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Sears Gift Card Winner

Lisa — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 22:32:34 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The winner of my Sears gift card giveaway was Oona! I am super excited for her, and according to her comment, she was going to get a toaster. I have a feeling that she’ll have some money left over after that so hopefully she can get some some snow chains or something nice for herself.

I’d also like to thank all the people who entered the contest. I love doing giveaways, and I was glad to see so many people who entered. Keep reading, because I plan on having quite a few new, great giveaways coming up for this year!

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Granting Wishes at Sears

Lisa — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 15:00:08 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

TThis post is sponsored, but the ideas, thoughts and ramblings are my own.

Since having kids, I turned into a big softie. Yes, I’ll actually admit it. I cry at things I never would have before, and I think about things that never would have crossed my mind before having kids. I’ll be honest here — I get all teary eyed at Sears new commercials. Their new campaign is about how one gift can change someone’s life. Since I absolutely love Ty Pennington, I thought I’d show you what he had to say:

Okay, now that I’ve got myself composed again, I need to tell you what wishes Sears answered for my family. I was provided a $100 gift card from Sears that we were able to use this weekend.

Bill and I bundled the kids off early yesterday morning and headed off to Sears. I luck out since Sears is actually walking distance from my house, and we actually shop their quite a bit — off the top of my head, we got a bench, our snowblower, and our lawnmower from there. However, on this trip, we had no idea what we were going to get. My Christmas shopping is pretty much done, so we were going to try to find something for the kids.

The first place we checked out was the outdoor decorations. Madison is always wanting more for our yard, and this isn’t something we spend a lot of money on. Shortly after this picture was taken, Will decided to lay on the floor and talk to one of the deer that they had for a decoration. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get the camera out fast enough to get that embarrassing photo of him. Nothing really caught our eye in this department, so we headed over to toys. Of course, there were a lot of toys to pick from, but really, my kids don’t need another $100 worth of toys right before Christmas. Since the favorite part of any store for my husband is electronics, we headed to that department.

Once we were in electronics, my husband immediately walked towards the TVs even though we really don’t need one. Plus, $100 doesn’t really buy a TV (or at least not the ones he was looking at). Madison was being her normal hyper self running around looking at things until she saw the guitar hero bundle. Yes, that is my whole family playing Guitar Hero in Sears. Madison asked us if we could buy her the drums.

Now, the school district I live in has cut the art and music programs from the curriculum and will not be adding them back. I have written many posts on this blog about how awful I think this situation is and how I feel that music definitely is a class that should not be cut. My daughter loves to play instruments and sing. I can’t imagine depriving her of it. With the $100 Sears gift card, we will be able to fulfill her wish and give her the additional music support she will not be getting from our school. Who knows — Madison may end up to be talented singer, dancer, in a band, etc. However, I’d love to give her the stepping stones she needs to reach her full potential. (Plus, well, Guitar Hero is fun for mom and dad too. Dad was all over getting it when I told him there was 3 Tool songs and Freak On A Leash by Korn. I also need to add that the gift card paid for a portion of the cost of this bundle. I paid the rest.)

Since we got such an awesome family gift from Sears, I’d like to extend this awesome opportunity to one of my readers. Yes, I’d like to give you a $100 gift card to Sears to use however you like.

You can enter via blog comment, tweet or blog post:

Blog Comment:

I just need you to tell me what you think you’d want to spend your $100 on. Head on over to Sears and let me know the item number of what you like.

Twitter:

I’ve made it super easy for you to Twitter about this contest. Just tweet out this message:

RT @blm03 please grant my wish to win a $100 #Sears gift card – tweet to make your own wish: http://urlbrief.com/8e0599

Blog Post:

You can also enter by writing a post about the contest and linking back to this post. Make sure you leave a comment with the URL to your post, so I can count it as an entry.

Each tweet, comment or post counts as one registration. You can register up to three times by tweeting, leaving a comment, and doing a post on your blog. The winner will be chosen at random by IZEA based on all entries. This contest goes until December 23 at midnight EST. Good Luck!

Check out the other Izea Insiders for more chances to win:

Affiliate Summit West Silver Pass Giveaway!

Lisa — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:52:17 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

This contest is over. The winner is Content Pig!

Now, as many of you know, I was lucky enough to get picked as an Izea Insider. One of my perks is that I have access to passes to conferences. One conference that is coming up is the Affiliate Summit. It takes place in Las Vegas from January 11 – January 13th, 2009. I can’t go. We will be celebrating Madison’s 5th birthday, and I kind of need to be here for that. However, I want to pass this on to one of my lucky readers, because you are all so great!

This is one of the top conference to go to. The Affiliate Summit West Silver Pass gives you admission to the Affiliate Meet Market, Exhibit Hall, and the Affiliate Summit Social Network. The normal cost of the Silver Pass is $349 when ordered online or $449 when you get there. But yours will be free!

Here’s what you need to do:

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this awesome pass!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

For 1o (yes, 10! additional entries):

Join my Spark E Facebook page! Just leave me a link here to your profile on Facebook, so I can verify.

This contest will end December 19 at 8:00 pm CST. Good luck, and if you want a few more chances to win, check out these fellow Izea Insiders for their contests too:

Julies Journal

Oh, Hey

Steven Sanders dot com

Beautiful British Columbia

Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!

Lisa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!

Entrecard Forums Censoring Again

Lisa — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:55:29 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I really do like Entrecard. I really do. However, some of the missteps that have occurred over are just crazy. One of the ongoing missteps is their moderators on their forums. This was an issue a while back before. New forums popped up due to the censorship that a lot of the members were feeling on the Entrecard forums. Seriously, that was how bad it got.

Now, I thought that was over and done with. We were told that wouldn’t happen anymore and blah blah blah. Well, I learned firsthand myself how much crap that was (I’m a little irritated . . . can you tell?) Now, I have moderated before (I was moderator at the Izea forums over a year, so I know what a pain it can be. However, we were never ever ever allowed to delete anything unless it was spam.) Now, the thread in question is this one: http://entrecard.com/forums/7/15804/#p=21. Now, they posted a question and people started responding. I happened to be one of them. And my response got deleted since he (the moderator who started the question) didn’t like the answer. He also removed the reference to another forum called Firestorm. I’m sorry, you can’t ask a question on a public forum and then start deleting the answers you don’t like. Sorry, that is crap. The part that I especially love is that other forums are listed there. His reasoning? Firestorm and Forum Finder (which is the one I listed) are too close to what Entrecard’s forum does (huh?). I wouldn’t be half as ticked if he didn’t leave other forums up there that do the same darn thing. I don’t understand the double standard. I am not one to kiss ass which is probably why my comment is gone (I’ve left two more comments questioning why — we’ll see how long those last).

Now, I don’t own either forum that got taken off the list. I get no benefit for writing this post, besides releasing some of my anger. I just am sick and tired of Entrecard’s double standard when it comes to their forums. Obviously, the only way to get your posts to say is to kiss up or keep your opinions to yourself (which I would think is counterproductive on a forum).

Let me know your thoughts.