My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings » mind

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, and we don’t need another credit card. 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:

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Halloween: Masquerade Time!

Lisa — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:51:51 +0000

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

It is hard to believe that Halloween is a little over a month away, and it is time to start looking at Halloween Costume Stores again. I remember rushing around last minute last year trying to find a superman costume for Will (As you can see, I did find one!). This year I am not quite sure what we are making the kids. I did find some Handy Manny costumes in Will’s size, so we may go with that. Madison changes her mind from day to day what she wants to be. Right now, she wants to be a fairy with wings or a princess. This is very surprising for my house due to the fact she is soooo not a girly girl. However, she is old enough to decide what she does and does not want to be for Halloween. She could be asking for much worse, so I am happy with a fairy or a princess. I think we are leaning towards a princess since last year she was supergirl, the year before that she was Tinkerbell, and the year before that she was a flower.

How do you decide what your kids are going to be for Halloween?

Izeafest – Day 2

Lisa — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 15:41:02 +0000

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

We learned on Day 1 that we had to get there bright and early to make sure that we got a plugin for our laptops. Without that, day one didn’t have a lot of blogging or twittering going on. Well, at least not from me. Day 2 started with a keynote speech from Merlin Mann. I have to say that it was one of the best keynote speeches I have ever heard. His speech was about “don’t be a dick”. Everything he said was true. He even asked the audience to disagree with what he said, but no one did, because he was right.

The next panel was Social Network and included Michael Brito, Sean Bonner, Etan Horowitz, and Lena West. This was another panel that really wasted my time. First, we had Lena West stating that she was too busy to actually do it herself. My first question was then why are you on this panel? Then she managed to offend half the room (google: Lena West and mommybloggers to find out why. Trust me, there was no
airbrush do over. The more she tried to explain herself, the worse it got). They pretty much said to use Twitter and Facebook. Umm, yeah, knew that already. Now, tell me how to use them to help me, because I really don’t get Facebook at all. There are also dozens of social networking sites out there — and nobody even mentioned them.

Next, there was Loren Feldman. I love Loren Feldman. He speaks his mind, and he makes awesome videos! It was almost breathtaking to hear what equipment he uses. We learned that you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars to do good videos on your blog.

Next, we had the plug-in panel with Loren Baker, Jonathan Dingman, and Erik Hersman. This was definitely cool, because I learned I am using a lot of the wordpress plugins that I should be!

Last, there was the Blog Design Makeover Panel with Scott Allen,Matt Blancarte, and Christopher Schmitt. My only complaint with this is that they were very rushed. Also, the designs were nice, but way out of the price range of us normal bloggers.

In a nutshell, that was the conference. I have one more post about the IzeaHunt that we did, and that will pretty much summarize the conference. Would I go again? I’ll be honest — I don’t know. It is a lot of money. Did I learn things? Yes. However, does any of it help me to monetize? Not really. I really thing they need to have breakout sessions, and you can pick and choose what sessions to go to. That way, you can reach the middle ground bloggers and the beginning bloggers. What I found lacking was that none of the big name big money bloggers really told us how to get from middle group to up on top. Telling me what you are doing now really doesn’t help me all that much.

Everything is Bigger at Pampers

Lisa — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 04:53:17 +0000

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

One of the cool things I learned when I got to visit Pampers is that they try to think like a baby. Did you know that a baby takes more steps than a marathoner (which is probably why you see few babies needing to walk on treadmills)? To help everyone keep that in mind, they have lots of cute things to help them remember what life is like for our little ones: