Monday, August 29, 2011

Straigh Talk August

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Straight Talk for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

 

 

King Arthur is famous for pulling the sword out of the stone and for his quest for the Holy Grail. Falling Down House is famous for it's lack of cell phone reception and I am famous for my quest for a cell phone company I like. C and I had T-mobile for 6 years and in that time we have spent approximately $9000 on service alone. Who knows how much we have spent on phones. Of course we had heard of those no contract companies but they seemed too good to be true and I was certain they'd have crappy phones and service.

 

After a few years C talked me into dropping T-Mobile and going over to Simple Mobile. Well, I was right they are too good to be true. My phone sucks! The service sucks, and half the time my calls get dropped. My phone is always in emergency mode and searching for Network.

 

I am done with them.

I have been looking around for something different. I thought I'd try Cricket.

 

I went into the Cricket store and after all their hoops to jump through I walked right out.

 

I was starting to give up when I decided to give Straight Talk a look-see... I started out with a few questions.

 

 

 everything you need

 

 

  1. How much are plans? the unlimited plan is $45 a month and includes text, calls, picture messaging, and web!
  2. Do they have crappy phones? Straight Talk only sells phones from reputable companies like Samsung and LG.
  3. Can you afford the phones? Reconditioned phones start out at $10!
  4. Can I keep my number? YES! Straight Talk will port over your cell number and even some house numbers.
  5. Do you have to sign a contract or have a credit check? NO and NO!
  6. Will I have coverage or will it be spotty? Straight Talk have a great nationwide network of coverage!
  7. Are there fees for activation, reactivation or termination? NO!
  8. What about International Calls? Yes, Straight Talk has plans that include International calls for low rates!

 everything you need

 

So if you think about it C and I could have spent only $6000 over the course of 6 years instead of $9000.

 

That's a savings of $3000!

Hook, line and sinker

Do you know what I would do with that amount of money if I had it right now? Well, I'd use it to pay off some bills and then I would quit and stay home with my kids!

 

 

 

If you don't believe me how great this company is then check out these videos made by customers just like you and me!

 

everything you you needhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvWv7J6ffEU&feature=related  

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66Q7GWZY8nY  

 

 

call a friend

 

mom knows best

 

Visit Sponsor's Site  

Visit Sponsor's Site

Monday, August 22, 2011

I hate Bunkbeds!

The kids and I stopped by Big's Furniture today to look at that sofa I've been drooling about. We got there and I was immediately excited by the great furniture and prices. It was awesome.


When we move into our new home the queen size bed in Goo's room will go into C's "ManCave".


 This leaves Goo without a bed. So on a whim I asked to look at kids beds. Goo finds this one.

I HATE bunk beds! I think they are dangerous for children and anyone that puts their kid in it is irresponsible! I realize that this statement will offend people but I don't care. They will realize that I am right the first time their child falls off the top bunk!

 I slept in the top bunk and I can tell you that my older sister Newt would get mad at me and kick the top bunk as hard as she could. It hurt but one day she kicked it so hard she lifted the bunk bed mattress and support up. They both went off balance and crashed down right on top of Newt. It broke her nose (she deserved it too!) and just goes to illustrate the very real dangers

A study in the journal Pediatrics has found that more than 35,000 children and young adults get hurt on bunk bed each year. Half of the injuries affect children under age 6 and they were related to falls having to do with the ladder or jumping off. Most injuries were cuts, scrapes, and bruises but 20% were fractures.
…most bunk bed–related injuries are associated with objects around the bed, by children playing in and around the bed, or by children jumping on and off the bed
Even worse, males are injured more often than females. There’s even “bunk bed fracture” caused by children jumping or falling with their feet/legs out-stretched.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recommends:
  1. Guardrail gaps are <= 3.5 inches to prevent hanging and strangulation
  2. Side rails are present on both sides
  3. Mattress foundation is sturdy and secure
  4. Mattress of correct size is used
  5. Children younger than 6 years should not sleep in the upper bunk
  6. Children should be discouraged from playing on bunk beds
  7. Night lights should be used to prevent falls
  8. Hazardous objects should be removed from around the bed
  9. Bunk beds should not be placed too close to ceiling fans or other ceiling fixtures



I also found this statement from an Emergency Room doctor.

Bunk Bed ER DOC.



Bunk beds are commonly used in American households, yet to our knowledge, no studies have been done to determine if they are safe. We prospectively studied the incidence, epidemiology, and outcome of injuries related to bunk beds. We interviewed all patients with such injuries who presented to the emergency department between February 1987 and February 1988. A control group of children who use bunk beds but who came to the emergency department for another reason were also interviewed. There were 68 injured children and 54 controls during the 1-year study period. There were 47 injured children (70% of this group) and 26 control children (48% of this group) younger than 6 years, which is below the age recommended by the Consumer Product Safety Commission for bunk bed use. Carpeted floors were significantly more common in the control group, 67% (36 children) vs 42% (26 children). Injuries occurred most often when the child fell from the top bed (38 children [58%]), fell off the ladder (7 children [11%]), or fell off the bottom bed (8 children [12%]). Injuries occurred during sleep (19 children [29%]), getting in or out of the bunk bed (13 children [20%]), or playing in or near the beds (28 children [43%]). Of those injured while asleep, 13 of 19 children were younger than 6 years. Head injuries accounted for half the trauma (35 children [52%]), and extremities were involved in 16 patients [24%]. The most common injuries were lacerations (27 children [40%]) and contusions (19 children [28%]), but 8 children (12%) had concussions and 7 children (10%) had fractures. Six children (9%) required admission to the hospital. Head and face injuries were significantly more likely if the top bed had no side rails. These data suggest injuries could be prevented if side rails were mandatory for all top beds, young children were not permitted to sleep in bunk beds, and all children were encouraged not to use the beds for play.


So I ask you as a parent...  Why take the chance with your baby?????

Monday, August 8, 2011

Backyard Idea Totally Stolen from Mandy

There are all kinds of ideas floating through my head about our new backyard. Since one day the house we leased will be ours I’ve been looking around and when Mandy @ Small Fine Print suggested a backyard Splash Pad I must admit I had no idea what that was. I looked it up and now I want one!

 

 

Friday, August 5, 2011

Bigs Furniture


I need a new couch ours can't move with us because of the mold. This couch is on sale @ Big's for $295! Wow we can even afford that on a Ghetto Budget.

Check them out!Non-Ghetto Couch

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

It's a Doula's World

As I’ve mentioned a time or two on this blog I am now a trained Doula. I will be certified as soon as I complete the 3 births I need (with good reviews mind you). To this end I am offering a freebie!

 

On Facebook I have a page Hatchery Doula Services (a separate blog soon to follow). If you are in the Las Vegas/Henderson area and you are one of the first three people “LIKE” the Doula page you will receive free Doula care for your pending birth. This is a $550 value.

 

The package includes:

 

·       2-3 prenatal visits

·       24/7 support via text message

·       My presence at your birth (active labor up to an hour after birth)

·       Help initiating breastfeeding

·       1 -2 prenatal visits

·       Your Birth Story as told in the baby’s perspective.

 

So be the first to “Like” Hatchery Doula Services on Facebook and I’m all yours!

 

 

 

 

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Pot Meet Kettle

It’s funny I should mention the painting yesterday. This morning something happened that made the whole thing funny.

C has a new hobby. He makes YouTube videos and posts them online. He usually makes videos for his brother We shall call him Crab Boy. Crab Boy has a band. I don’t really like them but C does and so do the kids. Crab Boy has a song called physical and C made a video for it that was all cleavage!

 

He has always made fun of that painting calling it all kinds of nasty names filthy, dirty, bad influence for the kids.

 

This morning YouTube removed C’s video due to it being filthy, dirty, and just generally in bad taste.

 

So C I say to you Pot meet Kettle!

 

Monday, August 1, 2011

My Favorite Artist and My least Favorite Marital Fight

I have this painting in the upstairs bathroom. It is just from a calendar I bought over 10 years ago. It had glorious pictures in it and I became enamored of the artist.

C hates the painting and as often as he can he calls the picture porn. We fight over this all the time and I always win as I refuse to take the painting down! I thought maybe you the readers of Falling Down House would like Alma-Tadema and I am happy to introduce him to you as well as C.




Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (8 January 1836 – 25 June 1912) was a Dutch painter.
Born in Dronrijp, the Netherlands, and trained at the Royal Academy of Antwerp, Belgium, he settled in England in 1870 and spent the rest of his life there. A classical-subject painter, he became famous for his depictions of the luxury and decadence of the Roman Empire, with languorous figures set in fabulous marbled interiors or against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea and sky.
Though admired during his lifetime for his draftsmanship and depictions of Classical antiquity, his work fell into disrepute after his death, and only since the 1960s has it been reevaluated for its importance within nineteenth-century English art.
Victorian painter

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The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888), oil on canvas, 132.1 x 213.7 cm, private collection. As it was painted during the winter, Tadema arranged to have roses sent weekly from the French Riviera for four months to ensure the accuracy of each petal.
After his arrival in England, where he was to spend the rest of his life, Alma-Tadema's career was one of continued success. He became one of the most famous and highly paid artists of his time, acknowledged and rewarded. By 1871 he had met and befriended most of the major Pre-Raphaelite painters and it was in part due to their influence that the artist brightened his palette, varied his hues, and lightened his brushwork.
In 1872 Alma-Tadema organized his paintings into an identification system by including an opus number under his signature and assigning his earlier pictures numbers as well. Portrait of my sister, Artje, painted in 1851, is numbered opus I, while two months before his death he completed Preparations in the Coliseum, opus CCCCVIII. Such a system would make it difficult for fakes to be passed off as originals.[15]
Among the most important of his pictures during this period was An Audience at Agrippa's (1876). When an admirer of the painting offered to pay a substantial sum for a painting with a similar theme, Alma-Tadema simply turned the emperor around to show him leaving in After the Audience.
On 19 June 1879, Alma-Tadema was made a full Academician, his most personally important award. Three years later a major retrospective of his entire oeuvre was organized at the Grosvenor Gallery in London, including 185 of his pictures.

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Unconscious Rivals, (1893), oil on panel,45 x 63 cm, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery. Alma-Tadema's female figures have a slightly bored pleasure-seeking attitude, as if they were pampered courtesans.[16] There is little action in Alma-Tadema's paintings; here the two women are just probably waiting for a lover. The composition is balanced by the flowers in bloom.
In 1883 he returned to Rome and, most notably, Pompeii, where further excavations had taken place since his last visit. He spent a significant amount of time studying the site, going there daily. These excursions gave him an ample source of subject matter as he began to further his knowledge of daily Roman life. At times, however, he integrated so many objects into his paintings that some said they resembled museum catalogues.
One of his most famous paintings is The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) – based on an episode from the life of the debauched Roman Emperor Elagabalus (Heliogabalus), the painting depicts the psychopathic Emperor suffocating his guest at an orgy under a cascade of rose petals. The blossoms depicted were sent weekly to the artist's London studio from the Riviera for four months during the winter of 1887–1888.
Among Alma-Tadema's works of this period are: An Earthly Paradise (1891), Unconscious Rivals (1893) Spring (1894), The Coliseum (1896) and The Baths of Caracalla (1899). Although Alma-Tadema's fame rests on his paintings set in Antiquity, he also painted portraits, landscapes and watercolors, and made some etchings himself (although many more were made of his paintings by others).
Personality

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Spring, (1894), oil on canvas,179.2 x 80.3 cm, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. It depicts the festival of Cerealia in a Roman street. One of Tadema's most famous and popular works, it took him four years to complete. The models for many of the participants and spectators were Tadema's friends and members of his family.[17]
For all the quiet charm and erudition of his paintings, Alma-Tadema himself preserved a youthful sense of mischief. He was childlike in his practical jokes and in his sudden bursts of bad temper, which could as suddenly subside into an engaging smile.
In his personal life, Alma-Tadema was an extrovert and had a remarkably warm personality.[18] He had most of the characteristics of a child, coupled with the admirable traits of a consummate professional. A perfectionist, he remained in all respects a diligent, if somewhat obsessive and pedantic worker. He was an excellent businessman, and one of the wealthiest artists of the nineteenth century. Alma-Tadema was as firm in money matters as he was with the quality of his work.
On 15 August 1909 Alma-Tadema’s wife, Laura, died at the age of fifty-seven. The grief-stricken widower outlived his second wife for less than three years. His last major composition was Preparation in the Coliseum (1912). In the summer of 1912, Alma Tadema was accompanied by his daughter Anna to Kaiserhof Spa, Wiesbaden, Germany where he was to undergo treatment for ulceration of the stomach.[22] He died there on June 28, 1912 at the age of seventy-six. He was buried in a crypt in St Paul's Cathedral in London.
Style

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Silver Favorites, 1903, oil on wood, 69.1 x 42.2 cm, Manchester City Art Galleries. An outstanding example of Tadema's contrasting gleaming white marble against a backdrop of dazzling blue Mediterranean sea.[23] The artist obliterated the middle-ground, and the foreground is abruptly juxtaposed with the distant horizon, creating a dramatic effect.[24]
Alma-Tadema's works are remarkable for the way in which flowers, textures and hard reflecting substances, like metals, pottery, and especially marble, are painted – indeed, his realistic depiction of marble led him to be called the 'marbelous painter'. His work shows much of the fine execution and brilliant color of the old Dutch masters. By the human interest with which he imbues all his scenes from ancient life he brings them within the scope of modern feeling, and charms us with gentle sentiment and playfulness.
From early in his career, Alma-Tadema was particularly concerned with architectural accuracy, often including objects that he would see at museums – such as the British Museum in London – in his works. He also read many books and took many images from them. He amassed an enormous number of photographs from ancient sites in Italy, which he used for the most precise accuracy in the details of his compositions.
Alma-Tadema was a perfectionist. He worked assiduously to make the most of his paintings, often repeatedly reworking parts of paintings before he found them satisfactory to his own high standards. One humorous story relates that one of his paintings was rejected and instead of keeping it, he gave the canvas to a maid who used it as her table cover. He was sensitive to every detail and architectural line of his paintings, as well as the settings he was depicting. For many of the objects in his paintings, he would depict what was in front of him, using fresh flowers imported from across the continent and even from Africa, rushing to finish the paintings before the flowers died. It was this commitment to veracity that earned him recognition but also caused many of his adversaries to take up arms against his almost encyclopedic works.