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Two Best Friends, Never Met, Until Now

Published on June 10, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Headline

Dwan and Brandy both write their own blogs, run their own businesses and pretty much do everything together as would your normal “best friends”, but there is something unique about each of them that makes their friendship even stronger than most best friends; Brandy and Dwan have never met each other!

Dwan is a mom of three living in Texas and Brandy is a mom of three living in New Hampshire. Brandy is scared of flying and Dwan doesn’t care for flying but is willing to fly in order to see the world. This summer, July 17, 2009, to be exact, these two moms will meet for the first time in person. It’s funny that they are so excited, nervous, and anxious to meet each other, because they have spoken on the phone for hours on end every day, they have supported and helped each other in blogging and business. Every venture one of them attempts, the other follows along helping in anyway she can. They know everything about each other, but just have never seen the other in person.

Dwan and Brandy are what true friendship is based on; honesty, integrity and support. These two moms do everything in their power to help lift each other on a bad day, and support each other in every way. Dwan and Brandy have what it takes to maintain a long lasting friendship and look forward to sharing their exciting news with their readers through a 30 day countdown from TX to NH Giveaway Blast.

Dwan and Brandy already have a few vendors lined up to offer products for giveaways and reviews. They have many open slots for more products and are always looking for items to include in their grand finale giveaway. If you wish to read more about these two amazing woman please visit their website created just for this event!

Tags: blog, business, friendship, John Lynch, New Hampshire, relationships, Texas, United States

15 Comments

Office Max DiVoga Collection Giveaway Winner

Published on June 9, 2009 by brandyellen in giveaways

Recently I held a super giveaway for the DiVoga Collection from Office Max, rubber band ball included. I was able to review this product line along with Peter Walsh’s [In] Place System and I love them all and use them to this day to help me stay more organized.

The total number of entries was 136 and using random.org the number 79 was randomly generated … which means the following person is our lucky winner for the DiVoga Collection from Office Max:

katie said: I subscribe via Google Reader

Congrats! An email will be sent to you today and you have 48 hours to respond. Have a super day and remember for those who did not win please visit Office Max to buy your own today!

Tags: Google, Google Reader, office max, Peter Walsh, Recreation, Search Engines, Searching, tools

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Little Imaginations

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

As I sat watching my children play I realized they have such wonderful imaginations, yes even baby K who is near 10 months old has a very active imagination. It is so wonderful how humans are born with the sense to create characters out of any object or pretend play with a helicopter or matchbox car.

My oldest always had a fantastic imagination but I wonder if it was because I allowed her imagination to flow, I encouraged her to utilize this excellent skill. I believe as a parent, you should encourage your child to pretend play and use their imagination. Not only should parents encourage such behavior but they should use their imagination as well.

The children in our house are not the only ones with an imagination, I have one too! A very, very bright imagination that creates Mr. Salt out of our salt container or a horse out of a laundry basket and blankets. It is so fun to let loose and have some imagination time with your children.

Here are some family fun adventures you can go on with your children to help encourage their imaginative behavior:

Make a school bus out of some children’s chairs and take turns being the bus driver.
Pretend to be dogs and have fun howling at the moon.
Take a laundry basket, and a few blankets placed on top to create a pretend horse, take turns riding the horse to town one at a time.
Pretend to be monsters and run all over chasing each other going “roar”.
Fisher Price Little People make for great pretend play and imagination games.
If you are a Dad, create a Dancing with The Dads entry for PBS Sprouts Dancing with the Dad’s Sweepstakes.

And now a word from my little imaginative children, created using the free program SmileBox:

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow: Imagination Fun

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Tags: Basket, Bus driver, Child, children, family, fathers, Fisher Price Little People: Sing Along Favorites, home, Parent, Public Broadcasting Service, School bus, shopping

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Win An Electrolux French Door Refrigerator

Published on June 8, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Featured, giveaways

Oh I so need a new fridge! I have yet to mention in my blog posts that for the past couple of years my electric bill has been through the roof. We have cut back on our electricity usage and nothing changed. The electric company even questioned what we were doing to cause it to nearly double in kilowatt usage. The only thing we could think of was our fridge, we feared {at the time} that it may be dying. The electric company only confirmed our fears, they did say a fridge that is dying may be pulling more electricity – oh yeah it does – and it has for the past two years!

We have been saving but there are other priorities like food on the table, car issues, children’s doctor and dentist visit payments, etc etc! The wonderful joys of being a parent and living in a tight budget household makes it hard to afford a brand new fridge, so our debate has been do we save money for a new one or do we buy an old one and take the chance of wasting money on a fridge that will not improve our electric bill? We decided to save for a new one, and now having a chance to WIN a new one while helping raise funds for ovarian cancer research?! I am game, and I hope you are too!

When I heard about this Electrolux French Door Refridgerator from Mom Select, I knew I not only had to enter to win, but I had to tell my loyal readers {that’s YOU} more so they could enter to win as well!

The Virtual Lemonade Stand is helping fight ovarian cancer, and YOU can help too. All you have to do is visit Electrolux, click on the virtual lemonade stand campaign and register for free to create your own stand. For every stand that is created, $1 will be donated to Ovarian Cancer Research Fund {OCRF} and you may even sell virtual lemonade to raise more funds for OCRF, how fun is that?

As a little girl I had always wanted to have my own lemonade stand, and now thanks to Kelly Confidential I am able to have my own virtual lemonade stand and better yet it will help raise funds for a good cause – it’s simply a win win situation!

As a way to learn more about how serious ovarian cancer is in the United States, I decided to look up some stats, and thanks to the National Cancer Institute website, I was able to find the following stats about ovarian cancer:

Estimated 21,500 cases in 2009 in the US
Estimated 14,600 deaths in 2009 in the US

That’s some scary stats! Especially since I, myself, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer causing cells twice now. During my first and last pregnancy I was told to have cells at medium to high risk for cancer, luckily the cells went away on their own after just under a year of watching them closely and visiting my OBGYN frequently. This is not the case for all, not every woman is as lucky as me to have these cells appear and then just “go away” on their own, and I often wonder – “did they really go away”? I wonder “will they come back”? It’s scary not knowing, and if I can help raise some funds so we can have more ovarian cancer research and possibly save another persons life – I am up for spreading the news to all!

I invite you to enter to win an Electrolux French Door Refrigerator, but better yet I invite YOU to create your FREE lemonade stand to help raise funds for Ovarian Cancer Research, but first I want you to take a peek at my virtual lemonade stand.

Tags: Cancer, Conditions and Diseases, Gynecologic, Health, Lemonade Stand, Organizations, Ovarian, Ovarian cancer

2 Comments

A Black Lab, A 6 Year Old & 2 In Diapers

Published on June 6, 2009 by brandyellen in Brandy's Life, Headline

: Image via Wikipedia

Get ready for my Saturday morning …

It started late Friday night when we had a family movie night, On-Demand movie through Comcast. The movie of choice? The Tale of Despereaux, a super cute mouse with a fantastic story of loyalty, honor and courage. A must watch movie! Moving on in my story…

We had a late family movie night, all of us heading to slumber close to 11pm, and a lovely 2 year old woke the black lab and myself up around 7:30am grumpy as ever today. My ever so sweet tear dropping, feet stomping, whiny two year old was awake and apparently not in a very pleasant mood. I would have just told him to go back to bed, wait a minute, I DID tell him to go back to bed, but he simply whined and stomped his feet some more. For fear he would wake his sister up or worse the baby up, I let him out of his room to sit on the couch while I worked on getting the black lab outside.

I placed our black lab on her leash and proceeded outside to hook our sweet black lab puppy up on her outdoor run. While inside I grabbed my sweet, whiny but no more feet stomping 2 year old some milk and grabbed the dog food and some water to go outside and give to our black lab puppy. I opened the door to find a black lab puppy running in circles below our steps – but wait a minute – that is not where her run reaches … oh yeah … our sweet black lab puppy who is absolutely gorgeous but very LARGE for her age BROKE her run .. oh yeah snapped it right off! Better yet – hubs is at work and can’t fix it! I have been spending my morning taking a puppy outdoors to pee or poop nearly every 30 minutes but she will not go pee nor poop while on the leash she keeps looking at me wondering why I am not hooking her on her run for pee & poop time.

Next, wakes the 6 year old. She woke up happy and sweet which is normal for her. 6 year old decided she wanted an english muffin with peanut butter for breakfast, and so I made toast for all three of my sweet children as well as myself. After we ate our toast together we decided to give our sweet black lab a first time bath.

The black lab had to be dragged to the bathroom, picked up and placed in the tub and then shook the whole time we bathed her. No one ever informed me of how much black labs shed, they shed all day, all night and everywhere! There was no exception to this shedding in my bath tub. So not only did I clean a black lab, I had to clean a bath tub.

Now we have three clean kids, one clean dog and a mommy who is ready for a nap ALREADY. Oh and the black lab STILL will not go pee nor poop outside … calgontake me away!

Tags: Cooking, DustinHoffman, dvd, home, Kids and Teens, shopping, Sigourney Weaver, Tale of Despereaux

10 Comments

Fitness Friday: Feel the #EASactive Burn Baby

Published on June 5, 2009 by brandyellen in Featured, fitness, Memes

Gosh I am so exciting to have the EA Sports Active. My husband could not do this 30 day challenge with me for strained muscle or something in his leg, but I am plugging away on my own with the support of the Wii Mommies, my Twitter friends and my bloggy friends! Thank you for all the support!

This week I worked out June 2 and June 3 but something came up last night and I didn’t get to the #EASactive workout. I know, I know, bad me, the #wiimoms need to give me a phone call every morning or something j/k

I did burn around 190 calories this week and am did some outside exercise daily as well. For some reason I have gained 14lbs {prior to starting the 30 day challenge} which is not making me very happy, but gaining the weight has made me even more motivated to lose it! I did quit smoking so maybe that is the reason behind my weight gain, not to mention I have just been super exhausted.

I am plugging away at the 30 day Challenge and plan on keeping up with it this month. Can not wait to see how much I lose. I did get a trophy on EA Sports Active for burning 100 calories!! That’s rewarding!!!

I love that you can do custom workouts, which I have not done yet. Due to all the craziness since our trip to NYC I have only gone on to do the 30 day challenge workouts. I must say my knees are weak because the squats kill my knees, but it’s great because I can simply “skip this exercise” if I am having trouble with my knees or a particular exercise.

The reason I love EA Sports Active so much is because you can work out to your level. You can create a custom workout, do the 30 day challenge, or whatever you feel you can do. It’s great to push yourself one step further than what you would normally do for exercise but remember to drink plenty of water, breath and stretch before and after the workouts.

I would highly recommend EA Sports Active to someone who needs a set schedule of exercises but wants something that motivates a bit more than a normal work out video.

Anyone else doing the #EASactive 30 day challenge this month? Leave your link where you will be placing updates so we can keep each other motivated, also make sure you subscribe to my blog as I will be placing updates every Friday during Wii Mommies Fitness Friday meme.