You Have THREE Kids????!!!!

Published on July 11, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Headline

One thing that really bugs me is the response I get when I tell someone I have three kids, now normally people see me with the two boys – both are in diapers and they will be 3 and 1 in August – yes they are exactly 2 years and 6 days apart. I also have a daughter from a previous relationship who will be 7. Yet, no one gets why in the world we would have three children. I would quite honestly have MORE if I could, and if it was reasonable for our family, but just the three are rather costly and take up a lot of time. The children do not take up time in a negative way, but I could not imagine trying to share my attention with another one, I can already see the competition for “mommy time”. My oldest, who was raised by me being overal single for the first three years of her life, found it hard to cope with a new brother and then two years later we had another BOY. She was so devastated, she wanted a baby girl sister, but I keep telling her that it’s great to be the ONLY GIRL because now she gets Mommy and girl time ALONE without the boys! If she had a sister she may have to share that time

Well today I have a video to share with you about all the things I get frustrated with, which includes the sentence, “YOU HAVE THREE KIDS??!!” .. I hope you enjoy watching it and leave a comment with your feedback, or share your story too!

Tags: baby, children, Diaper, family, Feedback, home, mommy, parents, shopping

24 Comments

Bliss Living $25 Gift Certificate Winner

Published on July 10, 2009 by brandyellen in giveaways

Today I get to announce the winner for the Bliss Living Gift Certificate and I am super excited. First thank you to Bliss Living for offering this to my readers and thank you to Chic Execs for without you I would have not been connecting with Bliss Living’s wonderful products and website!

Using random.org random integor generator number 39 was pulled and so without further adieu the winner of a $25 gift certificate to Bliss Living is….

Julie who said …. “I am a email subsriber”

I know there are a lot of Julies and so if you have an email in your inbox saying you WON then you are the lucky winner!!

Thank you for being a loyal reader everyone and check out my other giveaways .. this giveaway blast wraps up with our final giveaway ended July 17th .. so get on board while you can!! Also, donate any money to help pay for shipping, the time involved, etc etc .. batteries for my camera that I use for images and videos, etc etc … you get entries into the giveaways just for donating … here is the donation post URL: http://tinyurl.com/lxgrwq

Happy Friday!

Tags: 'giveaway, contest, Games, Names, Random number generation, Random.org, Roleplaying, World Building

2 Comments

Brotherly Love

Published on July 10, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Featured

First I am thinking I need to get more videos of my oldest online, so many think I only have two children because my oldest is not with me as often as my boys are. During the school year she is in school and during summer she spends a lot of time with her father. I often feel like she is not home enough, and so I should create more videos of her so that when I need some Ki time I can see her live on video! In the meantime I have a new video of dear sweet AJ and his baby brother. Both AJ and Baby K were being so sweet and cute hanging out on the couch with Dad that I had to capture this with my camera.

I must say I am amazed to see them getting along so well, being happy. This is what family is all about, creating wonderful memories and being able to record them with my Flip is just fantastic! I am happy to share this video with you and hope you enjoyed watching it!

Remember to stay happy, and catch those memories!! The children grow up way to fast

Tags: Adult, baby k, Camera, family, Recordings, shopping, Video, Videos and DVDs

4 Comments

Review: Creative Clips by Colleen LLC

Published on July 10, 2009 by brandyellen in Featured, Product Reviews

As the day gets closer, July 17th that is, when I will meet @MommaDJane for the very first time I find myself not ready to have a house guest for three nights. I rarely have company, okay I never have company, and now here I am going to have a guest for three whole nights. I hope we can all get along, I do have a super small home. I am sure it will be fine though!

Today I am featuring an item that will be included in the final giveaway prize package, which is being given by random to one of those who entered our previous contests!

About Creative Clips by Colleen, LLC

The owner, Colleen, is a mother of two who resides in Arizona. Colleen created Creative Clips after having a hard time finding fun clips for her daughters thin hair (something I can relate to). Her idea was to create a clip that was fun, stlyish and add a little “bling” for all ages. Each clip has a small piece of velcro to help keep the clip from falling out. Creative Clips by Colleen, LLC was started by one mom’s vision and is now large enough where they can ship bulk orders to customers!

Many to Choose From

Four categories to include bugs, bows, flowers, and hearts.
Medallion creative clips to add a bit of “bling” to any little girls hair.
They even offer a clip rack for sale to hold all your clips.
In search for a stylish headband? They make those too!

If you are looking to learn more about Creative Clips by Colleen, LLC you may visit their events page to see when they will be close to you.

Tags: Accessories, Arizona, Company, Flower, Hair Care, Headband, Health, Limited liability company, shopping

1 Comment

WordPress Upgrade Equals Mess With Plugins

Published on July 9, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Headline

I tell ya, I love WordPress, ever since I switched from Blogger to self hosted WordPress I have been like a kid in a candy store with all the plugins, ability to make a business website with WordPress and just so many other fantastic features. Well this was until I upgraded to WordPress 2.8. As a person who is married to a computer pro, I should know better than to upgrade until something has been out long enough for all those other programs to catch up. For instance, not all programs are compatible with Vista, why? Well because Microsoft rushed, got it out and now wants to push it down our throats yet we can’t be guaranteed that our programs will be compatible with it? I mean really?!

Okay, Okay, you have me, WordPress talk and Microsoft Operating Systems, not really comparable, but the point is if something is NEW do not try it until it has been out a long time or if you have a way to test it on something that is not as important. For me, I should have copied all my files from my current domain name and transferred to another domain to “test” out WP 2.8 prior to upgrading – why did I not do this?

I was in a hurry, I was sick of seeing that “you need to upgrade” notice across my screen. I am an organizational addict, which means if something is pulling an update notification every time I login, or my email has more than a couple unread messages – I am going to organize. I guess you can call me OCD in some ways but it’s who I am, I enjoy being organized and up to date.

Now that I have my upgrade completed I have spent more time than I had to spare deactivating plugins and reactivating them to figure out WHY my whole WordPress dashboard wasn’t working. I could no longer upload images, preview my blog posts, nothing. It was like writing blind and basic. No more additions to make my blog posts look “cute” or “professional”, just plain ol’ text and maybe an image if I wanted to literally write in the HTML code to get the image just right – which I am capable of doing, but really had no interest in doing.

Finally I figured out there were a few plugins conflicting with WordPress 2.8 – now do not ask me which ones as I removed 3-4 and then left them removed .. I may take the time this weekend after we see Thomas to test which ones were creating the conflict, but for now I will just leave them be and mind my P’s and Q’s before I say something else and it all goes down! LOL

Overall I am very happy with my self hosted WordPress account, lots of features and so many cool SEO plugins.

So did you upgrade? Do you have any venting about WP you would like to add?

Tags: blogger, Microsoft, On the Web, Operating system, Weblogs, Website, Windows Vista, wordpress

9 Comments

Survey Time … Please

Published on July 8, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life

: Image by J. Star via Flickr

I appreciate each and everyone of my readers, I really enjoy personally reading all the comments you leave and I enjoy offering you the best product reviews, recommendations as well as giveaways.

In order for me to continue to up it a level and offer you even more reviews and giveaways I need to have a survey completed. As my way to say THANK YOU and encourage you to complete this short survey I am offering you a chance to insert your email address at the end so I may send you FIVE entries into any current and/or upcoming giveaways .. this code will be for YOU only and assigned to your email address ONLY.

This code for 5 extra entries may be used alone or in addition to the other entries listed on all my giveaways – this is for current AND upcoming so you can virtually use this code anytime!!

The only catch is that I must have the survey completed no later than 12pm EST on July 9, 2009.

I thank you in advance for understanding that this survey will help benefit the content on my site so that I may better focus on what interests you:

Click Here to take survey