Treat Someone You Love to Something Sweet from Harvard Sweet Boutique

Thank you to Harvard Sweet Boutique for providing complimentary product samples for us to base this review upon. All opinions expressed are my own.

For Father's Day this year, my husband received an especially sweet treat from Harvard Sweet Boutique, a specialty gourmet bakery located right here in Massachusetts that ships freshly baked goodies to anywhere in the U.S.  Their selection consists of a wide variety of gourmet cookies, toffees, truffles, and brownies, including some that are gluten-free and low-carb.  In our small sampler box, we received two Vanilla Sea Salt Caramel Brownie, a piece of Milk Chocolate Almond Toffee, and a few White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies.

I must say that the presentation of this gift was most impressive.  My poor husband had to wait to open the beautifully embellished box until I was satisfied that I took enough photos of it.  The striped necktie was just adorable.  (I kept it aside and am waiting for the perfect opportunity to try it on our cat.  If I manage to snap a photo before he escapes, I'll certainly share it with you.)

Inside the box, we found the individually wrapped treats to be tucked inside another bag for added freshness.  Because the weather was warm and humid when our order was shipped, although the treats were intact, the brownies and the toffee were slightly melted.

The Milk Chocolate Almond Toffee was for me!  I am a huge fan of toffee and found this concoction to be delicious.  It did have quite a lot of almond pieces in it, so I would only recommend this toffee for nut-lovers.

Although my husband was not disappointed by the White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies, he found them to be average compared to the Vanilla Sea Salt Caramel Brownies.  He found the brownies to be utterly delicious . . . enough so that he might think it would be worth the drive to the bakery located in Hudson, MA.  He could not help but wonder, if the brownie tasted this good shipped to his door, it must taste that much better fresh from the bakery.

Visit HarvardSweetBoutique.com to see their full line of gourmet treats.  You're sure to find something perfect for almost any occasion, including graduations, get well gifts, birthdays, thank you gifts, housewarming gifts, or even party favors.  Be sure to checkout their mouthwatering photos on Facebook.  Also ground shipping at Harvard Sweet Boutique is a flat rate fee of just $5.

Things You May Not Have Known About Starting a Small Business

I found this information to be interesting and thought my readers would too, since many of you are parents who work at home and may be thinking about starting a brand new small business in the near or distant future.  For example, did you know that $22.4 million in small business loans were approved in 2010?  This is something to keep in mind if you are feeling hesitant about taking the leap because you may be worried about start up costs.  Read on to learn more about the history of the SBA . . .

What Device Do You Use to Shop?

It isn’t good enough to just have dynamic web sites and content these days. I remember just a few short years ago, the idea of cloud computing was science fiction. Today, any company that does not embrace every single benefit the Internet offers is doomed to fail, or at least yield mediocre performance. The web is so fluid and dynamic it is dizzying.  The pace of change seems to double each day. How is it possible, not only to understand what can be utilized, but to actually manage it?

Imagine how novel email was 10 years ago? Today email is one of the slower ways we communicate and share data! Today we text, tweet, IM, video chat, VPN, FTP, and on and on and on! I can upload all of my pictures to a shared and secure location on the web and all of my family can look at them, print them, or download them from anyplace and on any device they wish. I could easily list another dozen examples highlighting how complex and dynamic the web is.

How do we manage it all? Not only is the web itself complex and ever changing, the actual devices that we use to utilize the web are just as diverse. Desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, netbooks, Chromebooks, e-readers, webTV, etc!

For a company to stay ahead of Internet trends, capabilities, and profit centers, they need a management suite that integrates all the various interfaces and platforms. People are online 24/7 and are no longer tied to their PC's when initiating commerce online. A business needs customer management software that can take advantage of all the opportunities the web offers. This system not only needs to be compatible across all devices, fast, and simple, it needs the ability to grow and adapt to the ever changing web.

As much as I cannot wait to see what the web brings next, I am equally humbled by what it can do already!

Email Large Files Up To 100MB for Free with Adobe SendNow

As someone who works from home online, I have run into the problem of not being able to send big files, such as multiple high resolution images or high definition videos, by email on more than one occasion.  I have tried using a free trial large file transfer service in the past and it was almost not worth it.  The site sent me emails daily, trying to sell me various paid services . . . emails to which I did not recall subscribing.

That is why I was so happy to discover Adobe SendNow.  This is an actual free service and not a "free trial."  Although the free service has limits, such as only being able to send one file at a time up to 100MB and having a file expiration of 7 days, it is perfect for someone like me, who only needs to send large files occasionally.  If you do need to use a service like this often, then you can upgrade to the Basic plan for $9.99/month or the Plus plan for an annual rate.  To learn more, visit Acrobat.com.