Education

Turning a Powerpoint into a video

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After we got the Powerpoint complete for my uncle’s mom’s funeral service, we needed to figure out how they were going to play it. Since it had both music and videos, we figured converting it to a video file would be best so they could just pop in the DVD and play it through a projector.

I’ve done this before, but for the life of me, I could not remember, so… what do I do best? Ask Google!

This was an easy one! I kept trying to save it, but I couldn’t find the save as video option so that it would put it into one nice little package for me with everything I needed. But, Google told me I need to Export it… Duh! That totally makes sense now, right?

Always, always, always… click save every few minutes while you are working on a project. The last thing you want to do is work for hours then make a mistake that causes you to lose your entire project. After your Powerpoint looks like you want it to look… Save it! Then.. Export as Video, you can change your requirements, I didn’t want it to go to a CD since I know know if their DVD player will be able to read it from a CD, so I just exported it as a video. Then, I uploaded it to YouTube so they can review it before I burn it to a DVD for them.

I hope this helps you! I’ll definitely refer back to this myself the next time I work on a Powerpoint… I use it so much less now that I’m out of school. I’m sure I’ll have to help my kids with some as they get older. But, I will tell you that I was super shocked to see my 5 year old using a computer with a keyboard and mouse in her Kindergarten class when they were in the library. Kids are so smart and they are definitely way more tech savvy than we were a their ages.

Mosquito Bites

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Mosquitoes used to eat me alive. And I was allergic to them so they would swell huge, get a fever, and hurt for days. If a mosquito bit my forehead my eye would swell shut. And… I love tropical vacations. The only bad thing is that there are tons of mosquitoes.

We left from our wedding, straight to the airport, and overnighted to Tahiti. When we landed in Tahiti, we thought we were going to jump on a flight over to Moorea, only to discover they had updated our itinerary… and our flight wouldn’t leave for 8 hours. We were exhausted, and I still had tons of hairspray in my hair, and tons of makeup… so we decided to take a bus to the boat shuttle,

then another bus shuttle to get to our hotel earlier. When we got to the hotel, our room wasn’t ready….

But… they offered shower rooms in the lobby and said we could use those. So, we took our bags in, turned on the hot water, got undressed… and waited…. and waited… and waited. After 5 minutes of cold water, Ryan got dressed and went back out to the lobby to ask for help. One of the workers came in and felt the water and said it should have been hot by now. 🙁

So they had a wing of the hotel that was under construction, so they weren’t putting guests there, but one of the rooms was actually ready to go, so they said we could use the room until our Garden Bungalow was ready.

I’m sure you know what we did next… booked a massage for a couple hours later, took a shower, and took a nap.

After our massages we got to move into our Garden Bungalow and decided to take the hotel shuttle to a restaurant on the water for dinner. After we unpacked everything, we realized that the 2 containers of Off Spray I went out to buy on the morning of my wedding were nowhere to be found. But… we were just going out to dinner, so no big D.

Until they sat us at our table on the lagoon with long white tablecloths and gave us our menus and went to get us some glasses of water. I was trying to look at the menu when my legs started burning… and itching. I couldn’t figure out why. But… being close to the water, and wearing a dress, and having a long tablecloth meant that mosquitoes were able to get to my legs without me even realizing it. I got bit on both legs for a total of, I think it was… 18 bites. So, I said we needed to leave. The hotel shuttle had just left to go back, so we had to wait for him to return to pick us up and drop us off at the grocery store. Of course, everything was in French, so we ended up picking this up… it looked right. Then we walked back to the hotel. On our way back, we met a very sweet lady who said we could use lemon on the bites, and she showed us where her little Pearl Shack was that she owned, and said her son owned the ATV shop next store and he takes people on tours of the island.

So, back at our room, we ordered room service that came with… Lemon, and my hubby put lemon on my bites. It didn’t make the allergic reaction any less severe, I still had to spend the entire honeymoon with huge welts, with fever, and looking bruised and feeling super heavy.

That’s what I had to deal with… for years and years and years. I had no idea that my bodies reaction to bites could or would ever change… until I learned about gut health and started researching more natural options. Oh my goodness, you definitely need to learn about this stuff, it’s so crazy how so much of your health is tied to your gut! And I didn’t even learn about gut health until I was diagnosed with Cold urticaria, an allergy to the cold, yes, it’s a real thing. I thought it was something fake that the girl on The Bachelor made up to try to get more attention from the bachelor. But it was only a few months later that I learned it was real, and I had it, and they wanted to try to mask my symptoms by putting me on Lupus medication, even though I don’t have Lupus.

Anyway, that’s what got me started on this more natural path. My skin no longer has crazy reactions to the cold, my bites are much fewer (did you know the mosquitoes are actually attracted to the bacteria on your skin??? I thought it was my blood type, but when I would meet fellow mosquito attractive people they never shared my blood type), and when I do get bit, I say it looks like a normal person’s mosquito bite. In the last couple weeks I’ve been getting bitten again, and if you are like me, it drives me crazy when it’s time for bed and all I can think about is how itchy that bite is. This mama needs sleep, I work 30 hours a week from home as a data analyst and I also watch my almost 2 year old, and almost 4 year old, and have to pick up my almost 6 year old from the bus stop every day. I sleep like a log, now, and wake up super rested and ready to start my day, but… nobody likes to be woken up to itchy skin.

So… of course I went to google to find natural remedies for mosquito bites and one listed, that I know I have a bottle of was peppermint oil. I am not an oily mama, so I don’t know all the correct terms, but I put some oil straight onto the bite, rubbed it in and was good until morning!

So, if you have bites and have essential oils on hand, try it out. And if you don’t have peppermint alone, do what I do, and find one that has it as an ingredient. It can’t hurt to try it.

Also, if you plan to go to Tahiti, learn some of the language before you go, it’s so cool to see people light up when they know you can speak a little of their language.

https://www.tripsavvy.com/common-tahitian-words-and-phrases-1532902

 

Couch vs the Marker

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So… Remember that time I was glad that Alexandria only got the marker on her skin and the kids chairs, and was really happy she didn’t get it on the new couch 🛋?

Until my hubby noticed a few days later that she actually did get it on the side of the couch 🤦‍♀️

My friend Kendra mentioned that she cleans her couches with alcohol and water. So… I gave it a go.

It seemed to work, it just doesn’t smell the best. Then, I remembered my Theives cleaner that gets stains out of the carpet and it smells good too!

I’m happy to report that I was able to get the marker off the couch 🛋 🙌

And I even got most of the marker off of Bobby’s chair

Work from home with Userfeel.com

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One of my friends on Facebook posted in one of the local Mom’s play groups about this website that had work from home jobs. One of those jobs that I saw, that looked really cool was Userfeel.com I had seen a page like this before, but when I tried to apply for the job, it said they weren’t hiring in my area… which I thought was a little weird, since it’s a remote job, and I’m not sure why they wouldn’t hire in my “area”. They didn’t specify which “area” I was in either, but maybe they just don’t hire people in California. Something to note is that they aren’t actually hiring you as an employee, they are hiring  you are an independent contractor, so you do need to save for tax time on your own.

However, Userfeel.com did not have this “area” notice when I went to their website. So, I was pretty excited that I could get signed up. After you submit your information, they send you a confirmation email to verify your email address. After you verify your email address, they send you another email for the next step, to take the qualification test. The qualification test is to make sure you can do the job.

So, what’s the job? It is right up my alley! You have to have a computer with a microphone because you open up their recording software that records your screen and your microphone and they give you a set of tasks so that you can “test” out websites and give your honest feedback. I am a data analyst by day, and I personally love testing things to make sure they work right. When they don’t, I like to figure out what could be wrong, then pass the information back to the developers so they can fix it and get it back to me for testing. With Userfeel you go to the website they direct you to, and follow the instructions. My test was actually looking at Enterprise, the rental car company, and trying to schedule a car rental. As you are going through the tasks, you also speak out loud your thoughts on the process, the website, anything that you notice. As you complete the tasks, you mark it as complete and go onto the next task, until you are done and it uploads the video with your voice back to Userfeel and they can pass it along to their clients for feedback, so they can make sure they are providing the best user experience to their own customers.

The cool thing… you actually get paid to do this!

And you can do it when you have free time. You, of course, need to find a quiet spot in your home, so that you can focus, and they can hear your voice clearly in the recording, but… you can pick and choose when you want to work. I, personally, just passed my certification test, so I haven’t done any real tests yet, and haven’t gotten paid yet. But, I am looking forward to getting my first email with a real test so I can give this a go.

We have definitely been tightening our budget at home, so it will be nice to be able to add some extra income without having to leave the house to do it. I do work 30 hours a week as a data analyst, and also take care of my almost 2 and almost 4 year old, while my hubby is at work, and my oldest is at school, so… it doesn’t leave for a lot of free time, but that’s the nice thing about this, you do it on YOUR time, and you don’t have to get dressed and head out of your home to do it.