I hope you enjoy this month’s contribution to Hallmark’s “Life Is A Special Occasion” campaign! (Go grab a snack. It’ll enhance your experience.) These days, dinner around this house goes pretty smoothly. Someone does the cooking, calls everyone to the table, and, well, we eat. Conversation goes on throughout the meal, and then when we’re all done–because nobody leaves the table until everyone else is finished eating–everyone helps to clear the table and then a couple of us (but not the one who cooked) do the dishes. It hasn’t always been that way, mind you. Mealtime around here used to be stressful when the boys were little. In addition to…
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Back-To-School Fashion: This Time, It’s All About Attitude And Seniority.
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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Cody Simpson + Hallmark = True Love (& other stories)
A couple of months ago, I received an invitation to a Hallmark event that was actually taking place only about seven miles from my house. As a blogger who is contracted with Hallmark for 2012 and writing monthly posts for their awesome “Life Is A Special Occasion” campaign, this event was not “mandatory” by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not every day that my buddies at Hallmark have an event in my neck of the woods and I also thought it would be fun to cover it. Apparently this young man named Cody Simpson was going to perform at the event, which was to promote the new Hallmark…
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Let’s Talk About It…But Only One At A Time, Please!
I hope you enjoy this month’s contribution to Hallmark’s “Life Is A Special Occasion” campaign! (I’m sure you will. Trust me.) “Keep the lines of communication open” is one of my favorite pieces of advice to dole out when people ask me how to survive once their kids become teenagers. I have always tried to do that with my own kids and, although making the time to talk with your kids (and listen too, because you know, TWO WAY and all that kind of stuff) isn’t an iron-clad guarantee that everything’s gonna be alright, it’s definitely one of the best ways to set a strong foundation that can help fix…
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If Only My Card-Carrying Teenage Music Fanatic Self Could Have Carried Cards Like These…
When I was a teenager in the 80’s, music videos were a new phenomenon. (Wow, that sentence screams old.) The launch of MTV in 1981 (who remembers which video was played first? The answer is at the end of this post.) made it possible for music fans everywhere–especially teens–to enjoy their favorite acts at a higher level than ever before. The visual experience of music videos back then was something to behold: most videos had a storyline and were shot like mini films. Most teenagers watched MTV during every waking moment, waiting for their favorite videos to appear in the rotation. Or maybe that was just me. For me, one…