Pinewood Derby 2014: The Electric Wedge and Howie Car

14. February 2014 · Comments Off on Pinewood Derby 2014: The Electric Wedge and Howie Car · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
Our winners! We're so proud of our boys this year. Not only did they do most of the work (really!), their cars performed very well.

Our winners! We’re so proud of our boys this year. Not only did they do most of the work (really!), their cars performed very well, earning first place trophies for each of their age groups.

Last month the boys participated in their Cub Scout pack’s Pinewood Derby. I thought I had written about our sons’ Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies before, but I guess I hadn’t. This is Jacob’s 5th year competing, and Timmy’s 3rd. And our third Cub Scout pack experience with it.

Because this is a much smaller pack than we had in Florida, the entire event was completed in less than two hours. It was nice to see the boys pay attention to the entire event…unlike in Florida where the event was around 4 hours long.

I’m going to discuss the cars our sons chose to make, and then discuss the event itself. I guess I’ll be spilling some trade secrets and monetary investments we made in the boys’ cars, but I don’t think what we did was too unreasonable. More »

The SodaStream Chatterbox “House Party” Pack

05. February 2014 · Comments Off on The SodaStream Chatterbox “House Party” Pack · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , ,
If you talk about the product, you get to try out the product.

If you talk about the product, you get to try out the product.

Today I will be talking about our SodaStream again. I had written about it last year when we first got it, and one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written for GeekMom is about a Soda Stream syrup hack using real sugar.

We’ve had our SodaStream just under a year and we like it a lot. We’ve had to replace the CO2 cartridge three times in that year, meaning we’ve made nearly 200 liters of soda with us. We’ve tried the SodaStream-brand syrups, we’ve made our own syrups, and we’ve tried the Mio-type concentrated flavor syrups. The latter option has been the most convenient for us, and that’s what we tend to do most often.

With that background, I had applied in January through the House Party social service to try out some Soda Stream flavors and talk it up through social media.

The SodaStream pack arrived in mid-January. You can see what I had received in the photo above. The sampler box of syrups, two 1L bottles, a recipe that mixes flavors, and several coupons to give to friends. I was surprised to see that most of the flavors in the pack weren’t necessarily new. In fact, we had tried the Country Time and Kool-Aid flavors in the past. Read on for my impressions of the Chatterbox. More »