September 2011 – Page 2

Elliott Yamin Infinity Music Hall 9/17/11

Katie September 21, 2011 0Comment

Saturday night I made the trek to Norfolk, CT to Infinity Music Hall to check out Elliott Yamin and Mikey Wax. The last time I had seen Elliott was in 2007 and I had kind of lost track of his career a bit, but I knew that even if I didn’t know the songs, they’d be sung really, really well and I’d enjoy myself either way.

Opening up the night was Mikey Wax (http://www.mikeywax.com) from New York. His new album comes out on Tuesday, but Saturday night was the first night that he had CDs available for purchase. He did 5 or 6 songs, approximately a 30 minute set. His last song was the most impressive, he stood at the front of the stage with no mic and had his guitar unplugged and just sang. (From looking at his site I think the last song he did was “Wait by the Door” I really need to start keeping track of opening act setlists too, I think!)

After Mikey’s set there was a short intermission before it was time for Elliott! He came on stage about 8:45 and played until a little before 10. He mentioned that he is working on a new album that will be coming out between November and 2012. But hopefully soon and then he would come back. He also kept saying how much he loved the Infinity Music Hall venue. It is really neat, although the lighting made it difficult for my picture taking. But I guess that just gave me another reason to actually learn how to use my camera and not try to figure things out on the fly 😉

As I had previously mentioned, I kind of lost track of Elliott after his self titled release, but fortunately he did only 2 songs (by my count, anyway) from his 2nd CD and 5 from the self titled (yay! I know those!) with the rest of the set made up of songs coming off the new album. (Which I believe he said was going to be called “Lets Get To Whats Real”)

The show was great and after the show I hung around to meet him. We chatted a bit about how every year on Idol during Hollywood week someone in my family always brings up how he missed practice w/ his group to sleep his season. He assured me he WASN’T sleeping and that the magic of TV made it seem that way because they wanted to make drama. I told him it didn’t matter what he was doing because he sang better than everyone! He mentioned how Sway was in his group and usually he is part of his band (which I did remember after he said that in 2007 he was there) but they had to scale down a bit for this tour. He also mentioned another contestant as well, but I didn’t remember her. Then he told me to have a safe trip home. He’s a really nice guy 🙂

My merchandise purchase was a lanyard that had the tour dates on it (which he signed for me) but it is also a USB Flash Drive with some songs and photos on it! Which I thought was really, really neat. There are some new songs on it and a live show from Osaka! I can’t wait to listen to it! That cost $15, but if you wanted a shirt as well, it was only an additional $5, so I bought a shirt with some mics on it and Elliott’s name. Definitely a great deal and I think a lot of people went for it.

I had no idea how I was going to keep up with a setlist for his set only knowing one album’s worth of songs (and even then, I don’t know that I remembered all the song titles) but fortunately I was able to get a setlist off the stage at the end of the show 🙂 Note that Moody’s Mood For Love he just kind of started singing when someone yelled it out for him during the encore and his band just kind of stood there while he just saaang. So that song wasn’t on the official setlist, but of course I am including it.

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Katie September 20, 2011 0Comment

What: Hellmann’s Live Chicken Challenge
Where: Live stream at Facebook.com/Hellmanns
When: Today, Sept. 20th at 12:10pm EST
Who: Celeb dad and actor Mark Consuelos, renowned chef Tim Love and lifestyle expert Sissy Biggers

I received the information in this post from One2One Network. I did not receive compensation from this post but I am entered to win a gift card for posting.

Book Review

Book Review: Go Big by Cory Cotton

Katie September 20, 2011 0Comment

Cory Cotton is 1/5 of the group “Dude Perfect”. If you spend a lot of time on YouTube, you may know Dude Perfect as the group of guys who do trick basketball shots as they have had several viral videos over the past couple of years. Go Big is the groups mantra and the book not only tells you about the story of Dude Perfect and how they became successful but it also tells you how to make your shot count in the connected world and how to use what they have learned as they went along to apply to any of your dreams and visions to help make them come true.

The book is broken up in to 5 sections which are the give principles Dude Perfect uses – Get Excited, Own It, Blink Later, Inspire Others and Give Back. Get Excited about what you do. Fully embrace your vision – Own It! Your window of opportunity may often be too short to blink. Blink later. To keep lasting momentum, Inspire Others. Shift your perspective from inward to outward – Give Back.

I had not known much about the group, although I am sure I must have seen one of their videos online at some part or another. It was very interesting how they came up with their crazy ideas for trick shots and what they did in order to make it happen. After being given courtside seats to the Kings, they met the mayor and were able to arrange doing trick shots at the capitol building! As they gained popularity they even had a crew and were able to do shots out of airplanes and through moving trains! These guys sure do Go Big.

I think that it will be hard for you to read this book and NOT be motivated to come up with some kind of plan to make your dreams come true. Whether or not you will then follow through with them is up to you – but I think the dudes would prefer it if you did GO BIG!

About the Book

Listed by Advertising Age as one of YouTube’s hottest brands, Dude Perfect has used its crazy basketball shots to reach and inspire hundreds of millions with a contagious Go Big philosophy. By leveraging the connected world, the Dude Perfect guys’ dream became a reality, and now, they want the same for you. Written by one of the dudes himself, Go Big tells their story and unveils their secret: give practical principles for taking your passions, skills, and dreams to the next level. Are you ready to GO BIG?

About the Author

Cory Cotton, a graduate of Texas A&M University, is one of the founders of the five-man trick basketball team known as Dude Perfect. Since its appearance two years ago, Dude Perfect has garnered more than 47 million views of its online content and has been labeled as one of YouTube’s Top 10 most in-demand brands.

An experienced writer and speaker, Cory has been privileged to speak live in front of millions on several television shows, including Fox’s Studio B and CBS’s The Early Show. Alongside his brother, Coby, he performed and spoke in front of the 13,000 attendees of the Catalyst Conference, one of the world’s largest leadership events. Cory is involved in promoting several charities, including Compassion International and Visiting Orphans.

5% of Author’s Proceeds will go to charity:water, a nonprofit organization bringing clean, safe water to people in developing nations.

Dude Perfect’s Website: http://game.dudeperfect.com/

Cory Cotton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/corycotton

Cory Cotton on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/corycotton

Dude Perfect on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/corycotton

I received a free copy of this book from Tyndale in order to write this review. I was not asked to write a favorable review and all thoughts and opinions are 100% mine.

Product Review

Amy Adele Personalized Calling Cards

Katie September 18, 2011 0Comment

I have an unhealthy obsession with stationery. Cute papers, business cards, envelopes, you name it – if it is cute and something I can write on or hand out – I love it!

Calling cards from www.AmyAdele.com are fun and versatile! Use them as gift tags, bookplates, playdate or appointment cards, or simply calling cards! They feature many popular designs, and can be used on their own or to match our stationery, invitations, labels, and Christmas cards.

Recently I had the chance to choose some personalized calling cards from Amy Adele. Yes, I did have some trouble narrowing down what design I wanted to use. Somehow I managed to get it down between the Monkey Calling Card and Butterfly Calling Card. In the end, I went with the Monkey for some Concert Katie business cards. What can I say, I like to monkey around 😉 The best part is – I can also coordinate these with stationery thank you cards, invitations, return address labels and even make gift tags that match.

There are also a TON of other designs for me to choose from if I am ever looking to do a different theme for a birthday party, save the date, birth announcement, etc. I can probably even work some of it into scrapbook layouts! And did I mention all the designs are super cute and adorable? Because they are!

Be sure to check out www.AmyAdele.com for all your stationery needs 🙂
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Book Review Product Review

Affordable Rome Sightseeing

Katie September 17, 2011 0Comment

I love to plan trips. Some of these I do end up taking and others are just wishful thinking – but whether I am planning for real or pretend I always try to make my trips as affordable and as fun possible! Lately I’ve been dreaming about doing some Rome Sightseeing!

Recently, I was told about a new e-book that would help me with this dream. Affordable Rome Sightseeing: Five Best Kept Secrets of Italy’s Most Amazing City. Reading this ebook taught me where to go for relaxation in Rome (for free!), where to eat (for reasonable prices!), how to enjoy Rome with kids, the littlest biggest view, and what tourist sites to check out. Just looking at the photos in this book got me thinking about what photos I’d like to take if I ever do visit – it seems like anywhere you turn you will end up taking a photo of something picture perfect no matter what your skill level! (And one of the photos is listed as a difficult photo to take, so now I have been challenged… lol)

Cath Andrews put this ebook together – while not a native of Rome, she has visited many times and loved it so much she decided to get married there! Cath’s passion for Italy led to her creating a website – Explore Italian Culture and to put this ebook together to share her knowledge with those looking to visit. While the book is only 15 pages, it is jam packed with information and photos and is a great resource for anyone who is going to Rome or planning on visiting there someday (aka me)

If you too are interested in finding out about the ive most best kept secrets of Italy’s most amazing city then head over to http://www.explore-italian-culture.com/rome-sightseeing.html and sign up for The Italian Sofa newsletter and you will be able to find out where to get your free download of Affordable Rome Sightseeing!
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Product Review

Mixbook 5×7 Card Review

Katie September 15, 2011 0Comment

Every year, the Hanson fanclub organizes a card swap for Christmas. I know in August / September it may be a little early to start thinking about Christmas cards but every year I always get a bunch of cute cards with photos the fans took at Hanson shows and I always say how “next year I’m going to make a custom card with my Hanson photos!” and then I forget and don’t have enough time to get anything put together.

Well, this year is going to be my year. Mainly because I started thinking about this in August / September 😉

This year I am getting my photo cards done through MixBook. Before I even logged in to the website, I thought about what photos I wanted to use. I decided that I wanted to use photos from March of this year at PST’s radio event. I would use 3 or 4 photos – an individual shot of each brother and possible a group pic depending on what the layouts I found were.

I ended up finding 1 that I liked that fit my criteria and 1 that I liked the front of that didn’t quite fit my criteria, but I was able to manipulate it so that it did by adding in another photo to the layout. After I created mock ups I opted to order the one that fit my criteria (AND I was able to fit in 2 more photos on the back!) It really didn’t take all that time to go through the creation process for the 2 cards and it really made it easier to decide which one I wanted to order when I could see it with my own photos right in front of me, rather than have to guess what it might look like.

The cards arrived less than one week after they were ordered from Mixbook and came complete with envelopes. They look great and I can’t wait to send them out! For now, I am keeping them in a safe place so they don’t end up ruined or lost before the end of November when I start mailing out cards.

To find out more about Mixbook, check them out on Faceook and Twitter!
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Product Review

Sticker You

Katie September 14, 2011 0Comment

It’s really no secret that I LOVE stickers. When I found out about StickerYou.com, I knew that I just had to try it out. You can purchase sticker sheets (in USA at Hobby Lobby and at Mastermind and Scholar’s Choice in Canada) and head over to the StickerYou.com Make + Print website and create custom stickers. They provide some graphics or you can upload your own photos to use and you can add text as well using several fonts that are provided. Each sticker pack comes with a unique code that gives you access to the sticker design area and then a set number of times that you can print out your stickers. (If you don’t have sticker sheets you can design the stickers on the website and then pay to have them printed and sent to you!)

StickerYou has just become the first website in the world to allow kids to design their own stickers and instantly print them at home via their exciting new retail product called “Make+Print Your Own Stickers”. With the launch of this new product line, StickerYou is poised to revolutionize the sticker industry.

Each package of Make+Print offers flossy, blank sticker pages in a choice of shapes and sizes. Kids then go online to StickerYou.com to start creating. Using the award winning online Sticker Maker, they instantly access thousands of proprietary and licensed art images, and can even upload their own photos and images. They can also use the text and coloring tool that features a variety of fonts and special effects to maximize their creativity. And the ultimate reward is once they hit ‘print’, they have the finished product in their hands in just moments.

Glossy and removable, the blank sticker sheets are mess-free and compatible with any inkjet printer. Available in circles, rectangles, hearts, stars (and even iron-on transfers), each package offers from 40-108 stickers and retails for $13-$15. Make+Print Your Own Stickers can be found at retailers throughout North America in August 2011.

I had no trouble creating my stickers on their website. For my first sheet of stickers I used only provided graphics. Of my 8 stickers I had a Superman logo, a Batman logo, Superman and Wonder Woman, a Facebook “Like” icon, 2 mock tickets for concerts that otherwise won’t have tickets for my scrapbook (Using a combination of graphics and text), my name in animal letters and Charlie Brown playing baseball. I didn’t even begin to touch on all the graphics that are provided by the website. There are a LOT.

I did however have some trouble printing. I designed the page in Google Chrome, but later found out that this browser is not compatible and I should have used Firefox or Internet Explorer. I was able to load the sticker page on the other browser but when I tried to print (using a test sheet first so I wouldn’t ruin the sticker sheets!) it was only printing out part of the stickers. I then realized that I needed a more up to date version of Adobe Reader because to print the sheet, a PDF pops up. Finally, after 2 nights of struggling I managed to get everything to work – so keep this in mind if you are going to be trying this with you kids! Make sure that your Adobe Reader is up to date and you use Firefox or Internet Explorer. You might want to do a trial run first before the kids are around because judging on how impatient I was getting doing this myself, I can definitely see a kid having a meltdown.

For my second sheet, I decided to use photos that I had taken to create the stickers. I took 4 photos from the Stevie Nicks concert and for the remaining 4 stickers used the different fonts and colors to make setlist stickers. Now that I had all the issues with printing out of the way, this page went incredibly smoothly and I am really happy with how it came out and am currently trying to figure out what to do with the stickers to turn them in to my scrapbook layout for the show!

Find out more about StickerYou at their TWITTER or FACEBOOK pages.

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Television

Karaoke Battle USA

Katie September 13, 2011 0Comment

After the taping in July, I had mentioned that I would give more detail once our episode aired. The NYC episode aired on September 2nd – while I was away, so sorry for the delay with getting this posted! (And I am sorry that I didnt start writing this earlier so that I could remember more details! Oops!)

We went to the 4th and final taping, which was the end of the episode. When they were playing the intro music, Joey said it sounded like “Born This Way”, which I had forgotten that he said until I was watching the episode back and heard the music. I guess I was not being very observant the past few weeks when I had watched!

We got to see the final 2 guys and girls be chosen and sing their final song. This made up of the majority of the episode. I expect the other filming sessions had to sit through *everyone* performing, even though just clips ended up being shown, so I guess we chose the correct filming to be at, even though it was a really, really long taping…

First up was the guys, Joey did his “the votes have been verified” mumbo jumbo and then we waited what had to have been like 10 minutes for them to get reaction shots of all the front-runners. Everyone had to sit there serious and anxious. And then Corey Johnson was announced. Then we did it all over again for the second person and Creigh Riepe was announced. I think it was during this round (or maybe it was the one later) when they had to do Creigh’s chatting with Joey twice. The poor kid had to act all excited and shocked twice in a row! (Although he probably was still shocked and he did a great job both times)

Then it was time to announce the girls and get reaction shots of all of them… Brandi Thompson and Shantel Norman were announced. The woman behind us was chanting quietly “Shantel, Shantel, Shantel” and went NUTS when her name was called.

We got to see all 4 finalists sing their final songs. We had hoped that it would be Creigh and Shantel that were chosen, and they were. We may be a bit biased – but that is who we will be rooting for throughout the competition!

(Edit): The above was written before the most recent episode aired. We now have our top 8 down to our top 4! Unfortunately Creigh did not make it (if WE voted, he would have, no doubt!) but Shantel did! Here’s hoping she makes it to be the Karaoke Queen 🙂

Sports Travel

Trip to DC!

Katie September 12, 2011 0Comment

As I had previously mentioned, over the Labor Day weekend I took a trip to DC to visit a friend. The main reason for the trip was to see the Mets (we went to 2 games) but we also went to The Hard Rock Cafe in D (of course) and took a tour of Ford’s Theater. And of course I have already updated you all on the Stevie Nicks concert.

Here’s a few photos to recap the weekend, under the cut! 🙂

Book Review: Saffron Dreams

Katie September 11, 2011 0Comment

Saffron Dreams byShaila Abdullah is the story of a woman who loses her husband on September 11th in the World Trade Center attacks. Arissa is Pakistani and her husband Faizan, works at the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center. Arissa is pregnant and during her pregnancy finds out that it is possible that the baby may have some disabilities once it is born. Since this baby is the only thing of her husband’s she has left – terminating the pregnancy is not an option and she delivers a baby boy, Raian, who has developmental disabilities. Arissa thinks that God gave her a child like Raian so she would spend her time keeping sure he is well and not spend her time focusing on the fact that she is now a widow.

Arissa also finds her husband’s manuscript and decides that since he was so close to completing it, that she will finish it for him as it was his life’s work. Between Raian and this manuscript, Arissa is kept quite busy.

I really enjoyed reading this book – it was a fairly quick read during Hurricane Irene. The first sitting I got to the point where she found out that her unborn child may be disabled and I spent the rest of the time while I was not reading hoping that he would end up born ok. I soon realized that this was not going to be the case when I picked the book up again, but Arissa did a wonderful job with taking care of all of Raian’s needs as well as working and balancing everything that comes with being a single mother. I also liked how September 11th was worked in and it showed some of the struggles Arissa had to deal with being Pakistani and having everyone say it was “her people” who did this – when she was suffering with everyone else and that the people who did these terrible things were not her people.

About the Book

From the darkest hour of American history emerges a mesmerizing tale of tender love, a life interrupted, and faith recovered. Arissa Illahi, a Muslim artist and writer, discovers in a single moment that no matter how carefully you map your life, it is life itself that chooses your destiny. After her husband’s death in the collapse of the World Trade Center, the discovery of his manuscript marks Arissa’s reconnection to life. Her unborn son and the unfinished novel fuse in her mind into one life-defining project that becomes, at once, the struggle for her emotional survival and the redemption of her race.

About the Author

Noted as “Word Artist” by critics, Shaila Abdullah is an award-winning author and designer based in Austin, Texas. Her creative work focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of Pakistani women and their often unconventional choices in life.

Find out more at http://www.shailaabdullah.com/

I received a free copy of this book from Loving Healing Press in return for writing a review. I was not asked to write a positive review and all opinions are mine.