clad Stainless Steel Roaster with Rack. What I love about this Roaster is that it is Stainless Steel for easy cleaning. It has very large sides, it’s deep so that reduces splattering. Then the handles which help for easy lifting. Wonderful!

Retails for: $159.95 - $199.95

more…

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Image Source

I heard about this website from a friend of mine. We both have young toddlers running around our homes, and while they’re running we’re chasing them trying to clean up their messes. Now I will admit most of their messes are just the usual clothes thrown every where and toys in every room of the house (these are the easy messes). But then there are the real messes these little ones make. Like ketchup all over their clothes or a boxed drink spilled on the carpet. Whatever it may be these are the messes that are stressful and sometimes very hard to clean up. I will admit that these messy spills are not always my kids, my husband and I have made those similar mistakes here and there. So as I was telling my friend about a recent incident one of my boys had with some juice stains on the carpet, she told me about this wonderful site. My friend said that this site is a great resource for anyone with a cleaning problem. The site is called How To Clean Stuff.net. This site covers literally everything from good old fashioned stain removal to cleaning your kitchen or bathroom, to cleaning a babies finger nails. I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to have a one stop resource on your cleaning inquiries. Love It!

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I’m sure most of you heard of the Kindle either before or (definitely) after it was mentioned on the Oprah Show this month. If you were like me you have big plans to get it for yourself as well as for your friends or family members as a great Christmas Gift this year, but there may be a few things you want to know before rushing in and spending $359.00 ($300 with Oprah discount til Friday Oct. 31) on the new “it” item.

First for those that are not familiar with the Kindle it is an electronic book reader that wirelessly and without a computer downloads books, magazines, newspapers, Blogs and RSS for your reading pleasure. It does not take a computer and it does not take a pre-existing Internet connection; it runs off of Sprints very reliable EVDO Internet. You can browse nearly 200k titles on Amazon’s site from the reader and download them within minutes to your reader. It is in my opinion one of the best ideas in consumer electronics in the last 10 years. It seems to be a must have for anyone that reads frequently.

So I in preparation for buying many before this Friday, I had my husband research it a little more to make sure it was worth getting (he doesn’t take everything Oprah says as doctrine) and he found some interesting things.

Now even though many of us are just hearing about the Kindle it officially launched in late 2007 and there has been a lot of mixed messages from early users, as well as a lot of speculation as to a new and improved 2.0 version. If you remember all the hype behind the $500 plus iPhone only to find that the 3G was soon to be released making the old version obsolete within a year of production, you could see why I got worried when my husband started to tell me the same thing about the Kindle. So I did some digging and here is what I found. more…

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So other than the service is sometimes bad, I love my iPhone! I wanted to share some of my favorite iPhone and iPodtouch applications.

The Face Melter

($1) The Face Melter is so fun to mess around with if you have time to kill. You just choose a picture from your library and then with your finger you can change the picture to make yourself look fatter, thinner, crazy or really anything. Then after you edit the picture you can hit a play button to have the photo move. Here are some examples of what you can do:

Wurdle

($2) Wurdle is my favorite game. You will love it if you love the game Boggle. There are a bunch of tiles and you find at least 3 letter words that connect to each other. There is also an option to put your own personal picture on the background of the tiles. I love this game!

Phlipper

($1) Phlipper is a fun matching game. You can customize your own pictures, and choose multiple pictures at a time to upload. It is so much funner to match when you can use your own pictures. My kids love seeing their pictures and you can make it more…

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www.513coupons.com

With all that’s going on in the economy these days, we can all use a little relief, any where we can get it. I for one need help at the grocery store. I am use to just buying whatever and not even looking at the prices. I wish I was more of a savvy shopper, but I’m not, so any help I can get is much appreciated.

So recently I heard all this buzz has been around this women’s site, called couponmom.com. She has everything you need to know about coupons and saving money on her site. It’s wonderful! Everything from free coupons to free samples, as well as some very helpful money saving tips. I especially love the restaurant coupons and free offers since my family and I tend to eat out a bit. Along with couponmom.com I found four other really helpful sites, that I think you’ll enjoy. They are: retailmenot.com, couponcabin.com, currentcodes.com, and fatwallet.com. These sites can help us have fun shopping, while still saving money.

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credit: parentsresourcenetwork.org

As a mother of four year old twins, I find myself juggling more than I can handle at times. That’s even with the help of my wonderful husband who fortunately works from home and helps out a lot. Even with a wonderful husband, great family and friends, at times it just doesn’t feel like enough support, and I feel as if I am failing as a parent. There are some days I feel like I did everything right and my kids are getting it-that they are getting all the teachings and nurture that I had intended for them. Then there are the days that as a parent I feel inadequate and I question everything I’m doing or already have done. That is why I enjoy talking with other parents, sharing experiences, getting advice and all kinds of helpful parenting tips. In the last four years, I have learned many helpful things, but I realize there are still plenty of things to be learned. I am excited to learn and grow and hopefully get the stamp of approval from the critics that matter the most-my kids-that yes, I was indeed a great parent. I know I won’t ever be perfect at all of it. I will fall short at times, but that fact that we as parents keep trying and learning, right there makes us pretty good parents. So I wanted to share this website I found recently with you all. It’s a site that has a lot of helpful parenting tips, along with some clever and fun ways at teaching our kids important values. Check it out. Even though Parenting can be hard at times, we as Parents can still enjoy teaching our kids important values and manners. Happy Parenting to all!
valuesparenting.com

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