June 4, 2012: Reviews

Hi all,

Well, I seem to have what I'm calling "Blogger's Block" or aka Writer's Block. Last night I had a really great idea about writing how my split ends seemed to be improving, what products I've been using, etc. Then I woke up today with a head full of split ends. :/

Isn't that just how it goes sometimes? I seem to be reaching a dead end on a few things, so I guess that means I'll have to get more creative! Speaking of creativity, I was going to do a new manicure last week but then I got my Copious credits and so I decided to wait until this week when I get them to do a new manicure. It's always good to give nails a break sometimes, and they're certainly getting one this week!

I know many of my readers are here for the beauty item related posts, so I'll have to apologize for not posting many beauty reviews or manicures lately. I promise I'll be doing that soon enough! This blog, however, was meant to be about trying new things, and sampling new things. Not just beauty related items. So here's something different! :)

I just want to post a few comments on a few different things I have tried recently. The first two are Facebook games, because who doesn't love games, especially free ones? Facebook app games are very popular and I've played a lot of the more popular ones myself.

Zynga Bingo

I've played almost all of Zynga's games, but Zynga's Bingo is different. It is truer to the classic bingo game, except you win collection items. Like the other Zynga games, once you complete a collection you get a prize. In Bingo, you get power ups. These power ups do different things, such as filling in numbers on your board.

I like this game, but I've found I can't play it for very long at a time. You can have 1 or more bingo boards at a time; in the screen capture I have 4 going all at once. To me, this just requires too much concentration. So personally, this is a great game if I just want to sit down and relax and goof off for a few minutes. With Bingo, I'm not going to be sitting here for hours trying to collect things, build things, etc. like other Zynga games. So this is fun.. like I said, I won't be playing it a lot but I think it's fun for what it is.

Oh, I forgot to mention: this game is live, you're playing against other Facebook users. There's only a certain amount of Bingos allowed for each round, so if you don't get it, you lose!  You can kind of see in the screen capture, there is a chat feature so you can chat with other users. This is a good thing, and a bad thing. People are people, so they sometimes get rude or obnoxious. They also may not speak your language which gets confusing!

The one thing I don't like about this game is the announcement of the numbers: I find the voice annoying, and at times it just is way too fast.

Ravenshire Castle

Before I talk about Ravenshire Castle, let me talk about Ravenwood Fair & Ravenskye City, the other games in this series. I LOVE these games. If you've played Zynga's Farmville or other games, you'll see similarities here except I think the Raven games are more fun! Zynga's games tend to be more tedious; the Raven games are tedious at times but they don't have all of the annoyances Zyngas games have. I really don't understand why these games aren't more popular or more specifically, why their popularity has decreased... I understand Ravenskye City changed the way you request items and I agree, that stinks. I don't like it, so I don't play the game as often. However, I'm holding on to the hope they'll change it back or improve upon the system. So anyway...

If you've played either of the two previous games, you'll notice similarities between them and Ravenshire Castle. For that matter, you'll see similarities between it and Castleville. The graphics, I think, have improved in Ravenshire Castle, while the game system itself seems to be about the same as the other two games: you have quests, you need to harvest or hunt for materials. You build buildings, you get friends to help you. It's pretty simple. The one thing different is in this game, you have the ability to "sneak" into other castles and look for materials but watch out, if you're caught by the guards you're out of luck!

I haven't played this game much yet, I mostly play Ravenwood Fair, but so far I like it. The system is simple, it's easy to play. No complaints yet.

Ice Blue

One last review for today! Last week I went to Family Dollar and discovered they were changing the store around and adding a bunch of new things. One of those things I found was Ice Blue, the Family Dollar brand comparative to Mineral Ice. I've been meaning to pick up some Mineral Ice to try, so I saw Ice Blue there for only $2 and thought I'd give it a shot.

I do want to note that I'm using Ice Blue not for Muscle or Joint pain relief, but for headache relief. I know Mineral Ice helped me in the past. Ice Blue seems to work, also. It looks like Mineral Ice, it smells like Mineral Ice, and it leaves your skin blue just like Mineral Ice. At a lower cost! As a reminder, I don't have normal headaches, I've had the same headache for 22 years so what works for your headache pain probably doesn't do a single thing for me. Ice Blue does provide mild, short term relief for me so for that alone I give it thumbs up!

I don't think it lasts quite as long as Mineral Ice does, although it's been a few years since I've used it so I could be wrong. I also vaguely remember Mineral Ice making me cold all over; Ice Blue does not. I can't say with any certainty it works just as well or better than Mineral Ice, but for a cheap knock off, it does a pretty good job.

So... *ahem* I said I was dealing with Writer's Block, did I? I find this went on longer than intended, so I will post today's giveaway info in a second post.

Have a great day everyone, and let me know if you have any comments, questions, suggestions, etc. about any of the things I wrote about today. As always, I love comments, even if it's just a quick "Hi!" to say you read this and enjoyed it. Thanks!