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Welcome Wednesday
Hi all. I am trying something new here on a rainy Wednesday night. The awesome Take It From Me has started a sort of social bloghop. Visit http://www.takeitfrom-me.blogspot.com/to find out the details. Basically every Wednesday you visit and enter your blog url and then follow the directions. It’s a good way to meet some new blogger and attract some new followers too.
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Giveaway Roundup and Blogaversary
Well here it is the one year Blogaversary of thriftymommastips, now thriftymommedia with thriftymommasbrainfood and thriftymommagogo, and I am ready to celebrate my biggest giveaway yet. I am going to draw for this one on June 28th, so hurry up and enter. The prize is a family day pass for four at the excellent Fort Rapids Waterpark in Columbus, Ohio. It’s about a five hour drive from London, in case you were wondering. But for those of you who are stateside this one will be even easier to get to. We travelled to Fort Rapids last year and loved it. It was a fun family weekend for us and I…
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Curbside Food Drive
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 children these days are incredibly bilingual. Probably three quarters of…
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Niagara Falls for Family
There are so many awesome ways to fill the days in the summer when the kids are home from school. But this year, for sure one of our adventures will lead us back to Niagara Falls. The Falls are remarkable entirely on their own and I still have vivid memories of visiting this well known tourist attraction and natural wonder from when I was a school-aged child. Many years in a row we would drive to the falls from Guelph and stay over at a family-friendly cheap motel then on to Marineland – one of the other best things about this place. When my oldest daughter turned six we drove for…
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The End of School Blues: Triggers for Grief in Adoption
Let’s take a minute to talk about triggers. We all have them, triggers that sometimes seize us by the heart and drag us back to a memory – good, bad or otherwise. Triggers can be like strange little portals to the past. Sometimes brought on by a smell, a time of year, a feeling, a picture. Triggers for Grief in Adoption are many and they sometimes arrive out of the blue for parents. But for kids in care and adoptees they can be hard to cope with and even harder to communicate clearly to adults. They are visceral and emotional. The Triggers for Grief in Adoption For adoptees, or children…
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Making Safety Fun – Cute Helmet Covers
A cute Canadian company is making safety fun for kids of all ages. A couple of weeks ago this adorable beaver helmet cover arrived in the mail…from Tail-Wags Helmet Covers. (see bottom for exclusive discount for thriftymommastips readers – Thrifty is coupon code) How cute and Canadian is this? My daughter got to try out the child-sized Patriotic Beaver, which she loves. At six, it’s not uncommon for my child to argue about wearing her helmet, which is part of the reason I love having this product available. It’s a fun way to promote safety and she doesn’t argue about wearing this dressup helmet. I wish we’d had it sooner. The adorable…
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How To Drive Traffic to Your Website
Need Traffic? Get in the Driver’s Seat to bring Traffic to Your Website or Blog. Website traffic is often key to carving out a niche for your on line business, web site or blog. For business, the more traffic you have, the bigger your bottom line. Whether you’re launching a new product or a new blog sometimes you want traffic or followers. Here are 5 solutions to generating traffic and followers. But Mommybloggers and web site owners beware – there are no overnight solutions here. Social media is about establishing a conversation built on trust. While there are many advertised ways to purchase followers and raise profile, these are often short-term solutions,…
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Crayola Sidewalk Chalk Maker – review
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 products. They are simply made better than others. Over the…
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Social Media: How to Maximize Use of Linked In
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 a time I flailed about but then I started to…
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Chip Trips
Looking for amazing and affordable family travel ideas this summer? Eat more chips. Thriftymomma is on a blog tour with Lay’s Chip Trips this summer and I can hardly wait. The excellent Frito-Lay’s promotion means that every time you buy a bag of Lay’s chips you get a code on the side of the bag. On the top of the bag there are points. Some say 5 and some say 10. Visit http://tiny.cc/7hud0and sign up for the Lay’s Chip Trips promotion and, no matter where you are in Canada, you can redeem the points for a trip or a voucher for a free kid’s meal at Boston Pizza, half price…