Dawniemom

Seat Snug – a review

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Nov 222008

My baby girl (who is 5-1/2 years old and weighs all of 32 lbs.) just recently moved to a booster seat in the car, from a regular strapped in car seat. The problem we’re finding with booster seats, particularly with our minivan, is that there’s nothing to keep it secured in the vehicle. So the child in is top heavy, and therefore, gets tossed around when you’re going around corners or, heaven forbid, in an accident.

Personally, the person who created minivan seats to be like ours are should be smacked. There’s no way for them to sit securely. The creators of the Seat Snug understand that.

What’s the Solution?

The brand new SeatSnug® allows the lap belt to be lightly tightened around a child’s hips while riding in a vehicle, preventing seatbelt slack or looseness from developing.

By gently securing a child while riding in a booster seat, SeatSnug® substantially eliminates bouncing, rocking, tipping, falling over, submarining, and ejection, thus reducing the potential for injuries and death in vehicular accidents. At the same time, SeatSnug® improves child stability and comfort.

As a side note, if you’ve been around the net long enough, you’ll be aware of the acronym RTFM. I didn’t.

When I received my Seat Snug, I glanced at the instructions – figuring how hard can it be? Yeah – I’m that goofy. So then I spent forever freezing my butt off trying to fix what I’d messed up LOL

Seat Snug understands that, too LOL They even warn you beforehand – this is very difficult to remove – DO IT RIGHT! They provide VIDEOS on their site to show you how to install it.

When I finally got it taken BACK off, I READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, and had it installed in 5 minutes LOL Now, when I put Libby’s seatbelt on, it stays tight across her lap. She’s able to move forward freely, but she doesn’t rock back & forth when we turn corners. She is secure. To me, that’s worth it’s weight in gold!

Visit SeatSnug’s website to learn more, and to order yours.

Special thanks to MomCentral for this opportunity!

I never gave video chat a 2nd thought before I moved away from my family and had kids. But once they came along, it was important to me that my family see my kids, not just in the occasional photo, but really see them – even when they’re not at their best, so we invested in a video camera a long time ago.

The problem came when it was so choppy and lagged, thereby making it nearly impossible to hold a conversation. The cam has sat there, collecting dust, for quite some time.

Then, MomCentral asked us bloggers to check out Tokbox. Tokbox is a video chat website, and is (best of all) FREE. Tokbox is even integrated into Facebook, so you can connect with your Facebook friends as you’re hurling a sheep at them! You can also simply put your own specialized Tokbox link anywhere you’d like, [http://www.tokbox.com/Dawnie] and when people click on it, they’ll be able to call you right from there. They do not need to have a video camera.

In fact, when I dusted off our camera to try it out, the first couple of friends I tested it with didn’t have video cameras, and I don’t have a microphone! LOL But you can text chat as you view the video or they view yours, etc. I did finally find a friend who had their own video camera, and when we got linked up, the HUGE difference in the quality of the video was just mind boggling! It was as if we were sitting face to face, having coffee – instead of 200 miles apart!

One of my favorite features is the ability to import friends from all your favorite places, like yahoo, gmail, etc. That made finding people to chat with so much easier!

I also liked having the ability to embed this cool little widget wherever I might want to. For those of you who are (rightfully) concerned about privacy, their privacy controls are AWESOME! You are able to set exactly who contacts you. I have mine set so that only the people on my friends list can contact me, IM me, leave messages for me.

With nothing to download, no costs or prepaid minutes, and complete privacy control, TokBox solves a number of the problems we all have staying in touch. Plus – video is so much more fun than simply talking!

Now if only I can figure out where my microphone went!

My special thanks to MomCentral for the opportunity to check TokBox out!

One of the reasons why I do not shop online very often is because of the shipping & handling fees. I don’t mind paying reasonable fees, but when they’re based on a percentage of what you buy, rather than what it’s actually going to cost them, that bugs me. It bugs me enough that I won’t buy from those sites.

So when MomCentral asked me to take a look at shop.com, the very first thing I clicked on was their link for Free Shipping! They have HUNDREDS of shops that offer free shipping!

Shop.com is basically a one-stop shopping portal. You tell it what you’re shopping for – it goes out, finds a parking spot, slogs through the slush, gets into the store, fights through the crowds, finds a salesperson to go look up the price of the thing you are in need of, gets the price, fights the crowds out of the store, slogs through the slush, searches for the car that it can’t remember where it parked, drives home, and gives you the price – and does that for hundreds of different places – all at once!

Here’s an example. I searched for “cookie sheet”. I need a GOOD, heavy cookie sheet because mine are so … well, let’s just say I NEED one. Look what I got:

There are 574 matches in SHOP.COM > Home & Housewares > cookie sheet

Now, of those 574!! results, you can narrow down the results by price, by store, by size, by brand – all without having to find your snowbrush!

For me, living here in the boonies, if I want something other than WalMart, I have to drive for (literally) hours to get something else. With Shop.com, now I don’t have to! I can comparison shop on just one site. What’s more – you can buy from a variety of stores right there on shop.com. They also offer shopping tips, suggestions and COUPONS! Seriously, with all the stress that the holidays can bring, taking the hassle out of shopping is one of the best gifts you can give YOURSELF.

Special thanks to MomCentral for another great opportunity!