Happy Labor Day!

Happy Labor Day everyone! I hope you got the day off or have been enjoying some R&R.

Now a few days ago I was talking about Labor Day with my boss when they asked, “Why do we celebrate Labor Day?” Most of us just know Labor Day as a day off from work or school (mainly west coast schools) or the ending of summer and that school will be beginning (mainly east coast schools), but why did this day become a holiday to celebrate?

It got me thinking, “This would be a great thing to write about!” and away I went to actually finding out its history as I never really knew nor cared why before of its reasoning why it became a national holiday.

Calculate Your Dog’s Age

I happen to find an article that dogs age a lot faster than humans and wanted to share it with you. So at some point you’ve probably heard that a dog’s age was 7 years for each calendar year.

In actuality, they age a lot faster than that and the calculations are different and vary per size. As shown in the chart below.

As you can see from this chart, all dogs up until two years old will age the same no matter the size. Once the dogs turn three and afterwards, their age in dog years will depend on their size.

Chibi Shiba Revived

Konnichiwa just wanted to say ‘Sorry’ for being gone for so long and the blog being in hiatus for all this time.

A new post that you might enjoy to come soon… Hopefully a lot more after that too.

Very apologetic,
shibaluvr

A Sunday Morning

These were taken last Sunday when they went out for their potty break and went to the apt complex’s little dog park. They were the only dogs there at 9AM in the morning. Shoko was off explorin’ so this is all about Blitz; who we got back in August.

Blitz you’re so far! Come closer…

Awesome new anime series fall/winter

So apparently it’s the fall/winter season for new anime series and I gotta say I’m excited for all these good new anime series that have just started.

It was a hit and miss with the series that came out during the summer.

Here is a list of all the new series (in no particular order) that I noticed that came out and have watched at least the first episode.

5 Reasons Why I Love Shiba Inus

I love all dogs but I love Shiba Inu’s the most. If I could I would probably get another.

Just got our 2nd dog named Blitz a month ago. No he is not a Shiba but still isn’t he a cutie?

So I won’t be getting another dog anytime soon. Unfortunately…

Huh? What? I didn’t say anything… >.>

So back to Shiba Inus. I love everything about Shibas even their bad points, which I may mention in another post, but for now I’ll mention 5 things I love about Shibas. Now bear in mind there aren’t many Shiba Inus in Arizona (or at least in Phoenix) and we don’t meet other Shiba Inu’s which is unfortunate so my list is based off Shoko. So some of these may not apply to other or normal Shibas. I’m sure Shoko is not like a normal Shiba. She is very quirky.

RE: Alistair++ – A Fun and Free Otome Game

So a few weeks ago I was looking for otome games and I found this game called RE: Alistar++ on Sayuri Studios website. It is a free to play dating sim game.

It is a cute and fun game to play and it being free to play helps if you have a tight budget and can’t afford to buy all these great otome & visual novel games out there.

Budgeting My Life Just Got Easier

Just the other day I was searching on the web in hopes to find a website that can help you with budgeting your finances and I came across this site called BudgetSimple.

It helps you budget your finances (for those who can’t do it themselves and need help).

I was looking to use one since we went from having one paycheck come in a single income to two paychecks dual incomes and thought it would be best to try to use the extra moolah coming in wisely. Don’t want to keep spending and spending.

I know it’s easy enough to do it on Excel and it even has templates if you don’t want to create it from scratch but it’s nicer and easier if someone did most of the work for you and all you have to do is simply add income & expenses.

Your monthly budget page.

Sorry this is just a sample not what my budget looks like 😉

The nice thing about BudgetSimple is it’s completely free to use. Also no personal info besides your email address is needed and they won’t use your data or send to third-party companies. You can, if you choose to, upgrade your account. With the upgrade you can now:

• View & use on your mobile phone
• Get reminders & reports by email
• Run more detailed graphical reports to get more details of your finances
• Use the Plus savings tool to help you accomplish your savings goals (a nice feature if you have a goal you want to accomplish in saving money)
• Schedule expenses for various time periods (that would be really nice to use)
• Export your data to Excel
• No Ads! (everybody loves this)

They have a 30 day trial so you can try out the BudgetSimple Plus features for free for 30 days. Of course if you don’t want to pay a monthly or yearly fee then you can always stick to the basic free account.

I guess you can say the downside to BudgetSimple is you have to manually enter in everything. Though if you do have some recurring expenses or income you can mark it and it’ll carry over for the next month.

A sample report of expenses.

The nice thing about doing it online instead of using Excel is it’ll tell you if you are over or under budget or if you are balanced. It’ll help show you if you spend too much or if not you can put that. I also got an email from the founder of this site asking if I needed help with creating my budget. I graciously declined the offer but thought it was nice gesture.

Even if you don’t choose to use their site they have a nice Budget Tips page about other ways you can save or use your money more wisely. You can read them here. It is worth reading.

Have a good night everyone!

My New Toy

So over the weekend my husband and I decided to upgrade our phones.

I love to get new technology & play with them and find all the cool features (cause I’mma geek).

So what am I upgrading from? My now previous phone was an LG Ally

Image Credit to lg-phones.org

My new phone is now the new Samsung Galaxy S III in the snazzy white

Image Credit: Samsung

I’m not a fan of Apple so I stick with the android phones. Plus I love the variety of designs and options available.

As you can tell this phone is very thin. I’m so worried to drop it, I bought a cover but… still it looks so fragile. I also went from part touchscreen part QWERY keyboard to an all touchscreen phone. Luckily it has a large screen for those that are not used to typing on a touch screen or might hit the wrong letter ’cause of chubby fingers. Not that either of those apply to me. 😉

I also went from a 3G to a 4G and while I didn’t think that would matter, some things like apps are a lot faster to load now than before.

Here are some of the cool new features I discovered.

• S Beam
  It allows you to share photos or files with another S3 (Not sure what other phones it’ll work with…).
• Direct call
  Allows you to call the person you are texting or if you are looking at their contact simply by lifting the phone to your ear. (Has to be enabled to work)

• Smart Stay
  It will keep the screen lit if it notices that you are looking at the screen. (Has to be enabled to work) This doesn’t always work well though.
• S Voice
  Similar to the iPhone’s Siri, S Voice will make a call, open a text message, tell you the weather, search on the web, open an app, put an event or task on your calendar, and among other things. The voice isn’t as good as Siri’s but if you get angry with it or use curse words it will respond back.

• Best Photo
  I haven’t figured out how to use this one but I read it’s supposed to take 20 pictures and then choose 8 of the best ones.

• Buddy Photo Sharing
  This allows you to shares with everyone instantly: as the phone recognizes your friends’ faces, it can share photos with them instantly. (Haven’t tried it yet… but noticed that you can tag friends or family on photos in your phone.)

• Join or Separate a Contact
  I found this feature pretty nifty and what this does is join multiple contacts together or if you want you can separate them and it’ll keep them as separate contacts on your phone and not delete it until you choose to. I found this handy since (if your like me) and have multiple Gmails or have some contacts labeled differently. Though I believe it does it’s own joining if the name is the same. I do realize that this is not a new feature since it probably is on some of the other phones but it’s new to me and I like that feature. Only downside that I found is when separating because you noticed it’s on 2 different Gmails and you only want it under one it doesn’t tell you which Gmail you are separating so you have to take a guess and then check to see if you separated the right one or not.

If I miss any features let me know.

Which smart phone do you like? Are you a fan of the Android phones or you an iPhone fan? (Don’t worry I won’t hate ya if you like the iPhone… 😉 )

Shiba Inus – Shi-ba What?

So, I mention in my welcome message about Shiba Inus and wanted to tell you more about them. I was gonna on and on about Shiba’s but I think I’ll save you the trouble and only tell you briefly what they are and tell you in other posts more about them and our Shiba Inu, Shoko. (Pictured below)

Curious Shoko

Shiba Inu’s originated from Japan and is even their national dog. The name is Japanese for Brushwood Dog because of their red colored fur.

What makes them so popular in Japan?

I want to say their small size (I say small but they are still a medium size dog) is perfect for Japan’s small living spaces and apartment living. I’ve even been told that by people who meet Shoko that they love her size because she is small but not too small.