Top Ten Signs You’ve Slept With A Blogger
Mar 31, 2012 Blog & Social Media Stuff
I don’t know what to say about this video, other than it was late, and we’d had a lot of sugar.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, SheStreams, Top Ten
Today’s Agenda: thriving on the familiar
Jan 17, 2012 Today's Agenda
This has been the longest break for my normal routine I’ve ever had since having kids. First there was Christmas, then a week at my mom’s. Then we came back to Brooklyn and the kids went back to school, but my husband was still home on vacation, which was weird and messed up my routine entirely (totally my fault, not his – I have trouble working when somebody else is sleeping in and playing video games). Then I went to CES in Las Vegas. Then a long weekend with all of us home.
Today was the day things were supposed to get back to normal, but my husband is home sick. So I’ve still got one more day. But he’s upstairs working and being sick, so I’m just going to force myself to get back on track.
#1 on my list is taking care of a couple projects left over from last year. I wrote a Blogger Pledge back in September and have been doing really well following it…except for the very first one. I put that one first because I knew it would be the hardest one for me. And I have improved, I just haven’t totally conquered it. But a couple hours of writing and I’ll be caught up.
Other than that, bread is rising, dishes are (mostly) done, and I might even do some laundry today. I like to spoil my family with clean clothes every once in a while (but not so often that they get used to it).
Have a great Tuesday!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging
Today’s Agenda: 3rd try edition
Dec 9, 2011 Today's Agenda
I have gotten SO much done in the past two days. Unfortunately none of it was on this blog. Grr… I get sucked into projects. I am now completely caught up on my invoicing, my project follow-ups, and I’m actually getting there on laundry. The kitchen is clean. I even showered every day this week. (Yes, I know, that shouldn’t be a big deal.) But I can’t seem to find the time to write. Except for these “Today’s Agenda” posts.
I’m glad I don’t have a traditional job. I’m thrilled that I can (mostly) arrange my work around other things I want to do or have to do. But sometimes I wonder how much more productive I would be if I had an office to go to every day, outside of my house, where I wouldn’t get sucked into doing other things, and then at home I wouldn’t be sitting in front of my computer at 10 or 11pm trying to get work done.
Time management is my biggest stumbling block to being super productive. I flit from thing to thing, sometimes finding something else to occupy my time if I don’t want to do what really needs to be done, and other times I just get sucked into getting other things done and never get to what I really want to do. There’s always something else waiting to be done. I’m never finished.
I was at an event the other day with my friend Mitch of Gay NYC Dad, and I complimented him on how consistently he posts about things very soon after they’ve happened. I mean, we went to the same circus performance a month ago. I think his post was up before I got home, whereas mine just went up a week ago. He said that he has to do that, that he can’t have things hanging over his head – he said he used to live that way, and it was terrible. I agree. I have hundreds of things hanging over my head.
I don’t know what the answer is, except saying no to more things until I can get everything under control and caught up, even though I already feel like I’m saying no to pretty much everything. I don’t want to run around the house finding clothes for the kids every morning. I don’t want to stay up all night working on projects that I should’ve started weeks ago. I live in a perfect storm of procrastination, trouble saying no, and mild attention deficit disorder (or as I call it, the “Ooh, something shiny!” syndrome).
And the sad thing is, things are so much better than they were a year ago. But I need to step it up. I think it has to start with time. I won’t get all of the laundry done. But if I work on it for a solid hour each day, it will be fine. I won’t get the house clean, it’s just too big. But an hour of cleaning every day will make a huge dent, instead of letting things get so bad that I’m too overwhelmed to start. If I take an hour at the end of each week to invoice and update tax info, I won’t have to spend hours catching up.
I won’t get all of my work done every day – there’s an endless supply of what I want to write about. But if I sit and work for a certain amount of time without flitting to something else (you know, I really need to fix that shelf right now, even though it’s been broken for months), I can plan things out better and know how much more I can take on, or if I need to say no.
This started out as a “Today’s Agenda” post about how I was going to try for the third day to post about Thanksgiving and cake pops. But just writing about it has helped me crystalize in my head what I need to do to get out of this hole. So, I’m off to do an hour of cleaning.
And, uh…post about Thanksgiving and cake pops. :-)
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, cleaning, time management
Listen to your Mother(lode)
Sep 26, 2011 What's Going On
I’ve loved Lisa Belkin’s column in the New York Times since I first read it. She tackles every parenthood issue you could think of with fairness, curiosity, and experience. And she writes really well. Her newest post, about whether or not all parents love one child more, is already igniting quite a discussion in the comments section. I’ve been lucky enough to get to know Lisa over the past couple of years, and she even gave me a tour of the New York Times offices last year. I’ve gotten more traffic than I ever though possible from when she’s linked to me from the Times online. And last month at a conference in San Diego, the Blogging Angels were able to snag her to record a great podcast episode in my hotel room.
I normally don’t promote our Blogging Angels podcasts here because they’re geared towards bloggers, but this episode is for anyone who has kids, anyone who reads Lisa Belkin, and anyone who’s wondered what it’s like to write a blog (or anything) within the structure of a giant newspaper.
To make it as easy as possible for you, you can listen to the episode right here. And don’t worry about scribbling down the links we mention – we’ve done it for you.
If you’d rather download it to your mp3 player:
To download this episode to your computer directly: right click, then click “save link as.”
Of course, easiest of all would be to subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes.
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, Lisa Belkin
Today’s Agenda: Top secret edition
Sep 12, 2011 Today's Agenda
I really hate it when I get to do something interesting and can’t talk about it (yet). But today is that kind of a day. However, since I got less than four hours of sleep, there’s always the chance that I’ll slip up and tweet about it. :-)
After a disastrous week of sleep last week, I vowed to get to bed by midnight every night this week. Missed that deadline by two hours last night. And I even left the kitchen a disaster to save time! Ah well, better luck tonight.
In the meantime, be sure to check out my latest Blogging Angels podcast. We sat down with Lisa Belkin, who writes the Motherlode blog over at a little publication called the New York Times. It’s a really good episode.
Have a great day!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom, from Amy’s cell phone (so please excuse any weird formatting). All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 0. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, Lisa Belkin
BlogHer 2011: eBay Classifieds & my renewed resolve to not end up on an embarrassing reality show
Aug 5, 2011 Blog & Social Media Stuff
I’m so thrilled to be attending my fourth BlogHer conference! I can’t believe how far I’ve come since I attended my first one in San Francisco in 2008. I had just started blogging and had no idea what I was doing, but my sister lived in San Fran, so I figured going to the conference would be a good excuse to visit her. Honestly, I left BlogHer ‘08 a little more confused than when I went in, because of the enormous amount of information that had been shoved into my brain in the space of two days (so it was a good kind of confused). When I’d started blogging I thought it was something you did alone, for free, and possibly every once in a while you’d get to do something cool, like meet Grover. I had no idea what I was in for, or how blogging would take over my life.
With each successive BlogHer I have to admit I’ve attended fewer conference sessions and instead used it as a networking marathon of sorts. Thousands of bloggers, PR and brand reps attend, so it’s a great place for relationships to start or move to the next level. And on Saturday my blogging career will enter a new phase, when I host my first event, along with my fellow Blogging Angels and the ladies from Zebra Partners. We’re holding a breakfast for about sixty fantastic bloggers, and we hope they leave with some tools to better present and market themselves. Because as much as some bloggers would like to present this as a warm-and-fuzzy community of women, for many of us it’s a business. And I must confess: I have a lot to learn at the breakfast as well. After more than three years of blogging, I still feel in many ways like I have no idea what I’m doing.
Listening back to some things I’ve said in Blogging Angels podcasts, I notice I’m getting a little cocky. Perhaps it comes from getting somewhat comfortable and confident with what I’m doing – just enough to act like a know-it-all, even though I still have so far to go. So I’m really grateful that as an eBay Classifieds ambassador I get to attend BlogHer with their sponsorship money, not worrying about how many hours I have to work or how many posts I have to write to make up for the plane fare and hotel and conference ticket and, yes, a nice meal or two (a girl’s gotta relax a little, right?).
I’ve been working with eBay Classifieds for a while now and I feel like I’m on the precipice of a major shift in my life. I’ve been letting a lot of stuff build up in our house, and I’ve been blaming our renovation. One entire floor hasn’t even been started yet, and honestly I don’t know when it will be (when money rains from the sky, perhaps?). I keep telling myself that once that floor is usable I’ll have plenty of storage space for everything I’ve accumulated, but I think it’s finally time to admit that if I wait for that floor to be finished, I just might be found by my kids one day, buried under a pile of crap.
Now there’s no need to call the producers of Hoarders or anything like that – I’m not at that stage. But I am at the stage where when people come over, there’s a mad dash to get stuff hidden, and I never ever let anyone see the upstairs. It would take days to prepare for that. So, while eBay Classifieds has been my go-to site for buying some really wonderful things (an awesome treadmill and a really great TV, to name a couple), I haven’t been using it as I should have, to also move things out of the house. So, that’s the project when I get back from BlogHer: Operation Move The Crap Out!
The goal? To be able to use some key areas that right now are just piled with stuff. I have an entire room on the top floor that’s supposed to be my dressing room – there’s an awesome art deco dressing table in there, and shelves for my shoes and accessories, but I’ve never been able to use it as such – it’s filled with crap. On the parlour floor, my piano – which I would really love to use – is buried under boxes. Even on our kitchen floor, where I’ve set up several beautiful shelves in a back hallway to organize all of my baking and overflow kitchen stuff, I can’t get to anything because whenever something is in our way we just toss it in there, somewhat out of sight.
And I don’t want to put too much pressure on this project, but I’ve found in the past that when one area of my life gets in order, others tend to follow suit. So there’s some extra motivation there.
At the risk of my husband divorcing me, I will be posting “before pictures.” They will make the “after” pictures look all that more impressive.
But first, on to BlogHer! And a huge thanks to eBay Classifieds for getting me here. If you’re here and want to hear about what a fantastic, free listing site eBay Classifieds is, tap me on the shoulder and ask!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 14. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, cleaning, eBay Classifieds, Travel
How are you celebrating National Ice Cream Day?
Jul 17, 2011 What's Going On
There was a time when I thought all of these silly national day of this and national whatever month were wastes of time. Then I found out that there’s a National Ice Cream Month (July) and a National Ice Cream Day (today!). So I’ve changed my tune, because basically the day (the whole month?) requires me to eat ice cream. That’s worth celebrating.
Last summer I visited the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Factory in Le Mars, Iowa, and it was truly amazing (I missed a blogger trip to Jamaica in order to go to Iowa, so you can see where my priorities are). We met the owners, made our own ice cream flavors, and ate a lot of ice cream, including a gourmet lunch where ice cream was worked into every course.
We even got to tour the factory floor, which is not usually public – we had to put on the regular gear that the factory workers wear. We got to sample ice cream novelties right off of the conveyor belt.
Since then I’ve been searching Brooklyn for Blue Bunny. I don’t have too much of a problem finding the half gallon tubs of ice cream, but I can’t find the novelties anywhere. A tragedy, I’m telling you!
One of the things we did at the factory was learn what the official tasters do. We compared a Blue Bunny Champs Vanilla Ice Cream Cone with the leading competitor. You know the one, it’s probably the one you buy from the ice cream truck. And you might not have realized this, but that other one? It’s not real ice cream. It’s a “Frozen Dairy Dessert.” That’s right. That “ice cream” you’ve been eating in the playground is no such thing.
Blue Bunny novelties on the other hand? Real ice cream. I can’t even tell you what a huge difference that makes. I can’t even eat those other ones any more, Blue Bunny has so completely spoiled me. But I can’t get those here! What to do? How do I celebrate National Ice Cream Day without my favorites?!?
Blue Bunny came to the rescue and sent me an embarrassing amount of ice cream novelties, packed in dry ice. And the timing couldn’t be better, because we’re having our next door neighbors over for a BBQ tonight! I hope they like ice cream!
So, happy National Ice Cream Day – I know how I’ll be celebrating!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. This post has a Compensation Level of 1. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Tags: Blogging, Blue Bunny, Food, ice cream
Freebies, swaghags, and disclosure
Aug 23, 2010 Uncategorized
The Blogging Angels‘ second podcast went up this morning, and I’m very excited to announce that we’re now on iTunes!
This podcast is all about the free stuff that many bloggers have access to, what they do with it, and what it means for readers. This is a subject I know a lot about. I have a swag room. I let my pregnant sister Cara go shopping in it for baby stuff last time she was in town. It’s crazy that my youngest child was four when I started blogging and yet I’ve been given tons of baby stuff. I think it’s just easier and cheaper for the companies to send stuff out to way too many people than to take the time to target the products well.
Almost every job I’ve ever had had some kind of perk associated with it, from free baked potatoes at Arby’s to a great suntan while lifeguarding to free porn on the TV when I was a concierge. But at least those jobs had paychecks, and the perks were just extras. For many bloggers, the perks (free products) are the main reason they’re blogging. For others, free products are evil and they will have nothing to do with them. I suspect that most of us fall somewhere in the middle.
When I was still a fairly new blogger I was having a conversation with Kim Orlando (TravelingMom.com) about all of the free stuff I was starting to get and what I should do with it. She told me something that really stuck with me: whatever I do with it, it’s not free. Dealing with it takes work. And it can be very fun work. I like using products and writing about them. But it takes a lot of time, and yes, it is work.
In fact, the only “freebies” that I would consider totally free are the ones you never ever hear about on this blog: they come to my house and either get given away or collect dust. And that category makes up about 90% of the stuff that comes my way.
The Blogging Angels: Swag, freebies and responsibility
And please, if you like us, rate us in iTunes!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information. Amy also blogs at Filming In Brooklyn, Behind the Screen, Momtourage, and podcasts with The Blogging Angels.
Tags: Blogging, freebies, iTunes, swag, The Blogging Angels
