"The Best Day Ever" Music CD Review

Disclosure: Grandma Bonnie's Closet has not been compensated for the following product review. I received a product sample for review purposes only.

I am so excited to have the pleasure of reviewing "The Best Day Ever" music CD for children.
My first impressions were that this is not ordinary children's music. This music creates an energetic mood that children of all ages will love. I was bouncing around just like a child while I listened to this CD. The mood and energy created by this music got me up and swinging with my grandson.

A very interesting and at the top of my favorites on this CD is the track, Silly Sandy Shark"s Swinging Summer Surf Song. This song brought back some fond memories of some swinging surfing tunes I am very sentimental about. 
Another of my favorite tracks is, Wake Up (It's Time to Go to Bed). I love the rhythm of this song. It is very addictive. I found myself toe tapping several times while listening to this track. I am fairly certain this will become my youngest grandsons favorite tune. 
The cutest track on this CD is Dah Day. It is the sweetest babbling baby you ever want to listen to. 

The Best Day Ever! Track List

Poor Mother Goose

Fly(A Caterpillar's Tale)

A Little Green

Riverside

Wonderful Day

Silly Sand Shark's Swinging Summer Surf Song

Friend

Wake Up(it's Time to Go to Bed)

School Days

Another Bedtime Story

Superhero

Dah Day

I know how much my grandsons are enjoying "The Best Day Ever". I do believe they will be listening to this CD for years to come. 

Baze and His Silly Friends will take your child for a wild ride with their toddler style rock-n-roll. Your toddler will be head bopping and feet stomping along with this musical adventure. If you want to read more about Baze and His Silly Friends stop over and check out  My Silly Friends.com. Hook up with Baze and His Silly Friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Blaze and His Silly Friends are proud supporters of Autism Speaks, and a portion of the band's CD sales goes to help raise autism awareness. 

CD Release date: 10/29/2013

For ages 3-7

Run time: 29 minutes

"The Best Day Ever" will be available at CDBaby.com and iTunes.

Readers, What type of music do you and your children/grandchildren like to listen to?

Grandma Bonnie's Closet received one or more of the products mentioned above for free. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Bambo Natures Premium Eco Friendly Diapers Giveaway

Disclosure: Grandma Bonnie's Closet has not been compensated for the review. I received a product sample for review purposes only.

When I first found out that I would be reviewing Bambo Natures Diapers I was tickled pink. I knew my grandson Little Roo would be the perfect tester for Bambo Natures Diapers. Little Roo has very sensitive skin. His little bottom has preferences when it comes to disposable diapers. Most diapers cause him to have red itchy skin. We all know how unpleasant a red itchy bottom can be.

Bambo Natures Diapers are perfume free. I can attest to that fact. With a very sensitive nose I did not smell anything when sniffing these diapers. The fact that perfume free means no smell at all is a big plus for me. Bambo Natures products are certified free of all dangerous chemicals and all known allergens. 

 The true test is will this diaper leak or sag on Little Roo? Will Little Roo be sensitive to this diaper? My grandson has tested these diapers for a little over a week. They have not leaked, sagged or caused a sensitivity.  The diaper passes Little Roo's personal test. 

If you would like to win a package of Bambo Natures Diapers please enter the Rafflecopter below. If you do not have a baby in diapers perhaps you know a baby in need of diapers. Your grandchild, neighbor, friend or church nursery may need a package of diapers. They also make nice shower gifts.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Qoileez Accessories

Disclosure: Grandma Bonnie's Closet has not been compensated for this review. I received a sample product for review purposes. 

The minute I saw Qoileez Hair Accessories I had to have a set! I was fascinated by their simple and stylish designs. My mind started to buzz a mile a minute. What all could I do with such cute accessories?
First off Qoilezz is a great hair accessory but it can also be a fashion accessory to clip on your handbag, belt, shoe strings or key chain.

Even my first thoughts were, "How cute these would be in my granddaughters hair." They would be the perfect hair accessories to match their dance costumes. As I played with the stretchy plastic accessories I started putting them on a few objects around our home. 

I wrapped one on my grandsons straw. I hope the cuteness encourages him to drink a little more. But it also helps to identify his cup that is the same color as his cousins cup. That led me to put a couple on my crafting tools. I often craft with friends and have a hard time keeping track of which scissors or other tools belong to me. I placed them on my granddaughters school pencil and even a wine glass. Not only do they dress up plain ordinary glasses. They help to identify which glass is yours. 

After all that inspiration I had a light bulb go off in my head. Why not tag my phone accessories with Qoileez!

Whenever I travel to visit my children I have a hard time keeping my phone charger and earplugs. The problem in our family is almost everyone has the same phone, charger and headphones. A lost charger is a pain to replace. Now I know for certain which phone charger belongs to me.

I bet Qoileez hair accessories can be placed on most school supplies, pencils, backpacks, eyeglasses, and key chains. 

Qoileez are easy to place in your hair or any where. Check out the 30 second video and see how easy they are to use.

To keep up with Qoileez follow them on Facebook and Twitter. 

Readers, "What would you do with a set of Qoileez Hair Accessories?"

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Cake Decorating Made Easy With Royal Icing & Ateco Decorating Tube Set

Disclosure: Grandma Bonnie's Closet was not compensated for the review of this product. I received a free product from ShopAtDean.com in exchange for an honest opinion. The opinions expressed are my own.

If you are a long time reader of Grandma Bonnie's Closet then you know that one of my favorite hobbies is cake decorating. I am always looking for new and interesting cake decorating products to play with. I often browse online in my spare time looking at cake decorating sites and supply companies. That is how I came across Dean Supply Online. I sat for at least an hour looking at all their kitchen and baking supplies. Then I came across the Ateco 55 Piece Decorating Pastry Tube Set. I began to dream of all the lovely cakes I could make with this awesome set. I thought why not ask for a set to review. My readers enjoy making cakes for their grandchildren/children. You all do, right!
Dean Supply Online is a family run business of 63 years. If you ever visit Ohio and are in the Cleveland area you might want to visit their showroom on Woodland Ave. Hmm, I bet that would make a good blog post.

On with the review. A little over a week ago I received this lovely 55 piece Tube Set. I was impressed with Dean Supply's friendly service and amazingly fast shipping. That is one reason I like to support family owned and run businesses. A good family business puts their customers first and works to see that they are happy and satisfied. I am indeed happy and extremely satisfied.

The set includes two Rose/Flower nails, a coupler for changing tubes and 52 decorating tubes(tips). Included in the 52 tips are multiple writing tips, string tips, star tips, border tips, and leaf tips. Best of all, these beautiful tubes came in a nice heavy duty case for storage. 

This is a pastry filling tip. Imagine how easily I can fill donuts and cupcakes with custard fillings. I will be testing this tip out soon and let you all know how it works. 

The tube to your left is a grass or hair making tube. The tube at the right makes borders and can be used to make a basket weave design on cakes. (Stay tuned for a basket weave cake post in the near future.)

I found the tips easy to use, easy to clean and fun to decorate cakes with. The important thing about getting tips clean after use is a brush made for tube cleaning or a pipe cleaner. I found the tubes easy to clean with pipe cleaners. The coupler that came with the set makes it easy to fill one pastry bag with icing and easily interchange tubes through out the decorating process.  

I used the coupler in this pastry bag. Just drop in the first piece of the coupler. Then add the tube on the outside of the bag and place the ring over the tube. I dropped the bag into a glass and folded the bag over to make it easy to fill with Royal Icing. I then covered my cake in white fondant. I selected a few interesting tubes to test. 

First I used tube #070 for the draped border on the top edge. Then tube #32 for the bottom edge. Next, I tried the rose tube #127 with the large rose/flower nail. It took lots of practice to get a few flowers to even begin to look like a rose. Well, at least they resemble a rose of sorts. Finally, I used tubes #34 and #4 to make leaves and vines. 

Now, I have a surprise for you. This is my first attempt at a YouTube video. I would love for you to watch this short video. I am demonstrating the use of the above tubes while decorating a cake with Royal Icing. It is a short video and I do appreciate your support. Thank you for watching.

I hope you enjoyed the video. Follow Dean Supply Online with Facebook and Twitter. 

Keeping My Favorite Photos Safe

Disclosure: I am participating in the Verizon Boomer Voices program and have been provided with a wireless device and six months of service in exchange for my honest opinions about the product.

Blog photos, family photos, and just everyday photos boy, oh boy have I got photos.  As a Grandmother, blogger, wife and traveler I have tons of photos I would like to keep safe. Today I am going to share a little about my photo saving problems and the solution I was able to come up with to solve this issue. I started out by asking myself a few questions. If you would like to join my brainstorming session and see where it leads. Please answer the questions with me. Feel free to express yourself in the comments section of the post. I would love to hear your ideas and solutions to this problem.  

How often do you use your cell phone camera to take pictures?

Many times I have found my cell phone camera useful in capturing that spur of the moment event that I would not have been able to because I did not have a camera on me. I think about the first time my grandson started walking. No one was expecting it at the moment. There were no real cameras lying about. So we all whipped out our cell phones and started snapping pictures as fast as we could.
Conclusion to question one. Cell phones are great for capturing life's most important memories.

How many photos do you have stored on your phone?

I have over 1,500 on my new phone. My new phone is only a few months old. The last cell phone I used had over 5,000 pictures and videos stored on the phone. I am wondering if I am the only person who does not delete photos.
Conclusion to question two. Cell phones sure can store a ton of photos. But are they safe?

How do you move your photos from your phone to your computer?

This is the one problem I have not solved until just recently. In the past when I wanted to move photos from my cell phone I would email each and every photo to myself. Although this was tedious and only allowed me to move one or a few photos at a time, this was my first choice of action. When I decided I had an over abundance of photos stored on my phone I would plug the phone into my computer and move the photos to a folder on my computer. My method was working fine until I lost my cell phone. Then I realized it was not the answer to my problems.
One would think I would have learned from my mistakes but I guess I am a little hard headed when it comes to changes. A few months ago my computer decided to just up and quit with out notice! What an untimely death. I was very lucky because my dear son was able to retrieve my photos off the hard drive and a few uncorrupted documents.
Conclusion to question three. After serious some thought. Storing photos on a phone or computer will not keep them safe.

Do you have a back-up storage system for your photos and important documents? 

I have always thought of purchasing an external hard drive for back up of our important documents and photos. I need to look further into a external hard drive for this purpose. In the mean time I remember at some point during the Verizon Boomer Voices blogger training program a speaker mentioning being able to back up photos taken from my phone automatically on to G+ or Google Drive. There is that ah ha moment! A little light bulb just lit up and was getting brighter as I thought about the memory. 

OK, I have a G+ account. Most bloggers I know have a G+ account. How hard can it be to set up my phone to automatically save my photos to my G+ account? This is kind of a technical issue and I am not the greatest at figuring out technical problems. 

Conclusion to question four. Saving photos in the cloud on G+ will make a great solution to safely storing photos. That is if I can implement this feature on my cell phone. 

I had to start somewhere so here we go.

My first step was to look up information on auto backing up photos on G+.from a mobile device. 

They have some great step by step information that is easy to follow on that web page. Next, I opened the preloaded G+ app on my Droid Razr Maxx HD. I looked into the settings hoping to find the camera and photos settings. I did not see this listed in the G+ settings. I must have opened and closed the app multiple times. I was fairly certain it was there I just was not finding the right listing in the settings. At this point I was frustrated and had thought of making a trip to the Verizon Wireless store near our home. (The time being 10:30 pm that was not going to happen.) I have on many occasions taken a trip over to one of their stores just to get answers or help with cell phone problems. I think it is the simplest way to get answers to technical problems with a cell phone when you just can't figure it out by yourself. I can tell you from experience that the Verizon Representatives are very helpful and extremely knowledgeable.

I have had a few application problems in the past on other cell phones. I thought back to other instances and came up with four steps I could take to get the G+ app to work correctly.

Step 1. Sign out of the application and sign back in. 

Step 2. Reinstall the application or update. 

Step 3. Get knowledgeable help. In this case I would ask my husband or son.

Step 4. Contact or visit the cell phone provider.

I am happy to report after following step one I was able to find the Camera and Photo setting listed in the G+ settings.

I followed these steps to set the auto backing up of photos on G+ from my cell phone.

This is such an amazing feature for a cell phone and application. I am now going to upload my photos to a photo printing website and have prints made of my most precious photos. .

My readers, What do you think? How do you back up your photos?  

A Little Walk

It sure has been a long week around here. I have been kept busy with yard work, gardening and to many other things to mention. I worked in the garden a little this week and wanted to update you on the results of the Weed Free Raised Bed. Although I mentioned recently how it did not remain weed free but had developed a few weeds here and there. I want to let you know that I have not spent many hours weeding this year. I have over all probably weeded about three or four times. I would bet all in total I have not spent more than an hour or two in garden work.  I must admit I have not gotten as many vegetables as I had expected. But I believe the soil many need some amending next year. That may help it to produce a little more. While I have been busy in other parts of our yard I took a few pictures while I walked around our yard today. I just forgot to take photos of our garden. I will be sure to get a few photos of our garden before the season ends.

Our largest apple tree has produced well this year. I can hardly wait for the apples to ripen. They are almost ready. We have another apple tree planted at the same time but it has only started to produce this year. So we may only get a handful from the second tree if any at all.

While getting some photos of our flowers in the front flower bed I came across this dragonfly. It seems to be molting. That is if they molt. Does anyone know if they molt? I thought the wings were spectacular!

This is the grapevines on the left side of our home. They are hanging on an arbor and our gazebo. That is all from one vine. It started out on the arbor and has grown so much we added a fence to the side. When it out grew the fence we built the arbor to help support the vines.We have another vine on the right side of our home. I just forgot to take photos on that side of our home. I may do that in another post. Any how this vine has always produced well but not excessively.
Well, last year it did not produce at all. Not even one grape. I was happy to see this year that it has actually produced tons of grapes.

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I stood under the gazebo to snap this shot. This is just a small section of the ceiling in the gazebo. These grapes should be ready to harvest some time in September. They are just amazingly  beautiful! Don't you think?
Well, that is all for today. I hope you all have a great weekend.