With a sleek design and repositioned buttons, the Pantech Breakout adds a little visual interest to the ever-growing list of 4G capable smartphones.  It’s compact design, a 12mm design, combined with 4” touch display metal buttons and grips make this phone as fun to look at as it is to use.  One of my favorite feature, and I’m sure the favorite of many others, is the ability to switch between seven different home screens and customize everything to your tastes and needs.  Running Android’s 2.3 Gingerbread OS and a 1 Ghz Fusion processor, the Breakout can handle all of my apps and data usage without any problems or slow-downs. 

My only complaint comes with the camera.  At 5 megapixels, this camera just doesn’t stand up against even other mid-grade smart phones and while the front facing camera is a nice feature, if it doesn’t take good pictures what’s the point?  Honestly though, if taking first rate pictures isn’t high on priority list, the Pantech Breakout is a great phone that makes 4G accessible to everyone.

The Pantech Breakout is a great first 4G smartphone and would be the perfect Christmas present for the teen in your life.

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Since we’re all until 30, we were pretty new to the songs of ABBA…of course we knew the big hits like Mama Mia and Fernando, but the rest of the songs and the dance moves? HA! We were utterly clueless.  I didn’t play the game before hand so that I wouldn’t be at an advantage…but boy I wish I had.  I’m not nearly as smooth as the smooth operators dancing in this game!  The music was fun and the dance moves kept us laughing for hours!  We’re looking forward to playing together again, but this time I’m practicing before!

About ABBA You Can Dance (from the Ubisoft site):

From the creators of the award-winning Just Dance® franchise comes ABBA You Can Dance. Featuring 26 timeless songs, including “Dancing Queen,” “Mamma Mia,” “Fernando,” “Waterloo,” and “Take A Chance On Me,” ABBA You Can Dance invites you to unleash your inner dancing queen and hit the dance floor with one of world’s biggest music sensations. Dance with up to four players or join in on vocals; ABBA You Can Dance is unforgettable fun for friends and family of every generation.

I would like to point out the this game is rated E10+, but I wouldn’t want my 10 year playing this game…some of the songs are suggestive and should be treated as such.  If you’d like to purchase this game so that you, too, can relive the Swinging 70′s with ABBA You Can Dance, you can pick it up at Amazon (affiliate link) or Toys-R-Us.

Thanks to the fantastic disco ball and the slight libations that were consumed, we all let loose and danced our hearts out.  The party was groovy, ABBA You Can Dance was rad, and a good time was had by all.  My favorite song and dance was Dancing Queen, but I have to admit Voulez Vous was the most fun to watch the awkward boys try.  Designed not only to give you a good time, ABBA YCD also gives you a good sweat, these moves really get you moving.  I’ll be adding this to my workout regiment this week.

Do you have a favorite ABBA song?

Thank you to Ubisoft for sponsoring this blog post. Please click here to learn more about Ubisoft. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective. All opinions are my own.

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Here in rural Kentucky we don’t have access to anything faster than a 3G network, so I was thrilled to get the chance to test out the difference in speeds and connectivity between the 4G and 3G.  While at Women Create Media, I needed an easy way to stay connected to the founder, Lindsay Maines, and the other volunteer.  Since none of us were native to San Diego, we might have had a little issue getting to the conference without a hitch and we might have gotten a bit lost, but thanks to my Verizon navigation (which kept right up with us), we were able to find our way there on time.  Since being that far up the mountain can occasionally cause issues with connectivity, but thankfully I had the ThunderBolt to keep me connected and I never had to worry that my network couldn’t keep up.  Every time I needed to surf the ‘net to get more information on the location of the venue, our sponsors, or our speakers, my phone sped right along without any issues.

Then, during BlogHer, while everyone with AT&T service was walking around struggling to find service, I never had to worry.  Never once did my Verizon service fail or even for a minute lag.  Not only is the ThunderBolt a hot looking phone with it’s sleek body and bright screen, this phone takes amazing video & pictures without ever skipping a beat.  I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to test the brand new ThunderBolt from HTC.

Disclosure: I received no payment for this review only the pleasure of testing the product while on vacation and in San Diego.  All thoughts and expressions are all my own.

Image Credit: http2007 & Verizon Wireless

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We all know I’m Type-A, but did you know I am so Type-A that I’m already thinking about Christmas—even going so far as to already be purchasing Christmas gifts and choosing the perfect Christmas card for my loved ones and business?  Well, I am!  I am a huge (HUGE) card sender! I send them for every occasion, but most especially Christmas!  I love giving and receiving, heck I even enjoy the process of picking out the perfect card for each loved-one individually.

This will be the first year Jonathan and I will be sending out business Christmas cards to our clients and I’m determined to find the perfect card that is both professional and personal.  Do you send every person you know an individual Christmas card or do you only pick out special cards for your loved ones and send special bulk Christmas cards to everyone else like me?

Thanks to Storkie.com I can have a little Christmas in July and feed my Type-A tendencies with some fun Christmas card shopping.  In fact, I’ve been perusing their site (not only because I’m sharing this sponsored post with you) this week in search of the best, or my favorite, Christmas cards to share with you and my loved ones. There are so many chose from on this site!  I’m a huge fan of classic Christmas cards, some of my favorite Christmas cards are the classics.  My grandmother always sent my very favorite cards and she always used to send cards with a cardinal on them.

I love the look of the classic cards, the nostalgic feel, and memories of Christmases gone by; I miss those Christmases and the family-togetherness that came along with it.  Those Christmases are gone now and I’ve got girls of my own, I want to share the feeling of those times and the memories with them.  I feel like if I can stay true to the nostalgia of those times in a small way by sending out classic Christmas cards…and maybe I’ll brighten someone else’s Christmas as well and help them remember fond memories of Christmases gone by.

Disclosure: I received monetary payment for this post (hence the sponsored-ness), but all Christmas memories and thoughts are my own.

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In Scrapbooking Your Christian Faith, Donna encourages everyone, not just the gifted writers among us, to chronicle our lives and our faith in a way that speaks to generations to come.  Throughout her e-book, Donna provides simple explanations and definitions of scrapbooking terms to help even the novice like me be successful and not feel overwhelmed.  One of my favorite parts in the entire e-book is found in Chapter 2 when Donna describes a “faithbook”, or faith scrapbook, as an eternal love letter for your family. How beautiful is that? Who wouldn’t want to leave behind an eternal love letter?

Placed sporadically throughout, Scrapbooking Your Christian Faith, Donna has placed helpful and encouraging tips for the beginner (or expert) scrapbooker that helps you keep going and gives you a fantastic sense of belonging.  For those of you who lack inspiration, Donna also includes examples of her own Christian scrapbooking (faithbooking) to help guide you and inspire you along your path.  With nearly 100 pages of scrapbooking tips, encouragement, and faith-based teaching Donna Riner Weber offers the beginner and the expert scrapbooker another outlet for their creativity and an opportunity to glorify God in the process.  I would highly recommend reading this if you’ve been looking for a way to share your faith with your family for generations to come.

Disclosure: I received a small nominal payment for this review, but all opinions and thoughts are honest and my own.

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With lightning fast processing speed, a touch screen, and access to the Android Market {and thus access to hundreds of apps and games}. For the mom who has everything, except quiet & contented children in the car, the Samsung Fascinate offers a plethora of games {aka distractions} for the long car rides that come along with holiday travel. Our favorite game this year was hands down Angry Birds, those stinking pigs make great adversaries, and the Kindle for Android allows your reading child to stay occupied with their favorite books. The Google Sky Map is a perfect choice for your science and astronomy-minded children, allowing them to spot and distinguish the various constellations, stars, planets and allows you to search the night sky for your child’s favorite planets. The Android Market also offers great games for the small people in your family, like the Dora {or Mickey} Memory game or the FingerPaint app that allows your smallest children to create masterpieces with just a stroke of their pinky.

I’m sure you’ll agree that anything that distracts small and big hands alike would make a great gift.  Children love to play games and especially love new technology.  But the games and great apps aren’t the only reason the Samsung Fascinate makes a great gift for the mom on the go.  With features like Swype, which allows for optimized “typing” on this touchscreen phone and creates greater efficiency; a brilliant 4.0” Super AMOLED™ screen that provides a brighter image both indoors and outdoors (in direct sunlight); a powerful 1GHz processor; and Unified Contacts which contains all the contact information for Twitter, MySpace and Facebook, IM and email accounts any Mom on the Go would be thrilled to find a gift like this in her stocking.

**Images Provided by Verizon Wireless**

No related posts.

HTC Droid Incredible

Taken w/Droid Incredible

Pros: HTC’s Droid Incredible is sleek, small and fits neatly into your hand. The Incredible is…well…incredibly fast thanks to Verizon’s 3G network.  The camera is great; it takes fantastic, clear photos with ultra-fast speed.  The toggle button allows me to scroll through text I have already entered so that when I make a mistake I am able to scroll back and fix it without having to delete everything and rewrite it.

Cons: The HTC Incredible has touch sensitive buttons that can make it more difficult to use and makes mistakes more prevalent. The touch-screen keyboard is difficult to use, but I’m used to using an actual keyboard so it’s really just a matter of acclimation.

Motorola Droid X

Taken w/Droid X

Pros: The camera takes amazing pictures with crystal clear imagery and location stamping.  The 3G Mobile HotSpot made it possible for me to access the internet while traveling down the road and at rest areas along the way to the coast.  Where it not for the fantastic Navigation lady my darling (but location-challenged) husband & I would have been lost countless times on our way to the coast & while we were there.  The Droid X has physical buttons whereas the Incredible as touch sensitive buttons that can be hard to manage.  The Droid X will record 720p HD Video and can be played out to a HDTV via the mini HDMI plug ($30 cable not included) but will only play the video back in 480p standard Def. on the phone itself {which is both a pro & a con}.

Cons: The large screen that most find quite agreeable uses 80% +/- the power even on the dimmest setting.  Though the operating system is the Android 2.1 I found it became increasingly ‘glitchy’ and hard to use as apps & widgets were added.

Note: Verizon is currently pushing updated Android OS 2.2 which gives many new features: Exchange support being one update that 2.2 provides, which is huge for businesses.

Final Thoughts

Verizon has finally stepped into the “hawt” phone arena and they’ve stepped into it in a huge way.  I’ve been a Verizon user for years and have recently been lamenting the lack of awesomeness when it comes to phones {ie. the lack of iPhones} but I can honestly say with the addition of the Droid Incredible and X Verizon redeems themselves and guarantees my loyalty for many years to come.  Both the Incredible and the X offer great features with the ability to add hundreds of apps and widgets.

Taken w/Droid Incredible

We added about 10 games for the girls to play on both phones and the Incredible held up better against the strain of the extra apps.  But I must say it’s pretty awesome to be able to add all those games in the blink of an eye and keeping my girls entertained for hours without much effort.  If it hadn’t been for the Droid X’s navigation, my trip to the coast would not have been as much fun…what with the getting lost that would have accompanied us.

Disclosure: Verizon Wireless allowed me to test drive each phone for about 2 weeks. They were then returned and I received no compensation aside from the ability to not get lost while on the coast.

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Instead of using shredded baked chicken pieces I switched out and used Tyson’s Grilled and Ready Frozen Fully Cooked Chicken Breast Strips.

Chicken & Dressing Casserole

Ingredients

• 3/4 package of Tyson’s Grilled and Ready Frozen Fully Cooked Chicken Breast Strips
• 2 14 oz. cans of Swanson’s Chicken Broth
• 2 pkg. Stouffer’s Stuffing
• 1 TBS butter, cut up
• 1 12 oz jar Heinz Classic Chicken Gravy
• 1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix stuffing and broth as directed on stuffing box, allow to moisten.  Spread chicken into 13×9 inch pan, cover with stuffing, add pieces of cut-up butter to top, now spread the gravy on top of the stuffing and sprinkle the cheese on top of that. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes or until hot.  Serve with hot rolls.

Now this isn’t the most healthy meal, but for a special occasion or to say “Thank You” I think we can overlook health issues. Try it and see if you don’t find something to appreciate!

Disclosure: Collective Bias & Tyson provided me with a $50 gift card and 10 free product coupons for this campaign. This compensation in no  ways hinders my ability to provide unbiased facts and reviews. If you have any questions about my disclosure policy please see my disclosure policy.

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When you consider that I normally bake all of my chicken at one time for the week (usually 3 pounds) and this takes approximately an hour (I bake from frozen, because I always forget to thaw first), by using the Tyson chicken I have already saved myself 30 minutes per meal.  That’s not a small number for my family.  We have a lot of extracurricular activities that take place Mon-Wed each week (Tuesdays being the worst time-wise) and I firmly believe in the power of a Family Dinner in the lives of children, so I struggle to find ways to provide a nutritious, tasty, and timely dinner each night.  I admit there are times when I fail, but I do the best I can, if I can save 30 minutes prep-cooking time…well, that frees up some more family time.

Anyway…I digress, here’s a look at my recipes:

Chicken Noodle Soup

Ingredients

• 3 14oz. cans of Swanson’s Chicken Broth
• 3 cups of water
• 1/2 package of Ronzoni’s Healthy Harvest Extra Wide Noodles
• 1 large carrot shredded ( my kids don’t notice them this way, they think it’s cheese)
• 1/2 package of Tyson’s Grilled & Ready Frozen Fully Cooked Chicken Breast Strips-cut in thirds (Or you can buy Tyson’s Grilled & Ready Frozen Fully Cooked Oven Roasted Diced Chicken Breast)
• 1 cup-your choice of added frozen veggies

Directions

Bring water and broth to a boil, then add the noodles and chicken. Boil until are almost done, add frozen veggies and carrots (along with any extra seasonings you might wish to add.)

Serve with a salad. Quick and easy…not to mention delicious and nutritious.

The Verdict

My only real complaint about the chicken is that there are a few pieces that are a little grisly and fatty, but if you don’t mind trimming it off before you cook with it that’s really no problem.  The chicken tastes as good as the chicken I would make in my own oven (though I can’t really tell if there is a “grilled” taste) and it does save me time. While I would have to pay a premium (almost twice what I would pay for uncooked chicken), the Tyson chicken will make a great notch to my arsenal of providing delicious healthy meals for my family. I won’t stop baking my own chicken completely, because while there aren’t any preservatives used, Tyson does contain 330mg of Sodium per serving. All in all though, I am thankful to have found a welcome “helper” for my kitchen and I’ll be using Tyson’s chicken in the future.

Stay tuned tomorrow, I’ll be giving you the Chicken & Dressing Casserole recipe and showing you how this casserole helped me show my appreciation to some very deserving teachers.  I’ll also give you the details on a delicious giveaway.

Disclosure: Collective Bias & Tyson provided me with a $50 gift card and 10 free product coupons for this campaign. This compensation in no  ways hinders my ability to provide unbiased facts and reviews. If you have any questions about my disclosure policy please see my disclosure policy.

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I was able to design my own personalized pearl bracelet with charm and locket(retail: around $60) in minutes (it took a bit longer since I have a hard time deciding on anything).  I chose a pearl bracelet with a heart locket (which sometimes falls open) engraved with KH (my girl’s initials), and a K with pearl attached.  I decided to make it as much neutral, not favoring either girl more and decided to use only their similar initials.  I want both of my daughters know that I love them equally.

It took a relatively short amount of time for the bracelet to be shipped and arrive at my home.  The quality of the bracelet is very good, however as I mentioned above the locket occasionally comes open, and it thrills me to no end that I finally has something in dedication to my little ladies.

Custom Couture Jewelry Collection – A new custom accessory! Gift givers first choose a bracelet or necklace in one of five designs, including a pearl or beaded chain. Then they add one of three engravable pendants and finish the accessory with a miniature, sparkling birthstone pendant, initial pendant with pearl accent, and/or one of six miniature charms, including a star, angel, cross, heart, butterfly or key.

I love the idea of this as a present you can build for someone else. I mean how often to we get the same old thing from our husbands (or have to buy it ourselves)?  This would be a fantastic alternative.  How nice would it be to get a gift of jewelry that your spouse and children designed especially for you? Oh my gosh! I would melt! And what a great chance for your husband to spend some quality time with the kids teaching them how to show their mother some appreciation!

The Custom Jewelry would also make a great gift for your mother!  Imagine your mom’s face when she opens the box to find a personalized gift you created just for her.  I actually love this as a gift for any special lady in your life!  Right now you can get a free Keepsake box with your purchase of select items!

Full Disclosure: Things Remembered generously allowed me to create and personalize my own bracelet for this review.  I was given the chance to do this review by Global Influence (formally Momfluence).

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