Happy Holidays

I think TodaysMama said it best.

The newsletter from them on Tuesday started out:

"The TodaysMama staff wishes you the Happiest of Holidays.

Be safe. Don’t burn the pie. Take lots of photos, and for heavens sake, don’t let that one crazy relative get to you.

Merry Christmas!"

Yup. That about sums it up! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Happy 101 Award

Merry Christmas!

Beth P at We Laugh Until We Cry gave me a beautiful early Christmas present Monday by honoring me with a Happy 101 Award. This award is for the bloggers and their blogs that make you smile and let me tell you, the award is so cute how could I not smile receiving it! :) Thank you so much Beth! This award brightens my day and definitely makes me happy!

RULES FOR HAPPY 101 AWARD

List 10 things that make you happy, try to do at least one of them today, and tag 10 bloggers that brighten your day. For those bloggers who get the award, you then link back to my blog and create your "makes you happy" list.

10 things that make me happy:

1. My family. Dave and Elijah totally make me happier than anything in the whole world.
2. My friends. My best friend in the world Dee. Beth, Chris, Rachel, Tonya, Ashley, Angie, I could go on and on. All of you are wonderful!
3. Getting and leaving comment love for my bloggy friends!
   
4. Hybrid scrapbooking!
   
5. Cooking
6. Sewing
7. Did I mention my son? lol Okay then everything about him, Elijah's laughs, talks, and adorable faces.
8. Video Games
9. Graphic Design
10. Tweeting!
    

10 blogs that make me happy:

1. Tonya of This and That
2. Angie of A Simple Kinda Life
3. Pamela of A Renaissance Woman
4. Bobbi of When Did I Go From A Kid to A Grown Up
5. Corine of Complicated Mama
6. Amy of Resourceful Mommy
7. Tara of Feels Like Home
8. Shannan of From Crib to Car Keys
9. Chris of Blog Well Done
10. Monica of The Online Mom

There are so many more wonderful bloggers and blogs that make me happy I could have given this to. Thank you all for all the smiles you give me! And thank you again Beth for giving me the award! :)

Make lemonade

I review products. I give positive and negative on the products. Sometimes there is no positive.

Due to a current situation a woman was thrust into the lime light. She just happens to be an author of a book.

I found the book. I reviewed the book. My review had nothing to do with my opinions of her or the current situation.

A person claiming to not be her and having nothing to do with the situation has used the negative opinion I left as their basis for attacking me. I wrote an open letter to them earlier this week, which you can view here.

Last I checked everybody was entitled to their own opinion. Positive or negative. Apparently it is not so.

This person has now taken the time to contact sponsors and friends to try to discredit me and prove me to be unethical. I have nothing to hide and those of you who know me, know that. I DID post a negative review on this book. I even did it under my own Amazon.com review account and name. As for the review itself, maybe it was a bit harsh. But it is my opinion and I am entitled to it. I post negative feedback. Up until now most companies I have worked with commended that.

I was just going to ignore her and let her go away, but I thought to be fair I should post her letter and share it with you all since she went to so much trouble to write it and might have missed someone. Here is her letter:

"Hello.

I am writing to alert you to someone who states she has a "relationship" with you. I do not know in what capacity she represents your company.

Erin Pyle from the website, "www.pyleoflove.com", has entered a Twitter fray by posting a bogus "review" of a book on Amazon.com. She does quite a good job of being vague in the details of her review. She is also very savvy about her deception--she reviewed two other products on the same day, hoping it would appear that she had a valid reason for signing in to Amazon reviews.

When one clicks from her Amazon page to her web page, as I did, there is a post about the person for whom she has taken up offenses. To be clear, Erin Pyle has been caught up in someone else's fight, and taken it a step further, in hopes of harming her "enemy", the author of the book.

Here is a link to Erin's "review", and the comments that respond to it:
http://www.amazon.com/review/R1STV9S8FRWKSW/ref=cm_cr_pr_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=059528812X&nodeID=#wasThisHelpful

I question the unethical actions of Erin Pyle, and I hope that, as a representative of your company, you question her actions, too.

Thank you."



As for the review being bogus. She has no proof of this. Want to check the book out for yourself? Amazon will let you view some of the first pages.

As for claim I am just trying to 'harm' the author, I would like to point out that one negative review is not going to harm her if she is in fact worthy of positive ones. Thank you for giving me the credit for thinking that my one review to her many good reviews would be that influential in harming her.

Whether it's politics or social issues or whatever, we can be on different sides and still succeed.

You go your way, and I go mine. And we both have our own thoughts that cannot be swayed at the end of the day, and that's okay, believe it or not.

We are ALL entitled to our thoughts, good or bad.


I would like to also thank the person for their opinions because it made me remember that you have to take the good with the bad. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. Something we all learned when we were children.

Wordless Wednesday - My little camera ham

Today's Wordless Wednesday is actually pretty wordy... lol

Elijah is a camera ham. He wants his picture taken so much it could be his job. Luckily for him one of my jobs is to take his picture.
The room that his play area is in is actually a 21 x 25 room. His play area takes up half and we have a home office on the other half. I could take a better picture of both sides but I already synced my camera for this post. hehe

So anyway... to divide the room we have a couch and then a long wooden gate/fence. You have probably seen it in some of my pictures... often.
Often if I am at my desk and Elijah is playing he will decide he wants me to play with him, so he will bring a toy or object he is playing with over to the fence. If I don't get right up that second and come over the fence to play he will throw the object over our side. It has become a little game now. We sit and throw the ball back and forth, stuffed animals. Anything that is safe to throw. Many times the little face he gives me while standing on his side is so adorable I have to take his picture. If he even senses the camera is near he will then strike a pose with whatever object he brought over!
I have seen him stand still for 3 minutes because he doesn't think I took a good enough picture. He will screech for me to take another and another until I get the shot HE wanted.
Then he walks away so I know picture time is over and I can come play with him now.
Sometimes he will be doing something cute across the room and I will try my hardest to pick up the camera quietly to snap the picture before he notices.
It's very rare I actually get the picture without him noticing the camera and jumping up to run to the fence, and if I do it's usually only with my camera phone which is obviously blurry at best.
I take AT LEAST 5 pictures of Elijah a day. Most of these pictures never get posted or printed and are just archived on disk after disk. I don't think the one picture a week on Wordless Wednesday is enough. I need to find more creative ways to share some of his pictures.

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

Sesame Street launches ebook collection

Starting today Sesame Workshop launched a ebook collection including one of our personal favorites, The Monster at the end of this Book!

Click here for the complete story in my examiner column.

Tackle it Tuesday - OMG CHRISTMAS IS IN 3 DAYS AND I'M NOT READY edition

You know I haven't participated In Tackle it Tuesday since... Well actually I HAVE participated. I just seem to forget to take the before and after pictures for the posts.
And today was no exception. lol

There is so much to do before Christmas. I felt so on top of things for months now. Christmas shopping was DONE since we bought the very last thing on our list the first week in November. All the decorations were out of storage sitting in their boxes in the family room, the tree was standing (naked but standing) and the Christmas music was all loaded in the ipod waiting to be played.

So we finally decorated, did the tree, listened to the Christmas music, and were a week away from Christmas when 2 things dawned on me.

1. I totally FORGOT 3 people we would be seeing at Christmas we needed to have something for.
   
2. CHRISTMAS CARDS. durr. I forget these every year until last minute. I swear I am filling out next years cards and putting them in our 'to be mailed' sorter now.

So here we are now 2 days until Christmas Eve. We are snowed in. And by snowed in I mean we have 2 to 3 feet deep snow the entire 130 foot length of the driveway. We are all sick with a horrible cold. Elijah has SIX teeth coming in, all about an eighth of an inch through. I still am missing 1/2 the part of the gift for those 3 people. And still have not mailed a single Christmas card.

I did manage to 'wade' my way through to get the mail and then yesterday Dave cut us a path down, which was nice. But I have a sneaky feeling we are not going to be done in time. I shoveled for an hour and managed to get done our front walk. Well sort of. Dave finished the rest and shoveled for about 3 hours. He got about a 7 x 7 square done, plus the bath down the driveway, plus another path to the mail box. That alone is a TON of snow.

SO. We plan to tackle the following today:

1. Clean Elijah's play area.
2. Organize hats/gloves/scarves into over-the-door hanging plastic pockets.
3. Straighten Elijah's room.
   
4. Clean the kitchen.
5. Clean the living room upstairs and rearrange all gifts.
6. Straighten family room downstairs.
   
7. Wrap remaining gifts.
   
8. Pack all gifts that are going with us on Christmas Eve/Day.
9. Get in the attic. Get out curtains I need and put the 30 boxes of things Elijah has outgrown up there.
10. Figure out how to get out of the driveway. WOO 4 hours later! All snow is GONE! Dave & I alternated shoveling. We both ache now.
11. Do the 3 2 1 loads of laundry that seemed to have mysteriously accumulated since yesterday.
12. Put together ingredients and prepare to make a few 'dessert' gifts we are giving. (I have to make those on Wednesday night)
13. Pack Elijah's diaper bag for holiday travel.
    
14. Figure out how to get to the bank.
15. Figure out how to get to the store to buy the last part of the present for the 3 people. Going tomorrow morning.
16. Keep Elijah from having too many teething melt downs.
17. Get rid of our colds. (Sanitize, Sanitize, SANITIZE!)
18. And somehow finish and mail these Christmas cards.

I know there is probably more... but I don't want to think about it. I'll update you on my progress later by crossing things off as they get done!

Happy Tuesday!

Allstate's X the TXT: Thumbs Up to the Safest Holiday Ever

The holidays are one of the deadliest times for teen drivers. To combat this epidemic, Allstate has established,THUMBS UP TO THE SAFEST HOLIDAY EVER! Created to save the lives of teens this holiday season and to benefit NOYS, each person who joins this cause and pledges not to text and drive, Allstate will donate $1 to NOYS for teen safe driving programs, up to $25,000.

NOYS is a collaborative network of national organizations and federal agencies that serve youth and focus on youth safety and health. Through this network, NOYS influences more than 80 million young people ages 5 to 24 and adult advisers and supervisors. Their vision is to be the premier national youth health and safety coalition and their mission is to promote youth empowerment and leadership and to build partnerships that will save lives, prevent injuries, and promote safe and healthy lifestyles among all youth. NOYS is a longstanding leader in developing programs to promote youth traffic safety.

How you can give a Thumbs Up to the SAFEST HOLIDAY EVER:

Frequent family discussions about safe driving behavior is key to a safe teen driver! Fill up on some of the facts and then talk about them together often! Visit www.Allstate.com/teen to go to Allstate's website to download the Allstate Family Texting Pledge and start the conversation about responsible driving with your family!

• Reaching for a phone while driving increases your risk of being in a car crash by nine times.
• By pledging not to text and drive, you’re doing your part to help make this the Safest Holiday Ever.
• The deadly consequences of texting while driving don’t just affect teens; it also affects their families, friends and communities.
• We’re asking teens and teen influencers around the nation to take their thumbs off their cell phones and keep their eyes on the road.

Allstate's "X the TXT: Thumbs Up to the Safest Holiday Ever" campaign challenges teens and parents alike to make the pledge not text and drive. By joining the cause at www.causes.com/thumbsup, you're pledging to put your cell phone down behind the wheel. As part of the campaign, a 30-city "X the TXT," tour kicks off this holiday season during which teens and their families can add their thumbprints to a pledge banner as a public commitment not to text and drive.

I gave my thumbs up! Did you?



Disclosure: I was not compensated in any way for this post.