Review: Daily Goodie Box - November

 

The Daily Goodie Box has been around since about July of 2016. I signed up for an account right after I heard about them. They are 100% free, you don't even have to pay for shipping. And for a free box it's a nice sampler box of products.

What was in the box?

Electrolit - Electrolyte Beverage- I don't really do any excessive exercising to where I would need something like this but it did have a good grape taste to it. 

GoodLight - Vanilla Nutmeg Cardamom Candle Tins- This was my favorite thing n the box. It smelled so good. I would definitely buy this. I love candles. 

Green Goo - Free to Breathe Natural Decongestant- I suffer from allergies so I did what the instructions said and put a little of this under my nose which was supposed to make me breathe better but I don't think it had enough eucalyptus in it to open my air passages. It did nothing for me. 

Rejuva Minerals - Natural Eye & Brow Pencil- This is a nice eyebrow pencil. I think it worked well. I would buy this for sure.

Bare Republic - Mineral SPF 30 Tinted Face Sunscreen- I wear sunscreen everyday so I tried this on my face and neck and it does work. My skin didn't get red and I didn't burn. So it does work. 

ShiKai - CBD Cream with Borage- Another CBD cream or lotion that did nothing for me. It didn't have a nice scent so even as a lotion I didn't like it. When I used it, it didn't feel good on my skin so I won't be using it again.

Shire City Herbals - Fire Cider Super Shots- I didn't try this. I'm not into throwing back a shot of vinegar. Not happening.

Jack N’ Jill - Hand Sanitizer- This worked well. Plus it has a cute little holder that you can attach to your purse. 

All they ask you to do is try the products and leave reviews for the products you got in order to be eligible for more Free Goodie Boxes. As you guys already know, I'm a fan of all these types of boxes. I love all the different subscription boxes and it's really nice to be able to try new to me products for free. This is a great box to try for.

Oh and one more thing, if you visit their FB Page, they give away Goodie Boxes to people who interact with their posts. So if you've tried before and weren't able to get a Goodie Box, there's even more ways to get one now.

Daily Goodie Box. It's more than just Free Samples!

Have you signed up? Have you received one of these boxes?

I'm a fan of subscription boxes and love trying new products for free so this was a huge hit with me. New products+free box = Fabulous!

Disclosure: I was given and free box in exchange for a review but all opinions are my own.

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

I was up early and the sky looked like it was on fire this morning. The picture really doesn't do it justice. 

Book Review: Dark Tarot by Christine Feehan

 

Book Description

Light and dark combine as the cards reveal hidden truths in this intoxicating installment in Christine Feehan's #1 New York Times bestselling Carpathian series.

 

Sandu Berdardi continues to exist only to protect his people. An ancient Carpathian, his entire long life has been dedicated to honor above all else. He knows his time has passed, especially since he has not been able to find his lifemate—the anchor to keep him sane in a world he no longer understands. But just as he truly starts to give up hope, a voice reaches out to him in the night and his world explodes into color.

 

Adalasia enters Sandu’s mind seamlessly, as if she has been a part of him forever. While she can see the shape of things to come in her deck of cards, her gift is both a blessing and a curse. The true course of Sandu’s quest remains unclear, with danger waiting at every turn. She cannot see everything the future holds, but she does know it is a journey they will take together.

 

By joining him, she will start them down a dangerous, seductive path from which there is no coming back....

My Review

Sandu was contemplating meeting the sun since he had lived such a long time, had not found his lifemate and knew his time was fast approaching when he would have to make the choice. Then he heard a voice in his head speaking telepathically to him and colors popped all around him which was quite shocking since he had lived in a gray world, colorless and emotionless for centuries. He knew what it meant, he had found his lifemate and she was speaking with him telepathically. After speaking to him for a moment she quickly cut off all communication but he was able to find her because they were now linked. 

Adalasia lost her mother a year ago in a break in. The people had been looking for something, she knew it and they hadn't found what they were looking for. Now she knew that those same people were after her, meant her harm and she was in danger. So when Sandu finds her at her tarot reading shop and confronts her, she tries to send him away to keep him safe but he's not going anywhere and he's not going to let her get hurt by anyone. 

Adalasia has a special tarot deck that has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations. Her family are gatekeepers and her deck of cards has magical properties that these other people know about and want. There are 4 gatekeepers that keep a beast locked away somehow. When Sandu and Adalasia talk and he finds out she is in danger, he knows they have to run and she knows it too so they do. It's right away that Adalasia finds out that he is more than human and because she has some idea from a legend she's heard about him and his people, she's not quite as shocked as someone else might have been. 

Not only are they on the run from the people who want her and her tarot deck but they want to find out more about Sandu's family and childhood because somehow, Sandu and Adalasia are linked in a way that they can't explain.

After talking to other Carpathians about Sandu's childhood and his family because he cannot remember anything about his family and childhood, they decide to seek out other Carpathians that might have come across his family when he as a child. In doing this we get to re-visit some of the beloved characters from other books in this series that readers have come to love over the years. 

A lot happens as they gather more and more information and the danger they find themselves in gets greater. This book kept me on the edge of my seat right up until the end. I never knew what was going to happen next and I really enjoyed the role that Adalasia's tarot cards played in this story. There's a lot more magic in this book than there has been in other books from this series and I liked the slight twist that the magic brought to the series. After reading this I know that we'll be seeing more the ancients from the monastery and I'm glad about that. 

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Disclocure: I was given an e-ARC of this book via NetGalley but all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Happy Raturday!

 

*All pictures today courtesy of www.martymousehouse.com*

Apartment Life #277

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 24 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 24 years here in a weekly blog post. 

On Halloween night around 11PM, I start to go to sleep and some woman starts crying really loudly across the street. I look outside and see some guy booking it down the street like the hounds of hell are on his tail. I doubt the two people had anything to do with each other, but you never know. I hear crying and yelling and stay awake because I had a feeling the police were going to show up and I was right. Got the picture of the police car and went to sleep. lol I didn't hear anything more and I have my window open at night now because the temps are nice so I would have heard more commotion if there was any.

-----

My daughter was at the end of the street playing Pokemon Go and sitting on one of those metal benches that I've shown you. Here's a post with the metal benches and tree's if you haven't seen them before. A guy walked past her on the sidewalk pushing his motor scooter and the police who must have been parked around the corner, pulled up right in front of where she was sitting and stopped the guy. He hadn't done anything but they made him open his backpack and searched it and his motor scooter he was pushing. She heard the police say that they pulled him over because you can't ride a motorized bike on the sidewalk but he never had it turned on, which is why he was pushing it. The the police pulled out a picture of a guy and asked this man if he knew him, my daughter said he told them he didn't. 

After a few minutes of searching him, his bike and backpack and running his ID, I guess they didn't find anything and let him go. But I'm stumped, why did they stop him in the first place? My daughter sat there and listened and took a picture for me and even she was trying to figure out why he was stopped. Sure it's a bad neighborhood but the police shouldn't be stopping people for no good reason.

The high this week was 77F/25C

The low this week was 51F/10C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Favorite Song of the Week

 

I really like David Draiman (Lead singer for Disturbed) so when I found out he did a song with Nita Strauss, I had to listen to it. I liked it a lot and wanted to share with with you. I hope you like it too. 

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received: 

Thayers toner. 

Estee Lauder foundation. 

YSL Perfume sample. 

Amazon gift card.

The Thayers toner sample was tiny. My friend Bijoux had told me last week about this sample being tiny and she was right. lol It wasn't even enough to do my entire face. 

The foundation samples are good but again the sample is so small it's not enough to cover my face. The perfume smelled good though.

I also received a $15 Amazon gift card from Yougov surveys.

Did you receive any freebies this week?

Recipe: Home Made White Bread

 

Recipe

1 Cup cold water

1/4 Cup milk

2 TBSP sugar

1 1/2 tsp. salt

2 1/2 tsp yeast

1/4 Cup butter- melted

3 1/2 Cups flour

Instructions

Heat water and milk in a microwave safe cup for 1 minute. Add yeast and let sit for 2 minutes. Then add sugar, salt and butter. 

Slowly add flour to liquid and mix well. You will need to mix this with your hands. Using a mixer is not necessary. Kneed dough for 10 minutes, form into ball and spread a tiny amount of vegetable oil over the top of the dough. Put dough in a large bowl, cover and let rise at room temperature for 2 hours. 

Punch the dough down and kneed for about a minute. Shape into loaf and add to a greased loaf pan. Add bread pan to oven but don't turn oven on. Add a boiling pan of water to the oven and let bread rise for 30 minutes or until bread has risen to just above the rim of the loaf pan. Take pan of water out, and turn oven on 350F while bread is in the oven. Let bake for 30-40 minutes or until bread is done. 

There is no need to preheat the oven when making this bread. 

This was the dough after the first rise. It doubled in size while rising. It made a really good loaf of bread. And it's easy to make. I didn't even use a mixer or anything. You can totally mix this by hand. 

Have you made homemade bread before?

Favorite Picture of the Week

 

A while back I received a free bag of dog food for Falcor. When I went through the pictures to pick which ones I wanted to use for my post, I picked a couple and discarded the rest. But when I went to look back on them, I found these two that made me laugh because Falcor was in the back photobombing me. 

You can barely see him but he's back there... just staring me down. At least he liked the food. 

Book Review: Immortal Born by Lynsay Sands

 

Book Description

A simple promise to protect her friend’s infant son has turned Allie Chambers’ existence upside down. Caring for—and feeding—an orphaned vampire baby has been tricky enough. But as little Liam grows, so does his appetite. He needs more blood than she can personally supply. And when her attempts to steal from a blood bank go awry, Allie wakes up surrounded by doctors, cops…and the gorgeous, mesmerizing Magnus, who she can neither trust nor resist.

Magnus never expected to find his life mate breaking into a blood bank. Clearly, Allie is already entwined with his world—in deeper, more dangerous ways than she realizes. A band of vicious rogue immortals is in pursuit, and Magnus’ first task is to keep her safe. His second: to awaken her to mind-blowing pleasure, and hope she’ll accept the life, and the passion, that only he can offer.

My Review

Allie made a promise to her immortal neighbor that she would take care of her son if the people who were after her showed up, so when they did and the neighbor's house exploded after she was given the baby to take care of, she believed the mother to be dead. Now she had to take care of a vampire baby with no help. 

Magnus is an immortal (Think vampire but they call themselves immortal's) and he thinks Allie might be his mate, so when she's arrested for breaking into a blood bank, he checks it out. 

Allie hit her head during the robbery to get blood for little Liam so the officers wanted her to spend the night in the hospital but she escaped to go home, get Liam and move to a new location where the vampires couldn't find them. But the bad vampires (rogues) are waiting at her house and try to kidnap her until Magnus and his friend save her and Liam. While it's not how he wanted to introduce himself to her at least she knows he's one of the good guys. 

Allie isn't sure what to make of Magnus and his friends. She isn't sure she can trust them at first and some of them do come on too strong and make her uncomfortable with their questions about Liam and how she got him but the women were there to make it easier for her and explain things better than the men were doing. Magnus and the others realize that Allie and Liam are in danger once she tells them the name of the rogue that Liam's mother had told her had been keeping her and Liam's father captive when she escaped. It's then that Allie realizes how much danger she and Liam have been in but Magnus and the others assure her that she's safe now as long as she stays with them. I'm not sure I would have believed everything and felt safe with them at first either but they all did a good job of making her trust them. 

When the bad guy does finally come after her like I knew he would, Magnus and the others go out looking for her and to find the bad guy to get rid of him once and for all, since they knew about him and have been looking for this person for a while. 

I've been reading this series for some time so I really liked that we get to see some of the other characters that have been in the series. It's nice to get a look at how some previous characters are doing while reading a long series. 

I really enjoyed this book and liked that there was action right from the near beginning of the book. The pace was good and kept me reading, wondering what would happen next. I really liked Magnus and Allie together and liked the fact that they didn't fall for each other really fast, that it took a little time for her to fall for him.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. 

Amazon

Happy Raturday! Meme's I made of My Rats

 

This week I thought I would share some of the meme's that I made of my own rat pictures. I sometimes see a few of them floating around FB and Twitter on rat sites and groups and it always makes me smile.

Apartment Life: #276

 

This is a weekly blog post that I'm calling Apartment Hell  Life. I've mentioned a few times some of the crazy things that go on in and around my apartment complex in the past 24 years that we've lived here and people keep telling me I should write a book. But instead of a book, I've decided to share the crazy things that have happened in and around my apartment complex in the last 24 years here in a weekly blog post. 

I heard the police helicopter flying low around my apartment complex and looked outside and sure enough the police were on my block. The police had someone in handcuffs down the street who was arrested but I saw her back around here the next day. 

She had her boyfriend arrested for hitting her a couple of weeks ago and he was in jail for a week before getting back out. These two are always arguing and fighting around here. She would be better off leaving him but I don't see that happening any time soon. 

I did happen to get a blurry picture of the police helicopter that was flying around my apartment complex at the same time.

The high this week was 80F/26C

The low this week was 52F/11C

So that's it for this week's Apartment Hell  Life! Be sure to come back next week for more.

Review: Dove Body Polish

 

Every once in a while I come across a product that I like so much, I want to share it with you. This is not a paid ad, and I did not get this product for free. I paid for it myself. 

I have diabetes which causes my skin to be dry especially in the Winter time so I went looking for products that would keep my skin smooth and not dry. I use a lot of lotion but that only helps so much. I was reading that an exfoliating cream or cleanser might help, so I went looking for one and found this on Amazon. 

It's an exfoliating scrub you use in the shower. I just want to say how good this one smells. No, seriously. Dove needs to make an entire bath line with this scent. I'm not even kidding. Plus this really does make my skin feel smoother and softer after a shower.  I got the Crushed Macadamia & Rice Milk scent and it's so nice. 

This is what it looks like. It's so soft and feels so good on my skin. So if you're looking for a skin exfoliating cleanser, try this one and see if you like it. I'm actually surprised I loved the first one I tried. They also have other scents if this one isn't to your liking. 

Pomegranate Seeds & Shea Butter

Crushed Almond & Mango Butter

Colliodal Oatmeal and Calendula Oil

Brown Sugar & Coconut Butter

Have you tried this product? 

Freebie Friday!

 

Welcome to another weekly Freebie Friday post, where I tell you what free samples and full sized products I received in the mail and how you can get them too. Someone asked me why I do a "Freebie Friday" each week, so I'll tell you.

A while back I listed all the free samples and wins that I had received that previous year and so many people didn't believe that I could have gotten so many free things. So I decided to prove it by taking a picture every week and sharing the sites that I found the links to the freebies at. So now you too can get great free samples coming to your mailbox each week.

  You can find links to great samples at Hey It's Free and Freebie Shark.

This week I received 4 perfume samples from Macy. 

Did you receive any freebies this week?