This is for the new iPad, not the iPod.

You can learn about all the details here:  File Taxes Online in 2010 and Win a Free Apple iPad!

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Pixie Colour Picker was created for webmasters and designers, and with the explosion of blogs across the Internet more people are learning how to tweak their templates.  I always have Pixie open when I’m tweaking my blog template, Atahualpa (which is also free and has over 200 customization options).

Pixie is a very tiny program, only 11KB in size.  It was named perfectly as it takes up a tiny amount of space on your hard drive using minute amounts of memory when running. It works with Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Windows XP Home/Pro and Microsoft Windows Vista. I have been using Pixie for several years and its creator keeps the website is updated to the current year so it is nice to know this sweet little program’s creator still cares about it.

There are two free choices at the Nattyware site; you can download Pixie as a portable application or in a zip archive. I recommend downloading the zip archive as you will get a readme.txt while which will help you figure out what this little program is if you happen to forget.

Double click on the zipped file to open.  Copy the executable file pixie.exe and paste it to your desktop.

The program icon will look like this:

Now just double-click. You may get a warning message that looks like this: go ahead and click Run to open Pixie:

When Pixie is open, it will look like this on your desktop.

As you move your cursor, Pixie will show the color your cursor has landed upon. In the above image, the cursor was pointed at a brown color. See the numbers and letters to the right of the color?  You’re going to focus mainly on the HTML number.  The brown color in this sample is #AD835D.

When you place your cursor directly onto Pixie, it looks like this:

Those are your Pixie hotkeys. When you have your cursor on the color you are trying to match, simply press Ctrl-Alt-c to copy the HTML code.  This copies the number onto your clipboard. When you get to where you want to add the HTML code, simply press Ctrl-v to paste the number.  If you are mouse dependent, these hotkeys may take some getting used to, but will become second nature after a few times.

I mostly use the copy HTML hotkey, Ctrl-Alt-c. But sometimes when I’m trying to grab a color that is very small, the magnifier comes in handy.  Just place your cursor in the area and press Ctrl-Alt-z. A perfect example would be if you were trying to grab a color from a favicon.  It can be a challenge to rest the cursor on the exact color you want, but with the magnifier that task becomes simple.  You can make sure it’s not only the right color, but you can then press Ctrl-Alt-c to grab the HTML number.

You can also configure the Pixie hotkeys by right-clicking on the program.  Once you change the letters you wish to use for each process, just click on the small X in the top right hand corner, and Pixie will go back to the default screen.

You can also move Pixie around to anyplace on the screen. I usually keep it up in the top right hand corner of my computer monitor. Pixie always stays on top of whatever you are working on so you can grab colors from any program or screen.  You can minimize Pixie and it will drop into the icon tray at the bottom of your screen on the right hand side.  When it’s in the icon tray, just double-click to restore it to the position you had it in last.

Keep this program in mind when you are trying to match colors on the computer as it will be very helpful.

What are your favorite free computer programs?

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I had a feeling it was dust in the heat sink or fan area.  So I promised myself before I got on the computer for the day that I’d wrestle it from its nesting place and bring it out and see if I was right.

I was right all right.  I’m almost embarrassed for you to see just how bad it was. Essentially, my computer’s heat sink and other venting areas were wearing fur coats made from dust bunnies. In the image below, I have pointed an arrow to the only visible portion of the heat sink. It is made from aluminum and is silver colored.

Dust Bunny Fur Coat on the Heat Sink

Dust Bunny Fur Coat on Air Vent

Dust Bunnies on Outer Fan Vents

Dust Bunny Fur Coat on Air Vents

I know that one little speck of dust can wreak havoc with a computer’s electronics, so this is pretty much a disastrous situation for my computer.

Luckily my hubby has this awesome air compressor tool and I spent a good 15 minutes blowing air through the computer’s innards – otherwise I would have needed to use about 3 or 4 cans of compressed air!  It is all clean now, and back at home.

No more loud whirring and freezing of the mouse!

I told you it was dusty in Arizona.     Even my boss, who has the cleanest house of anyone I know has a layer of dust on her microwave two days after she cleans the entire house.

Have you given your computer a dusting lately?

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It reminded me of when we were living below poverty level.  We used to dumpster dive right in the mobile home park we lived in.  It was incredible all the things we found that people had thrown away. We never found food, but once I found two rolls of chickenwire, brand new, just thrown away. I used to find plastic clothes baskets with just a little crack in them. We’d find clothing.  When we were moving from that mobile home, we found enough brand new carpeting in the back of a carpet store to cover the floor in the whole place.  All free.  I have found so many treasures from dumpsters.

When we moved out here and got our goats and chickens, I was only working three days a week, instead of seven. Mr. A was a full time stay at home dad.  Life was so much more pleasant and fulfilling than it is now.  Of course we had less money, but the extra time was totally worth it.

We used to do our grocery shopping together every Friday. Sometimes I’d get lucky at one of the grocery stores and they would be sorting through the vegetables, throwing out the less-than-perfect produce.  I’d look into the can and nearly gasp at all the vegetables and fruit that was going to be thrown into a dumpster. I’d ask if I could have the produce for my goats, and occasionally I’d be able to take it home (often it was already spoken for). I would get such a thrill out of taking that produce home, for I knew that about three-quarters of it would be perfectly useable.  The only problem is you have to process it immediately. There was way too much for the refrigerator, and it would spoil without doing something with it. So I’d have to blanche a bunch of it for freezing, pull off all the bad parts for the chickens and goats, saving the good parts. I was at the store the other morning and looked into the garbage can… saddened by what I saw in there. Such perfectly good produce, but I have no extra time or energy to even think about asking for it.

When we lived in the big city most of the stores had a discount clearance section.  It was awesome, and I made a lot of banana bread.  One time, my sister bought a flat of grapes that were starting to wrinkle.  She thought it would be a fun project for the children in her daughter’s first grade class to try making raisins.  The teacher ended up reporting my sister to the principal, accusing her of bringing rotten food to the school.  It was shocking to me, and to my sister.  Heaven help us if we were at the store at the same time, we were practically fighting over who would get what.

The stores out in my area don’t have a discount produce section. I miss the thrill of getting those great prices.

I guess if I lived in an area like Riana lives, I would be interested in trying the freegan lifestyle.  I guess I think it would be a challenge. But it’s not something I could do currently.

What about you? Could you ever consider being a freegan?

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Both items were from Big Lots, a popular discount store.  I’m sure I’ll be able to find something there that I can use for $25.

Last Sunday night, AJ and I wanted to watch a movie, and so he popped up some of this gourmet popcorn.  Unfortunately, even though the container said “Best used by July 2010″ the kernels hardly popped.  The popcorn burned and half the kernels just sat at the bottom of the pan. Luckily we had some Orville Redenbacher popcorn on hand, and AJ said he used half as much as the “gourmet” and it popped twice as much!

I decided to see if Big Lots would give me store credit for the popcorn, so I went to one of the stores to find out. No dice.  Their refund policy requires that you have a receipt, and the product must be returned within 30 days. The salesclerk said the best she could do was offer me the exact same item as an exchange.

So… I took the exchange.  We looked to see if the product was any newer, and it’s expiration date is the same: July 2010.

Now here’s my dilemma.  What do I do with this popcorn?   There’s no point in trying to pop it, I’m sure it is just as stale as the first box I got.  I can’t regift it, because that would suck to give someone popcorn that I know isn’t going to pop.

It cost TWELVE dollars.

I wish I could just get the darned receipt from my “Secret Santa” and exchange for something else!

The thing is, the guy who bought it for me is a big fan of Big Lots and is a bargain shopper and penny pincher.

I think he’d be bummed to know his twelve bucks is going to be thrown in the garbage.

He’d expressed interest in the popcorn, and whether it would pop red or blue.  Since I told him I’d let him know, I decided to also let him know that unfortunately the popcorn didn’t pop… I guess I was hoping he’d say, “Here’s the receipt, take it back and exchange it for something else.”

So what I did was I told him we tried popping the popcorn, and although the container said it should be good until June 2010, it didn’t pop. I told him I took it back to see if I could exchange it for some fresher popcorn, and I guess I’d give it another try. He suggested that maybe red and blue popcorn just doesn’t pop well as a general rule.  I told him I’d let him know how this batch turns out.

Okay but I don’t even want to waste the oil to try popping the stale popcorn.

So I guess I’m going to throw it away. I feel rotten about throwing away a twelve dollar item that can’t be used.  I guess the other thing I could do is give it back to him. At least that way he could take it back to the store and get his twelve bucks back.

Or just throw it away.

I feel like a ninny for even saying anything to him. You know the whole look the gift horse in the mouth thing.

What do you think I should do? Just throw it away?

Yours,

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If you’re into writing yearly Christmas letters, you can dress up your letter using fonts.

When you begin your search for free fonts, it can be a little frustrating because some of the sites are merely sites with links to other sites where you can get fonts. But Fontspace really has free fonts.  The fonts are categorized nicely with tags, and there is a clear image of each font.  They download within seconds and are ready to use.

How to Put The Fonts Into Your Font Folder

Sometimes this can be tricky.  My operating system is Vista Home and downloads are automatically saved in a downloads folder.  I’m going to show you how to put a shortcut on your desktop so you’ll never lose your downloads ever again. But first let’s download a font.

First, find a font that you like at Fontspace and click on the download button.

Next you should see a message asking you what you want to do:

Make sure Save File is selected, and click OK. I generally leave “Do this automatically for files like this from now on” unchecked because I want to be the one making the choice all the time when I’m downloading files from the Internet.

Next you’ll see your download screen dialog:

Making a Shortcut to Your Downloads Folder

The file has downloaded, but where has it gone?  Where’s the download folder?  What I have found handy is to download the font, and with the download window still open, right click on the file that just downloaded. Choose Open Containing Folder.

Once you get the folder open, right click on the download folder, go down to Send To, then click on Desktop (create shortcut). This will place a shortcut on your desktop, so you can easily find your downloads folder. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

Your downloads will always go into this folder, so from now on, anytime you download anything, you can just click on this shortcut on your desktop to open the downloads folder and find the file that just downloaded.

Unzipping the Downloaded Font

Okay, so now click on the downloads folder, and look for your zipped font file.

Double click on it. That’s all there is to it. Back in the olden days, we had to have a file named pkzip to unzip files. But now Windows does it all for us.

Once it opens, you will be able to see the contents of the zipped folder. What you are looking for is the file ending in .ttf.  True Type Font is what that stands for. Right click on it, and select copy from the drop down menu.

Now go to Computer, then click on Local Disk (C:\) and paste the file at the root (C:\).

You’ll see I have a few other fonts located there, and the Candu__.ttf is there now also.

Installing Your Font

Now you want to go to your Control Panel, and click on Fonts. Click on Start, Control Panel.

Once the Control Panel is open, click on the Fonts folder.  Once that is open, click on an empty space and right click. Choose Add New Font from the drop down menu.

Another window opens, and from here you click on the font you want to install, then click the Install button.

Click Close once you are able.

Now the font should be installed. You can look in the fonts folder to see that it is there.

If you have Word, open it up and choose Candy Cane for the font.

I just think that is so cool!!

Just a few of favorites in the Christmas fonts at Fontspace:

Ice and Snow – ice capped uppercase letters – lowercase are plain.

Marshmallow World – snowflakes dingbats!

Carr X-Mas Dingbats – all kinds of Christmas dingbats; presents, snowmen, santa clause, ornaments, just a great assortment.

KR Christmas Frame – lovely frames that you can enlarge and use to frame photos!

Christmas Cheer – Christmas sayings in various designs; Joy, Peace, Merry Christmas, Ho, Come Let Us Adore Him, Winter Wishes, Noel, and more.

Xmas Clipart – More dingbats of Christmas; Santas, bells, reindeer, holly and presents.

WWFlakes – more snowflakes.

KR Christmas Dings – Dingbats with a religious slant; manger, doves, angels, baby Jesus, three wise men, Mary with baby Jesus, etc.

KR Color Me Christmas 2002 – Dingbats that you can print out for coloring! Great resource for parents and teachers.

GE Christmas Joy Font – more Christmas dingbats.

Wow, and that’s only going through the first thirty fonts available, there are 155 Christmas fonts in all! You’ve got to check it out yourself, and find your own favorites.

Please let me know if this tutorial has been helpful for you and I will add more.

*Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Fontspace in any way, nor have I been asked or paid to do this review. I just love this font site, and want to share it with my readers!

Yours Truly,

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The second is a $10 Gift Card for Kroger/Fry’s Grocery.  It came in the mail, and says “Free $10 Gift Card – Just for requesting a quote at hartfordauto.com/a74 or 888-276-3551.”

Good luck!

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Land of the free, home of the brave. God bless our troops for the job they are doing to protect our country.  Our country and the state in which I live are in pretty bad spots financially, I hope we can pull through without having to go into a depression like some are anticipating.

But on a lighter topic, I love fireworks. 4th of July is one of my favorite holidays.  I love taking photos of fireworks.  AJ and I went to a 4th of July get together last night and we both took our cameras.  We have two tripods, but could only locate one. AJ wanted to take some video as well so he let me have full use of the tripod.

My camera is just a little ol’ point and shoot, but I am always very pleased with the photos that come out.

Here are a few tips for getting fireworks shots.

TIP ONE:

Figure out if you can set your camera to have a slower shutter speed, or perhaps yours will have a setting specifically designed for taking fireworks, like my Nikon Coolpix S220 does. Since it’s a point and shoot, it doesn’t like me set the shutter speed or anything fancy, but it does have a lot of “scene” settings from which I can choose. Like sunset, fireworks, beach/snow, etc. You can imagine the different lighting you would get at sunset, during fireworks, or at the beach or if snow was all over.

TIP TWO:

Always bring a tripod. I have tried taking photos without the tripod but it didn’t work out, I can’t stand anywhere near as still as a tripod can.

TIP THREE:

Make sure your battery is charged. I always make sure my battery is fully charged prior to leaving for the fireworks show.  I actually own a second battery so I make sure both are fully charged.

TIP FOUR:

Clear your camera’s memory card. I always make sure I have an empty card so I can take plenty of pictures.

TIP FIVE:

Set your photo resolution at the highest setting, just in case you want to get photo prints made up of your fantastic firework photos!

TIP SIX:

Last but not least: This tip is something with which you must experiment.  You have to get your timing right. I listen for the “boom” sound when the firework has been set off, you can hear it whizzing up into the sky but you can’t see it yet.  Right at that moment I snap the photo. The shutter stays open for several seconds and hopefully it will gather the photo while the firework is up in the sky. Otherwise, if you wait too long or if you take the photo while the firework is in the sky, you may end up with black sky, or maybe a few little flicks of light.

Of the 150 photos I took, I had about 3 dozen black photos, some with tiny points of light.  It is a bit of a distraction (to your enjoyment of watching fireworks) to be messing with the camera but after a while you’ll get the hang of when to snap the photo to get the firework. The thing is your shutter will be open 10-30 seconds, taking light in all those seconds. That’s why you see long streaks of light in my photo above.

Of the 150 photos I took, I ended up liking 60 of them. That’s pretty good, I think. And also why it’s so important to take LOTS and LOTS and LOTS of photos!! It’s so easy to do with a digital camera!

Good luck with your photo shots!  These tips are also great for taking photos of campfires, christmas lights and anything else with lights in the dark!

I hope you have a wonderfully relaxing day today, with good food, friends and family!

Mrs. Accountability

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I started out by doing some research at T-mobile.com to see what kinds of phones were available to me at a reasonable (hopefully free) price.

When I logged in, T-mobile displayed a page with an offer to reward me for my customer loyalty. I looked over the deal and decided to pass on it for the time being, until I had a chance to look into it more closely.

I actually was surprised to see that there were hardly any “free” phones available with extending my contract.

AJ and I stopped by Costco since his new glasses were starting to crack and while there I impulsively decided to look at the phones at the T-mobile kiosk. I ended up choosing a Samsung t429 which will be free after I send in the $50 rebate.  (Shoot!  Where is that rebate?  I need to send it in!)

My original plan with T-mobile was a regional plan that I was grandfathered into from when I was with Voicestream.  3000 anytime minutes for $49.99, and no long distance or roaming charges to just a handful of surrounding states.  Of course that didn’t include states nearest me that I actually had friends or family living in.

I decided to call T-mobile to get more information about this loyalty plan. My biggest concern is that they would raise the rates in a year, and I’d lose my really good 3000 anytime minutes deal in the process.  The representative assured me that I could stick with this plan and they would not raise the rates for the rest of my time with them.

I hope she wasn’t lying, because I decided to go for the new plan.

I started with Voicestream back in 2001 – for my sister.  She needed a cell phone and didn’t have the credit to qualify for the line in her name.  A few months later, we moved out to the country, and I was driving 50 miles to and from work, crossing a lot of barren desert, and felt it was necessary to get a cell phone. I actually remember feeling reluctant to become “one of those people“.

So here’s the loyalty plan deal from T-Mobile. The first two lines are $89.99, so $44.99 each. The third line is $39.99. I am allowed to have as many as 10 lines in my name (the rep was really happy to inform me of that). My sister was paying $14.99 for unlimited text messaging because apparently one of her children got hold of her phone back in December and texted $1000 worth of charges onto the bill. Funny how I never heard about that (my sister does have access to the account and didn’t want to alarm me). Thankfully T-mobile was merciful on my sister and backdated the unlimited texting by three days, which wiped out the $1000 in texting. My goodness, I cannot imagine. We pay 20 cents for every text over 400, so that means my niece texted 5000 times within a couple of days.

Mr. A has the third line, and we’ve been paying $4.99 for his text messaging.  He’s computer illiterate, but he did finally learn how to text message on his phone.

The new plan costs $19.99 for unlimited text messaging on all three lines. From what I understand, $19.99 would cover unlimited text messaging for all my ten lines, if I were to ever get that many lines in my name.

Actually, AJ is thinking about upgrading from his pay as you go phone line.

And T-mobile is also currently offering a deal where if I can persuade family or friends to get a line in my account, from another service, then I’ll get a $135 reward. So my mom is actually seriously thinking about signing up on my account.

So here’s the deal once more:

• First two lines $89.99
• $39.99 for the additional line(s)
• $19.99 for unlimited text messaging on all lines
• unlimited, anytime minutes
• free long distance within the U.S.
• no roaming charges

All because I’ve been with T-mobile for eight years. It really sounds too good to be true.

We’ll save $20 from what the bill used to be previously.  My sister pays her portion, Mr. A’s company pays a portion, and I pay a portion. We’ll split the savings between the three lines.

What do you pay for your cell phone, and how many minutes? Are you limited to evenings and weekends?  Or have you not yet become “one of those people?”

Mrs. Accountability

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With my most recent Amazon Gift Certificate I decided to order a book on square foot gardening which I’ve seen frequently at Amazon, but never read.  I’ve always used the techniques for intensive – or square foot gardening – described by Duane Newcomb.

I wasn’t too impressed with the book… maybe I’ll do a review on it, but the guy definitely doesn’t live in the desert. A lot of his recommendations would not work for us here in Arizona.  But I did like his chapter on vertical gardening, specifically the part where he shows you how to build a section with conduit and mesh.  I have grown my crops vertically before, but haven’t found any method that I was happy with. The mesh he uses got me to thinking; only I didn’t want to go try to track down the mesh he uses (I hate looking for oddball items). I got to thinking the hay twine might come in handy. You could probably pick up something similar at Walmart or a hardware store.  The mesh I put together took about 200 feet of twine.

I went out into Mr. A’s “stuff” piles and started looking around to see what I could find. At first I had hoped I could steal Mr. A away from his current job and get him to drill some holes in a piece of metal or wood and help me erect it into the garden.  He was too busy though, so I went to looking again on Saturday morning. I found these pieces of metal that are bent into an “L” shape and they have holes every foot or so.

My original plan to grow my vining plants close to the perimeter has not been working out so well because the watermelon keeps vining its way OUT of the garden completely. Luckily the area had chicken wire protecting it since I’m still shielding the sunflowers from the birds and critters.  But had the chicken wire not been there, the growing tips of the watermelon plants poking through would surely have been eaten off.

I decided that bed could use help first, especially since the watermelon vines were growing to be 18 inches and longer. They put out little strings to wrap round and round anything to hold onto, so the longer I waited, the more I’d have to fight with the little ties.

I wasn’t sure how to erect the “L” shaped pieces, they were too tall for the garden. But then I realized I could work them through the chicken wire covering the top of the garden, which would serve as a brace to hold them in position. I pushed them up through the top, then got them into the position I wanted them beside the bed and pushed into the moist dirt. Here’s a photo of the top part.

I couldn’t go too far down, since chicken wire lines the bottom of the beds to prevent the gophers from digging in and eating the watermelon plants.

Then I started tying on the hay twine. I tied a strand through each hole going horizontally first. That was about six strands. Then I put a strand in between each of those strands, just tied onto the pole (there are only six holes in the pole to tie the twine securely into). Then I started at the bottom and worked my way up, tying a slip knot onto each strand. The really cool thing about doing that is it’s really easy to move the strand over to the left or right if that would work better for the vining plant.

Here’s a closer picture of the watermelon vines and how I’ve wrapped them around the hay twine.

I’m very excited about this idea. I found a use for hay twine – three strings on each bale, and I used 22 for this netting, and the watermelon will have a place to grow without trying to poke its way out of the garden where birds can nip off the growing tip.

It didn’t take that long to put this together. Probably 30-40 minutes for the first one.  I also put up another one over the green bean bed – that one, since I had my technique down, probably took less than 20 minutes.  It was a typical Saturday morning’s worth of gardening work, except it’s getting darn hot out there!  It was probably close to 90 degrees when I finally came inside.  I always take a big glass of ice water with me, my camera, the home phone, my gardening bucket with everything I might need, and I wear a nice big hat for shade.

I need to get all the extraneous stuff done in the garden so I don’t have to spend so much time out there. I don’t mind spending the time, it’s just getting hot earlier so it’s very uncomfortable. On the days I do need to spend a couple hours, I’d better start getting out there earlier!  I usually am up by 4:30 or 5 (would you believe I used to be a night owl?) so it wouldn’t be too difficult.

Find more of my gardening posts by clicking on my “gardening” tag.

This post was included at the Make It From Scratch Carnival, held at It’s Frugal Being Green on May 19th, 2009.

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