On this rainy Monday I am blogging quickly about my first award. Yay me! The Sunshine Award – funny and slightly ironic name for the award on a day like today. (Booming thunder drumroll in the background.)Anyways so this is me thanking my readers for one year of excellent support and comments and ideas. And also acknowledging Deb Kade, over at Lucas’s Journey With Sensory Processing Disorder for giving me this award. Thanks much my lovelies. Now for this next year of growth and partnerships I look forward to having you visit me at one of my other blogs http://www.thriftymommasbrainfood.blogspot.com/…

So what does a picture of my darling daughter in a Brownie uniform have to do with London’s Curbside Food Drive? I thought you’d never ask. Recently, I had a chance to volunteer with my daughter’s Brownie troupe at the London area food bank off Adelaide Street and I learned a few things. The first thing I learned was that eight-year-old girls are stunningly competitive. Yes, the Brownie troupes, when split into smaller units, were racing each other to bag the most food hampers. Mommy comically reminded them to slow down and “it’s not a race” a few times. I also learned that…

I am a huge fan of Crayola products. Their sidewalk chalk is forever being used around here to create great murals on the back patio. Their crayons are the best, the strongest, most colourful. My daughter, diagnosed with sensory processing disorder, often overexerts pressure on things and misjudges the amount of force required to do a task, and as a result, in her hands crayons snap into tiny bits causing frustration. But over the years I have proven Crayola crayons much stronger than other brands and less likely to cause meltdowns around here. So for those reasons I adore Crayola…

Linked In was my first big foray into the adventure that is social media and that was a trip I took thanks to a PWAC (Periodical Writer’s Association of Canada) workshop. One year ago social media expert and writer Dawn Boschcoff came to London and gave a great presentation about the evolution of media. Me, being an old media gal, well let’s just say I had a lot to learn and the best way to do that, with respect to social media, is generally just to wade into the waters. That’s what I did as soon as Dawn’s words settled. For…

Graduating from high school but not yet sure where you want to go with your life? Or college perhaps? Nobody knows that topic quite like Sean Aiken, author of the One-Week Job Project. Aiken, a British Columbia native, became a media celebrity when his very cool 52 jobs in one year tour of North America caught on with legions of people caught in career limbo. Hot on the heels of the book’s success, Aiken who blogged consistently about his jobs over the year, has launched a one-week job summer job project modelled on the very premise of his book. Over…