Disney’s “Planes” Movie Review

Disney's Planes

Complimentary movie admission was received.

On Monday night, Jai and I headed into Tigard for an advance screening of Disney’s Planes at Bridgeport Village. The theater is right next to a pizza place that I had a gift card for, so we enjoyed a nice dinner and then settled in for the movie.

Planes follows the adventures of Dusty Crophopper, a cropduster that has big dreams of becoming a daredevil flyer and competing in a major air race. With a little help from some other planes and automobiles, Dusty sets off for the experience of a lifetime!

I enjoyed some of the sly jokes in the film; for example, the planes sit at a bar sipping gas cans, and at one point of the film, they mention a plane who was disqualified from the race for using a banned blend of super-powered petrol that “Blurs your vision” – hahaha! At another point in the film, Dusty lands on a giant aircraft carrier called the “Flysenhower”. I also noticed that they paid attention to details in the plane universe. At one point when the planes are flying, you notice a flock of little gliders below them made to look like birds; and when they race through New York, you see the Statue of Liberty as a giant plane.

Although this movie has been aimed more towards little boys, I loved the inclusion of Dottie, a smart and skilled mechanic who also happens to be female. There are also two girl planes participating in the race, although they are mostly relegated to love interests, so nothing groundbreaking there.

This movie has a “Sporty” feel to it, with sports newscaster planes narrating the action as the planes race from one location to another. The 3-D really suits this movie, since it makes the loop-de-loops and aerial tricks more impressive as you feel like you’re flying along with them. At the heart of the action is a story about overcoming odds to achieve your dreams, facing your fears, and doing the right thing. I’ll admit that I even got choked up at points towards the end! The plot develops exactly as you would expect, so there are no shocking twists here – just a cute little flick that kids and parents can enjoy together.

Disney’s Planes hits theaters today, August 9th!

Frownies Immune Screen Review

Immune Screen

Complimentary tube of sunscreen provided for review.

I’ve been a fan of Frownies products for a while now. So when I heard that they had a new sunscreen on the market, I knew I had to check it out. Sunscreen is really important to me, especially during the summer when I have to be really careful in order to avoid sunburns.

Frownies Immune Screen comes in a 4oz bottle and is designed for use on the face and neck/chest. I’ve never used a sunscreen quite like this before – it has the consistency and color of a clay mask out of the tube, but goes on clear and can be worn by itself or underneath foundation. I’ve tried it both ways – if you wear it alone, you could tell you have a product on if you look really closely, but it doesn’t make you look super greasy. I would totally feel comfortable wearing this alone, although these days I pretty much always put on foundation or powder while doing my makeup because I have such dark circles under my eyes.

I really like this sunscreen – it smooths on like a moisturizer but dries quickly, so your fingers will drag on the skin if you don’t mix it over your face fairly rapidly. It also has a pleasant scent reminiscent of their other moisturizers – it doesn’t smell like a regular sunblock to me. Immune Screen has an SPF of 15, so this would be absolutely perfect for year-round use, since my preference is to wear sunscreen on my face even during cloudy weather. For bright summer days, I’d want to go higher in SPF or my face would probably burn.

Frownies Immune Screen retails for $39.97 and is available on Frownies.com.

Purex Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets Review

Purex Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets

Product samples were received for review.

I’m obviously very frugal when it comes to most things, including laundry. Recently, I’ve been cutting corners even further by making my own laundry detergent. So for this reason, I don’t often use fabric softener sheets. I actually prefer my laundry with them – in fact, I’m in love with most scented household products in general – but I consider it to be more of a luxury, so I don’t get to use them often. So when my friends over at Purex sent over a box of their Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets to test out, I was looking forward to extra-nice-smelling laundry!

These sheets are the same ones that Purex have carried for a while, but have been revamped with an improved formula and more fragrance. I chose the “Mountain Breeze” scent – there’s something so refreshing to me about crisp, “Ocean” scents in cleaning products. (I also thought the name was funny because a local store brand soda is also called “Mountain Breeze”!) Jai and I have used these in several loads of laundry and we both like the scent a lot. And anything that can make laundry more pleasant has got to be good, right? πŸ˜‰

You can find these dryer sheets at Walmart – visit Purex.com for more information.

Avoiding Summer Sunburns With Coppertone

Coppertone

Product samples were received for review.

My fair complexion means that my skin burns very easily. See this bad sunburn I got last year? I still have tan lines on my shoulders from that same burn, which happened at the end of last July. I’ve realized that no amount of sunscreen is really too much for me, so I’m very careful to not only apply it extensively but also bring a bottle along with me to do frequent touch-ups if I can’t get to shade while I’m outdoors. I used up most of my sunscreen while I was in Wyoming last month, so when I got an email from Coppertone offering to send me a few bottles from their line, it was great timing since I know I’ll go through a few more bottles over the course of this summer!

The sunscreens I received from Coppertone were:

I tried these out this week before heading to the zoo, and they really worked out well. I love that they have a sunscreen especially for the face, since I don’t like how much product I have to slather over my pores to protect my skin. I haven’t used it regularly enough to know if it will cause breakouts, but it’s supposed to be formulated not to. SPF 15 is pretty low, but I see that they also have Oil Free Faces in SPF 50 which is what I would go for personally.

I’m also loving the spray – although it’s been designed to spray on wet skin, I found it to be very useful for spraying myself down for regular activity, since I could get to hard-to-reach areas like my upper back. It makes the process of applying sunscreen a lot less tedious since it goes on so quickly. It took a while to dry in some places because I SOAKED myself in it – no, really, I sprayed on probably an excessive amount. (See my comment above about “No amount of sunscreen is too much”! ;)) You might want to put down a towel if you’re doing this indoors, since it will get on the floor.

I had a hard time spraying the Wet ‘n Clear with my left hand, so I didn’t bother putting it on my right arm and used the ultraGUARD lotion for that instead. I also packed the lotion in my purse, since it was the most convenient bottle to take with me for touch-ups.

Summertime survival kit

The makeup is to fix my melting face in the Portland heat, while the snacks are to keep us from starving to death in standstill rush hour traffic. πŸ˜‰ I ended up not need to touch up my sunscreen since most of the time I spent outdoors happened after 6 PM, but better safe than sorry!

Coppertone logo

Fellow thrifty folks will have noticed the recent Sunday newspaper coupon insert for savings on Coppertone products – but if you missed out, you can click here to print off a coupon for $1.00 off. That way you won’t get “Burned” by paying full price! Ha! Ha! I crack myself up.

What would be in your “Summertime survival kit”?

Sight Words: The Future of Flashcards App Review

Sight Words

This is a sponsored post.

As someone who was homeschooled, I look at all the resources and tools available to homeschool students now and think how much simpler it’s gotten. Thanks to the Internet, there are countless resources and options for homeschooling parents available and I think it’s fantastic – back in the ’80s and ’90s, my parents had to send off for special materials through snail mail catalogs and the like. It’s crazy how quickly things change!

Of course, we all remember good old decks of flash cards – and those, like everything else, have gotten a modern makeover. Forget fumbling through a deck of cards; now it’s all on iPad, baby! Sight Words: The Future of Flashcards is an app from Sprite Labs aimed at developing reading skills in children aged 4 to 8. This application uses voice recognition to quiz children on different words, showing them on the screen and then prompting them to repeat it. The teacher is Miko the monkey, who sits on a tree smiling and delivering lessons. When a word appears on the screen, he puts his hand to his ear and leans in eagerly, waiting to hear the response. It’s very cute!

Upon starting the app, you can choose between preschool through third grade levels, with nouns receiving their own section. Parents can set the app for either “Teaching mode”, where the female narrator says the word out loud before it appears, or “Practice mode”, where the word is only displayed on screen and not spoken. You can also enable or disable hints, where the word is repeated verbally if the speaker does not say it correctly the first time. I purposely said the wrong words a few times to see what would happen – if you try too many times, the narrator just gently tells you to try again later and moves on, so kids won’t get frustrated getting stuck on one tough word. It also appears to flag difficult words for you to access later, although there seem to be some variables with this. The voice recognition appears to be pretty good – although when I tested the “Preschool” level, it prompted me to say the letter “A” and I purposely said “B” to test what would happen with a wrong answer. Miko told me I had that one right, though. πŸ˜‰ I tried another word that it identified as being correct that was way off, but all the rest were accurate. There are bound to be moments like this with voice recognition, especially with children just learning pronunciation.

When you get through five words, Miko gives you a fun on-screen puzzle to solve, giving this a game aspect. This is WAY more fun than the flash cards I grew up with and I think it’s so neat that we can utilize technology in all of these new ways to make learning fun and interesting. From a technical standpoint, this app seems to work pretty well, although when I first launched it I noticed the program closed when I adjusted the volume on my iPhone; it hasn’t done that since, but it has crashed a few times while trying to play the introductory movie.

This app is available for iPhone 3GS (Which is what I tested it on!), as well as iPhones 4, 4S, 5, iPad, and iPod Touch 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations. It is available for $1.99 on the iTunes store – click here to purchase.

Monsters University Movie Review #MonstersU

Monsters University

Complimentary movie passes were received for the purposes of reviewing this film, along with a mini cupcake and plastic monster ring. πŸ˜€

Last week, my family and I were able to check out an advance screening of Monsters University at Regal Pioneer Place in Portland. Our crew consisted of myself, Jai, my future sister-in-law and her 5 1/2 year old nephew. We were all excited to check out the movie – Monsters, Inc. was our nephew’s favorite film, and he had never seen a 3-D movie before, so we knew it would be a memorable occasion.

Monsters University follows the college years of Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan as they attend the school of scares. Mike and Sully butt heads when they meet, but when circumstances force them to work together in order to stay at Monsters U, they eventually start to bond. With the help of their underdog fraternity, Oozma Kappa, the characters learn to put themselves in each other’s shoes and value each monster’s unique talents.

The film is really cute and silly, with humor for the whole family. I liked the attention to detail with the passing visual gags – for example, during finals week, we see a six-armed monster scurrying along with a latte in every hand! The movie has great voice acting, with Billy Crystal and John Goodman resuming their lead roles along with characters voiced by the likes of Steve Buscemi, Helen Mirren, and Charlie Day, who provided the voice for a fuzzy purple monster named Art. Day’s monster is essentially a G-rated version of his character on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which is one of my favorite shows, so I enjoyed his segments! All of the adults in our group really liked the movie and the short preceding it, The Blue Umbrella; this film is a great one to watch with your kids because there’s something for everybody. The only complaint that Jai and I had was that the movie ran longer than it needed to – we felt that the plot could have been more concise. But to be fair, we feel like pretty much every movie we’ve seen in the last 10 years was too long!

The 3-D on the film is a lot of fun, although I think some of the smaller children can get tired of wearing the glasses after a while. The 5 1/2 year old that we brought seemed to enjoy the movie overall; but he did mention that the scene where Dean Hardscrabble (Mirren’s character) flies down from the ceiling gave him a start because he wasn’t expecting it. I know they worked hard to make this movie goofy and not scary, but if your kids are really small they might find Hardscrabble to be a little creepy in 3-D.

Monsters University opens today, June 21st – if you’re looking for a fun film to take the kids to this weekend, I recommend giving this one a look!

Skin Tight Lotion Review

Skin Tight

Thanks to Skin Energizer for providing samples for review purposes. This article is a recounting of my personal experience using this product – I am not a doctor (As I’m sure you can tell!) and this article is not intended to prevent or treat any condition.

I have really dry skin, so I go through a lot of lotion. I have to keep lotion on my hands all day, or they get very dry and parched, which is unpleasant; I also like to use overall body lotion, although I tend to forget to put it on. Recently, I received samples of Skin Tight Body Firming Lotion from SkinEnergizer.com, and it couldn’t have come at a better time, as I had just run out of my usual hand lotion.

Skin Tight comes in a long, tapered bottle that holds 8 ounces of lotion. It has a creamy, moisturizing consistency with a pleasant scent that is not overpowering. It works pretty well on my dry hands and makes a lovely all-over lotion as well. If you look around my house right now, you’ll notice a few bottles of this dotted around – one in the bathroom to use after the shower and one by my desk where I work, as I have to re-apply hand lotion throughout the day. The instructions recommend applying to targeted areas twice a day, but I’ve been putting it mostly on my hands.

As for the firming aspect, I don’t know – really, any areas of my body that need to be firmer are that way because they need more time at the gym to tone up, so that’s really not something a lotion can help with. Personally, I don’t believe any lotion can eliminate double chin. However, just as a stand-alone lotion, Skin Tight is moisturizing and smells good, so overall I’ve really been enjoying it.