Patty's Picks . ServiceStars

Spring Cleaning

2011-03-28T14:50:00.002-04:00

Spring is a beautiful season when the weather starts to warm up and we can consider going back to the beach. One tradition that accompanies this time of year is Spring cleaning. We love to get excited about getting rid of the clutter and unwanted stuff that we have accumulated throughout the year. Cleaning up our closets and the kids drawers and getting rid of a lot things that we simply don't need. Spring cleaning should be a way to make a fresh start and to clear a path for the energy to flow throughout the house. Plus, we always feel so wonderful when it is done.

Personally, I am the queen of piles but this year I got super excited and decided to make myself happy. I invested an entire week to cleaning up my piles of stuff and things that I had forgotten that I even owned. I really do feel so much better now. This is why I would like to encourage you to do it. Even get your kids, , husbands and even your neighbors involved. Let's put all the stuff together and organize a garage sale to help a needy family or better yet to donate the money to our favorite organization. My favorite is St. Jude’s hospital. This is an amazing organization and is dedicated to children. You can visit the web site http://www.stjude.org/ and donate and feel part of someone's life. We have so many places to donate our money, let's make a difference this year.

We all like to eat fresh and healthy and we all notice that eating healthy gets a little expensive. I have a great idea for this year...why not try growing our own fruits and vegetables. After eating a really good organic apple or a good organic pepper why not take the seeds and plant them.

Here is how I do it, I keep the seeds and put them in a little bowl with a piece of cotton inside, add some water covering the cotton and throw the seeds inside. After a week or 2 you will see a beautiful plant growing and then you can either plant this in your garden or just simply put it in a planter. This a great way to spend a few minutes outside enjoying the weather and appreciating our work. You can do this with your children and watch how excited they get to see their own garden growing in front of their eyes.

How about the good old fashioned baking? We all appreciate a pie or favorite baked item from a neighbor. This year, that can be you. This will give you a reason to get to know them or let them know that you are happy they live on your street. It is also a nice way to say thank you for the times they picked up your mail or watched your house while you were out of town.

Whatever you do it with love and joy, after all this is what life is all about, having love and joy in our lives.

Have a wonderful Spring everyone !!

Losing Weight The Healthy Way

2010-09-30T11:04:00.001-04:00

    This is a fascinating story for all the people like me that struggle with their weight, lack of energy, or generally feel unhealthy. Three months ago if someone had told me to try a new diet, I would have laughed or rolled my eyes. You see, I am the baby in a family of 5 children. I watched my sister struggle her entire life with her weight. She tried one diet after another spending large amounts of money with little or only temporary results. I quickly lost faith in "diets".

   My husband and I have a very busy lifestyle. We run around alot and don't have a set schedule for meals. We would eat small breakfasts, cereal and maybe a half of bagel, sometimes only a cup of hot coffee. Our lunch was whatever was in the fridge and if we were out and about we often visited the famous fast food places. Dinners were really good, even if they were sometimes late . Wonderful pastas, always with vegetables and potatos. We always thought we were eating well.

    Six months ago we decided to make an effort to eat more healthy. We started making salads for lunch and stepped up our dinners. I actually started making my own spaghetti sauce from scratch. My husband and I still felt unhealthy though. We were tired all the time, overweight and had trouble focusing. We tried smaller portions, eating at set times and we even joined the local fitness facility but nothing seemed to work. Our physical condition was becoming a real concern for both of us.

    One day we went to visit an associate in her home to pick up materials that had been ordered for our business. This associate is a wonderful lady and we have known her for years. She unfortunately has a serious medical condition. We rang her doorbell, the door opened and standing in front of us was a totally different person. Our friend had shed alot of weight, was glowing, looked 20 years younger and best of all, she was using a cane instead of her walker!

     How did she do it? That was the obvious question. A new medication? Miracle cure? Physical therapy? What did you do? After a little prodding, she handed us a business card and said, "go see Katalina, she will change your Life." We decided to tak her advice and go visit Katalina.

    She has a very cute office in Boca Raton that made us feel welcome and comfortable. We weren't sure what to expect but were optimistic. First of all, I was blown away by the amount of time that she spent with me and my husband. We talked for almost three hours like we were old friends. She determined our blood type and tested the pH level of our saliva. You see, Katalina is a nutritionist and her main goal was to get us healthy !!! Appareantly we were eating foods that were bad for our blood type and our bodily fluids were acidic putting us out of the proper pH balance.

     We were sent home with 3 pages of food lists and a pH food chart. The first page was a big list of the foods that we must eat all the time, the second page was the food that we can NEVER eat and the third page was a list of foods that are neutral and could be eaten after one month. During our talk she gave us a lot of advice and tips on how to generate good Karma and emphasized that this diet was intended to promote good health and that weight loss was only a side benefit. We also learned the importance of eating organic foods as opposed to conventionl foods. We had to stop feeding our taste buds and start feeding our bodies. Katalina pointed out that this dramatic change in diet would improve our lives mentally and physically.

      I have to be honest, it sounded too good to be true. We were so unhappy with everything else we had tried and didn't want to be disappointed again. We had seen the results in our friend though and there was something about Katalina that convinced us that this was real and worth the effort.

     Well, only one month later, I want to tell everyone that it works!! We followed our food lists religiously. The first week was hard as our bodies began detoxifying from the poisons left over from the processed and fast foods. The second week I got creative by using the list of spices that match our blood type. Some were new to us and it was a great experience to try new things. I started experimenting with the veggies, fish and meats. My husband lost 16 pounds in 3 weeks, me only 6 pounds but I'm a lot smaller.

     We really feel wonderful! We have so much energy and our minds are so much more clear. No more afternoon naps or "fuzzy" mornings. It is so hard to explain the change that we feel. I truly saw our faces clear and glowing. I compared pictures from last Spring and now and can't believe the diference.

     Today I called Katalina to make an appointment to find out what was next. I was again impressed by how sweet she was and that she was so genuinely happy to hear from us and so pleased with our results. She wasn't in a rush to see us again because we were doing so well on our own. She gave us some more advice over the phone and repeated her famous line, please call me anytime with any question, I am always available for you. This is the reason that I want to tell the world about Katalina. She really cares about the people that come to see her. This is much more than a business for her, it is a passion to educate people on how to improve their lives.

    If this sounds like something you would like to experience than I highly recommend making an appointment with Katalina. Please don't hesitate because your Life can truly change.

I care a lot for people and that is why I wrote this. Hopefully my story can make a diference in someone else's life. Here is the link:

http://www.bocacolonics.com/

2010-09-13T20:32:00.000-04:00

I have a funny and very interesting story to share with you guys. This story will be especially helpful for all the people that own an iPhone, iTouch or iPad. As you may know, Florida was considering banning texting while driving. Well maybe they should outlaw texting while walking.

The other day, I was working around Broward advertising our beautiful web site. I was leaving the Pink Pony Tail, one of our advertisers and I was checking my email in my iPhone. I didn’t notice an extra step at the end of the walkway. I went down pretty hard and of course, my phone flew out of my hand and the screen of my iphone was shattered into a million pieces. Oh the pain!! I’m not sure what hurt more, my badly twisted ankle or the loss of my uninsured iPhone.

I was throbbing in pain but determined to find a way to fix my phone and not pay hundreds of dollars for a new one. I called the guys at the AT&T store. They don’t do that type of repair there but this particular representative was nice enough to give me this awesome web site that can fix my screen……..I ran to this place called www.ubreakifix.com in Pembroke Pines, almost one hour away from where we live but worth every mile! I was so happy when we arrived there. It’s a little place, very cute with a big screen TV and 2 guys working. One of the guys looked at my once beautiful iPhone and then told me these wonderful, magical words…… “YES we can fix it.” Twenty minutes and $79.00 later, my baby was back and my ankle was feeling better already.

I just had to share this with you. I have friends that replace their iPhones 3 times a year. Now with this store you can replace your screen and repair most water damage too.

Please keep www.ubreakifix.com in mind the next time you have an iAccident and save yourself some money.

Welcome to my Blog

2010-03-11T14:21:00.011-05:00

Hello to all of you that live in Broward County in the beautiful sunshine state....Florida !!!
We are so excited to let you know that after a lot work, we are finally are out there advertising your business..... We have beautiful Mini Vans wrapped by Exposeyourselfusa !!!!
We are planning to drive our mini vans all over Broward County to let people know about your business and give people the way to find the services they need as quickly and easily as possible.
This website is beautiful, easy and very friendly for everyone !!!
To our providers....we are going to make sure that you receive every single request !!
To our users, we will provide with any information or question that you need, via email or by a simple phone call.
We are so happy and excited to help our local businesses to prosper in this shaky economy. We know that advertising is expensive and this is the reason we are doing it for FREE for now until furthur notice. The reason we are doing this is because we believe that WWW.SERVICESTARS.COM is going to be the best way to get all the services we need without the long phone calls.

We do want to thank you to our wonderful tech team
Milko Carranza and Omar Carranza from Apeiron IT.
For being so wonderful throughout this whole process.
I will keep posting all kinds of good stuff , promotions, coupons etc.
Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Looking foward to helping you,

Patty

Summer… wonderful season for children, teenagers and the rest of the world!

2009-07-06T11:21:00.002-04:00

Summer… the time that kids and teachers have vacations and families plan different ways to visit friends and relatives or get away somehow.

The summers are getting more and more difficult every year for a lot people. The economy doesn’t help. People have to work extra just to take their children to the beach or to the movies which is actually very expensive these days! I wish we didn’t have to pay $5.00 for a hot dog at the beach or $50.00 dollars to see a movie with 3 people!

I have been talking to a lot people and times are changing in so many different ways. I remember summers for me when I was 8 years old. They were the best times of my life!! My parents never had to worry about putting us in summer camps, ballet, gym classes, or pottery school, etc. Our days were playing outside until it was dark and my mother would call us for dinner. Our parents worked full time jobs and somehow they managed to take care of 5 children (us). We didn’t have nannies and the neighbors kept us in their homes or if we were big enough they kept an eye on us. The weekends were great waiting for my Dad to take us to the beach and I still remember spending entire days at the beach. No worries about skin cancer or putting extra creams on us even though the sun was brutal! I don’t remember so many kinds of lotion to avoid sunburn at that time. They did make sure we drank a lot juices and coke. Forget about water or mixing juice with water? We had real sodas with lots of sugar and ate ice cream like there was not tomorrow.

Later, when I was a teenager, life was different of course, but just as amazing. The last day of school was the best day of the whole year besides Christmas, of course! Those days still make me smile and bring me memories that make my whole life special. We grew up in a nice neighborhood and our summer routine was sleep all morning, get up fix our room, run to the beach all day long , come for dinner and leave your home to see your friends again!

Today everything seems so different and it makes me think how lucky I was to grow up in a normal, God oriented environment. My parents realized that we spent 9 months of the year going to school, getting up early and going to bed early and were tired. We needed to sleep and rest our young bodies at least 3 months of the year. Times have changed and so have we but it’s nice to reminisce about those times. I’m sure many of you remember how simple life used to be and how complicated it is right now. We now have computers and cell phones to communicate with each other. I used to scream from my window. Now it’s so hard to talk with the kids. They are too busy texting, sending emails or hard wired to their iPods and there is a television in every room of the house. The communication is very different and we quickly forget how nice it was to just sit at the table, have dinner together and talk about our day.

I wish the best summer ever to all of our friends out there and may this be as wonderful a time of year for you as it always was for me.

Summer Has Arrived

2009-05-18T20:09:00.005-04:00

Hello everyone,

I hope everybody had a wonderful Easter and Mother’s Day!! Time is flying as you all know and there is hardly time to do all the things we want to do. We are working very hard on this web site and hoping that it will be very helpful to all of you. Thanks for all the people that are using ServiceStars.com and thank you for the wonderful feedback.

Well, summer is almost here. The kids are getting out for vacation and heading off to summer camp.
It’s so nice to see all the students graduating this month and seeing them so dressed up for prom night.
To all the parents with teenagers graduating this month, congratulations!!!!! You are as much responsible for their achievement as they are and you should be proud and happy.

For the parents with little children, be prepared and enjoy these years. They will fly by and before you know it, you will find yourself helping to pick out a prom dress or tuxedo. Enjoy every single minute before that day is upon you.

Father’s Day is coming up. Unfortunately mine has already passed into Heaven but I feel so proud and happy because he was a great man and my best friend!! For all of you that are very lucky to have your Dad still with you, make sure you go out of your way to let him know how much you love and care for him.

I believe that every day that we wake up is a gift and we should celebrate that in a way to say I love you to the people around us. I have some great ideas for a Father’s Day present besides our love to them. ServiceStars.com has great Car wash companies that do an incredible job. I personally use Fab Car Wash. These guys are great and super affordable. For $25.00 you can surprise your Dad with a nice shiny car, inside and out! Just choose your city, go to residential and click car wash. Submit your request and you will have a phone call in minutes. They will come right to your home or Dad’s office and use their own water and electricity.

Are you looking for a very special cake for your event? Look under Catering and look for Cakes By F& L. Their cakes are beautiful and taste as good as they look!

We also have some really great photographers on our web site. A beautiful family portrait would make a great addition to Dad’s desk.

We just added 5 Elements Spa as a sponsor. You can find their link on the home page. There is no better way to relieve that stress than a professional massage.

If you want to go all out, I have a great suggestion. Try one of garage organizers. One of our users organized their garage as a surprise gift for her husband and he absolutely loved it. He actually called into our office to thank us for helping his wife find such a great company.

I can go on and on giving you ideas from our wonderful Servicestars.com web site. Just give something different to your Dad this year, no more T-shirts or knick-knacks that collect dust. This year everybody is watching their budget so the best thing we can do is give something that they really need or want.

All of us here at ServiceStars.com want to wish every man who is a Dad a wonderful Fathers Day!!!

Valentine’s Day

2009-02-05T23:33:00.006-05:00

February is the month that we celebrate Valentine’s Day and go out of our way to show our feelings to that very special someone. Let’s ask God to give us lots of love to give! At this time of year, we see stories and commercials about what to buy and do for each other. With all that has happened in the past several months, I decided to write about a group of people that really need our “love”, attention and support. I’m talking about our local small business people. With this economy, we are all facing tough times but I know from dealing with these folks how especially tough it is for our local service providers.

I know a lot of people that have many questions about what is happening in our world. Big companies are going bankrupt, many people are losing their jobs and we are all feeling scared. This is the time that we need to help each other in many different ways. If you know someone that needs help, lend a hand. If you hear of a job opening, tell a friend that is unemployed. If you know someone that is working overtime, offer to watch their children. Every little thing means a lot.

This is why we are working overtime here at ServiceStars.com. This website is all about promoting to you, your local business people. These local service providers are your friends and neighbors. Some you have heard of and others you have not but they are all great at what they do. They need and deserve your support. So, the next time you need service in your home or office, please take a look at the great people here at ServiceStars.com.

Happy Valentine’s Day from all of us!!!

P.S. For some great gift ideas check our Residential section under Florist/Gift Delivery.

Holiday Season

2008-11-29T11:25:00.001-05:00

I hope all of you can see how far we have come with our new online directory, ServiceStars.com. It has taken all of us a lot of work and effort to launch this project. Our goal is to make your life easier by helping you to find a service that you need with just a click of the mouse and to help our local businesses advertise to you affordably. Thanks to our terrific web masters that never let us down, our dream has become a reality.

I am a person that believes in dreams coming true and I’m sure that all of you have one or two dreams as well. I just wanted to share with all of you my gratitude to God for helping us make Servicestars.com possible. Our goal has always been to make it easy for the users and the providers to find and help each other.

As hectic and busy as this time of year is, I hope you all can take some time and relax this holiday season. We only live once. Don’t forget to send a card to someone special. Send an email a phone call or a little gift to show them that you care. After all Christmas and Hanukkah are the seasons to give and share. This is a way to start the new year with a different attitude and the satisfaction of knowing that we did the best we could. Let’s share with our loved ones what God has given to us.

We know that last year was tough for a lot of people. The economy has slowed and that is scary for all of us. Many of us did not do as well this year as last year and that is one of the reasons that we created this web site. We wanted to provide an affordable way to advertise small and medium businesses that deserve your patronage but maybe can’t afford the big advertising.

With that in mind here are some nice ideas for you to let someone you love know that you care without spending a small fortune.

Stop at Hallmark (I recommend Jay’s Hallmark in Coconut Creek) and pick up a beautiful collectible ornament for about $15.00. Not only are they beautiful but that special person will remember you every year when they decorate their Christmas tree. A special friend gave me an angel ornament about 10 years ago and I remember her each and every year.

Find a great picture that you took during the past year and put it into a really special frame. Hallmark, T.J. Maxx, and Marshalls have beautiful ones. That is a gift that only you can give and means so much more than another tie or sweater.

How about a gift certificate from the Pink Pony Tail Salon (or your local salon) for a manicure for someone that could use some pampering. Now that is truly unique.

For about $20 you can surprise that special someone with one of our fine mobile car washers. They will come directly to you; they use their own water and electrical supplies and can make your car look showroom beautiful. Look under Car Wash And Detail Service. Hmmm..I wouldn’t mind that gift myself…. hint hint.

Gentlemen!!! Target has pretty boxes for $5.00. Buy a box and fill it with 25 red chocolate kisses and 25 pieces of paper, each one filled out with a reason why you adore that special lady. This is a can’t miss, trust me.

Something less romantic but just as appreciated. How about a gift certificate for a housecleaning? If you are having company for the holidays or just want to clean up afterwards, this could really score you some points. Take a look under Cleaning-Housecleaning. Here’s a tip though, book them early. This time of year is crazy for cleaning companies.

Make your own coupon for a night of babysitting for someone with small children. This will cost you only a couple of hours of your time but will be, as they say, PRICELESS, for that parent.

Okay……I’ll let you in on my own little secret. Take a small trip to the Boca Center Plaza. It’s located on Military Trail just north of Palmetto Pk. Rd. on the west (right) side of the road. Walk into Spalanos Salon and ask for Sherry. She has an incredible assortment of costume jewelry, accessories and giftware at unbelievable prices. You can find Sherry under Florist/Gift Delivery. Shhhhhh…….

If you want to spend a little more but don’t want to buy the same old thing as everyone else, why not try Vintage Rocks. Our friend Bonnie handcrafts antique pieces into contemporary jewelry. They are beautiful and absolutely one of a kind. This is the type of gift she’ll never forget! You can Vintage Rocks under Florist/Gift Delivery.

Finally, if you are truly overwhelmed this year, why not let someone else do the cooking? Hiring a catering company can relieve so much stress and work and may not be as expensive as you thought. Find ours under Catering Service. You can thank me later!!!

Hurricane Season

2008-09-05T09:36:00.000-04:00

I have lived in South Florida for most of my life and experienced first hand some of the challenges of preparing for a hurricane. Many of us, including myself, were not properly prepared for Andrew, Wilma, Katrina and others.

I also did not know the challenges we would face in the aftermath. I have created this page to help you prepare for hurricane and to give you helpful tips for what to do afterwards. Here are some links that I have found to be helpful.

You may want to check them now and print them in case you are without electricity or internet service during the hurricane aftermath.

http://www.redcross.org

http://www.wsvn.com

http://www.broward.org/hurricane/gasstationgenerators.htm

http://www.broward.org/hurricane/grocerystores.htm

http://www.broward.org/hurricane/shelters.htm

http://www.broward.org/hurricane/10step.htm

http://www.stormpulse.com

If you would like to comment, please email me at Patty@servicestars.com