April (from blueeyedbrat.blogspot)

Congrats! We’ll be sending you an email from lizandkate@live.com to get your mailing address.

This week’s giveaway -

Icicle Sticks – Ice Pop Maker

What a great way to keep your cool this summer. Just freeze up your favorite beverage or diluted flavored syrup, and enjoy! Can be eaten as an Ice Pop on a stick or use as an Icicle Stick in your favorite beverage to cool and add flavor to your drink. Dishwasher safe and made of easy to un-mold silicone. Made by Back To Basics.

As an added bonus, we’ll pick two winners for this giveaway! Good Luck!

Here’s how to enter…

Just add a comment below, and you’ll be entered to win!

Want to enter again? Go to the home page, take a look around and comment on another story! It’s as simple as that!

Enter as many times as you’d like.

More entry details…

There are several ways to enter.  You may choose to enter one way, or you may choose to do them all.  It’s up to you.  The more times you enter, the more you increase your chances  to win.

• Leave a comment on this post between now and Sun., Aug. 1st   9:00pm MST. and you’ll automatically be entered.

• Leave a comment on any other Coffee Break with Liz and Kate post between now and Sun., Aug. 1st. (9:00pm MST) and you’ll automatically be entered again.  The more comments you leave, the more entries you’ll get.

• Link to this post on your own blog (include the url in your comment) and receive an extra entry.

• Please include email address with comment so we can contact you if you are the winner.

So good luck readers and Enjoy your Coffee Break.

Reel reviews for real people

Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action

Genre: Action & Adventure, Mystery & Suspense

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andre Braugher

Director: Phillip Noyce

Running time: 1:39

Plot: As a CIA officer, Evelyn Salt (Jolie) swore an oath to duty, honor and country. Her loyalty will be tested when a defector accuses her of being a Russian spy. Salt goes on the run, using all her skills and years of experience as a covert operative to elude capture. Salt’s efforts to prove her innocence only serve to cast doubt on her motives, as the hunt to uncover the truth behind her identity continues and the question remains: “Who Is Salt?”–© Sony

Ebert says – 4 stars “Salt is a damn fine thriller. It does all the things I can’t stand in bad movies, and does them in a good one. It’s like a rebuke to all the lousy action movie directors who’ve been banging pots and pans together in our skulls. It winds your clock tight and the alarm doesn’t go off for 100 minutes.” (read full review)

James Berardinelli (Reelviews) says – 2 1/2 stars “Salt contains plenty of action; in fact, it rarely slows down, making one wonder if a better title might be Run, Angelina, Run. But the plot isn’t strong enough to withstand the assault on the wall of suspension of disbelief by a gamut of increasingly preposterous stunts. There comes a point when it becomes difficult to take Salt seriously…Admittedly, Salt goes well with popcorn, but it’s never filling.” (read full review)

Peter Travers (Rolling Stone) says 3 stars - “Suspend disbelief, all who enter here. Salt, starring slinky-sexy-scary Angelina Jolie as a CIA agent accused of going over to the Russians, is primed to keep your pulse racing so your brain will stop thinking, “WTF!” Go with the illogic or you’ll miss the fun. Salt has the action pow to slam you hard, batter your senses and make a case for Jolie as a superpower.” (read full review)

Rex Reed (New York Observer) says – 1 star “Salt is not a cautionary tale about the dangers of high blood pressure from too much sodium. No, it’s just another entry in the flaky, forgettable farrago of predictable action thrillers in a particularly brainless summer, this time starring Angelina Jolie as a C.I.A. operative named Evelyn Salt, who may or may not be a double agent working both sides of the fence. Like most of the loopy escapism I’ve suffered through so far this summer, it is totally preposterous.” (read full review)

Other movie reviews by Kate

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This week’s cheater recipe…

Restaurant Style Steak Fries

Ingredients:

• 28 oz. bag of frozen steak fries
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 2 tsp. Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Directions:

1.Pre-heat oven to 450 degrees.

2.Line baking sheet with foil. (Makes for easier clean-up). Bake steak fries (without the topping mixture) for 15 minutes.

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3. Combine the cheese, seasoning and salt.

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4. Sprinkle over potatoes and mix gently.

5. Bake 4 – 5 minutes longer or until potatoes are browned and crisp.

More Cheater Recipes

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National Get out of the Doghouse Day is this day as well. I hope none of you find yourself in the position of needing to get out of the doghouse, but if you’ve done something that met with disapproval, today’s the day to play the appropriate “get out of jail free” card and leave the doghouse to the true canines among us.

Spooner’s – or Spoonerisms – Day is on deck for July 22. You probably utter spoonerisms from time to time, although you may not know that’s what it’s called. The term comes from Reverend William Archibald Spooner, who staused quite a cur with all his wixed up mords.  It’s a slip of the tongue that skews a couple of words like this:

• hog douse
• dack boor
• rinner dolls
• perry chie

Here are some father ramous spooners from Squidoo:

One of the oldest and best known Spoonerisms in radio was uttered by announcer Harry Von Zell in the early 1930s: “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Hoobert Heever.”

Another announcer once solemnly intoned, “All the world was thrilled by the marriage of the Duck and Doochess of Windsor.”

As Queen Elizabeth II sailed into Sydney Harbour aboard the royal yacht Brittania, an excited announcer said, “…and there goes the 21-sun galute.”

It was once announced that word of an impending presidential veto came from “a high White Horse souse.”

I’m sure you can see that celebrating this day could be a fot of lun!

Hot Enough For Ya Day is July 23, and judging by the extended forecast, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say, “Why yes, it is. Thanks for asking.”

We’ll wrap up the week with National Drive-thru Day on the 24th From fast food to prescriptions to a bottle of wine, you can find just about anything at a drive-thru. I say let’s “drive-thru” and get milk shakes!

Until next week, get your party on!

Movie reviews by Kate

Reel reviews for real people

Rating: PG-13 for sequences of violence and action throughout

Genre: Action & Adventure, Mystery & Suspense, Science Fiction & Fantasy

Staring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Ken Watanabe, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard

Director: Christopher Nolan

Running time: 2:28

Plot: In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a single idea within one’s mind can be the most dangerous weapon or… In a world where technology exists to enter the human mind through dream invasion, a single idea within one’s mind can be the most dangerous weapon or the most valuable asset. (Rotten Tomatoes)

Kate says  – 4 stars “Put your thinking caps on for this one, because you’re going to need them.  Here’s my advice on watching Inception…just go with it. Pay attention. Try to keep up but don’t expect to understand what’s going on, and know that you’re in good company  because no one else knows what’s going on either. Inception is startlingly clever, imaginative, fascinating and intense.  Finally an action film that actually makes us pay attention to more than the blur of motion. The words of movie reviewers can’t possibly do this movie justice, you’re gonna have to see this one to believe it.”

Ebert says – 4 stars “It’s said that Christopher Nolan spent ten years writing his screenplay for “Inception.” That must have involved prodigious concentration, like playing blindfold chess while walking a tight-wire. The film’s hero tests a young architect by challenging her to create a maze, and Nolan tests us with his own dazzling maze. We have to trust him that he can lead us through, because much of the time we’re lost and disoriented. “Inception” does a difficult thing. It is wholly original, cut from new cloth, and yet structured with action movie basics…Here is a movie immune to spoilers: If you knew how it ended, that would tell you nothing unless you knew how it got there. And telling you how it got there would produce bafflement. The movie is all about process, about fighting our way through enveloping sheets of reality and dream, reality within dreams, dreams without reality. It’s a breathtaking juggling act…” (read full review)

Claudia Puig (USA Today) says – 3 1/2 stars “With Inception, writer/director Christopher Nolan not only cements his status as Hollywood’s most innovative filmmaker, he has created a daring genre: the surrealist heist thriller. Or, maybe he has developed the dream invasion action epic. No matter what you call it, the story is the most complex of any summer movie. Hollywood films generally regard audiences as below average in intelligence. Nolan, the creator of such films as Memento, Insomnia and The Dark Knight, regards his viewers as possibly smarter than they are —or at least as capable of rising to his inventive level. That’s a tall order. But it’s refreshing to find a director who makes us stretch, even occasionally struggle, to keep up.” (read full review)

Rene Rodriguez (Miami Herald) says – 3 1/2 stars “Inception is filled with grand, astonishing sights (in a dream, Page folds Paris onto itself as if she were folding a sheet of paper) and small, ingenious bits (DiCaprio gets stuck in a narrow alley while running away from bad guys, and the claustrophobia is nerve-racking). Nolan pays as much attention to small details as to big ones. The movie is as carefully constructed as a Faberge egg. The last half hour, a dream within a dream within a dream, is a breathtaking marvel of editing and pacing, cutting back and forth among three realms, the events in one impacting the others. The effect tickles your mind, then blows it right out of your skull.” (read full review)

Rex Reed (New York Observer) says – 1 star “Inception is the kind of pretentious perplexity in which one or two reels could be mischievously transposed, or even projected backward, and nobody would know the difference. It’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from summer movies in general and Christopher Nolan movies in particular, but I keep wondering: Can he do anything of more lasting value? He’s got vision, but creating jigsaw puzzles nobody can figure out and using actors as puppets who say idiotic things, dwarfed by sets like sliding Tinker Toys, doesn’t seem like much of an accomplishment to me.” (read full review)

This week’s cheater recipe…

Stuffed Shells

in a Snap

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Ingredients:

• 1 pkg. jumbo pasta shells
• 1 jar spaghetti sauce
• frozen Italian meatballs
• 2 cups shredded cheese

Directions:

1. Cook pasta according to package directions; drain carefully and rinse in cold water.

2. Place 1/2 cup sauce in greased 9×13 pan.

3. Place a meatball in each shell and put in pan. Top with remaining sauce and sprinkle with cheese.

4. Cover and bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Uncover and bake 5-10 minutes until bubbly.

More Cheater Recipes

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The young Anne Frank looks out a second-floor window down at a wedding party below.  The wedding occurred on July 22, 1941, months before the Franks fled their apartment and moved into hiding from the Nazis in what became later known as the Secret Annex.  See the video below.  According to the Anne Frank House, the video has been made available to the public through the benevolence of the couple, who recognized the onlooking girl in their wedding video from over 60 years ago must be the young writer.  At the time they were married, the bride lived next door to the Franks on the second floor.

The release of the video has created a stir around the Internet as viewers who have read the diary, seen film adaptations of it, or who simply know the history of the Frank family during the Holocaust, see the young girl move, toss her hair, look about at her neighbors, and glance back into her apartment on film.  The short video image presents a lively girl who is aware of her surroundings and wants to see it all–everything readers of the diary would expect to see in its writer.  The image is a moving reminder of what the Jews suffered during the Holocaust as well as a fitting celebration of Anne Frank and her accomplishments in this, her 80th birthday year.

Anne aspired to become a journalist, writing in her diary on Wednesday, 5 April 1944:

Anne Frank died at the age of 15 from typhus in the German concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen, seven months after her arrest and only two weeks before British and Canadian troops liberated the camp.

This weeks Giveaway – Fun new tape products from Scotch.

A Scotch Pop-Up Tape dispenser and 3-pack of refills

and the NEW Scotch Donut tape dispenser with 3 rolls of tape.

Check out my product review of these products on the Home Page.  I love them so much, I decided to give some away to a lucky reader.  I think you’ll love them too.   Just enter below.  This contest ends at 11:59 July 26.

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This week’s giveaway – Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader DVD Game(Parker Brothers)

Suitable for ages 8 and up.  See if YOU are smarter than a 5th grader.

Just leave your info below (we won’t publish it) and Good luck!  Check back next Monday, July 20 to see if you’re the lucky winner.

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Breakfast Burritos – Just chop up some hard boiled eggs and mix with some cooked spanish rice and some grated cheese. Wrap it up in a tortilla.  Heat  in the microwave and top with salsa.

BLT & E Sandwiches – Just add some sliced hard boiled eggs to the traditional BLT for a yummy twist.

Fried Rice – Just add come chopped up eggs and ham to your favorite fried rice recipe (a box is fine, Liz) and serve with soy sauce and fortune cookies.

Egg Salad Sandwiches -  You know the drill here, but for an extra twist to the flavor, add some ranch dressing in place of some of the mayo.

Chef salad – This meal only uses a few eggs, but I’m stretching to find meal 5 here, so give me a break.

Enjoy

-Kate