• Shameless Promotion

    Welcome To My New Home!

    After ten years of blogging at Suburban Scrawl, I finally decided to re-brand and pick up where I left off here, on the domain I purchased nearly two years ago and then proceeded to ignore…until now. Although the “blogging for a decade” mark was the final push I needed, I knew when we purchased a home in Knoxville proper rather than in a suburb–oh, I tried! I tried!–there was no avoiding dumping the old familiar name in favor of, well, an older and even more familiar name…my own. The site design is and will remain a work in progress as I make tweaks here and there on a (semi) regular…

  • Random Thoughts,  Shameless Promotion

    NaBloPoMo 2015: Jumpstart!

    It’s that time of year again! November is National Blog Posting Month, in which many of us attempt to publish a post every single day. There are prizes to be won when you sign up (by November 5!) on the BlogHer site, but for me the real prize is bringing myself back to regular writing on this blog, which I miss desperately much of the time. It’s gotten harder for me to write blog posts over the past couple of years for two main reasons. The first one is because I am so busy in other areas of my life. My work with LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER and BlogHer fill…

  • Shameless Promotion,  Something That Could Change Your Life

    Please Join Us Tomorrow Night!

    Here’s a programming note for tomorrow night: Please join LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER and The Partnership at Drugfree.org as we present a live-streaming event of personal stories to #EndMedicineAbuse. Date: The evening of Tuesday, September 10th, 2013 Time: 9 PM EST RSVP (optional for Google + users) View live: http://www.youtube.com/user/LTYMShow/live Hear new/original work by myself and ten other bloggers on the topic of personal connections to addiction, substance use, and/or what we want children to know about the medicine abuse epidemic in a powerful story-sharing hour. Join us at this engaging kickoff to a blog post tour and watch the livestream broadcast. I’m honored to participate in this very special…

  • Best Thing Ever,  Fun in Chicago,  My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Shameless Promotion

    The Journey

    It makes total sense (to me) that the day after writing a post about how consumed I am with Chicago’s LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER show, I would write another post about Chicago’s LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER show. I have two very good reasons. The first reason is because I was a total idiot yesterday and forgot to mention that tickets are still on sale. Had we used the same venue as last year we would have sold out weeks ago, but we decided that we’d “Go big or go home” this year and moved to a venue three times the size (the gorgeous Athenaeum Theatre!), therefore…tickets are still available! You…

  • Blessings,  My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Shameless Promotion

    Totally Worth Your Time

    Having blogged for more than five years–which, face it, is like twenty-five years in internet time–often I come up with a great idea for a post and then realize that I may have written about it already. If it’s something worth repeating, I put a new twist on it and present it to you again*, sort of like re-gifting, but better. And with that… I received a card today from a friend we haven’t seen in a while, and when I opened it I was pleasantly surprised to see that every inch of the inside was covered in handwriting. It was a note describing how much she and her family…

  • Shameless Promotion

    Puberty. There, I Said It.

    Today I wrote a sponsored post for the Hallmark “Life Is A Special Occasion” campaign over in my Reviews and Stuff section. It’s about puberty (really) and also includes some really sweet vintage pictures of the Wells boys (you know, to balance out the icky feeling we all get when talking about puberty). Check it out HERE. Go on, you can do it. (Did I mention that Encouragement is a sub-topic?)

  • Shameless Promotion

    The One That Isn’t About Katie Cazorla But Leads To The One That Is.

    I had the extreme pleasure of interviewing Katie Cazorla on Wednesday. Katie is the owner of a Los Angeles nail salon called The Painted Nail and the star of TV Guide Network’s reality show “Nail Files”. She is also hilarious. You know I don’t normally write a feeder post on my home page that leads you to a post on my sponsored posts page unless it’s something I absolutely know you should not miss. As in, your life might not feel complete unless you experience this piece of writing from me. (Not that my interview post is sponsored technically because I was not compensated in any way for writing it…

  • My Sister Has Mad Skillz,  Shameless Promotion

    I’ll Tumbl For Ya

    I have been a decluttering fool today. I went through more of the house than I intended AND expected to in one day: it’s amazing how much you can get done when you’re not in front of the computer! I did, however, post to my Tumblr blog all day, which I can do from my phone and my iPad and it doesn’t take more than a minute so I stayed mostly on task. I think I put up a record (for me, anyway) nine posts today, and it occurred to me that if you only follow me here and not over there, you are missing some VERY satisfactory stuff if…

  • Amazing People,  Best Thing Ever,  Fun in Chicago,  I've Got Mad Skillz,  My Friends Have Mad Skillz,  Pretty Pictures,  Proud Moments,  Shameless Promotion,  Something That Could Change Your Life,  Spreading the Bloggie Love

    About Last Night

    I’m having a little trouble. I can’t really wrap my head around the whirlwind that was LISTEN TO YOUR MOTHER CHICAGO last night. I can’t keep using the word “amazing” and expect that 1. People will continue to take me seriously 2. People will believe that yes, I’m a writer …but the fact is, everything about this experience (well, not everything: there were a few snags in the planning process but everything shook out in the end) WAS amazing. I tend to be long-winded (or whatever that is in terms of writing), and although I can think of thousands of things to report to you about last night, I think…