Peeled Snacks

I've talked about Earndit before, where you can earn prizes and rewards for logging your physical activity.

I'd won a $20 gift certificate from Peeled Snacks before, and now they're upping their generosity and letting us earn up to 5 gift certificates.

Plus, they're sponsoring a challenge at Earndit where they're giving away several memberships to their Organic Fruit of the Month Club. But everyone gets a $5 Peeled Snacks gift card just for participating in the challenge!

I'm not in any way affiliated with Earndit or Peeled Snacks - just a happy customer spreading the word

ReminderFox

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across ReminderFox which is an add-on for Firefox browser. It's a reminder program that lets you manage lists of reminders and to-dos.

It pops up in a small box on your screen and "reminds" you that you have something to do that day. You can hit the Snooze button and the reminder will go away for a specified amount of time. Then you mark the to-do as Complete when you've finished it.

You can set reminders to repeat at certain frequencies. I just set one to remind me to clear out my email Inbox every month since it gets really full.

New Blog Template

I'm having a blast customizing the new blog template for my Favorite Online Shops blog. I finally got brave enough to try a new template so that I could change the layout to 3 columns. It was so easy to do. I should have tried this months ago.

The only teeny speed bump was finding out how to center the header, but a quick search gave me the exact code that I needed and step-by-step instructions on how to place it. It worked beautifully.

Eventually I'll change this one, too. I'll play around with different formats and see what looks best. Now that I know how easy it is to experiment. Or I might keep the same layout and just update it a little.

Convert Tealight Tart Burner to Flameless

I love tart burners that melt wax, but I've been wanting flameless ones that use either a light bulb or a warming element.

I have a gazillion of the tealight kind and they make great decorations. So I was trying to find a way to convert my tealight tart burners into flameless. I searched all over the internet for some kind of small heating element and couldn't find anything.

	I decided to dig around the hardware store and found a candelabra clip socket in the lighting area at Lowe's. Since it has a 1" diameter, I got a 1" washer to fit into it to make a stand.
	Here's the clip with the washer over it.
	Here is the assembled stand with a light bulb inserted.
	Here it is in the tart burner cavity. The socket is rated up to 75 watt bulb. I needed a 60 watt bulb to melt my Yankee Candle tarts easily. A 40 watt bulb would work, but it took a long time and didn't have great scent throw.

I haven't tried soy tarts yet with this converted tart burner, so I will report back on that after I try them.

I'm not affiliated with Lowe's in any way

Thunderbird

This weekend, I started having problems with my Outlook Express mail client and lost about 10 days worth of emails. Knowing that OE isn't supported any longer, I figured that it's time to bite the bullet and change email clients.

Since I love Firefox, I decided to try Thunderbird. It has some really amazing features like the option of separate Inboxes for each email account. It was very easy to setup, start using, and migrate all my email from OE. Plus for every feature that I wanted, I could find an add-on that someone had written.

It's so much faster than OE. Granted, I save TONS of emails and use folders for storing emails, so I'm sure I was reaching OE's capability limits. But Thunderbird seems so much more forgiving.

I'm a Thunderbird Community member and the link is my referral link

Customer Service - Kohl's

I had another wonderful customer service experience at Kohl's.

I'd bought 2 denim skorts for the summer in my usual size. I wore them once and they stretched so that they were too big. I was disappointed but tried washing them, hoping they'd shrink. But they didn't and they were still too big.

So I thought I'd try to see if I could possibly exchange them, not sure if I could since I'd already washed them. The customer service clerk at Kohl's was wonderful. She took them back as defective and let me exchange them for the next smaller size, which fits beautifully.

I'm not in any way affiliated with Kohl's - just a happy customer

Notes from the Universe Challenge

I've posted about the Notes from the Universe by Mike Dooley as being very motivational for me. Plus they're wacky and alot of fun. Plus, they're free!! (I have a gadget on the lower right hand sidebar of the blog that displays daily NOTES.)

Mike is now offering a challenge to get more Adventurers to join the club and get the free daily notes. Here's what we get if we reach certain milestones:

If we reach 500,000 subscribers, every subscriber will get "Notes from the Universe" Screensaver Download
750,000 subscribers, every subscriber will get "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Life" 14 Hour MP3
1,000,000 subscribers, every subscriber will get (for the first time in TUT history),NOTES on weekends

Daily Feats

Dre Moran of Earndit.com suggested DailyFeats, and I've been exploring it and think it's wonderful. It's a cool, free, new site that rewards you for all your positive actions, including exercise. You manually check-in "feats" which are actions. There are multiple categories for health, learning, family, etc. You get points for actions and then you can actually trade them in for rewards.

The site is still relatively new, but I'm really enjoying it. It helps to reinforce and reward all the positives that we do daily. I just reached my first reward level so I'll be selecting a reward and will let you know how the process goes.

The site developers are actively seeking input and are making changes, so it's fun to give input on what we'd like to see.

I'm not in any way affiliated with Daily Feats

Customer Serive - J C Penney

I love shopping and getting bargains and using coupons, and I had a memorable experience the other day at J C Penney.

My family and I were stocking up on socks since they were on sale. But we had coupons for $10 off a $25 purchase, which amounts to big savings.

The wonderful cashier split our sock purchase into 4 transactions so that we could use the coupon 4 times and save even MORE money on top of the sale prices.

She was so cheerful and kind and pleasant, so here's a big pat on the back to JCP for their wonderful customer service

I'm not in any way affiliated with JCP

Customer Service - Rite Aid

I had a wonderful customer experience at Rite Aid yesterday. I was browsing the store and saw there was a mail-in rebate if you bought 2 of a Rite Aid brand personal care product. I thought that was pretty cool, so I looked on the shelves and only found 1 available.

I asked for some help to see if there was more in the store room, but there wasn't. The very helpful man (who happened to be the store manager) let me have 1 of the name brand items at the same price as the Rite Aid item so that I could have 2 in order to get my rebate.

Not only did that save me money, since I was able to use my Rite Aid card to save the additional 10% on the Rite Aid brands, but now I'll be able to get my rebate, too.

Needless to say, I walked out of the store feeling great and valued as a customer. You bet I'll remember that experience for a long time.

I'm not in any way affiliated with Rite Aid

Customer Service - Aeropostale

I like giving kudos when I get customer service that makes me feel good, so I want to say "Thanks" to the Aeropostale folks.

I took my son shopping for clothes to get him ready for college, and Aeropostale is one of his favorites for shirts. We had some $10 off $50 coupons that I wanted to use. I asked the clerk if I could ring up in separate transactions so I could use 2 of the coupons. She was so gracious and helpful, and helped me maximize my savings.

I'm not in any way affiliated with Aeropostale - just a happy customer

Earndit

If you remember, I have a FitBit pedometer which wirelessly uploads to the web. Recently the FitBit developers released an API so that other developers can access the FitBit users' data (with our permission, of course).

The cool programmer guys at Earndit can now use our FitBit data to award us points based on our activity levels. Other tracking devices can be read, too, including Nike Plus, Foursquare, Everytrail, and Garmin Connect.

Sponsors have donated prizes that we can redeem for our points. Just recently, I was the winner of a month's supply of Greek yogurt from Stonyfield Farm. Today I got my 30 free yogurt coupons!!

I'm not in any way affiliated with Earndit