January 2012 Cravebox

This is my SECOND Cravebox and granted these are my initial impressions (haven’t had time to USE any of the products yet)!

Each month for $10 you get a custom box and a selection of beauty, food, fitness and even more, products.

This is what I got this month:

• switch2health pedometer
• emergen-C vitamin drink mix (full size)
• colavita extra virgin olive oil (small size)
• mereadesso face and neck toning gel (looks like full size)
• prevention magazine

Overall I won’t be using ANY of these products so I’m a bit disappointed.

We just recieved our Fitbit’s in the mail so I don’t need the pedometer, I’m counting calories so I’m not using many oils, I already recieve Prevention Magazine on my iPad, and I mainly use Peter Thomas Roth and Clinique products for my face and neck (however I bet my sister would enjoy this product!) so I won’t be using the face and neck toning gel.

I think my husband will like the Emergen-C drink mix product and I was super pleased to see that it’s full-sized.

Do you have any experience with any of these products or with Cravebox? By all means, share!

Sarah’s Test Bunny of Doom…
Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred

Sarah has asked me to guest blog about the beatings and other joyness I will be suffering through in the next 30 days with my weight loss Jillian beatings.

I have always been a thicker girl, even hitting obese for my BMI (I’m 5’11″). I finally said enough is enough back in 2006 and joined Weight Watchers.  I went from 228lbs to 166lbs. I worked out to Biggest Loser DVDs and followed WW plan.

Then came the holy one (my daughter)… Miss Galina herself!

Boom! 70lb pregnancy gain! 8 weeks after I popped her from the womb, I rejoined WW and lost almost all of the weight again.

Currently I am at 193.3lbs.  

What happened?! Stress my sister’s minions/followers… stress.  We DiLullo’s stress eat like no one’s business! I went from about 175lbs to 198.2lbs in about 5 months.  Puh I tell ya… PUH!

NO MORE! Joined Gold’s Gym right before Christmas 2010 and been going faithfully with my soulmate, Melissa.  We both also started WW at that time as well. I am currently 193.3lbs… so a 4.9lb loss in 4 weeks… not bad! My short term goal is 170lbs, long term 155lbs.

So… whew! All that back story just to get to what this post is about, Jillian Michael’s 30 Day Shred.  Sarah is, of course, the one who brought it to my attention.  As I am her test bunny… in well… everything… she thought it was a great idea to have me do this and tell the world my suffering.

I am currently on day 2 of Level 1.  There are 3 levels of these 20 minute workouts.  You do each level for 10 days (hence 30 day). Supposedly people swear by this workout.

Day 1 — tried to kill me. I had to stop and take a break.  Me stop and take a what?! A break?! Nooo… but yes. Everything hurt, everything. I felt like I had inside bruises.

Day 2 — not so bad.  I didn’t have to stop.  I was able to control my breathing and not look like and feel like I was going to collapse.

I am on my short term mission with a completion date of May 31, 2012.   I have a goal to start this summer looking (as one dude once said to Melissa) BANGIN’!

Ali is a badass single mom to the amazingness that is 3 year old Galina and even with her current super sad job loss… still is focused on losing her chunkies and squishies!

WordPress Plugins I Currently Use

As of today, these are all the active WordPress plugins I have here at OSN. Going to give a brief explanation as to what they do / why I use them.

Akismet: By default this is included with the basic WordPress installation. It’s fantastic for blocking SPAM comments and trackbacks.

Broken Link Checker: This plugin checks EVERY SINGLE LINK in EVERY SINGLE POST and sees if it’s a valid link or if it’s “broken” (gives an error message like a 404 for example). It runs in the background so you really can just ignore it for the most part. It’s really good if you’ve been blogging for a few years because that super awesome blog you posted about in 2003 probably doesn’t exist today.

CommentLuv: A great feature for those who comment on your blog, it permits them to automatically link to their last blog post at the bottom of your comment AND it’s super easy to style within your CSS.

Comment Reply Notification: If you’ve ever left a comment at OSN you know I’ll 99% of the time respond to it. When that happens you automatically get an email saying that not only was your comment was responded to but the content of that response as well! You can set it (as I have) so this works only for admins OR works for everyone who comments. Very neat.

Compact Archives: You can see this plugin in action on my archives page. What it does is make a small and attractive year/month display for your past posts!

Contact Form 7: You can see this in action on my contact page. It’s super easy to use, super easy to implement, and I don’t receive ANY spam from it like I used to from other forms (plugins and hand-coded).

Custom Post Limits: A really neat plugin that allows you to change the NUMBER of posts displayed on the index, archives, category, and so on pages.

Facebook Like Thumbnail: This plugin grabs the FIRST image in your post for the Facebook thumbnail (when someone shares your post on FB).

Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin creates a sitemap that allows for better indexing and searches from Google and other search engines.

Greg’s High Performance SEO: A really good SEO plugin, has a good amount of options to really customize how it functions for YOU.

Outbrain: Simply put, this is an alternative to LinkWithin.

RSS Footer: I’ve mentioned this plugin before in past posts but it’s really neat! If you subscribe to my rss feed you’ll see at the bottom of each post, a little blurb and my photo. Just a great way to remind people of who you are, include links back to your site or other links.

Twitterlink Comments: Adds an additional input on the comment form for your visitor to enter their twitter handle to be displayed in their comment!

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: A plugin that does what it says! It displays (via a customizable template) links to posts that have similar content to your current post!

Share with me the plugins YOU currently use on your blog platform! Any you couldn’t do without? Any plugins that were an epic fail? Share!