Mariannes Motifs

What are we having for New Years Eve?

We are running out to the grocery store to pick up New Years Eve goodies.

I think I am going to try this one --

Buffalo Chicken Dip

From Allrecipes.com

"This tangy, creamy dip tastes just like buffalo chicken wings. It's best served hot with crackers and Celery sticks. Everyone loves the results!"

INGREDIENTS

    * 2 (10 ounce) cans chunk chicken, drained
    * 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
    * 1 cup Ranch dressing
    * 3/4 cup pepper sauce, such as Franks® Red Hot®
    * 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
     * 1 bunch celery, cleaned and cut into 4 inch pieces
    * 1 (8 ounce) box chicken-flavored crackers

   

DIRECTIONS

   1. Heat chicken and hot sauce in a skillet over medium heat, until heated through. Stir in cream cheese and ranch dressing. Cook, stirring until well blended and warm. Mix in half of the shredded cheese, and transfer the mixture to a slow cooker. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the top, cover, and cook on Low setting until hot and bubbly. Serve with celery sticks and crackers.

Happy New Year Coloring Pages

Updated for 2011!

Let's review some great New Years theme coloring pages for the kids.  This will give them an activity for New Years Eve.  As always I pick out the super nice free coloring pages out for you so you don't have to wade through the junky ones.

New Year 2011 coloring page from Activity Village.  Really pretty!

Here is a beautiful Happy New Year Coloring page from dulemba.com. 

Snowflakes and ribbons adorn this pretty printable Happy New Year page from Kaboose.

Crayola Party Horns and Favors Coloring page from Edupics.com.

Happy New Year Connect the Dots from The Ideadoor.

Really cute New Year Train coloring page from colormegood.com.

Paperback Book Swap - Great service!

Last week I signed up for Paperbackbookswap.com where you can list books you have and then swap with other members.  For listing 10 books I received 2 free book credits.  I ordered two books from other members which arrived via USPS media mail a few days later.  The way the program works is that you get your books for free, and when you send a book you pay the postage.

Its very easy to ship the books - I just sent my first two books and I didn't leave the house.  I bought the postage through PBS with paypal, printed labels on my printer, and put the packages in my mailbox.  Easy peasy.  And now I have 2 more credits to get free books on my wishlist. 

While this program is not totally free, its pretty darn close.  And unlike scouting around Goodwill, I am able to get exactly the books I want.  When you put books on your wishlist you will be notified when someone lists them and get a chance to get the book.  If there are a lot of peo0ple who want the same one you get in line for it.  :-)

You can also look and see what books are on people's wishlists, so that you can list a book and know it will get picked up right away.  (Then you get more credits to get what you want!)

Trade paperbacks and hardcovers I like selling on half.com.  But for books that are not worth much on half.com, like mass market paperbacks, PaperBackBookSwap is a great idea.  I love how they make it so easy to print your postage.  For mass market paperbacks you even get to wrap the book right in the paper off of your printer so there is no bubble mailer to buy.   How easy and cheap is that?

Cell Phone Shopping

When my contract with Sprint is up, I am considering whether to get an iPhone, or a new Blackberry.  A lot of it will depend on who my next job is with.  If they support ActiveSync or if the Notes iPhone connectivity comes out, I will go with an iPhone.   If not, a Blackberry, perhaps the Blackberry Bold might be in order.

I like the applications available for the iPhone - they really give it great exstesibility and a major fun factor.  And I am a sucker for cool gadgets.  Plus, my Dad has one and really, can I be out-cooled by my pops?  Apparently so.

I saw that Bestincellphones is having a free cell phone sale and on their Sprint page they have a Blackberry Curve as one of the choices.  If I had a Curve I could use it with Typepad for blogging from the phone as they have an application for that but it does not work on my model of Blackberry.

I wish they had the Blackberry Bold in their list of free Sprint phones. 

I sure hope things pick up in the job market next week.  The kids are predictably driving me crazy!  I took them to the library today and I was going to take them to the inflatable place, but they were fighting and I decided not to reward bad behavior.  So they stayed home and watched videos they checked out from the library.

Freelancing

I've written 9 articles for textbroker clients so far and I am really enjoying the challenge.  I am eagerly awaiting having the articles rated by textbroker.   They have different levels of ratings for their writers, and the higher your rating the better you are paid for each assignment.  I started as a three and I see that they do have a number of assignments at level 4 but I have not seen any listed yet at level 5, which I understand is difficult to attain.

Looking up textbroker tips, I found a very interesting blog written by a newly minted freelance writer.  She seems to give a lot of great advice on starting out in freelancing, particularly using Internet tools.  It's called Adventures in Freelancing.

Mysterious Gift appears - Did you send the EyeClops?

The 4th day of Hanukkah and the day before Christmas a package arrived from drugstore.com with my kids name on it.  There was no gift note in sight, but the package contained the coolest scientific toy ever - the EyeClops.  It connects to your TV and lets you magnify objects 200 times onto your TV screen.  We had so much fun looking at skin, hair, pennies, toys, and my diamond ring.

So, if you are the mysterious Hanukkah Claus or Santa Claus who sent this, please let me know!  And thank you so much for the awesome gift for the boys.  They demanded that I set it up right then and there and played with it for quite a while.

Writing for Textbroker

My sample was accepted by textbroker.com and I have now started writing articles for them.  In the last two days I have written five articles, on subjects ranging from the International Space Station, to the new HP iPhone photo printing application iPrint photo.

Textbroker rates their authors on a 1-5 scale with the pay per word increasing with a higher ranking.  I started out with a 3 star rank, and I am interested to see if I can achieve a 5 star rank and get better assignments.  The assignments I chose were between 400-700 words each.  Some of them did require some research.  The first article I wrote was on gluten free organic foods and that was very easy for me to write.  My mother was recently diagnosed with Celiac so we have been discussing gluten free cooking quite a bit.

If/when these 5 articles are all accpeted by the customers, I will be paid just over $20.00 for this work.  Considering that I was able to write the short articles in between taking care of the kids over holiday vacation, I don't think that's too bad.  This will be a great addition to the small income I receive from (deleted company), payu2blog, squidoo, and the amazon associates program.

And now I am going to go play some games with my family.  The four and 5 year olds can play Bliztkrieg Bop on Rockband on xbox 360 and it is just about the funniest thing you have ever seen.  "Hey, Ho, Let's Go!"

Home with the Kids for 2 Weeks

Oh boy!  Times two!  I have both kids home with me for the next two weeks.  So far we have done arts and crafts which consisted of coloring, making a box into a house for webkinz, and cutting and colring gingerbread men.

Last night we lit the candles for the first night of Hanukkah.  Jin wrapped the kids presents, and Melissa came over and made chocolate chip cookies.  Jin bought me Wi Fit!  I can't believe he found it - I have not seen any in stores anywhere around town.

After lunch I am taking the boys to the library and then to the Super H Mart.  (Korean grocery store)

Wish me luck.  I think I am going to be ready to run off to las vegas by the time the holidays are over.

Fun game for kids - ActionAllStars.com

Through socialspark I have discovered a new online game for kids called ActionAllStars.com.  I logged in and tested it to see if it would be good for Ben.  It's great!  First thing you do is set up your avatar and then launch the game.  I did have a slight problem with not receiving their activation email in my comcast.net account, but I signed up with my gmail one and that came through fine. 

I played a snowboarding game which was really pretty fun - I accidentally had to play it three times because it was so fun.  ahem.  Here's a screenshot of me doing a half pipe or some sort of snow board nonsense.

If you are looking for a more sporty alternative to webkins or build-a-bearville (which frankly are a bit too frou frou for my tastes) this site might be for you.  They have licensing agreements with the sports leagues such as mlb.com and nba.com so boys will think its cool.  Its also a safe environment for kids.  I especially like the way you can let the kids chat, but it does 2 different kinds of "safe chat."  I like the one where they can just pick certain canned things to say.  This is a good way to introduce a bit of online community without worrying about what your kid is saying in any chat.

Basically, this is a free, fun, and safe way for kids to play online.

Hanukkah Coloring Pages

This year Hanukkah (Chanuka) starts on Dec 12th, so we will light the first candles on Friday night the 11th.

Here are some of the best Hanukkah Coloring pages out there.  All free!

Menorah Coloring Page from Elizabeth Dulemba

One Jug of Oil Lasted for 8 Days - from Torah Tots.   Also see their pages featuring each Hebrew letter on the dreidel.

Happy Hanukkah Coloring Page from primarygames.com.

Dreidle Coloring page from Classbrain.com.

Pretty Oil jug coloring page from aish.com.

And don't forget your dreidel game!

Make and Play Dreidel printable  from teachervision.fen.com.  Also check out their printable dreidel rules.

Or try this printable dreidel from NickJr.com.