Medialunchbox Blog

From: Top Business Degrees

Popularity: 3% [?]

So it is finally your turn to get married.  Congratulations! You should be excited, get married is a big deal and is supposed to be one of the most memorable days of your life.  Everybody wants to have their wedding be memorable to their guests.  There are a number of ways you can make your big day just a little more exciting for everybody else.  Try adding in one or all of these little wedding gimmicks to have people talking about your wedding for years to come.

Wedding Entrance

This can be the most affordable to the most expensive ways to spruce up your wedding depending on what you do.  You could do a basic entry dance or you could go as far as renting a helicopter to make your grand entrance.  When I got married, we had an outdoor wedding, and instead of just walking out to the ceremony with drove out on a jacked up 4×4 golf cart.  My wife even almost ran over the head table.

Wedding Dance

This one has received a lot of attention in recent years but is always a fun way to kick off the party at your reception.  Get your wedding party together and choreograph a fun dance that you can all do together. My friends recently started dancing with an elegant song then broke into a hilarious rendition of Greased Lighting. One dance I’ll never forget!  This is pretty much free to do unless you are all a little challenged in the dancing department. In that case, you should hire a choreographer to give you a hand with your moves.

Photo Booth

This is probably my favourite trend that has been popping up lately at weddings. Photo Booths are exactly like they sound. They are your own personalized photo booth that shows up at your event and allows your guests to get fun pictures taken just like those old school photo booths at the mall.  The pictures are printed out instantly and your guests get a copy that they can keep, and you get a DVD containing all the pictures to help you remember your day.  A few of my friends have rented a photo booth in Vancouver and every time it was a total blast.  My wife still keeps the pictures in her bedroom mirror where she gets ready for work. The cost on a photo booth can be anywhere from $500-$1000+ depending on how many hours you want to book.  Keep in mind that you don’t have to give a wedding favour if you opt for a booth since it makes custom wedding favours on the spot!

Candy Bar

This was something that I first discovered at my very own wedding.  The cost on a candy bar is a few hundred dollars and consists of a table with big jars of 5 cent candies.  Guests can pick at the candy or they can make their own little goody bag to bring home to remember your event.  This was a huge hit at out wedding and has been something that many people have said they really enjoyed.

Popularity: 58% [?]

Single and loving it? Bachelorhood comes with some great benefits for the guy on the go. Freedom to travel, money to burn and no one to answer to. When the traveling bug bites, bachelors bite back. Our top 8 travel tips for bachelors will ensure the adrenalin flows as freely as the tropical drinks.

# 8 – Viva Las Vegas

Cliché, we know, but a bachelor trip to Vegas has all the makings of an amazing weekend. Party the night away on Fremont Street. This classic Vegas experience features old school casinos, cheap drinks and Vegas vixens aplenty. Ride the roller coaster at New York, New York before visiting the Las Vegas Mob Experience at the Tropicana. A trip to Vegas wouldn’t be complete without burning some poker chips in a swank Vegas casino. Cliché? Perhaps. Amazing? Definitely.

#7 – Party in Panama

There’s a reason college kids make the trek here every spring. The beaches are hot, the women are hotter and the bars are as wild as they come. Spend the afternoon lounging in the sun or splashing in the surf and the nights dancing your butt off with pretty coeds. At Hofbrau Beer Garden, it’s Oktoberfest all year long with free kegs of beer and a two liter Giant Boot of hearty German beer. Party on the beach all week long in Panama. Thousands of college kids can’t be wrong.

#6 – Set Sail

Although cruises are generally billed as a couple’s adventure, bachelors can have just as much fun out on the open sea. With top-notch entertainment, all you can eat food privileges, on-board casinos, movie theaters and sports bars and some of the coolest off-ship excursions, a cruise may be just what the doctor ordered. An all-inclusive cruise is definitely the way to go.

#5 – Roller Coaster Revolution

Is speed your thing? Hitting Los Angeles or Orlando with theme parks on your mind can really get the adrenalin pumping. Some of the world’s best roller coasters are found in these theme park capitals. The nightlife here is astounding as well, with plenty of clubs, restaurants and live entertainment to fill your time after the park lights go down.

#4 – Mardi Gras Madness

Where better to experience a bachelor vacation than New Orleans during Mardi Gras? The once-Catholic celebration has turned into an excuse to party. Fat Tuesday (February 21, 2012) is prime party time. Parades, celebrations and plenty of amazing food make this a great way to spend a long Louisiana weekend. Although the main action takes place in the famed French Quarter, New Orleans in general celebrates Mardi Gras in a big way.

#3 – Careless in Cancun

White sandy beaches, tropical drinks and half naked women. Cancun is a bachelor’s paradise. With ancient Mayan archeological sites to explore, plenty of nightlife and the world’s second largest coral reef in which to snorkel or dive, Cancun has something for everyone. A jet-ski jungle tour through waterways lined with ancient vegetation will make you feel like an old-world adventurer.

#2 – Sporting Spree

Have a lot of time on your hands? Consider following your favorite pro-sports team for a few weeks. Taking in a couple games and experiencing all that the different host cities have to offer is a great way to relax and rejuvenate. Be prepared to fly by the seat of your pants and research the schedule in advance to plan for hotel rooms and post-game activities.

#1 – Road Trippin’ Renegades

A vacation is always better with your buddies. This year, make spontaneity the word of the week. Fill up the tank, pick up your bros and hit the open road with no particular destination in mind. You’ll be surprised just how much fun not having a plan can be!

These travel tips are only suggestions. The best vacations are often found by accident or intervention. Go forth, explore and have a great time!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Nearly every child walking this planet loves cartoons.  As we age we tend to slowly lose that love for cartoons we had as a kid.  A lot of it has to do with the content within cartoons mostly being geared towards children as opposed to adults.  While most cartoons are geared towards children, there are plenty of cartoons being made that either completely cater to adults, or at the very minimum have subliminal jokes intended to entertain the older generations while their kids soak up all the cartoon fun.

Not sure which cartoon to watch? Well you can either checkout a free movie recommender service like Apeflix.com or you can try watching a few of my recommendations below!

Waking Life

While Waking Life is technically a cartoon, in reality it is more cartoon stylized actors.  Regardless, Waking life is a phenomenal movie that revolves around lucid dreaming.  The film is more of a documentary than a story but is definitely worth sitting down and watching regardless if you like cartoons or not.

Favorite Quote:
Quiet Woman at Restaurant: When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses – that’s what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that’s all that really mattered.

Shrek

The first Shrek was one of the pioneers for movies that were geared towards both kids and adults.  There are plenty of jokes that will make kids laugh, and even more slightly subtle adult jokes that will make you wonder how this made it into what was supposed to be a kids movies.

Favorite Quote:
Donkey: And then one time I ate some rotten berries. Man, there were some strong gases seepin’ outta my butt that day!

Shrek 2

Shrek 2 took the formula from the first Shrek and added even more adult entertainment to the mix. It doesn’t happen that frequently that a sequel is better than the original movie, but this one definitely did it for me.

Favorite Quote:

Shrek: Quick tell a lie!
Pinocchio: What should I say?
Donkey: Say something crazy… like you’re wearing ladies underwear.
Pinocchio: Um, ok. I’m wearing ladies underwear.
Pinocchio: [silence]
Shrek: Are you?
Pinocchio: I most certainly am not.
Pinocchio: [nose extends] .
Donkey: It looks like you most certainly am are.
Pinocchio: I am not.
Pinocchio: [nose extends]
Puss-in-Boots: What Kind?
Gingerbread Man: IT’S A THONG!

South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut

If you are looking for raw adult humor in the form of a cartoon, look no further than the South Park movie.  The movie brings it all together, bad language, satanic sex, you name it, this movie has it all.  Make sure you lock your kids in their rooms for the night before you put this movie on because if they see this movie before they are old enough, it is going to leave some scars!

Favorite Quote:
Satan: How come you always want to make love to me from behind? Is it because you want to pretend I’m somebody else?
Saddam Hussein: Satan, your ass is gigantic and red. Who am I going to pretend you are, Liza Minelli?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

One of my favourite movies of all time has got to be Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  To this day, no other movie has been able to blend cartoons and real life actors the way TouchStone did with this late 80′s Comedy/Crime blend of actors and cartoons. Roger Rabbit is still one of the most most memorable cartoon characters to date even inspiring an entire city to be built in Disney Land called ‘Toon Town’.  Who Framed Roger Rabbit was one of the first cartoons ever to be edgy enough to receive a PG rating and is definitely a movie you should add to your to see list.

Favorite Quote:
Roger Rabbit: Yeah. Check the probate. Why, my Uncle Thumper had a problem with HIS probate, and he had to take these big pills, and drink lots of water.
Eddie Valiant: Not prostate, you idiot, PROBATE!

Popularity: 17% [?]

Foodies are those who are ardent about their food and everything that goes into it. Ingredients and their quality, new and exciting presentations, the right wine pairings – they like talking about good food almost as much as they like the food itself. Now, conversation and good food have gone hand in hand for as long as we’ve been gathering in groups to eat. We talk, we share funny stories and we laugh over tasty dishes and somehow find that good food, when shared with friends, is even better. In this age of instant global communications foodies from all over the world find each other on social networks and soon enough, organizing their own social networks dedicated to All Things Food.

Here are three social networks for foodies about their favorite subject. Each will appeal to different tastes and needs within the foodie community, but all have in common the ages-old idea of sharing food with friends.

BeTheCook.com

BeTheCook.com taps into every foodie’s secret ambition to be the next Rachel Ray and lets them be the star on their own cooking show! It’s a multimedia website where foodies can upload recordings of themselves creating their favorite dishes to share with fellow community members. Though the self-created videos range in quality from almost professional to poor, each of them steps you through a recipe so that you can see how the ingredients go together, a great improvement over simply reading a recipe and trying to guess what the next step actually means. The recipes themselves from beginner to advanced, catering to a wide range of talents and palettes.

You’ll also see videos of members giving “how to” tips for everything from frosting a cupcake to wrapping gifts. If you ever wanted to know how to make homemade herb salts or jello shots, you’ll find video instructions on it at BeTheCook.com.

The site also features videos and recipes from their own staff and chefs and the video quality on these is typically much higher. In addition there is a community forum onsite with thousands of members holding forth on their favorite topic and asking one another questions on cooking tips, equipment, restaurants, cookbooks, and recipes from a half-dozen popular cuisines.

FoodandWine.com

The community at Food &Wine organized itself aroun the popular magazine by the same name and caters to upscale foodies. Membership on the site gives so many benefits it’s difficult to name them all, but highlights include your own food blog, photo gallery for showing off your latest gorgeous gastronomic creations, and the ability to customize your FoodandWine.com experience to see the things yo

u most want to see. Typical of most social networks, members can comment on others’ blog posts, “Favorite” photos and posts, and maintain lists of friends.

FoodandWine.com has a very large userbase of foodies contributing and is worth a look, if you’re searching for an online foodie home. Best of all, FoodandWine.com lets you log in with an existing social media ID, such as Facebook, Goo

gle, Yahoo, and OpenID, making it unnecessary to create a separate account and try to remember yet another login ID and password!

EatDrinkOrDie.com

If you enjoy high humor with your food and getting it recorded digitally, EatDrinkOrDie.com might be the site for you. In a quote taken from KillerStartUps.com, EatDrinkOrDie.com claims, “We believe that FOOD and DRINK keep us alive – spiritually as well as physically. We started this website because we ourselves wanted to get back into the kitchen – we wanted to cook more for our families and friends and we wanted our friends to cook more for us (big hint there guys).”

This site’s niche is funny videos. It seems to be related to FunnyOrDie.com which hosts humorous videos on a wide range of subjects. Whether it’s because FunnyOrDie.com acquired EatDrinkOrDie.com or the latter started up as a subsidiary to the former is difficult to say. As of this writing, clicking on an EatDrinkOrDie.com link takes you directly to the FunnyOrDie.com webpage.

Popularity: 5% [?]

1.    Eating Produce From Across The Country
You might not have actually stopped to consider where your oranges come from, but it could be hurting the environment. Produce from California or Florida spends a lot of time traveling to other countries on gas-guzzling trucks or airplanes. Not only does this use up a large amount of oil that we are in desperate need of, but it also puts a lot of extra pollution into the air that we could avoid by buying locally.

2.    Using Non-Fluorescent Light Bulbs
This is where we need to consider the golden rule of products: Cheaper is not better! The embedded act of buying the cheapest no-name branded object on the shelf, such as lightbulbs, is actually hurting our environment.

3.    Grocery Shopping With Plastic Bags
Considering how many groceries households purchase on a monthly basis it is not hard to imagine the number of plastic bags required to carry said groceries. So here a very important rules of rgrocey stores: DO NOT use plastic bags. With the number of reusable bag options that almost, if not all, grocery store chains off there is no excuse for not using a reusable bag. If you are worried about forgetting to use them, keep them in your car so that whenever you go grocery shopping they are already with you. Not only will you experience less snapped handles and spilt milk, but you will also be doing your part to save the environment.

4.    Driving EVERYWHERE
We all understand by now how much gas our vehicles use by looking at our bank statements. The trick is to decrease our gas consumption, which is good for us and even better for the environment. One of the best ways to do this is to walk to places that are close to your house or work. For a 10-minute trip, there is no reason why you cannot leave your car parked in the driveway. Even easier is that we are now in the summer months and the weather will not be as cruel to walk in. Not only is walking instead of driving short distances good for the environment, it is also good for your health and for your vehicles health.  Short distances cause a lot of wear and tear on an engine and by choosing to walk, you reduce the stress on your car and you can reduce your own stress at the same time with some exercise and fresh air!

5.    Not Unplugging Appliances & Electronics When They Are Not In Use
Just because the power is “off” doesn’t mean there is no power being used. All appliances or electronics use up energy when they are plugged into an electrical outlet even if they are set to standby or are powered off. Besides costing you a boatload of money over the course of the year to continuously run power to your dishwasher, laundry machine, computer, television, stove, fridge, microwave… you get the idea… this power consumption is also hurting the environment. Electricity requires the burning of fossil fuels to create and there is no point in burning excess fuel or courting power that you aren’t even actively using.

6.    Throwing Out Old Items Instead of Donating or Recycling Them
This is pretty straight forward but not a lot of people really consider it as an option for them. There are many great organizations out there such as Big Brothers, Salvation Army and Canadian Diabetes (to name a few) that will come and pick up your donations from your address once a month (if you have items to donate) and bring them to people who need them. This is a great way to reduce your environmental impact by not filling up the landfill with products and items that are still useful, even if not to you. Plus, it just feels good to know that you are helping!

7.    Not Being Aware of Your AC and Heat Consumption
When the middle of summer comes most people run to their AC and turn it on full-blast without realizing the impact to the environment. Most people also fail to realize that they do not need to set their thermostat at such drastic numbers. Setting your AC at a comfortable 68 degrees celcius in the summer and only turning your heat up a few degrees in the winter, will save you a lot of money on heating and electricity costs as well as it will save the environment. Another way to reduce your consumption of AC and heating is to ensure that your home, windows and doors have proper installation. One of the biggest problems is the enter and escape of air from your home. This means that your AC might be on full-blast but has to work extra hard because the air is escaping from your home, same with heat. In the end, ensuring that these are as energy efficient as possible will save you a nice bit of money on your bills.

8.    Materialism and the Need of New Stuff
We live in a material world. That is all there is to it. However, just because that is the way our society is geared doesn’t mean we all have to function that way and it certainly does not make it better. We all know that when a new product hits the market it is both exciting and expensive. There is nothing like bringing home a new device or gadget, but the reason that the price is so high is because of packaging. Excess packing hurts the environment and by buying products that are packed excessively you are supporting that and unconsciously making it OK. To do both your wallet and the environment a favour, consider buying products that are a couple years old. In a lot of cases, it will be just as effective as buying new.

9.    Buying Bottled Water
By now we all know the horror stories about landfills and bottled water. The trick: Don’t buy bottled water. Sure, it is easy to buy a flat of spring water at the supermarket, but something just as easy but eco-friendly and cheaper is buying a water filtration system for either your tap or a container for your fridge. Not only will it save you lots of money and reduce the impact on the landfills, but it will also taste just as fresh and cold.

10.    Eating at Fast Food Joints
Usually a deciding factor for not eating at a fast food joint is the nutrition side of things, but there is also an effect on the environmental when you eat regularly at fast food joints. Fast food restaurants happen to be among the leading cause for rainforest destruction today. By simply eating more meals at home or at sit-down restaurants you can do less harm to the environment and your body!

Popularity: 15% [?]