Some Fantastic Finds At Getting Gorgeous
Apr 27, 2013 What's Going On
Today I had the pleasure of attending Getting Gorgeous, a fantastic event put on by my friends Audrey and Vera. It’s a place where bloggers can meet with brands large and small and discover new products. I found some new favorites that I’m thrilled to share with you.
I had a long conversation with the owner of Love Jac Cards, and was very impressed by the fact that this Brooklyn mom takes all of the photographs and makes the cards herself! I walked away with a gorgeous Brooklyn card, but they’re not all about Brooklyn. She has a huge selection of beautiful, handmade cards for every occasion. She has a card-of-the-month club, and even does custom design cards.
Foster Grant is a well-known sunglasses company that I knew very little about. The main thing I learned today? That their gorgeous glasses are really affordable! They have a huge selection of sunglasses on their site for under $30. I went home with this cute plum-colored pair, which are my new spring sunglasses! You can also find them on Amazon.
I stopped by the New Balance booth and fell in love with their new Ballet Flats. Not only are they adorable, they also have a reversible innersole with a massaging texture on one side, and cushiony foam on the other!
I brought home a couple bottles of Dial Kids Body & Hair Wash for Fiona, in Watermelon scent. It’s a no-more-tears formula, and I love that she only needs one bottle for body and hair. There’s also a Peachy Clean formula for younger kids, 2-5.
The ladies at the Downey booth gave me a sniff of the new Spring Scent of their Downy Unstopables. If you know me, you know that I have a bit of an Unstopables addiction. If I don’t have at least two extra bottles at all times I start to panic, thinking about the loads of laundry that might get done without Unstopables! Ahhhhh! No, seriously, I love Unstopables. And the new pink one smells really good. I’m told it goes well with the Downy Infusions Honey Flower fabric softener that I brought home from the event. Can’t wait to use it!
And my last great find of the day, Haute Tags! They’re cute metal tags surrounded by Swarovski Crystals and engraved with whatever you want (@SelfishMom, maybe?). They come with two bag tag-style ball chains that can be cut to size, so you can wear your tag as a bracelet or a necklace, or put it on a bag strap.
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 (Love Jac, Foster Grant, Dial, and Downey). Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.
Things I Would Have Said To Tina Fey And Paul Rudd Today
Feb 8, 2013 What's Going On
I was supposed to interview Tina Fey and Paul Rudd today, but I’m not. It started out as an intimate roundtable where I could actually interact with two of my favorite stars for half an hour. I was giddy. Even my husband was excited, and he NEVER gets excited about blogging stuff.
But when it changed to a big press conference, I said no thanks. I have no interest in merely being in the same room as them, I wanted to be close enough to sneak up behind Tina and cut a lock of her hair, take it to a cloning lab, and keep a Tina Fey clone in my basement, chained to a typewriter supplying me with snarky one-liners.
It’s probably for the best, though. If I’d been there I might have asked these questions. And I might not have gotten invited back for anything, ever. So it’s probably good that I’m home, in my pjs.
“Tina, I’d really like to have you and Amy Poehler over for a sleepover. How can I make that happen? And before you answer, please know that I make the world’s best brownies.”
“Paul, you married Phoebe. Do you have any kids? Has she been arrested? Did you get any more rats? I know that the writers stopped writing the storyline, but I have a feeling that you completed it in your head.”
“Tina, I’ve never actually seen Mean Girls. I was hoping you’d watch it with me, and talk about it as we’re watching, like a live DVD commentary track. Are you free after the interview?”
“Tina, you once convinced Oprah Winfrey to come on your show. How can I use your tactics to convince Hugh Jackman to come to my house and clean my bathrooms shirtless?”
“Paul, was singing ‘Afternoon Delight’ with the other Anchorman stars the absolute culmination of everything you’d learned up to that point as an actor and a human?”
“Tina, you once said that you have a very low level of Flintstones knowledge for someone your age. My mother has a Fred Flintstone tattoo and is somewhat obsessed. Would you like her to tutor you? She also bakes.”
“Paul, does Steve Carell smell like cucumbers and office supplies?”
“Tina, does Alec Baldwin smell like Old Spice and money?”
“Tina and Paul, if the two of you had a baby, what job would it grow up to have?”
“Tina, you introduced me to one of my favorite words of all time, ‘crotchbiscuits.’ Did you bring yours with you? Or do you keep them on a shelf with your Emmys?”
“Tina, can I touch your scar? It’s so…beautiful.”
Yeah, probably best that I’m not there…
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.
Bring your budding bloggers to the Digital Family Summit
May 27, 2012 Blog & Social Media Stuff
I’m so thrilled to be attending the very first Digital Family Summit in Philadelphia at the end of June, as a guest of the organizers. But it won’t just be me attending, it will be my kids as well – owners of a couple of websites that they can’t wait to get off the ground. And this conference is going to help them.
The Digital Family Summit is unlike any other blogging conference I’ve ever been to, because it’s about kids, teens, and families who blog. And it doesn’t stop at blogging – there will also be sessions on startups and entrepreneurship, creating games, animating, blogging for good, and more. Plus you can learn about the legal and privacy ramifications of kids online.
My kids have attended several blogging and social media conferences with me so far, and while there were certain activities for them to do while I was in sessions, the conference wasn’t for them. This one is. The parties and meals, the sessions, it’s all family friendly and designed for kids 10-18 (that’s a rough guide – you know your kids).
The speaker list is absolutely astounding. It ranges from seasoned professionals to teens who are already at the tops of their niches, creating content and companies and blazing a trail for other young bloggers. Whether your child is interested in making money from a blog or YouTube channel, food blogging, travel blogging, starting a company, blog design, or photography, there will be sessions at the Digital Family Summit for your kid.
It doesn’t matter whether you and your kids already know how to blog, or are just interested – this conference is for you. There are some great guidelines on the summit’s faq page about who should attend, what kind of ticket each attendee needs, and what there will be at the summit for non-blogging kids. Everyone who attends is required to register, and each ticket includes six meals and three snacks.
There’s also a reduced conference rate at the hotel where the sessions are being held, but you have to hurry – that rate expires on June 7th, if it doesn’t get sold out first.
Plus, here’s an amazing deal for my readers: use the code Centsible when you register for the conference, and you’ll get 20% off the ticket price! (That code is from Kelly Whalen’s site, and if you check out her post about the summit before May 31st, you can enter to win conference registration for a family of five!)
I would love to see you and your kids in Philadelphia. I can’t tell how excited my kids are to not just be tolerated, but included and welcomed at a conference. And who knows, maybe some of the kids who attend the conference this year will be so inspired that they’ll be teaching sessions next year! :-)
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, Digital Family Summit, Kids
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
