Christmas

The LG G2 Smartphone: A Great Gift for the On-the-Go Mom and Beyond

December 22, 2013 by Sandra 2 Comments

I participated in an Ambassador Program on behalf of Mom Central Consulting (#MC) for Sprint.
I received product samples to facilitate my review.

Are you still Christmas shopping for someone special in your life?

Me? To be completely honest, this year I’m pretty much ‘allergic’ to Christmas shopping. My four year old son is in the hospital, and I’m fighting depression. I haven’t left the hospital in nearly three weeks, and life is hard right now. I can’t shop.

BUT I know that most of you who are reading my blog ARE shopping, and I’d love to share a fantastic new phone with you. Perhaps you’re shopping for a new phone for someone on your Christmas list or maybe you’re a busy mom who needs a super fast phone to keep up with family, work, and social media.

Allow me to introduce you to the LG G2 smartphone.

What Makes the LG G2 Smartphone a Great Choice
This phone is amazing. For me, the best features have to be the lightening fast speed and the fantastic 13-megapixel camera. The LG G2 truly takes beautiful photos.

I’ve taken a bunch of pictures here inside of David’s hospital room, and I’m looking forward to snapping many more from the outside of this place.

Other cool features of the G2:

KnockON – With this feature, instead of pushing the power button, you simply tap twice on the display to ‘wake’ the phone from its slumber.
Answer Me – Automatically answers calls when you put the phone to your ear. No need to swipe or even push a button. Nice!
Slide Aside – This allows you to do a three-finger gesture to slide open apps off the screen and then bring them back quickly when you need them. This is a great feature for multitasking.
Text Link – This isn’t what you might think. It’s very helpful, and it’s where the phone takes relevant text and inserts embeddable links to them in other apps. For example, if someone texts you a date or an address, with Text Link, you can quickly add that information to a calendar or get directions. Love this feature.
Guest Mode – This is GREAT for when your kids want to use your phone and you don’t want them to have access to all of your installed apps. Guest Mode allows another user to access the phone by drawing a gesture on the lock screen with a secondary unlock pattern, and then they only have access to the apps you’ve allowed.

And Finally…We Love our Smartphones
Sprint recently conducted a mobile survey that served up some interesting results. Apparently, most of us check our phones at least once an hour, and ninety-seven percent of us even check it when we’re with family and friends.

Judging by those results, I’d say we definitely love our smartphones.

Visit Sprint’s website to read more more eye-opening survey results!

What’s on your family’s wish list this year?

Family Christmas Traditions (and JCPenney gift card winner announcement)

December 15, 2013 by Sandra 1 Comment

This is part of a sponsored collaboration with Latina Mom Bloggers and JCPenney.
However, all opinions expressed are my own.

Family Christmas traditions are the best.

I was looking through some of our old pictures from recent years and was surprised to realize just how many traditions we actually maintain. Apparently, we like to do the same things year after year. 😉

Some things we’ve been very intentional about doing each year and other things…just sort of end up happening again and again.

I like that.

Our Family’s Christmas Traditions
One of our favorite things to do is decorate gingerbread houses each and every year. This is a must-do event for us, and I hope my kids continue this tradition when they have their own families.

We don’t look for perfection when it comes to decorating the houses. We’re aiming for family togetherness and a fun time, overall.

Besides decorating gingerbread houses, we also love to…

Make Christmas cookies
Drive down a local street that’s famous for its Christmas story displays and lights (my parents drove us down this same street when I was a kid)
Marvel at the houses that go over the top with holiday lights and inflatable characters (the inflatables seem to get bigger and better every year!)
Drive through the Phillip’s Park Festival of Lights display
Set up a nativity arrangement
Pick out a new tree ornament that represents our family
Drink hot chocolate
Decorate the Christmas tree and hang Christmas decorations inside and outside of our home
Go Christmas shopping (JCPenney is a great place to shop this time of year)
See Santa Claus

I could cry because this year we won’t be doing most of what I mentioned above. This year we’ll be spending Christmas at the Children’s hospital. David, my four year son who recently went through a bone marrow transplant, is in isolation in his room, and there’s no way we’re all going to be able to be together on Christmas.

That’s okay, though. Knowing this is our reality for ‘Christmas 2013’ gives me a greater appreciation for all the years we’ve been able to be together as a family for Christmas and create such wonderful family traditions.

DID YOU KNOW? JCPenney wants to share the spirit of Christmas – the real spirit that lives in Latino homes in the US, a celebration of real-life holiday traditions.

This short video gives a glimpse of what a real latino Christmas looks like for a young girl named Camila.

Winner Announcement of the $50 JCPenney Gift Card Giveaway

In my last post about JCPenney, I shared a giveaway for a $50 JCPenney gift card. The winner of that gift card has been randomly chosen and notified.

Congratulations, Laura! I hope you enjoy your next shopping trip to JCPenney!

What are some of your family’s favorite Christmas traditions?

Fun Holiday Creations with Tyson Chicken Nuggets

December 24, 2012 by Sandra 4 Comments

It’s not everyday that I get the opportunity to let my kids play with their food. They rarely get free rein to decorate their dinner. But last week, I had the chance to be a fun mom, and my kids created fun, memorable holiday creations with their Tyson chicken nuggets.

We started by going on an always-interesting-when-we-go-out-as-a-family-of-seven outing to Sam’s Club. You can see our entire trip breakdown in the Google+ story that I created about our shopping experience. There are lots of pictures. 🙂

At Sam’s, we bought our chicken nuggets, and we also bought other items that we could use to pair with the items that we had at home, so that we could be really creative with our holiday chicken nugget creations.

We used these items to make a wreath, Christmas tree, and snowman:

chicken nuggets (our main ingredient)

cherry tomatoes (for cherries)

peas (for some christmasy green color)

nutella (this was our ‘glue’ or ‘paint’)

granola thins crackers (these were used to make gifts to go under the tree, as a tree stump, and used as Frosty’s hat)

parmesan cheese (snow)

coconut (snow)

ketchup (as ‘glue’ and a great way to add a christmasy red color – also great for dipping your finished nuggets)

chocolate chips (coal for the snowman’s face and purely for fun)

chocolate truffles (the ‘star’ for our tree – an extremely creamy and delicious star, that is)

Nathan, our oldest son, had a delicious holiday wreath for dinner. We used chicken nuggets, cherry tomatoes, and peas to create the wreath. I love that we could incorporate some vegetables into this fun holiday meal.

Isaac’s and David’s creations were much more sweet and chocolatey. Isaac created a chocolate chicken nugget Christmas tree. He is definitely the adventurous one in our family, and he loved his creation. He enjoyed eating it, too.

Can you tell from the pictures? Chicken nuggets and chocolate were winning combinations for our sweet-toothed 5-year-old.

David also created a Christmas tree. His tree was made out of chicken nuggets, and it had peas for ornaments, cherry tomatoes as the stump, and coconut, which was for snow on the tree.

Breanna, who is our more meticulous creator, made a snowman. She used chicken nuggets as the snowman’s body, and then used the granola thins crackers as the hat, chocolate chips for the face, coconut as snow, and ketchup as glue to keep the snow on the snowman’s body. She finished him off with a single pea – as a button.

All in all, the kids loved thinking outside of the box with their chicken nuggets. They made some fun holiday creations, and I know this is something they’ll not soon forget. Why should cookies have all the fun?

We may make this a new holiday tradition. 🙂

What kinds of fun holiday traditions do you keep with your kids? Have you ever thought to decorate chicken nuggets in a fun and festive way?

I am a member of the Collective Bias Social Fabric Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™ and Tyson. All opinions are my own. #MealsTogether #CBias #SocialFabric

Christmas

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