Ted Williams – Homeless Man Turned Celebrity

I know this is already ‘old news’ but I have been behind the times.  I just thought to share this ‘feel good’ videos

CSN Product Review: Nostalgia Electrics Hard Candy/Sugar Free Cotton Candy Maker

In my October product review teaser post, I mentioned that CSN Stores requested me to review one of their many products they offered. I was having trouble narrowing down what I wanted to get until I stumbled upon this commercial cotton candy machine.  I mentioned to my husband jokingly to get one but his eyes actually lit up!  I didn’t know this but he always wanted one! 

Obviously, a commercial grade machine isn’t practical so we looked and found that CSN Stores carries personal machines.  We picked this one because it was the only one that mentioned that can make the cotton candy out of hard candies.  Also, we found this demo video that won us over! 

Nostalgia Electrics Hard Candy/Sugar Free Cotton Candy Maker

Shipping

It took about a week and a half to be delivered by ground.  My husband picked it up for me and he said it was packaged well, suitable for this type of product.

Design

I was a little surprised how big this machine was even though it was for personal use.  This is one thing that you need to consider if you live in a small space or limited storage.

It comes with the machine itself, a manual, two plastic cones and a scooper.

 

The Fun Part: Making the Cotton Candy 

As recommended by the video, we heated up the machine for a full five minutes.  Once we added the candy it started to web immediately.  It was very quick, after a couple of minutes, we got cotton candy! 

The spinning plate gets very hot so you must supervise your children.  Clean up was very easy.  You do need to wait for the spinning plate to cool down and soak in hot water if there’s candy stuck in the cavity.

Heating up for 5 minutes	One scoop of crushed candy.
Candy starting to web	After half a minute
After a couple of minutes	This is from 2 pieces of crushed hard candy

Anything Negative?

Nothing particular to the machine itself, just that it seems to work better with certain brands of candy.  We read a few of online reviews noted that Jolly Rangers didn’t yield as much.  We found depending what kind of candy you use, you may get a little bit of a mess.  The ones we used in the photos was Trebor brand and it worked great.  We tried Knorrs brand and some of the webs became airborne settled on the table.  That didn’t happen with the Trebor brand. 

The Verdict

It’s a great product!  My daughter had so much fun making it with us.   We found that the cotton candy satisfied our sweet tooth more then the same amount in its original form because it seems bigger due to volume.  If you are a diabetic or watching your weight or even avoiding calories, use sugar free candy.

Making it was quick and clean up was easy.  The best part, you can have any flavour you want! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Verdict

This is great for personal use.  I read a few one line complaints of how slow it was to service people at parties.  That is interesting since

Emotional Emails: Sending them are a Bad Idea

I’ve been so busy the past couple of weeks due to the holiday seasons.  I’ve really enjoyed myself the past holiday.  Spending time with my family and been loving every minute of it! 

Well, just had a post holiday buzz kill.  An accusation of a re-gift faux pas was sent from an anonymous email.  The accused massed emailed to quite a few people, as possible suspects of the sender of the original anonymous email. 

I chose not to respond and fuel the negativity, instead letting it die down and move on.  Even so, this actually bothered me for a week.  This whole incident reminded me of a recent post on uploading personal content on the Internet

Once Its on the Internet, it’s there Forever

In this case it’s the same with email.  Once it goes out, you can never retrieve it.  You can never take back what you said, even if you didn’t mean it. 

Emotional Emails are a bad idea.

No one can control one’s emotions, if you are angry, you are angry.  If you must write it out, go ahead, just don’t hit ‘send’.  Save it in a draft and read it again once you had time to think about what you said.  Send it once you have a clear mind, because you would have thought about the consequences.

It’s always best to think about ones audience and how it would be received.  Will there be innocent by-standers who will be caught in the cross fire?  Most of us didn’t feel very good and feelings were hurt.  Things have been forgiven, but to be honest, I won’t forget.