I was thrilled when I received notice from BzzAgent that I was accepted for the campaign to try
out the New Garnier Olia hair color. I have been needing to color my hair again and was excited about this new product. The first thing I liked was that it is oil powered and doesn't use ammonia. One of the worst things I think about coloring your own hair can be the smell that seems to last the whole day.
With the Olia, you don't have this problem. It really does have a nicer smell to it although you do still need to be in a ventilated room.
Usually when I dye my hair I use a light red color. This time I decided to try a little darker and picked the intense red color. It seems like it usually ends up not doing a lot of change, and I was interested in how much of a change this would do. I was a little..ok a lot...nervous. I wanted change, but wasn't sure how much of a change I could handle.
I will say that the process of applying the color while relatively easy in the tube, would work much better if you had someone helping you get the back of your hair. I found that trying to apply it to the back seemed to make more of a mess than I originally thought it would. I feel this is only because you can't see the back and while trying to take it down the length of hair, it drips.
I was amazed at the change it caused! I normally have medium brown hair, so the intense color was just that:) I liked it, just amazed that it changed so much more than other products did. I will say that my husband loved it. He decided it reminded him of Ariel from Little Mermaid and proceeded to play the music for me.
It is a vibrant and sleek color. It gives my hair a darker, richer look. I think I'll be glad when it relaxes in color a little bit. I colored it 4 days ago and have seen some change. I still have some coming out when I wash it, and the original wash did bring out the clear water.
I think I might go with a less intense red color next time, but I am hooked on Garnier Olia hair color now. If you want a great product, give this a try and see for yourself what you think.
Disclosure: I received one box of the hair color free of charge for this review. My opinions are honest and my own.
Congratulations to Bohemian Soapery on their 1 Year Anniversary!
Let's help them celebrate! You can visit their Etsy store with new products to explore and enter for your chance to win this sweet-scented giveaway!
Valentine's Day Gift Set with chocolate scrub soy wax melt and tiny soaps:
Looking for the perfect gift for the one you love this Valentine's Day? Well look no further! This pretty pink set includes all you need to pamper your love. A Wildberry Mousse Soy Wax Melt will set the mood with the creamy scent of mousse and tangy fresh picked berries. A chocolate (fragrance and dye free) body frosting sugar scrub will smooth away rough patches and make their skin touchably soft. Finally 5 adorably tiny hand soaps scented in Champagne Kisses will wash away the stress of the day.
Receive one 2 ounce soy wax melt in a convenient breakaway 6 pack, one 4 ounce unscented chocolate body frosting scrub and one conversation heart box filled with 5 tiny scented hand soaps.
$13.50 USD.
All of the products at Bohemian Soapery are made with love for her special customers like you!
These adorable sets are perfect for Valentine's Day! Each set consists of bubble bath, body frosting scrub and a cute plastic heart box filled with tiny heart shaped soaps. All items come in my signature scent "Happi", a combination of bright Pink Grapefruit essential oil and bubble champagne fragrance oil.
Receive one gift set with one 6ounce bubble wash, one 4 ounce body frosting sugar scrub and 5 scented soaps totalling aprox 1 ounce.
Prize: Winner's Choice of either the Happi Valentine's Day Gift Set or the Valentine's Day Gift Set with Chocolate Scrub, Sox Wax Melts and Tiny Soaps. See pictures above.
Date: February 14, 2013 to February 25, 2013 at 12:01am
Location: resident of the USA lower 48 states only.
Age: 18 yrs +
Use the rafflecopter form below to enter the giveaway. Complete the 2 mandatory entries, and it will unlock the rest of the additional "optional" entries. Each entry increases your odds for winning. It only takes a moment to get the Daily Secret Word and visit her Etsy Store to pick out your favorite items and leave a comment. One winner will be chosen with Rafflecopter via random.org. Good luck to all!
a Rafflecopter giveaway*Disclosure: Lost Island of Book Reviews's Namedid not receive compensation for this post except a link on the giveaway form. Lost Island of Book Reviewse and Love2EncourageYou are not responsible for sponsor prize shipment.
You Could Win A Dino-Mite Experience at Dinosaur World!
What a great idea for a family day! Fun for all ages!...
Read the full review here at Love2EncourageYou.
Ever desire to learn more about those dino greats that all kids seem to go nuts over? Well now's your chance! Enter to win a family 4 pack of single day tickets to the Dinosaur World at the location of your choice! There are three different locations in the USA.
Dinosaur World is filled with larger than life fun and it's the kind of place kids dream of exploring!
Each Dinosaur World has lots to offer their visitors. The Plant City, FL location has over 150 dinosaurs along many nature-filled trails, 2 playgrounds, fossil dig, Boneyard, museum, some animatronic dinos, huge gift shop, wonderful service, clean and spacious bathrooms, covered picnic areas, snack machines, and more!
Lots of activities and learning experiences!...
GIVEAWAY TIME!
PRIZE: One winner will receive four single day tickets to the Dinosaur World location of their choice: Plant City, FL / Cave City, KY / Glen Rose, TXLOCATION: resident of the USA lower 48 states.AGE: 18 yrs+ to enter.DATE: Ends 2/28 at 12:01am.
Please use the Rafflecopter form below. After you complete the mandatory entries, it will unlock the additional "optional" entries that can help increase your chances of winning. Good luck to everyone!
a Rafflecopter giveawayDisclosure: Lost Island of Book Reviews did not receive compensation for this post except for links on the giveaway form. Lost Island of Book Reviews and Love2EncourageYou are not responsible for sponsor prize shipment.
What do you do when you have the "perfect" career but are unsatisfied?? Find out what Tim Forbes learned and how he found the job he loved. A Great Read for all!
Check out guest post and don't miss the chance to win an ebook!
It's Game Time Somewhere Book Summary:
Tim Forbes was like many Americans: painfully unsatisfied in his corporate job but making too much money to walk away. But then, one momentous day, he and his wife struck the Deal, leading to a career in the one field he loved more than anything: sports.
Years later, having carved out his place in the sports business, he was surprised when a friend asked, "Do you still love sports?"...And stunned when he didn't know how to reply. Of course he still loved sports! Didn't he? Was it possible that walking away from a perk-filled Corporate American life had all been for nothing?
His year-long quest to find that answer started with a single game. But what he discovered there soon led to an unlikely coast-to-coast “sports walkabout” involving 100 more games and 50 different sports—from major-market events to the smallest of the small. Poignant, irreverent, and ultimately inspiring, It’s Game Time Somewhere chronicles one man’s search for the love of the game.
Tim Forbes's Bio:
Alternately blessed and cursed by the notion that everyone should do what they love for a living, Tim Forbes creates and writes about the games that people play.
Tim grew up in the farmlands of northern Connecticut, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Ithaca College—where he played Division III basketball in front of literally tens of people. He received an MBA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and an Associate’s Degree at the Professional Golfers Career College in Temecula, CA. Yes, in that order.
After 15 years spent meandering about in Corporate America, Tim went on to work for three professional golf tours: the Symetra Futures Tour, the LPGA Tour, and the PGA Tour. He also served as general manager for golf clubs in Nashville, Tennessee and Orlando, Florida. In 2009, he founded Outside the Mode, a sports marketing and production company based in his adopted home of Los Angeles.
Tim lives in Redondo Beach, California with a perennially underachieving fish named Halo, a cat, and a wife he fondly calls Bird.
Guest Post:
Cards on the table – yours truly is not quite right.
How else could you explain the fact that I spent a year of my life attending and writing about 100 uniquely different sporting events involving 50 separate sports? But that’s what I did, and literally thousands of readers helped me keep score. And when it was done, we all knew more about sports in America than it was thought to be humanly possible. Or at least I did, anyway.
“But why?” you ask. Well here’s my story and I’m sticking to it…
As Bill Cosby once said, I started out as a child. A child inexorably drawn to sports – the organized kind and especially the disorganized kind favored by my circle of friends. Consequently I grew up chasing a ball. It didn’t matter what size or shape, I chased them all. I was fortunate enough to have come of age in a time when kids themselves scheduled their own games and “officiated” them via the kid’s code of sports ethics – an arcane collection of arguments, declarations, and insults that inevitably led to the Do Over. Or somebody taking their ball and going home.
On those occasions when a quorum wasn’t available for even the most streamlined of games, I played them solo. Some might call it “practicing”, but I knew it as “having fun”. And as is the case with many things one repeats endlessly, I managed to develop some level of skill. So it came to be that I went to college on a basketball scholarship.
Annoyingly enough, they don’t let you just major in Basketball – well, not in 1977 anyway, and not in any conference that, like mine, did not start with the word “Big”. So I chose to pursue a degree in Psychology. Don’t ask me why. And when my undergraduate days ended, I decided to obtain an MBA, because, well…because.
The ironic thing was that neither Psychology nor Business Administration would have even been in the race had Sports Management been an academic option. Ubiquitous now, at the time that I entered college there was no such degree program. And so, a career match made in heaven went by the boards…for the time being, anyway.
In my mid-30’s, having acquired over a decade of experience in Corporate America, I became vaguely aware of the fact that people were getting paid to work in sports! Having thus discovered the existence of what was rightfully MY chosen field of work, I spent the next several years alternating between a state of agitation over having been born a decade too early, and thoughtful rumination on how I could still pull off a second half rally and transition to my natural calling.
At the age of 40, the confluence of a certain set of circumstances, not the least of which is the most understanding wife in the cosmos, enabled me to take the plunge. I enrolled in an accredited four semester program that rewarded me upon completion with an Associate’s Degree in Professional Golf Management. I was on my way – a little late out of the gate, but with a full head of steam and ready to use my transferrable skills to claw my way to the top of the sports business.
Nearly a decade later, having come to know quite well the good, the bad and the ugly about pursuing a second career within the sports industry, I was innocently confronted one day with the following question: ”After working in the industry for ten years, do you still love sports?”
Hmmmm…great question. One I honestly didn’t have an answer for. As you can imagine though, it became critically important for me to find one. And thus began germinating the idea of a “sports walkabout” – an effort to reconnect with my ball-chasing, sports-loving roots.
I went to a game. And then another. And another. Big games, little games. Tournaments, matches, meets and bouts. Men’s games, women’s games. Professional. Amateur. High School. College. Games that I was intimately familiar with. Games that I didn’t have the faintest idea as to their rules.
To those that virtually accompanied me I offered to share everything that I found – both positive and…not so positive. I promised to keep it light-hearted, and they in turn agreed to laugh, learn and share the link with others. This blog, this portrait of Americans at play, became a love letter to sports, warts and all. My friends at Google Analytics tell me that it has been read by thousands of people all over the world.
I hope it brings a smile of pleasure and recognition to your face as well. Because it’s always game time somewhere.
To read more of my stories, please visit: http://itsgametimesomewhere.com/the-igts-tour/the-stories/
Enjoy this part of a book tour! Interview with the author following the summary. There is also a giveaway at the end of post for a free ebook! A New Birth of Freedom: The TranslatorBook Summary:
Noam Chomsky argues that communication with aliens would be impossible. Stephen Hawking argues that it would be extremely unwise even to try. What if it were absolutely necessary to do so? This question arises with extreme urgency at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, in this time-travel, alternate-history trilogy, A New Birth of Freedom.
Robert Pielke, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, now lives in Claremont, California. He earned a B.A. in History at the University of Maryland, an M. Div. in Systematic Theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, and a Ph.D. in Social Ethics from the Claremont Graduate School.
He taught on ground and online for countless years at George Mason University in Virginia, El Camino College in California and online for the University of Phoenix. Now happily retired from “the job,” he is doing what he always wanted to do since he wrote his first novel at ten in elementary school. It was one paragraph, three pages long and, although he didn’t know it at the time, it was alternate history.
His academic writings have been in the area of ethics, including a boring academic treatise called Critiquing Moral Arguments, logic, and popular culture. Included in the latter is an analysis of rock music entitled You Say You Want a Revolution: Rock Music in American Culture. He has also published short stories, feature articles, film and restaurant reviews. His novels include a savagely satirical novel on America and its foibles, proclivities and propensities, Hitler the Cat Goes West, and an alternate history, science fiction novel, The Mission.
Most recently, he has updated and revised his book on rock music, which is being republished by McFarland & Co.
He swims daily, skis occasionally, cooks as an avocation, watches innumerable movies, collects rock and roll concert films, is an avid devotee of Maryland crabs and maintains a rarely visited blog filled with his social and political ravings. His favorite film is the original Hairspray; his favorite song is “A Day in the Life”; his favorite pizza is from the original Ledo Restaurant in College Park, MD; and he is a firm believer in the efficacy of “sex, drugs and rock and roll.” Somehow his family and friends put up with him.
Prices/Formats: $16.95 paperback, $4.99 ebook
Pages: 394
ISBN: 9781611605426
Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press
Release: November 1, 2012
** This is going to be a long answer – because “first book” in my case is kind of ambiguous:
** As a kid, I went to the movies every weekend to see whatever was showing. It didn’t matter what it was, I’d be there. And I’d always wind up ‘playing a role” from the movie– in my mind if not in reality – until the next weekend’s film. And it usually wasn’t a role from the film, it was “me” being in the reality portrayed in film. Some of my favorite rolls were cowboys – Hopalong Cassidy was my favorite. (I pretended to be Tom Mix too, because he was my father’s favorite. I never saw his movies – before my time – but I read the comic books.
But when it came to “cowboys and Indians” in these movies I gradually became disturbed by the fact that the Indians were always “bad” and the cowboys were always “good.” There were a very few films – not many, to be sure -- that had a different take on this. Broken Arrow was one of them (Jimmy Stewart and Jeff Chandler as Tom Jeffers and Cochise). And that interested me mightily. Again, my father influenced me. He, too, always thought their portrayal was one-sided. I wondered why there weren’t more movies like Broken Arrow.
Well, in the absence of any other films to speak of, I began imagining new scenarios for cowboys and Indians and played out these roles in my mind – and with the other kids I hung out with. After I learned how to write and how to use my mother’s Remington typewriter, I wrote a story, White Cloud, about an Indian who united all the Plains tribes along with all the Eastern tribes in the early seventeenth century to resist the European invasion. (It was 3 pages long, one paragraph and single spaced.) I was in the fourth or fifth grade. Somewhere, I still have it, and before my inevitable demise, I do a thorough search for it.
This was literally my “first book.”
What I didn’t realize was that I was writing alternate history. And I’ve doing it ever since. Unlike a lot of alternate history writers, I always have something in my stories that accounts for the “shift” from the path of history as we know it to the “altered” history. Usually it involves aliens and almost always time travel. So the genre I write in is really pretty much of a niche of a niche of a niche. And the readers are – thusly – few and far between!
My “next first book” was a religio/socio/political near future satire: Hitler the Cat Goes West. I wrote it in 1995, and if it were to be made into a film, it would be rated NC-17! It was published by an ultra-tiny university press, which has long since disappeared. Now I’ve given it to iUniverse and it’s still on sale….for the hearty and strong-stomached and venturesome souls.
2. What book are you currently reading?
** Like many other authors, I cannot read when I write – it’s far too distracting.
3. What's the hardest thing about writing this specific book?
** It pertains to the entire trilogy – I have to balance and harmonize a time travel story with an alternate history and have it make sense when a double first contact takes place – all without it becoming a “three stooges comedy.”
4. Any advice for someone who is wanting to become an author?
** One word: WRITE! [Don’t just talk about it….DO it.]
5.What would a typical day be like for you when you are working on a book?
** Up at 4 am – write from 6 to noon – lunch – nap – cooking shows on TV – fix dinner – films – bed by 11 or 12.
6. How did you come up with the idea of this book?
** Faulkner said it best in Intruder in the Dust – “Every Southern boy whenever he wants...” can imagine being on the field at Gettysburg on the third day of battle, just before Longstreet gives Pickett the command to go. “It hasn’t happened yet…” and “there is still time for it not to begin.” Now, I’m not a Southern boy, but I can still imagined some scenario where it does not begin. Plus, I lived in Gettysburg for three years and always had a fascination with history and the Civil War.
This is a story of family and love. When Ellie is a teenager, she and her close friend Nolen talk of the future and marriage. When Ellie learns of her Mom's affair and that her Dad is planning to take her away with him, she panics.
Before leaving, Ellie and Nolen bury letters they have written in a box written to each other, declaring their true feelings. The plan is to return and read them in exactly 11 yrs to the date if they don't meet up before that.
Choices are made by everyone involved which cause a multitude of heartache, and life is forever changed. There is a search not only for each other, but for God. They are all driven to a place of forgiveness throughout the story.
It's an amazing journey of seeing how the Lord can work all things for good.
Review:
As always when reading a Karen Kingsbury book, this book had me in tears. Not only is the story well written, but the message of life, choices and ultimately forgiveness, lies throughout the book and can really touch the readers heart.
We find that through anger and trials that God is always with us and uses those around us to bring us home to him.
I have read all of her books, and can truely say that in each one, I can relate to something in it. Her books draw me closer to God and always makes me examine my life and realize any changes that I need to make. Don't miss this wonderful story!
Disclosure: I received only an ebook of this in order to do the review. My opinions are my own and may differ from others.
Direct link to the book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Chance-Novel-Karen-Kingsbury/dp/1451647034/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357347202&sr=1-1&keywords=the+chance+karen+kingsbury
In the prelude of "The Lion's World", we learn that the author wasn't brought up on the Narnia books like many others but instead was a teenager before he read the stories. At this point, he had read many of Lewis's other novels which I think brought a different and interesting viewpoint to the book.
In a way it gives a more objective approach to his opinions since he hadn't read the books over and over as a kid, as many of us did.
Rowan Williams does a great job of showing us the feelings and thoughts of C.S. Lewis had for the Narnia books. We learn how important the books were to him. By showcasing not only the Narnia books, in this case through looking directly at the character of Aslan, but also the other Lewis novels we achieve a greater understanding of who Lewis was. We see the way he felt about wanting to find a way for people to come to an understanding of who Christ is by using characters that children along with adults could relate to and therefore understand.
This book allows us not only the spiritual dimension of Aslan, but also the intellect and depth of
C. S. Lewis.
I think this is a fresh and unique look at Lewis and Narnia. I highly recommend reading this book as soon as it is published.
Disclosure: I received an ebook of this in order to do my review. The thoughts and opinions are my honest opinion.
