Excitement. Hope. Gratitude.
These are the three sentiments we share at this time for the holidays. We are thrilled to have found so many extraordinary and unique finds this year. We are hopeful in the new year that we will continue to delight you. We are grateful for your visits and the feedback you send us on our favorite finds!

Happy Holidays from all of us @Extraordinique!

It's often the question of the day for the "chef" of the house - What's for dinner? It's also the familiar quest to do something fun and unique at the next dinner party. Preparing meals during the busy week, having some fun on the weekends entertaining or just having a quiet Sunday to relax is only limited now by your imagination. What if you could freeze, mold, even bake with familiar characters and shapes everyone will be talking about.

Kick Up Your Mimosas Recently celebrating our one year anniversary @Extraordinique, our friend and photographer, Calvina, suggested Tyler Florence's fantastic recipe for Orange Cream Mimosas. What was the most fun was using Sillycone's Symbol Ice Trays to toss in frozen @ symbols for our toast! Cheers!

Try Buckwheat Pancakes with Vanilla & Cinnamon Butter
Enjoying the smell of sizzling bacon and pancakes on the griddle makes for the perfect weekend morning, but how about kicking it up a notch by making your own infused butter cubes. We used Sillycone Letter Trays and made a mixture of vanilla and cinnamon in softened butter. Poured into the molds and wrapped in freezer wrap, not only were we able to take out what we needed, but we have some left over in the freezer to keep for the next pancake splurge. Yum!

Celebrate Colorfully  

For a special birthday celebration, I have always wanted to experiment with fondant. The Sillycone trays made shaping the fondant easy and fun to decorate our three layer chocolate decadence cake. Make a wish!

Not too long ago, my nose led me to a very aromatic booth where coffee beans were being canned at our local Farmer's Market. There was a substantial line to find out more and I was intrigued by some shoppers who actually were handing back their coffee tins for more. Once I got to the front of the line, I learned all about Pachamama Cofee Co-Op, a very unique farmers-owned co-op that was incorporated in Davis, California in 2001 and spans from Ethiopia to Peru.

Choosing a French Roast Premium blend to try, the sales team also told me about their "refill" tin program, which reduces the number of tins wasted and encourages customers to bring back the specially designed steel can to preserve freshness.

Pachamama Coffee Co-op is very impressive on so many levels - the family farmers and their stories, the 100% organic farming practices, the unique coffee beans themselves, and their mission to provide customers with premium coffee in the most direct manner possible and, in doing so, improve the lives of small-scale farmers and their families.

This cooperative is democratically-controlled and owned by its members, producer-groups of representing small-scale coffee farmers around the world.

Pachamama's member-owners ship their finest, organic single-origin coffee to the USA from Ethiopia, Guatemala, Peru, Nicaragua and Mexico. Pachamama Coffee Co-op hand-roasts in small batches in California and ship direct to customers.


Extraordinique!
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Couldn't pass up the Vote soap for our U.S. readers. "Take a shower with this soap -- it's good for you -- so is your vote -- so do both!"

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Baby Wit has a great "get it" factor when it comes to moms who want to dress their kids in everything and anything other than cute, fuzzy teddy bears or "equally uninteresting creatures."

Baby Wit has a great collection of quirky, eclectic, urban-to-suburban chic, including the largest collection of comic infant toddler t's online.

What I loved is their clothing picked to get into the Halloween spirit and thought these skull and cross bones kicks were awesome and this red infinity skulls shift dress was rockin' too!

Baby Wit also carries organic baby gifts and even cool accessories for the other "good boy" in your life, the pup! Woof!

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Gelato has to be one of those desserts that makes everyone "melt" year-round. As founders of Capogiro Gelato Artisans, John and Stephanie Reitano understand this. Capogiro offers flavors of the season, which reflect local harvests from nearby farms around the great city of Philadelphia. Capogiro strives to impress with both classic and unique flavors that will have you paying $60.00 for six pints shipped to your door. Today's flavors of the day include:

• Ananas Con Menta
  Golden Pineapple with Lancaster County Meadow Mint
• Fior Di Latte
  Milk gelato. Milk from an Amish family's single herd of hormone free, grass fed in Lancaster County. Crazy good.
• Quince
  Lancaster County Quince Poached in Lemon and Ginger
• Rosemary Honey Goat Milk
  Lancaster County goat's milk infused with Lansdale rosemary sweetened by New Jersey buckwheat honey

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Last year, I was using several services to track my physical activity throughout the day for weight loss. I had to enter in my workouts and my caloric intake. Then I added the Nike Plus, which tracked my mileage and the pace of my runs, and then allowed me to upload my workout to my Nike Plus dashboard.

Available early next year, I am really looking forward to utilizing the Fitbit Tracker an advanced monitor to track my activity throughout the day and even the quality of my sleep. Fitbit is the all-in-one fitness and sleep monitor (using motion sensing technology) to help track your level of activity throughout the day...and night. The small bluetooth device fits to your clothing worn throughout the day. The data collected is wirelessy uploaded to your own Fitbit dashboard where you can monitor and measure your progress.

FitBit seems to simplify and aggregate all of the necessary information into one health and wellness dashboard to log food, activities and track weight. The Fitbit device then does all of the rest, showing how many calories burned for the day and other personal stats.

To learn more about Fitbit, read more on the Fitbit launch at this year's TechCrunch50.

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