Not Everyone's Mama

Perfect gift idea – Actually, perfect holiday idea for making those holiday cards to send out!

Do you have those holiday cards made yet?

That’s something I do every single year.  My previous years’ cards that I have made looked like this –

This year I went with a different look.  I made a tree that looks (hopefully) like my children drew it and used my kids pictures as ornaments.

I wanted simpler this year.  I’m not sure why.  It just felt right.

The card was made and the next decision was, who do I go with to print it out?  I decided on MyPublisher.  

They have a program you can download and I thought it was super easy to use.  I used the card that just looked like a picture.  Uploaded my image to the blank one, ordered it, and it was done.  My cards will be shipped in 2 – 5 days and I’ll have them by Dec 1 to ship out to friends and family.

They also have TONS of styles to choose from if you just want to add your picture and not design it from scratch like I do.  (It’s the digital scrapbooker in me that has to do that every year!)  They have elegant, fun, simple, so many styles to choose from.

I can’t wait to get the cards and see how it turns out.

For the digiscrappers out there, they also print out 12X12’s if you go that route instead of printing them into a book.  Then again, they also offer books.  You can go with whichever product you like!  Awesome!

MyPublisher gets a

for being a fun, easy to use way to make your holiday cards with very reasonable prices!

And I have a goodie for one of you all!

Someone here is going to win a $50 coupon code for your own holiday cards this year!  We’re going to make this a quickie so that you have time to print, order, and get them mailed out before the holidays hit us hard!

Thank you to Project You for joining with me for this giveaway and for offering me a $50 gift code for my own holiday cards and one to giveaway to my readers!  Remember, you can always read the latest issue of Project You Magazine here at Not Everyone’s Mama!

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• Finally – A Christmas Card – DONE!
• My Holiday Card Tips and Purple Trail

Perfect gift idea – Make your gifts this holiday season!  Have those pictures that are sitting on your hard drive made into a beautiful (very reasonable priced) will be cherished for years photo book for your family and friends.

Awesome new product out right now that I think a lot of my blog readers will be interested in!  My first readers who ever started visiting my blog, my digiscrapping friends, will LOVE this!  I think all of my newer readers/followers/friends/family will think this is really cool too.

Traditionally, when you make a photo book, you go to a site, upload all of your photos and fiddle around with it there.

When you download (it’s free! try it!) Nero Kwik Media, you can do all of that on your computer without taking it to a website now. 

It was really simple to do.

Download the software.

Install.

The program automatically finds your pictures for you.

(click to enlarge)

Then go to Create A Photo Product.

From there you can, in my case, add all of your scrapbook pages, and start creating your book.

If you are using a 3600 X 3600 page, you can just drag and drop it where you want it, then click on use as background image.

It places it perfectly where you need it.

Continue on through each page and your back cover.

Preview.

Order.

You order it straight from the program.

Very cool.

The prices are more than competitive in my opinion too.  $12.99 for a 20 page soft cover book.  Think of how many Christmas presents you could give out at that price!  Homemade, photos of your loved ones, your scrap pages, for $12.99.

If you aren’t a scrapper, this program is really for you.

There are backgrounds included, frames, drop shadows, everything you need to create this book.  Just pick your theme (including holidays and kids!), drag, drop, and position your pictures, add your text, preview, and order.

Seriously, it could not be any simpler.

I honestly think anyone could use this program.

Does it do more than make photo books?

Yes!

You can burn CDs, watch HD movies you burned to blue ray, make slideshows, share on Facebook and YouTube, sync with your Android device (happy!  I have an HTC Evo 4G), and of course order your photo books, calendars, and greeting cards.

You might want to check this page out because I found a 40% off coupon code.  That makes your soft cover photo book less than $8.00.

I was really impressed with this.  Doing what I do with digital scrapbooking, I am used to being very technical, measuring edges for bleed, using templates, all of that stuff to get my books just right.

I didn’t have to do that here.

Drag, drop, done.

Head on over and download Nero Kwik Media for free!  Give it a shot!

Excellent product Nero!  I give you kudos and a

for being an awesome easy to product to help families record their memories.  I would like to give my own tip.  If you have more than one child, get a copy of each photo book made for each kid.  That way, when they move away and start their own families, they each have these books to take with them.  That’s how I do it.  I always want to fight with my siblings over my mom’s pics.  This way it’s taken care of.

Disclosure: This post is part of a SocialMoms product evaluation, for which I’ve been selected. One free photo book was made available to me for review purposes. I’ve been compensated for my time with a $100 PayPal payment. The opinions expressed in this post are mine and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of SocialMoms or Nero.

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Congratulations to Paul Haddock!  Thank you to everyone who entered!  Paul, I will send you an email.  Please respond within 48 hours with your information.  Thanks!

I AM REOPENING THIS BECAUSE SOMEHOW I POSTED 2 DATES FOR THE ENDING TIME.  IT WILL NOW CLOSE on 3/13 @ 11:59 PM CST.  I’M SORRY FOR THE CONFUSION!

I had the awesome opportunity to review the Motorola Endeavor HX1.

So what has been my experience with Bluetooths personally?  None.  I hated them.  Know why?  Because Pato is always buying cheap ones and I hate talking to him on the phone when he was using one.  The echo along with the fact that he had to yell for me to hear him was incredibly annoying.  Pato is not very technologically inclined, he cares nothing for computers, but he is always trying new things for his phone.

Do you know how hard it was to keep his hands off of the Motorola Endeavor HX1 when it showed up on my doorstep?

Because of his misuse of them I have refused to use a hands free set of any kind, which isn’t cool in situations where, well, I hate to admit that I have done it, but in situations where I might be operating a 3500 lb home away from home during soccer season on wheels AKA my Kia Rondo.

Until I saw the Motorola Endeavor HX1.  Now, why might this bluetooth headset excite me when others failed?

It has stealth mode.  Do you know what stealth mode is? Let’s use my children as an example. Let’s say I get an important phone call from the doctor’s office.  At that exact moment in time Murphy’s law dictates that all 4 of my childen will either need me, start whining, start fighting, start crying, and/or a combination of all of the above.  The most repeated phrase on any phone call with the doctor’s office or any business for that matter?  I’m sorry.  I can’t hear you.  95% of my phone calls are made on the porch, where in Iowa, in February, it tends to be quite cold.  While I’m on the porch, my children are attempting to open the door and tell on each other and the baby is standing there pounding on the door yelling at me to come in.

Stealth mode is a button that I can push on the headset that will cause all the background noise to disappear, at least for the person on the other end of the phone call, doesn’t really get rid of it for me.  I really don’t think that I can blame Motorola for that at all.

It also has CrystalTalk Technology, which when you aren’t in extreme noise situations, IE: Monster truck rally, tractor pull, around my children, it will cancel out that noise.  CrystalTalk is on from the moment you turn it on, no button to push. It would be perfect for when you’re in the car with the radio (at a normal level) or walking on a windy day.

So, I put it to the test.  Turned it on, hooked it up to my Blackberry which was just about as easy as could be.  My phone found the Motorola Endeavor HX1 within seconds.  Put the earpiece in, listened to the voice prompts, and called Pato, who couldn’t hear a word I was saying.  Hung up, read the instructions closer.  Oh that’s what those little black things are for.  They aren’t replacement parts.  It came with different ear pieces to attach to it so you get the best fit for your ear. Silly me.

I tested each one and found the one that felt most comfortable in my ear.  Called Pato back, bingo! He heard me clear as day.  For once I asked the kids to up the noise level and they complied.  I pushed the stealth mode button and asked Pato if he could hear me now.  I felt like a commercial, can you hear me now?  Can you hear me now? He could hear me, but he said I sounded a little farther away, a little tinny.  Which, can be explained by the fact that Stealth Mode actually

uses bone conduction to tap your vocal vibrations and seamlessly convert them to speech so the listener hears what you are trying to say.

(For us civilian type people, bone conduction is something that the military uses, now at our fingers in the Motorola Endeavor HX1.)

He said it was still preferable to hearing all 4 of our kids yelling to talk to him because they wanted him to bring home tacos after work as soon as they realized who I was talking to.

On my end, the calls were perfectly clear, like I was talking to him with my phone to my ear.

Then I repeated the test over the next week or so with family members and friends.  The results were the same, with CrystalTalk technology, everyone could hear me clear as day and in my car by myself or outside they could never hear background noise.  With stealth mode they said that I sounded father away, but couldn’t hear the kids in the background.  And plus, most people now call me and say, can you hear me?  Can you hear me Heather?  Smart alecs.

I’ve been using this a lot over the past 2 weeks and I love it!  Pato’s been trying to sneak it out of my purse.  I love the fact that I can push the button on the top and immediately it connects to my voice dialing feature and I can say, call P-ay-to (the only way my phone recognizes P-ah-to) or call mom. It’ll call them without me needing to do anything else.  Yes, this excited me. No, I never used my voice dialing feature much.

I haven’t had to charge it again yet after charging it 2 weeks ago overnight.  I usually use it in the car and when I know I’m going to make a long phone call. (I don’t know if my ear canal is too small but after wearing it for an hour or so, I have to take it out and give my ear a rest, but remember I’m not used to using a bluetooth.) Other than that I turn it off and keep it in a pocket in my purse so I don’t forget to use it in the car.  Safety first!  It’s rated with 7 hours talked time and 10 days standby time.

Motorola Endeavor HX1 is available at Sprint for $129.99 but I also found the Motorola Endeavor HX1 on Amazon for $102.95 right now.

This gets a

for keeping us safe while I’m driving us to and fro and for helping me have important conversation without having to hear, I’m sorry I can’t hear you.

Now some exciting news!  Motorola has offered to give one of the Motorola Endeavor HX1 to one of my blog readers!

MAIN ENTRY:

Go to Motorola and tell me what feature appeals to you most on the Motorola Endeavor HX1.

MAKE SURE YOU DO THE MAIN ENTRY BEFORE ANY OF THE EXTRA ENTRIES! THANKS!

EXTRA ENTRIES:

• - Become a fan of Motorola on Facebook
• - Subscribe to my blog via email or reader
• - Follow @Motomobile on Twitter
• - Follow me on Twitter (either @HeatherM74 or @GiveawayChick – you’ll get all the giveaways from other bloggers that I enter on @GiveawayChick, either one is fine.)
• - Tweet this giveaway (1X/day)

Win a Motorola Endeavor HX1 from @Motomobile and #HeatherM74! http://bit.ly/aw5gZ8 Best Bluetooth headset! Ends 3/13  #Giveaway * US

• - Follow me via Google Friend connect
• - add my button to your blog (the 24/7 mom one on the right side)
• - comment on one of my other posts
• - blog about this giveaway with a link back to this post.
• - Digg, StumbleUpon, or any other social networking bookmark this giveaway.  (Not the site, the post.) There are links after each post.

Please leave a separate comment for each entry.

- Check out this post for 3 extra entries on all of my giveaways through April 1!

Giveaway ends on EXTENDED! 3/13/10 at 11:59 PM CST. Only US entries. Winners will be chosen by random number generator. Winners will be emailed and must respond within 48 hours or an alternate winner will be chosen.

Thank you to Motorola for sending me the Motorola Endeavor HX1.

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