Month: May 2018

May 31, 2018

Visionaries Book Five of Mud, Rock and Trees Book Review

“The only thing keeping that seal around his neck is his head. Heads are easily removed.” – Visionaries

About Visionaries

“The only thing keeping that seal around his neck is his head. Heads are easily removed.”

Time is running out. Tzoladia is under siege. Heads will roll.

As the prophecy unfolds, young people dream and old men see visions. Emperor Zoltov’s forces move to exterminate the “Subhumans.” Risky alliances are formed as Metlan’s ambition propels him into places of mystery and murder. Brina and Amanki sail through a sea filled with enchantment and betrayal. Moshoi is dazzled by treasure as he faces the horrors of an evil empire. All forces converge on Tzoladia. Time for a showdown. Will mud, rocks, and trees come together at last?

Who will lose their heads?

My Thoughts

I could not put book five down! Visionaries was full of suspense and action, leaving me craving and needing more.

The capital city is under siege by the “sub-humans” and the Emperor is being forced to make rash decisions. The battle (from book four) seems to have backfired on him – it has created Metlan’s new position of power. Metlan has become a key figure in this series and we are left wondering where exactly his place will end up. He has a strong connection to the throne, has made others believe that he has completed great feats and has schemed with strong political alliances to ensure his future. I had originally really liked his character (and thought there could be more between him and Brina) but this book left me wondering about his character and his true actions. It is clear that the Emperor and his past mistakes have come back to haunt him and his time is up.

Our main characters (Amanki, Brina, Moshoi) are so close to finally coming together with the seals but yet are still so far! They have all made it to the capital but just not together and they are still missing one seal that was stolen by Metlan. You can feel the story coming to a climax and it is so exciting! There were several intense moments for Amanki that left you wondering if he would make it out alive but with his wit (and luck?) he finds a way to save himself (and his head!). While he was doubting his role in the beginning of the novel by the end, you can tell why fortune had chosen him to be a leader.

Visionaries is an intense installment in the Mud, Rocks and Trees series! You can almost see the ending in sight for our main characters but are not quite sure how it will end. You will not want to put this novel down.

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Rating: 5/5

About the Author

R.A. Denny started writing epic fantasy novels when, after watching the first Hobbit movie, she began excitedly spouting off information about C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien’s writer’s group called the Inklings and how their greatest fantasy novels were created. One of her sons commented, “We could do that.” She laughed. Then, he turned it into a challenge.

Her unexpected journey had begun. For several years, she continued her day job as a criminal prosecutor and escaped by night to the world of the Tzoladian Empire. Then, she decided to just do what she loved.

She completed writing her six-book epic fantasy series: Mud, Rocks, and Trees. The series should be read in this order: Refugees, Seekers, Captives, Warriors, Visionaries, and then Deliverers.

R.A. enjoys ancient history, board games, and LEGO. That’s the nerd in her. She rides horses, raised flying squirrels and lives with two cats. That’s the animal lover in her. Oh, and did I mention that she loves a challenge? That’s the adventurer in her.

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

May 31, 2018

All Night with the Cowboy Book Review

Billionaires, cowboys, and second chance romance collide in All Night with the Cowboy by Soraya Lane.

About All Night with the Cowboy

At the Ford family ranch, getting thrown from a horse is a part of growing up. But one cowboy is still learning the ropes when it comes to falling in love.

Tanner Ford has been riding bulls and busting broncos his entire life. So when he takes a hard spill―and sustains serious injuries―he refuses to believe his rodeo days are behind him. He’s determined to restore his body and revive his career. There’s just one problem: the finest physical therapist in town just happens to be the only woman he’s ever loved.

Lauren Lewis knows she made a huge mistake when she walked away from Tanner. But she was young, ambitious, and focused on her medical career. Now, after all these years, Tanner’s back―and, in spite of his injuries, looking better than she allows herself to admit. She agrees to work on Tanner’s big bruised muscles until he’s back in bull-riding shape again. But how can Lauren resist the smoldering attraction between her and her old flame. . .and will she be able to live without him?

My Thoughts

This well written novel is all about lost first loves and second chances, keeping you guessing about whether the two can push past their history in order to make a future together.

Tanner and Lauren were deeply in love in high school. Their romance as everything – they were always together! Tanner was always viewed as the motorcycle driving bad boy and Lauren the good girl. Just as they were about to graduate, Lauren breaks off her relationship with Tanner which devastates him as he never learns why, although he does blame her parents. Later on in the novel we learn that her parents give her a choice – break up with him and go on to school and they will help pay her education or stay with Tanner and they will not help. While it may sound harsh, they have her best interests at heart and Lauren realizes this later. She understands that if she hadn’t gone off to college to become a physical therapist, she may have settled into marriage with Tanner and kids (while not wrong, she wouldn’t have realized how much she loves her career and may come to resent him later).

Tanner’s sister works some magic and arranges for Lauren to become his physical therapist after a serious injury. It isn’t long before sparks fly! What they first agree to (a casual, no strings attached fling) soon becomes more with each not sure how to move forward. We watch them struggle with their feelings, expressing their emotions and learning how to move forward if they want to make a relationship work. It was a beautiful story from start to finish!

You can purchase a copy of this book on Amazon.

Rating: 5/5

About the Author

As a child, Soraya Lane dreamed of becoming an author. Fast forward more than a few years, and Soraya is now living her dream! Soraya describes being an author as “the best career in the world”, and she hopes to be writing romance for many years to come.

Soraya loves spending her days thinking up characters for books, and her home is a constant source of inspiration. She lives with her own real life hero and two sons on a small farm in New Zealand, surrounded by animals and with an office overlooking a field where their horses graze. She is the author of The Devil Wears Spurs, Cowboy Take Me Away, I Knew You Were Trouble, and Cowboy Stole My Heart.

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

May 31, 2018

Bring Beasts to Life in the Interactive Beasts of Balance Game

Beasts of Balance brings amazing technology to life in this interactive game of skill and creativity. Get ready to stack your animal characters and watch your world come to life!

What is Beasts of Balance?

It is a game that uses physical artefacts that creates a digital world on your tablet or digital device. Players create and evolve their world by stacking artefacts but the game ends when the tower falls!

What Does The Game Come With?

1 plinth
6 beast artefacts
2 miracle artefacts
3 migrate artefacts
3 cross artefacts
10 element artefacts
free iOS and Android app required to play

How To Play

You first need to download the free app to a mobile device, I used my iPhone and it was a quick set up and downloaded in under one minute. Once the app was downloaded, as soon as I turned on the plinth (the white base) it connected automatically and the app loaded the game. You first run through the tutorial, where it shows you how to add the artefacts (the pieces) to the plinth and how to gain more points. The game itself is simple, stack the artefact pieces to gain points but make sure it doesn’t fall or it is game over.

Our Thoughts

When we first opened up the game, I don’t think any of us realized just how much fun this game would be. It has turned into our favourite family game that we have played almost daily. It is competitive without being overly so and it is easy for all ages of our family to play. Our six-year-old is by far the best at this game! His little fingers and steady hands were perfect for adding the pieces on top of each other. Once we figured out how to gain more points by adding specific artefacts we rocked this game. Not only was it super fun to see who would be the first to knock the tower down (usually me), the game added a whole new element with the app creating a world of creatures. As you build your tower taller, you can cross-breed the beasts to create all new beasts (earning points) as well as they gain or lose energy based on the artefacts you add to the tower – so you definitely have to pay attention to both the app and the tower at the same time.

Beasts of Balance is an excellent game for children and adults of all ages – it has something for everyone. It will become your favourite game to play on family game night and any day of the week. From its easy set up, to easy instructions and elements of competitiveness you will love every moment.

Learn more about Beasts of Balance on their website. You can purchase the game here.

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

May 30, 2018

Italian Gluten-Free Gastronomy: The Art of Selecting, Preparing and Savoring Gluten Free Meals

Satisfy your cravings for Italian food while remaining gluten free with Italian Gluten-Free Gastronomy brought to you by Clarissa Burt and Rita Romano.

About Italian Gluten-Free Gastronomy: The Art of Selecting, Preparing and Savoring Gluten Free Meals

The newest creative cookbook on the market in 2018 is Italian Gluten Free Gastronomy by supermodel Clarissa Burt and chef Rita Romano. Also sold in an e-book, this cookbook comes as an 8.5 by 10 inch hard cover with an elegant dust jacket. Featuring a collection of 70 recipes (appetizers, soups, salads, main courses, desserts, beverages) with photographs supports those people who love the fine cuisine of Italy and also want to manage their celiac disease.

My Thoughts

I love my Italian food – I grew up on it and to me it is comfort food. I grew up on it and it is healthy, filling and full of variety. That being said, for those with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity it may seem like a daunting task to re-create the meals they grew up on in a way that their bodies can handle. But it can be done!

This cookbook is testimony to that. It contains seventy recipes that have been designed to satisfy your cravings for Italian food BUT also accommodate your health needs to remain gluten free. As you go through the book you will find recipes that you may be familiar with but have been altered to be gluten free.

I loved that the recipes were easy to follow, the ingredients are ones that you will easily find in your pantry whether you are gluten free or not and that all the recipes were easy to make. I find that when I have too much gluten in my diet, my stomach and skin suffers for it. I make a point to watch how much I intake during a week and I am diligent in what I make for both myself and my children (they have never noticed the difference yet!). This was the best part – I made quite a few recipes for my family and they had no idea that they were gluten free. Sometimes people feel like they are missing out being gluten free but no one in my family could tell the difference! They did an amazing job with these recipes and adding in flavours to satisfy those taste buds leaving you craving more.

This easy to follow cookbook with mouth watering recipes and beautifully designed photos and pages will leave you craving for more. It is a treat from start to finish, assisting you in with following your gluten free diet but never letting you feel like you are missing out.

You can purchase a copy of this book on the Italian Gluten Free Gastronomy website and on Amazon.

Rating: 5/5

About the Authors

Clarissa Burt is an award-winning actress, international media personality/producer/director, writer, author public speaker and Super Model. With hundreds of television and film credits to her name, This Who’s Who of International and American Women brings over 30 years of entertainment industry experience in both International and American markets.

Clarissa has launched her personal brand on QVC in Europe where she brings her sense of elegance and style to ‘Made in Italy’ products. Starting with a women’s loungewear line, from her very first show, Clarissa boasts sold-out numbers. . You can follow Clarissa on Voice America starting June, 2017. Learn more about her on her website.

Rita Romano was born in Bari, Italy. She is the youngest of twelve children born into a family with a deep appreciation for the culinary arts. She also lived in both Naples and La Spezia (near Genoa), where she developed an appreciation for the abundance of foods found in these diverse regions.

The young food fan came to the United States at the age of eleven, immigrating to Philadelphia with her parents and five of her siblings. After the Romano roots were firmly re-planted in the US, Rita learned about American food starting out in the food department of an airline. Upgrading to a position of supervisor for Alitalia Airlines offered her the opportunity to travel back and forth between the US and Europe. She especially enjoyed the frequent visits home to Italy. Experiencing the culinary diversity of these two worlds further fueled her passion for food.

In 1990, Rita opened three Italian restaurants in the Phoenix and Scottsdale area specializing in pasta. Her restaurants offered 31 delicious sauces for pasta that the enthusiastic Italian chef had developed herself. Encouraged by her customers to share her recipes – Rita began writing cookbooks.

Within two years, Rita had published her first cookbook and started her Italian cooking school. She has been featured in the Arizona Republic, Arizona Woman magazine, the Moon Valley Phoenix Advent, and Camelback Corridor News. Rita’s Cooking Class has been featured on local and network TV stations.

You can find out more about Rita on her website.

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

May 29, 2018

At Home Teeth Whitening Systems for Sensitive Teeth: Does it Work?

Your teeth are the very first thing a person will notice about you whether you are smiling or not. Without realizing it, we can judge a person by the colour of their teeth, missing teeth and even the angle of them.

While we can’t control genetics, the damage we do to our teeth through eating and drinking can be reversed. Some of our favourite foods and drinks can cause a lot of discolouration to our teeth over time without us noticing. These items include coffee, wine, dark soda, chocolate, candy and berries! I love my coffee and tea so for me removing these items out of my diet would be extremely difficult. In the past, I’ve had Dark Spots on Gums Treatment to cure some dark spots I had on my gums that I thought was a side-effect of coffee and smoking. I have found ways to cut back but eliminating entirely has felt impossible.

Smile Brilliant is an at home teeth whitening system that allows you to reverse the damage done over time from the comfort of your couch or bed (literally). You can easily spend a lot of money on over the counter products which are not guaranteed to work or in an office where you not only lose time away from work but also have to adjust for the cost of these treatments. Smile Brilliant is an easy to use at home system that is tailored to your teeth!

What I loved the most about this system is that you first have to complete your own dental trays. The package comes with enough material that if needed due to an error you make trying to create the impressions, you can always redo your dental trays. The components were easy to mix together (they felt like Playdoh) and easy to place into the trays. Once the trays were ready to insert into your mouth (one at a time) you were sailing. I did find that I produced a lot of saliva at this point, so don’t leave the bathroom when completing this part. My kids had a great laugh as saliva was dripping out of my mouth. I had this unexplainable fear of my teeth coming out with the trays (I have a fake tooth on a bridge at the front of my mouth) and it did not do any damage at all to my bridge or tooth. Once the trays have been left to harden, your next step is to mail them off.

I received my personalized dental trays back within two weeks from the USA. It was pretty neat to see the impressions of my teeth and how well they fit into my mouth. I think that this is the part that makes the biggest difference and sets this system apart – it is fit to your mouth and teeth, leaving no area untouched. The initial package came with the de-sensitizing gels and whitening gels that I would need. Each syringe has enough of the gel to complete 3-4 applications, the syringes looked like they would be awkward to use at first but it was quite simple to open them and apply them to the dental impressions. After that it was just a matter of applying the impressions to my teeth and waiting the recommended time, easy peasey right? The impressions did feel awkward on my teeth the first time I put them in because I wasn’t used to them. After two usages this feeling went away and it was like they were just my own teeth.

Here is my before photo:

You can see the stains from the coffee and tea on all my teeth especially the ones in the front. It is one of the few things that I am actually quite self conscious about and it causes me not to smile as often as I would like.

Here is my before and after photo together so that you can truly appreciate the difference it made:

I was so impressed with the difference the trays made in just under two weeks. I used them only for thirty to sixty minutes a day for that time frame and after each usage I noticed an improvement. It really helped me with my confidence and smiling more because I was not as self conscious about the colour of my teeth.

The system is easy to use, affordable and can be easily done from the comfort of your home. I felt supported by the entire Smile Brilliant team throughout the whole process as well as them providing me with tips and tricks to get the most out of the process. These tips included:

brushing your teeth with only water before applying the trays
whiten for 45 minutes to 3 hours a day (never overnight and never for greater than 3 hours)
rinse your trays with cool water
brush with a non-whitening toothpaste
avoid food and drinks that can cause stains

If you don’t like the thought of using teeth whitening kits and would prefer to visit the likes of a Cosmetic Dentist in Vista, CA, then this is still an option. What I would recommend you to do, is see which one suits your lifestyle best before making a quick, uninformed decision. Take your time and I hope you find your happy medium, reaching your goal of sparkly, white teeth!
THE GIVEAWAY!

Want to win your own Smile Brilliant Kit? Enter now to win by clicking on the link below which will take you to Smile Brilliant to enter.

Win a Smile Brilliant System

Don’t want to wait? Head over to Smile Brilliant to order now and receive 20% off your order using coupon code: workingmommyjournal20

Head over to Smile Brilliant now to learn more about their home teeth whitening system and to order your own. Make sure you are following them on Facebook and Instagram to keep up to date with all the latest news and deals.

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

Tooth Whitening Gel