Win $100 and Lilith Fair

I am giving away a $100 Visa gift card!  Want to win it?  Of course you do!  Just read all about my adventures at Lilith Fair and you will get the chance to win the $100 Visa gift card from BlogHer. Click HERE.

Some Bloggy Opportunities

Hello readers!  I just wanted to give ya'll a heads up about a couple of things that I've found out.

First, one of the online shops that I recommended to you guys last week, Tutti Bella,  wrote me to let my readers know that they are currently having a killer 10-20-30 sale.  Hundreds of items are marked down to $10, $20, and $30 and the sale ends 1/25/10.

Second, Care.com let me know that they are giving away a pretty great trip for two to Los Angeles! Here's what they wrote to me:

One lucky Grand Prize winner will receive a trip for two to Los Angeles, including round-trip airfare, a two-night hotel stay at the luxury SLS Hotel (http://www.starwoodhotels.com/luxury/index.html in Beverly Hills) with dinner for two at SLS’s Bazaar restaurant and a private VIP tour of the Warner Bros. Studio lot, where “Valentine’s Day” was filmed.  Twelve finalists will each receive two tickets to see the film.  In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, Care.com will also provide the winners with a free one-month premium membership to find that perfect babysitter.

HOW TO ENTER:
Enter at: www.facebook.com/caredotcom, and tell us your most romantic or funniest Valentine’s Day memory. All entries should be rated PG.  The twelve finalists will be selected during the months of January and February 2010.  One Grand Prize Winner will be selected from among the 12 finalists in February.  Three Finalists will be selected by a panel of judges on or around each of the following dates: January 23, 2010, January 30, 2010, February 6, 2010, and February 13, 2010. One Grand Prize Winner will be selected from among the 12 Finalists on or around February 13, 2010.

So I just thought ya'll might be interested in these two things.  And to be sure, neither of these two companies have paid me to write about them or have given me anything in exchange for writing about them.  I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Mental Health Day

It's been a long, long, long day. I'm ready to kick up my feet, finish my book, and go to sleep. I'll post more tomorrow, but for today- go here for a cool giveway!

And The Winner Is...

To everyone who entered, thank you so much! I wish I could give all of you a gift. To put an end to this suspense, haha, the winner is..... Micha at Dandelion Daydreams! Micha, email Jennisa when you get a chance, everything is set up.

Come On Bloggers

Where are you bloggers? Only six people have entered the Giveaway, get your butts in gear! Just to jog your memory, the winner will be receiving:

• A brand new custom header for your blog
• A brand new custom button that matches your new header
• All of this will be done for you by Jennisa at Once Upon a Blog.
• You'll get to bypass her long waiting list and get started on your custom designs!

The Rules

1. Create a link to this post on your blog (just click the Create A Link Button at the bottom of the post) and tell us one way (or as many as you want) blogging has changed your life. If it hasn't, you can write about that, too. I'm interested in all opinions.
   
2. If you want, it's not required (oh, please do it!), in addition to the post you can also leave me a comment about how blogging changed your life, and I will put your name in twice for the giveaway.
   
3. The giveaway will end on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 11:59pm EST and I will post the winner on Monday morning,
   
4. That's it!

The Big 300 and a Giveaway!

When I made my 100th post I didn't know it, and not that it really would have mattered, because I'm pretty sure no one read it! By the time I got to my 200th post, I accidentally missed it because of a draft counting error and some faulty addition. (How sad is that?) So I've been eagerly awaiting the 3ooth time I share some snippet of my life with you.

Yesterday rolled around and it hit me, I was only one post away from 300: Blogger's Block! I began to have a little freak out about what in the world I could write about that was worthy of "commemoration." You'd of thought I was dealing with a real world crisis - like peace in the Middle East, rather then my little personal blog, that's how drama queenie I was acting!

When I woke up today, to Vivien Leigh's "take me outside I have to pee" kisses, I realized I knew what I wanted to write about- so here it is!

I began blogging for a few reasons:

1. I'm a terrible scrap-booker and I wanted to make sure that I didn't forget Spencer's little quirks, the cute and not so cute stories, and my thoughts and feelings about her life- our life- together.
   
2. It seemed like it would be therapeutic (and it was free) to write down all the things that were swirling in my head.
   
3. To update my best friend on my life when Spencer and I went to North Carolina for a few weeks this summer/fall.

I didn't have any regular readers for a long time -I didn't get my first comment until almost two months after I started this blog and I didn't start getting regular comments until a month after that. For a while I was just trying to find my footing, figure out what I wanted to write about and what was off limits. I didn't post a picture of Spencer until almost one month after my first post and I never used her actual name until November! By then I felt comfortable in the Blogosphere and I had stopped worrying and caring about people who I knew that might be reading it.

This is the first picture of Spencer I put up on here. Doesn't she look like such a baby?

At first, I was just writing our story, I didn't really try to get to know other bloggers, and I was still a little scared about putting my/our real life on display. For some reason, and I'm not sure what the impetus was, I started to do some blogosphere exploration and it was like I won the lottery. For the longest time after I had Spencer, I felt very alone, no one I knew had any kids and the majority of my friends weren't local. Whenever I'd talk to them, they would tell me about their exciting lives, dates, engagements, vacations, workplace drama etc., and all I had to offer was something like "Babies R Us had a great sale today and I got a really good deal on diapers!" L-A-M-E. But then I discovered so many moms who were dealing with the same issues. I found so many women who wished they were dealing with my issues. I found a support system that was chock full of inspiring people and more and more blogs that I HAD to read.

After awhile I started to get some regular readers and all of a sudden I realized, I have blog friends! Every day I would look forward to reading their latest update and hearing their thoughts and opinions on what I had written. On difficult days I could always count on them to put a smile on my face or just let me know that they were thinking about me. When I would look for fun things to do with Spencer, their blogs were always full of great ideas. Recipes, crafts, online shopping tips, support, prayers, and humor- those are just a few of the ways they've helped me out.

When I started this blog, I was a little, okay a lot, woe is me, poor Katie, life is so unfair. But then I started reading the stories of other bloggers and then I stumbled onto Nie. Life was unfair to her, unfair times 300 is more like it, and the more I read about her and her family, the more I realized how much more I could be doing as a mother. Through her blog I stumbled onto so many others and I found other women who felt the same way that I did. It's made me want to be a better mother, because I know it's possible, and Spencer deserves nothing less than my best.

It sounds so trite to say that blogging changed my life, but it did. Not in a "I'm a completely different person" kinda way, but it's made me want us to live a life that's blogworthy. Not that I didn't want to give Spencer the best life possible before I started blogging, because I did! It's just that it made me realize how lucky I am, what a GIFT I've been given, and how I can make our lives better.

My fellow bloggers, you have made me see a picture that's bigger than just my little world, and have repeatedly shown me how grateful I need to be. There are so many times I've burst into tears when reading about someone I don't know or have never heard of; their stories break my heart, and I find myself praying for complete strangers. I hug Spencer a little tighter because I'm so aware of how fragile she is, how quickly she's growing up, and how much I LOVE her.

I wish the world were a little smaller, just so that it would be easier to be real life friends with my bloggy buddies. When there's a baby shower, or a wedding, or a birthday party, anything that is celebratory- I feel sad that I can't be there. When someone needs a shoulder to cry on, I wish I could provide comfort in a way that didn't didn't involve typing. Maybe that's the beauty of blogging, the somewhat anonymity of it all that allows us to really be ourselves because we're geographically separated. But I still wish I could get in my car, drive to their house, and just hang out.

It's amazing how something so little can have such a large impact. When I started blogging I never anticipated that it would be anything more than an online scrapbook. When I started this blog, my faith was barely a whisper in the back of my head. And while I'm still trying to figure a lot of it out, I'm now trying to see how God works in everything rather than trying to convince myself that he's a part of nothing. My entire life is a work in progress, and I hope it will always be like that- I never want to stop trying to become a better person- the person I'm meant to be.

To celebrate my 300th post, I doing... a Giveaway!! But this isn't any ordinary giveaway- it's a bloggy one! Since the theme of this post is how blogging changed my life (for the better), I thought it would be appropriate to do a giveway that would improve and beautify your blog.

I am giving the winner:

• A brand new custom header for your blog
  
• A brand new custom blog button that will match your new header
• All of this will be done for you by Jennisa over at Once Upon a Blog, who did such a great job designing my layout!
• She's a very in demand blog designer, with a very long waiting list, but not for the winner!

If you already have a custom blog layout, it never hurts to have a new header to swap in and out, just to spice things up- so I hope that won't keep you from entering!

The rules are simple:

1. Create a link to this post on your blog (just click the Create A Link Button at the bottom of the post) and tell us how blogging has changed your life. If it hasn't, you can write about that, too. I'm interested in all opinions.
   
2. If you want, it's not required (oh, please do it!), you can also leave me a comment about how blogging changed your life, and I will put your name in twice for the giveaway. Gosh I'm nice!
3. The giveaway will end on Sunday, June 14, 2009 at 11:59pm EST and I will post the winner on Monday morning,
   
4. That's it!

I will write down the name of everyone who's eligible and have Spencer draw the lucky winner from a hat. Of course I will take a picture of this, I wouldn't want anyone to think that the selection process was fixed, haha! The last time I tried a giveaway I only had four people enter, and that just doesn't work- so I'm crossing my fingers that this one goes better. Hopefully I'll get to make some new bloggy friends and discover some new blogs, I think that would be great!

Finally, I really want to thank all of you who have made this experience so positive and memorable. I think I'm so lucky to have found all of your wonderful blogs and I'm grateful for your support and friendship!

SHABBY APPLE GIVEAWAY

Marseilles Dress SHABBY APPLE GUEST GIVEAWAY

I love Shabby Apple, L.O.V.E it! My favorite diaper bag comes from there and every time I go their website, I am tempted to spend like $10,000. Grosgrain is doing a give away for a Marseilles dress from Shabby Apple, and this is my attempt to win it. The best part- they're letting you pick your own size, which is great for those of us who are no longer a size 4. Sigh.

If you want to get in on the fun, just head on over there. This is my 299th post, so I'm trying to think of something special for the big 300!