I hope you enjoy this month’s contribution to Hallmark’s “Life Is A Special Occasion” campaign! (I bet you’ll love it. It’s got funny pictures, even!) Today is a very special day. It’s not just the first day of school in our district. It’s the first day of J’s SENIOR YEAR. Let THAT absorb for a moment. I know from experience that this year is going to fly by for all of us, what with all of the special activities crammed into a final year of high school education combined with the college search, his girlfriend, his job, his car, and all of the other things he’s got going on. (Related:…
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The Real Martha’s Got Nothing On The Next Martha.
If you follow my friend Jen on Twitter (@TheNextMartha), you already know that she is crafty and creative and crazy (in a good way). She is full of ideas and her mad skills in, well, EVERYTHING related to home projects just blow my mind. She happens to adore Martha Stewart, hence her Twitter handle and the name of her blog, The Martha Project. Did I mention yet that MARTHA STEWART FOLLOWS 57 PEOPLE ON PINTEREST AND JEN IS ONE OF THEM? So there’s that. You can imagine that when Jen found out that the Friday lunch keynote speaker at last week’s BlogHer conference would be none other than the Real…
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#BBSummit12 In A Nutshell
After nearly a year of planning meetings, brainstorming sessions, countless emails, thousands of name badges (okay, 160 of ’em), and excessive sweating, the 2012 Brands and Bloggers Summit (#BBSummit12) came and went this past Saturday. After all the work that I put in alongside my Social RevUp partners MJ Tam and Dwana De LaCerna, I was looking forward to the beginning of the day just as much as I was looking forward to the end of the day (7:00 to be specific, which was the starting time of the after party). My brain is still swimming but I wanted to give you a recap of my favorite parts of #BBSummit12…
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What Teenagers Do Behind Closed Doors
If there’s one thing you parents of young children should know about what happens when they become teenagers, it’s that their bedroom door will often be closed. (Technically there’s more than one thing you should know but let’s just tackle this one for today.) It’s all a part of their asserting independence and wanting real privacy, even though “real privacy”–in my family, anyway–isn’t scheduled to happen for the offspring until they are living on their own. For teens, closing the door can make circumstances more forgivable to play music really loudly, easier to have a quiet phone call after it is technically allowed, conducive to an illicit afternoon nap when…
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Engaged.
My kid is engaged. No, no: it’s not what you think. Let me explain. We’ve had a minor hiccup in J’s college search process recently: he has decided not to pursue music long-term. A couple of years ago he was definitely planning to major in music and then when we started having deeper discussions about what kinds of music careers he would want to pursue, he eventually changed his plan to Music Education and then, most recently, a business major with a music minor. Two weeks ago he announced out of the blue during one of our many college conversations that music was out. It was a shocker to us,…