When my little sister and brother and I were young children, my single mother struggled to make ends meet and we didn’t have a lot of extra money for luxuries like sweets. Her idea of a great dessert was a bowl of instant white rice with maple syrup poured over the top. Or sometimes, Mom would mix powdered sugar with milk and a drop of red food coloring and spread it onto graham crackers. But each spring, we looked forward to a very special sugary treat. Our neighbor a few doors up the block was a traveling candy salesman. Each year after the Easter holiday was over, he would present my mother with a big bag of leftover foil-wrapped chocolate bunnies. Oh what joy! We knew it was time again for “DEAD RABBIT SUNDAES!” My sister, brother and I would sit at the kitchen table with a pile of chocolate bunnies in front of us and we’d begin carefully peeling away the foil wrappers. The naked chocolate rabbits would be piled up into a large metal bowl. Mom prepared a make-shift double boiler of the metal mixing bowl propped over a saucepan of boiling water. She gently placed our painstakingly peeled rabbits into the bowl and we all stood watching wide-eyed as the rabbits ...
Why Newbie Bloggers Should Attend Blog Conferences
Please welcome Tamara as our fabulous PR Mondays guest poster today! She has some wonderful insight on conferences for you. This summer I am planning to be at the following conferences: EVO, Savvy Blogging Summit and BlogHer. I wrote a beginners guide to BlogHer last year.Let me know if you are going to any of those and please leave some wonderful comments below with your own advice to newbies or questions/thanks to Tamara!Tamara is the voice behind The (Un)Experienced Mom and Blog Conference Newbie. In addition, she is the co-creator of Our Mommyhood...where motherhood meets bloghood! If she's not online chatting or connecting others, she's probably working out, sleeping, or changing a poopy diaper.---------------------------------------------------------------Why Newbie Bloggers Should Attend Blog ConferencesWhen people first get into blogging, it usually starts off as a casual hobby. Some people post when they can while others start off posting daily. But no matter how often you write, the realization that blogging is a bit addicting and can require a lot of time eventually hits us all.In the short time I’ve been blogging, I’ve learned a lot about the craft. There are blogs for ...
A Pink Frosting Birthday
A Pink Frosting Birthday We really lucked out with the weather that day. When the rain began, I worried it may ruin our backyard birthday party. Our daughter Stella and friends were celebrating her third birthday, and she was quite ready for cake. Soon the sun burst out and a brilliant rainbow arched above. Parents pulled out cameras and snapped away. The rain dried up as fast as it came. Cake eating could commence!Stella, the birthday girl, was proudly wearing her favorite lacy, pink Barbie dress and couldn’t have been more excited to notice she matched the Barbie cake I had so painstakingly crafted that morning.These kinds of baking projects always look easier than they are. The inverted 8 cup measuring glass produced a gorgeous skirt-shaped cake. Unfortunately, Barbie only sank up to her thighs in the soft white cake mound. It turned out to be easier to make another cake than to cut off Barbie’s legs. I know, because my husband and I tried! Needless to say, wire cutters, pliers and a steak knife weren’t up to the task of rendering a shorter Barbie. I then hastily prepared a small cake to place on top of the first cake. It was soon trimmed to size and set into ...
PR Mondays: Blog Frog
Can you believe that it has been a whole month of PR Mondays already? In January we concentrated on getting your ways to get exposure to your blog and we have one more awesome article for you on that from Holly. I have been busy interviewing PR reps for major companies and for the rest of Feb I will share their thoughts directly with you. If you missed any of the Jan posts make sure to go back and get your blog ready!By Holly Hamann, 1.30.2010holly@theblogfrog.comWhat is BlogFrog and how did it all start?Every wonder how BlogFrog got its start? I’m delighted to be guest blogging for Barb and I thought I’d share a little bit of background on what BlogFrog is and how it all got started.BlogFrog is the brainchild of Rustin Banks, who developed the beta product in 2008 during nights and weekends while still a full-time engineer at a local Aerospace company. Banks said he got the idea from his wife, a casual blogger who used her blog to keep their friends and family updated. There was no simple way for blog authors to have real discussions with readers and interact on their blogs. “A blog might have thousands of like-minded readers but what if I want to ask another reader a question ...