Our Unique and Beautiful Christmas Tree

It’s no secret that Christmas is my favorite holiday. I love everything about Christmas from making our traditional goodies to caroling to decorating our house.  Our house is a combination of old items from my childhood I received for Christmas such as my Lamb chop Angel to newer things that we have purchased throughout the years. Most people decorate a Christmas tree. I have seen beautiful trees that are perfectly color coordinated to match their décor. I have also seen trees that have all matching ornaments with colored balls and bows. All of those trees are beautiful of course but I personally love our Christmas tree the best. We always have a real tree that we buy each year. Everyone in my family loves the smell of fresh Christmas trees.  Decorating it is always a family affair.  Our ornaments are not the same, they don’t match the décor, but they are ones we have had for years.

With every ornament we place on the tree, there is a story and a memory. I like to look at them and remember when we got it and why.  Some of them are ones my sister and I got when we were born. We used to try and place ours higher than the other.  Others we made when we were very young like the star ones we made with glitter on them.  We have ornaments that were gifts from friends and teachers.  

When I was in 7^th grade, we did secret Santa, and I got an ornament that was made out of a dog biscuit. I remember how upset I was because I thought I was being called a dog. I didn’t particularly like the girl who gave it to me, but I think our homeroom teacher did that on purpose, maybe to make us become friends. It didn’t really work. I still have the ornament and it is still on my tree every year.  We have beach themed ornaments. I got my mom an angel made out of seashells in the Bahamas that now goes on our tree.  I also have Noah’s first Christmas ornaments and a frame of him and me as a baby.  My mom made some stuffed ornaments when I was a baby that always goes on the bottom of our tree.  I love that we have a variety of Christmas tree decorations vs. a standard tree with meaningless ornaments.  When I look at them I remember all the Christmases of the past. Decorating the tree while my Grandma Rose was there, dancing around wearing the Christmas tree skirt and all the happy memories each Christmas brings.

How do you decorate your Christmas tree?

We Had a #GetUnjunked Party!

It is no secret that I love to eat candy. I am surprised I didn’t get gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with Noah because I eat so much candy. Noah has inherited my love for candy as most children do, but I don’t like him to eat a lot of it. I heard about a brand of candy called UNREAL that is made with no GMOs and has no high fructose corn syrup and I thought that would be a good candy for Noah.  UNREAL Candy also has no artificial ingredients and no preservatives. It has low glycemic index and doesn’t contain partially hydrated oils.   I believe that everything is fine in moderation. I know that some parents do not allow their children any candy, but I occasionally let my son have a treat. I would prefer that the treat not contain artificial ingredients. Thankfully, UNREAL has saved the day. UNREAL offers the 

following:

 UN54 which is chocolate candy shell peanuts

 

UN41 which is chocolate candy shell

UN5which is Chocolate covered caramel and nougat

UN8 which is Chocolate covered peanuts and caramel

UN77 which is chocolate peanut butter cups

I was invited to host a party for UNREAL Candy.   As the mother of a kindergartener, I now have contact with parents that are actually local to me.  Noah has a lot of friends from school and in our area so I thought it would be fun to host a party and share my new knowledge of Unreal with the parents and let the kids hang out and socialize and of course come home with a goody bag.

I decided to hold the party outside close to the playground because after all it was a beautiful sunny day. They just opened a brand new playground with really cool equipment too, that all the kids wanted to play on. I thought that since our guests were six year olds they could play while I talked about UNREAL . I think sometimes if you tell a child it is not full of sugar they might turn up their noses at it. That has been my experience growing up. The parents were really surprised to learn about UNREAL. A couple of them said they had seen it in CVS but wasn’t sure what it was all about.  I tried to answer any questions they had to the best of my ability while trying to tweet during the party.  After I explained what UNREAL candy was, we thought we would have the kids try some out and give their opinions.  After all that’s what they came for.  The adults were able to sample too as UNREAL  was very generous with their product.  Instead of having each child eat 5 whole candy bars in like a hour, I broke them up in groups and had each kid sample a couple pieces.  There was not an unhappy person in the bunch.

Here are some of the tweets I tweeted out during the party:

I hope everyone enjoys unjunked candy this Halloween.

They taste better than snickers!! :) -This was from a parent at the party

I love the real peanuts in the peanut candies. -this was from a little girl who was trying the UN54

No GMO's No preservatives wow

You are not yourself when you are hungry or if you have all kinds of junk in your candy.

It was hard to tweet and entertain at the same time as you can imagine. It was a lot of fun though.  The party was a total success. I think that I have encouraged some local parents to rethink their candy buying habits and switch to the UNREAL brand.  Each child went home with a few treats and info for the parents in a nice little goody bag.

This party was on behalf of Global Influence. I was compensated for my time and party expenses. All thoughts and opinions are my own.  

Website Redo Tips

As a blogger and work at home mom that spends a lot of time online, I feel that your website is your business card. I think how it looks can say something about you as a person. For example if your website is all purple chances are your favorite color is purple. I know that with everything being so fast paced online people want to change up their sites. They get bored with the appearance of their sites and want to change it. It’s kind of like your wardrobe. Every so often you wanna try something new.  You get bored always wearing the same things.   I can’t design at all so I would have to hire someone. Who can you trust to have access to your site that you consider your child that you have been running for years? How do you know if someone won’t install a virus or delete all your hard work?  It is really hard to know with all the people who do website designs. Remember that your site is like your digital marketing agency.

Things to consider when hiring someone to redo your site:

How long have they been doing this? I would try and find someone with quite a bit of experience.  Experience doesn’t always mean excellence though. I wouldn’t make that my sole deciding factor. 

What is their style? Some people can only make those sparkly blinky graphics. Those were awesome back in like 2000, but if you want to be taken seriously you need something professional looking.  Can they accommodate your style? Do they also do designs in the platform you use on your site? Some people only design Wordpress or blogger.

How much do they charge? I have seen designers charge upwards to $700 for a redo. Can you afford them? Is it in your budget?  Do you think that it is a fair price?

Do they have a portfolio? You need to see what kinds of work they have done.  You need to see what they are capable of doing, not just what they can promise.

Do they have references? I would ask for some sites and that they have done and maybe reach out to the site owner via email and ask them for their opinion of the designer. Ask if there were issues. I would prefer to ask them and not rely on testimonials.  Call me a skeptic but if you spend years working really hard on something I need to talk to a person.

What is their schedule like? Some designers have a long list of clients. Will it be days, weeks, or months before you get your design completed? Are there issues at home that will postpone it?  I would see how long it will be, if you want something done quickly.  Some people don’t mind waiting.

What is the payment schedule? Do you have to pay a deposit? Do they require payment upfront? I wouldn’t recommend working with a designer who you have to pay upfront just as a security measure.

Are they efficient in HTML? That coding stuff is so annoying. Make sure you hire someone who knows their stuff really well. You can only Google so much.

Don’t be afraid to Google the heck out of them. Learn all you can. Most designers require a button or something that says Designed by…. Look for those on sites you go to.

Good Luck finding an amazing web designer! I hope these helped.