For many, photos of friends and family is the best form of art.  There is a reason why we cover our walls, shelves and desktops with images of loved ones.  Being surrounded by pleasant memories and experiences provides a comfort and joy that is hard to duplicate in paintings, but Photofiddle.com has found a nice way to combine the two mediums.

How can you do it?

Just visit photofiddle.com, click “start your art”, select an art style (dozens available), add your photos and order!  For my art piece, I used one of my favorite images of my husband and I, which was taken right before a date night.  A rare piece of art, if you know what I mean!  I chose to leave the art style as the original, and had it printed on a 18″ x 18″ square wrapped canvas.

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When tragedy hits, people band together, but when times are uneventful, people gossip, backstab, and hate.  It happens in the workplace, families, and, of course, the blogging community.  I often feel discouraged and disappointed from it all, and often wonder why we indulge in tearing others down?

The blogging world is extremely susceptible to this destruction because we are always voicing our opinions.  While some tough issues do end up in healthy debates, others result in nasty Twitter hashtags and defaming posts, which end up worse off than the original issue.  I cannot figure out the logic or reason for these actions.  Boredom, perhaps?

As many of you know, I experienced a taste of Twitter bullying and hate when I attended the Nestle event in September.  I was judged for simply being at the event.  I was bullied before any discussion took place with the Nestle USA CEO, heck, before I had even unpacked my bags.  I was called a “drone” and the all popular “shill” for attending such an event.  There were obviously more civilized ways to debate and discuss the issues that were at hand, but nonetheless, bullying flooded the twitter streams.  Yay, name calling! read more…

Thank you to Amanda Steinberg, from Daily Worth, who mentioned Mom Made That! (my other website) in yesterday’s Etsy blog post titled Seven Steps to Understanding Online Advertising. I have had amazing traffic and interest as a result of the article, which is very exciting!

You can read the article HERE.

Please take the time to shop through our mom businesses, who work very hard to provide unique, quality products and services. In addition, if you are interested in promotion with Mom Made That!, you can LIST HERE.

So far, 2010 has been a super year! BUY MOM!

I know, I know, this issue is so played out, but I couldn’t help myself.  I originally brought this up in our forum, but wanted to move it into a blog post as well.  I know some of you are still frightened by the forum.  It’s okay.  The forum is your friend.

Here is what I said, with some included follow-ups:

Mom Made That! is proud to sponsor the Blissful Bites + Bubbles party at Blissdom next week with a two HUGE prize packs! If you are headed to the event, there are only a few tickets left, so make sure you grab one HERE.

Thank you to the following businesses who participated in the giveaway:

Hand Stamped X’s and O’s Disc Earrings – Charitable Creations
Hand Stamped Hugs and Kisses Sterling Silver Necklace – Charitable Creations
“Good Food, Good Friends, Good Times” Wall Stencil – The Simple Stencil
$50 Travel Certificate – Moms on Vacation Travel Club
3 Humorous Workout Towels – Words to Sweat By™
2 Ladies Pigtail Pals Tees – Pigtail Pals
Mother Fluffer Hair Care Set – Danu
“Follow your bliss!” Wall Graphic – Old Barn Rescue
2 Lasso Necklaces – Designs by Denise
Casserole Dish & Reusable Shopping Bag – Cook Time with Remmi
Easy Lunchbox Container Set and Insulated Cooler – Easy Lunchboxes
Baby Dipper Feeding Set – Baby Dipper
It’s A Keepsake Baby Book & Baby Time Capsule – Digi Time Capsule
Pregnancy Journal Suite – Digi Time Capsule
Children’s Waffled Thermal T – Petit Couture
2 $50 Gift Certificates – Amiastri
4 Pack Organic Washcloths – Luvs Jurn3
3 Pack of Dapper Snappers – Dapper Snappers

I’m headed down to South Beach next week for a really cool experience.  You’ve probably heard of (or at least seen the commercials) of athletes testing at the Gatorade science labs?  Well, they’re bringing in a “mobile” Lab to the Super Bowl Media Center to showcase Gatorade scientists conducting performance tests on athletes, including Eli Manning, Tony Gonzalez, Maurice Jones-Drew and….me!  The tests will show exactly how my body functions during activity.  During the testing, we’ll be using the new G Series, which is a group of products for before, during and after workouts.  It’s an exclusive opportunity to try the G Series, which won’t be released until spring.  And guess what, you can watch my test and ask questions on GStream at uStream.tv/gstream.  My test is Tuesday morning beginning at 8:00AM ET. The entire schedule will be posted on the GStream channel.

Hope you’ll tune in!

::GIVEAWAY IS CLOSED::  Congratulations to Susieqtpie!

My son is growing up FAST, and as each year passes I worry more and more about online safety.  He is already wanting an email address to communicate with family, so when I found out about KidsEmail.org, I thought I’d give it a try.  Safe email for our children is a MUST and KidsEmail.org is putting the control in parent’s hands.

With KidsEmail.org, you can: (taken from KidsEmail.org)

• Allow child to only receive email from those in their contact list
• Email a copy of incoming messages to the parent
• Remove images within emails
• Remove links within emails
• Only allow specific attachment types such as: images, pictures, video, mp3s, zip, pdf, Word, Excel, Power Point, etc.
• Allow a parent to approve or deny any email sent to your children via the mail queue
• Only allow children to send email to those in their contact list
• Email a copy of outgoing messages to the parent
• Filter out offensive words found in incoming emails
• Spam filtering
• Several kids templates to choose from!
• A simple mode for young children as well as an advance mode for slightly older kids read more…