Month: September 2015

September 30, 2015

Transformers Prime: Ultimate Decepticons Giveaway!

Autobots, roll out! Transformers Prime: Ultimate Decepticons are here with your top five battles and the characters you know and love.

With three boys in our home, Transformers has always been a huge hit. And to be honest I love the series myself. There is never a dull moment when the Autobots and Decepticons are around.

In Transformers Prime: Ultimate Decepticons, we find a collection of five of the most epic Autobots vs Decepticons adventures from the Transformers Prime lore. This collection has all of your favourite unforgettable characters all in one place, including Starscream, Skyquake, Makeshift, Airachnid, Dreadwing, Predaking and Knock Out.

While the Autobots have vowed to protect Earth, Megatron and his evil Decepticons have vowed to steal all of Earth’s valuable Energon, no matter what the cost it. This collection includes the titles: Masters and Students, Con Job, Crossfire, Prey and Thirst.

Transformers Prime: Ultimate Decepticons is full of incredible graphics, great story lines and unforgettable battles between our favourite characters. This DVD combines all of our favourite battles and characters for an action packed viewing time that every member of your family will love.

The Transformers series has come back in a new fun way that all ages will love. Adults can appreciate the characters from their youth while the young viewers will love the up to date graphics of the characters (have you seen how different Optimus alone looks from when the series first started??!). Our whole family enjoyed the DVD from start to finish, with the boys acting out some of the battles (yikes!).

My Canadian and American readers can now enter to win their own copy of Transformers Prime: Ultimate Decepticons from Shout Factory via the Rafflecopter form below. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Make sure to follow Shout Factory (a company that produces some of the best pop culture out there!) on Facebook and Twitter for updates.

Disclosure: I received a copy of the above DVD in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

September 30, 2015

The Great Camp Adventure Walk #WW with linky

As many of you may already know, I participated in the Great Camp Adventure Walk to benefit Sick Kids Toronto this past weekend. I had an incredible time, I was so moved by the stories and families that were there. I am reminded at these times, how inspiring and miraculous every health care worker, family, child are. This week’s Wordless Wednesday is in dedication of my walk and the amazing families and children fighting every day at the Hospital for Sick Kids.

Make sure you link up below so that I can come visit you too! Have a great week.

September 28, 2015

Week Seven of My Healthy Living Challenge

What an amazing week, week seven turned out to be! I topped off a great week with The Great Camp Adventure Walk, where I completed all 20km! Needless to say even as I am writing this now my legs are still hurting but wow did it feel good.

Here is a recap of Week Seven:

~~Weight training four times this week.~~
Yoga twice this week.
~~Daily stretching (the stretching is geared towards my back that was introduced to me for physio)~~
~~11,000 steps a day – can I beat last week?!~~
~~Two 3km walk~~
~~The Great Camp Adventure Walk~~

Week seven was pretty awesome, can you tell?! I really want to keep my momentum from week seven moving for this week (if I could just get my legs to recover!).

Here are my goals for this week:

weight training four times this week
yoga twice this week
daily stretching exercises from physio
11,000 steps a day
two 3km walk
one 5km walk
enter all of my meals in My Fitness Pal

I am aiming to hit all my goals this week, so fingers crossed for me! My body while not losing weight is definitely feeling better. Which is the greater win for me.

Looking forward to checking in with you again next week. Have a great week!

September 28, 2015

Little Robot by Ben Hatke

Little Robot is a heart warming tale of friendship and overcoming fears that will be cherished by all.

About Little Robot

When a young girl finds a little robot in the woods, she presses a button and accidentally activates him for the first time. Now, she finally has a friend! But the big, bad robots are coming to collect the little guy for evil purposes, and it’s all up to a five-year-old armed only with a wrench and a fierce loyalty to her mechanical friend to save the day!

My Thoughts

I love children’s books. They give me a chance to unwind with my boys, to make-believe and to talk about important subjects in a neutral and easy way.

Ben’s Little Robot is beautifully illustrated with vibrant colours and images. Presented in a comic style, there are no long sentences that children sometimes find hard to follow. Instead we have thought bubbles with a few key words. The illustrations flow together so well that you can easily put together the story as you read it aloud. In fact, after I finished ‘reading’ it to my son, my youngest read it and then our eldest. We each were able to put our own little spin on it and be silly as we read our own version.

Little Robot teaches us about true friendship that goes beyond language and is found in our hearts, through compassion and listening to non verbal cues. Both the young girl and the little robot had a lot to learn about friendships throughout the story.

Little Robot is truly a beautiful illustrated story from start to finish that can be picked up by any age group and will be cherished.

You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon and Chapters.

Rating: 5/5

About the Author

Ben Hatke is the author and illustrator of the New York Times bestselling Zita the Spacegirl graphic novel trilogy and the picture book Julia’s House for Lost Creatures. He lives and works in the Shenandoah Valley with his wife and their daughters. His latest book mentioned above, is Little Robot.

In addition to writing and drawing comics, he also paints in the naturalist tradition and, occasionally, performs one-man fire shows. You can connect with him on his blog, so head over there and find out more about this fantastic author and illustrator (and as a bonus you can see him doing fire-breathing!).

Watch this clip to learn just a little bit more about Ben as he facilitates a discussion with his colleagues.

Disclosure: I received the above mentioned book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.

September 28, 2015

Wasp’s Nest by Gabriel Valjan

Book Two in the Roma series is Wasp’s Nest, with just as many (if not more) twists and turns that will keep you on the edge of your seat and unable to put it down.

About Wasp’s Nest

In the highly anticipated sequel to Roma, Underground, Bianca (Alabaster) returns to the U.S. for her former employer, the covert organization Rendition. She is to investigate Cyril Sargent and Nasonia Pharmaceutical. Although ambivalent about the assignment and uneasy about her online “friend,” Loki, she is enticed into researching what Sargent is doing with insect genetics. His research might upset the world of cancer research and treatment. Old friends Farrugia and Gennaro uncover a twisted conspiracy from their past and join Bianca in Boston where they will experience conflicted loyalties, question allies, and confront uncertain enemies, as they’re drawn into the wasp’s nest.

My Thoughts

Part two of the Roma series will not disappoint you in the slightest. It is well written, full of suspense with just enough information, adventure and action at each stage of the story. Each movement is cleverly laid out and slowly unravels like a nest would so you can find the truth and meaning behind each step.

I love how this novel pulls from the first just enough to tie the stories together. We see and find out items that were unresolved in the first novel that were closed in this story but only to bring to light a new and completely different problem. There is never any duplication or too slow parts in the novel at all.

Wasp’s Nest is so well written with many hidden under plots that it is truly a treasure to open and read each page. The ‘wasp’ is cleverly wrapped into this story in a very intriguing way (don’t want to give too many spoilers!) but the title which I first did not understand becomes very clear by the end of the novel. A fantastic read from start to finish!

You can purchase a copy of the book on Amazon.

Rating: 5/5

About the Author

Gabriel Valjan lives in New England, but has traveled extensively, receiving his undergraduate education in California and completing graduate school in England. Ronan Bennett short-listed him for the 2010 Fish Short Story Prize for his Boston noir, Back in the Day. His short stories and poetry have appeared in literary journals and online magazines.

The Giveaway

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Disclosure: I received a digital copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.