Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



You are here: Home / Archives for Recreation / Great Reading

Time to shop for the garden

by

I find that we have seasonal expenses. I’m sure lots of people find that they shop more at Christmas time and that they have hefty bills to pay come January. Our expenses go up at that time too, but I find that we have another spike in our spending in April and May too.

Why? Well … I’m a gardener. Spring is the best time to go out and buy more plants for the garden or order from mail order or online shops. I always find that I buy seeds, bulbs or bare root plants and garden decor around this time. I also often end up with a new garden book or two as well.

One of the sites that I’ve been looking at this year is www.buy.com because they always have the best buy. I just type in garden or gardening in the search box and it brings up interesting garden items and gardening related books. I also check out their front page while I’m there too as they have some amazing weekly deals.

Check out the site if your shopping for something online. You’ll probably save money.





Don’t cry over Spilt Milk – Laugh!

by

I guess I’m having a regular Linky Love fest over here today. I figured that while I was spreading the love I should also tell you about Spilt Milk – the blog.

Spilt Milk is written by Tee, a stay at home mom with two boys. Like Lisa, I know Tee from some of the forums that we both frequent.

Tee’s blog is a great site to visit when you want a laugh or when you feel like reading some inspirational stories like the story about the mother of a soldier who’s currently stationed in Iraq and how he wanted his mom to send him some silly string.

Along with humorous posts, funny videos and images you’ll find some mighty cool links such as the ones in one of her recent posts entitled Cool things to do with Google, the virtual pumpkin carving contest, or perhaps the video of the of the guitar player with no arms. I must show that post to my husband!

I really like her post with Balloon Art photos! Now that’s cool.

Poke around her site for a while. I’m sure you’ll find some things that make you laugh. Oh and as you might do with any site that you enjoy – don’t forget to bookmark her site or subscribe so you won’t miss any posts!

Great daily reading at The Foo Logs

by

foo.gif Have you ever visited The Foo Logs? If you hang out at my pal Fab’s site, Pointless Drivel, you’ve probably encountered The Foo from time to time and might have even already visited his blog.

The Foo likes to blog about a number of topics, but the main topics of the blog are Tech trends & life’s ramblings. I guess this blog is a little like The Foo’s in some ways as I tend to write about those two topics quite often as well.

If you believe in Karma there’s an excellent post up right now called What Goes Around, Comes Around. It’s a true story and I’ve heard it before, but it’s a classic. The story will make you believe in Karma if you don’t already!

Then there’s a post that I think most everyone might find helpful at one point or another.

Do you ever tinker with your sidebar widgets trying to find a color that matches your blog themes colors? Perhaps you don’t want to change your websites theme, but want to spruce it up by changing the color of the links or other areas?

Well, I’m sure you’ve encountered some sites that offer very limited colors for you to choose from when you are customizing a widget. You often have to know what the actual code is to create the color you want. Well, The Foo, was frustrated with sites like this and the time it took to find the right colors so he went ahead and created a page with a table of color swashes as he calls it.

Check out The Foo Logs. As I said, if you like this site you’ll probably enjoy The Foo Logs as well. The posts are a mix of humor, life and some really great tech finds that might help you with your own website or blog.

Shop from home with catalogs from Catalogs.com

by

catalogs.jpg

Do you enjoy the privacy of shopping in your own home? Perhaps you shop online or like to browse through catalogs and have your purchases mail ordered to your home? If you like doing either of those activities a website that might interest you is catalogs.com.

Catalogs.com has been in helping shoppers find and order catalogs that will assist them in buying the products they are interested in purchasing. The site has been providing this free service for over a decade.

Whether you are shopping for clothing, products for your home, or items that will assist you with your hobby or interest you’ll be able to find catalogs to fit your needs at Catalogs.com.

On the site you’ll find listings for well known home shopping magazines such as Omaha Steaks, LL Bean, FAO Schwartz, Lane Bryant and many more.

There are over 35 catalog categories to browse through, and hundreds if not thousands of catalogs that you could potentially order.

If you are a gardener like me you might want to browse through the great selection of catalogs in the Garden and Yard section. Interested in Music and instruments? Check out the Books-Music-DVD section as well as Musical Instruments. If you’re a hobbyist the Art-Hobbies-Crafts section is a must.

There are Catalog listings for parents, those interested in clothing, fashion and beauty, automobiles, computers and electronics, fitness and outdoor activities plus many more listings.

Once you find a catalog that interests you, you can read a full description of the catalog and order it free of charge. Many of the catalogs are linked to the various companies websites which is great because you can begin shopping online if you’d like while you wait for your catalog order to arrive in the mail.

You might wonder why people order catalogs these days when so many companies offer online shopping? Well, you can browse through a catalog at your leisure just about anywhere. You can share your catalog with family and friends who might not have access to a computer as well. Plus, if you do have family or friends who are interested in making purchases through the catalog that you showed them you might get a nice discount for making a larger order than you would have on your own.

One last reason why you might be interested in ordering a catalog – many of the catalogs listed also have special offers such as a certain amount of money or a percentage off your first purchase when your make an order through the catalog.

One important piece of information that you should know about Catalogs.com is that there are NO memberships. You get whatever you ordered and nothing else. They also respect your privacy as they clearly state on their “About” page that they do not share your name, address or email address with anyone, but the catalog company from which you ordered your catalog.

Extra’s on the site include the Catalogs.com blog Shopaholics, a very funny shopping humor website, shoppers advice, news and articles, and Catalogs.com free monthly newsletter.

It appears that they will ship catalogs worldwide so anyone can use this site. I’d say that this site is a catalog shoppers dream site. Visit today. I’m sure you’ll find an interesting catalog or two to order.

Anyone interested in an Internet book exchange?

by

I enjoy reading. Each night or rather since I’ve become quite the night owl as of late each early morning I go to bed and I read a little bit of a novel.

It seems that no matter how tired I am I can’t sleep without reading a little bit. Even if it’s only a paragraph or a page. It’s like reading is my sleeping pill.

I read enough books that I should borrow them from the library, but I don’t. I like having books when they come out and you can’t always get a new book at the library as you are competing with everyone else that wants to borrow the book.

So I buy my novels and every once in a while we’ll go to a used book store and turn in our books. We get some money back for the books. No where near what I paid for them originally, but it helps.

Do you enjoy reading? If you purchase your books what do you do with them? Do you save them for garage sales, throw them out, lend them to others or turn them in to a used book store like we do?

I just had a great idea. I tend to read horror novels, detective type murder mysteries and other thriller adventure novels. Perhaps some of you might be interested in trading books back and forth? I’d send you five novels and you could send me five that I haven’t read?

I say five, but it could be any number. I figure five is worth sending when you add in the cost of postage. Certainly you wouldn’t want to ship too many at once or the cost of shipping them would be too high.

If anyone’s interested in doing something like this let me know. Maybe I could set up a book exchange group.

BTW I do realize this contradicts what I said about borrowing a book from the library. I just thought this might be a good idea.

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday