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Right now, A Psych Mommy, is running an amazing giveaway that I would love to win for my sister. She’s going through a rough patch right now and the little things make her happy. To appease her she is borrowing my flat iron, I’d love to win one just for her!

So head over to A Psych Mommy and try your chances to win a Babyliss Pro Nano Titanium Ultra Thin Flat Iron courtesy of Misikko.

I’ve been seeing these fantastic shoes around the blogosphere and each time they make me swoon! Thankfully I have another chance to win them, Outnumbered 3 to 1 is having a Blog Launch Party and she’s offering a pair of U-Neaks for one lucky winner. So go and enter… if you don’t want them, I’ll take them!!

Enter here: http://outnumbered3-1.blogspot.com/2009/05/uneaks-review-and-giveaway.html

Here is Take 6 of Write from Karen’s weekly video meme called “In My Opinion” It is so fun that you should join in. The questions this week were:

1. How many siblings do you have? What is your birth order? Do you agree with the birth order characteristics? Why, or why not?

2. What’s the tastiest meal that you can cook? Do you like to cook? Tell us about your cooking experiences.

3. Has anything bad ever happened to you that turned out to be for the best? Has anything good ever happened to that turned out to be a bad thing in the end? Tell us about it.

Next weeks questions are:

April 15th Questions

1. Tax Day. Boo! What are your thoughts on taxes? Necessary evil? Too much? Too little? How do you feel about Joe the Plumber’s mission to abolish the IRS? (You can find out more about the Fair Tax proposal here.)

2. Are you more likely to avoid conflict or engage in it head-on? Why?

3. Which do you prefer: the hustle and bustle of city life or the quiet and serenity of the country life? Why?

Ever since starting Mommas ReviewI’ve grown an even larger addiction to social networking sites or cool little tools for improving me. I used to be a Myspace hag and that was my bread and butter of networking. Now I’ve realized there is so much more out there for me. I’m on Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, The Blog Frog, Twitter Moms and a couple Ning communities.

Well, thanks to my friend Speedy from Eighty MPH MOM I realized how much more there could be out there she pointed out the number one on this list to me which helped spur this post.

Best new place to share you and your ideas:

1. Blippr- this site is similar to twitter in the respect that you only have a short message you can place. It combines a tweet length with a product review. What I ended up doing was spending hours looking at every ones reviews and finding some cool new sites.
2. Yelp – forget large scale product reviews this site allows you to review your local haunts. I searched for my town (by not including what I was looking for just typing location) and found reviews of the local pizza place, restaurant, and places to visit with the kids. Largely addicting!
3. Plurk - truthfully, I don’t know if I like Plurk. No one I know is on there so it kind of defeats the social aspect of it. And the layout is whack (ha! I said that). But the concept is fun where you basically are doing a time line of what’s going on with you as you go. You can incorporate photos and even YouTube videos. It’s intriguing.

Coolest new business tools:

1. Twaitter - I cannot wait to spend all day using this. Twaitter is a web-based tool that allows you to schedule tweets! I can prepare announcements for Mommas Review or remember to share my best friends birthdays on Twitter. The pre-scheduling aspect is fantastic. They are also working on automatically tweeting a link to all blog posts (like RSS feeds on Twitter) so I can’t wait to try that either once they roll out with it.  You can also set recurring tweets if you like to toot your own horn. This is FREE (my favorite word) up to 500 tweets.
2. Gimp - No, gimp is not new. I know that. BUT I have decided that i can’t afford to purchase software like Photoshop and I know people like Jen my bestie, use Gimp for all their blog header/button making. It worked out great for her. I need to start figuring this out since I’m so fickle and always wanting change. I can’t keep bugging Amanda for it.

Best new app for your cell phone:

1. Skype Mobile- yes, I just downloaded Skype onto my cell phone. This might seem odd to everyone since why would I need a phone service on my phone. I use Skype ever since joining Extraordinary Mothers, it is where alot of the women get together and chat. We use it for conference calls, sure. But mainly we use it as a chat application. Now I can chat with my EMSS ladies on the go. I can even call my Skype girls – and I don’t think I’d be wasting cell phone minutes. I definitely need to learn more but it’s exciting right now!

Do you visit any of these sites frequently? Are there any other cool ones that I must know about? Do tell, because I’m always interested in making a larger social footprint and having fun virtually.

Once upon a time in the Proulx household we had plenty different portable phones. These phones were strong and durable. Or so we thought. Here is what happened to those phones:

1. Phone 1 – Run over by my husband with his Jeep
2. Phone 2 – Dropped into our fish pond by my husband
3. Phone 3 – Run over by my husband with his Jeep – Snapped in half, not down the seem, like top and bottom completely seperate but connected by wiring. The phone still semi-worked after this
4. Phone 4 – Dropped in a cup a water (kind of my fault)
5. Phone 5 – Current phone – Dropped so many times the screen is a jumble of letters

As you can tell, phones don’t last so long in our household. Though this is a short story it ’tis the truth. Which is why we need a new phone. Especially a VTech Phone.  My good friend Jennifer (aka Speedy) from Eighty MPH Mom is giving away a VTech cordless phone that is dreamy!

Week 4 of My Personal Opinion

Week 5 of My Personal Opinion

Visit Karen @ Write from Karen to join in to this fun weekly vlogging meme

Today is not my day.

• Gabrielle has a stomach bug and is vomiting everywhere
• We now have no water in our house because of another pipe breaking
• The water in our basement is freaking retarded
• I stretched myself too thin and now it’s hitting me
• Someone I love is checking themselves into the hospital

Tomorrow is bound to be better, right?

Here is the third week of the meme In My Opinion from Write from Karen! Come check it out and join in. Sorry its up so late in the day with such a short post… it’s been a long day.

My daughter is obsessed with television.

Yes I just admitted something that I never should admit in public. I’m sure I am going to even get some backlash for even saying the words television and my daughter in the same sentance. More specifically she is obsessed with Dora the Expolorer. I have convinced myself that Dora is a learning experience. Gabrielle (2.5) has been randomly blurting out spanish words since she began watching Dora and I love it. She counts to ten in spanish better than she counts in English.

Months ago we were at the Christmas Tree Shop (I hope everyone has one of these because they rock!) and we put Gabs into the car while unloading all our bags. I hadn’t buckled her in yet just put her in to get her out of the weather while I got my bags in. Well this unbuckled child yelled to us “HELP ME! HELP ME! Ayúdeme” Oh yes, my daughter declared help me in spanish without any prompting.

Though watching Dora has become an education experience for her, it’s also a horrible, no good, very bad obsession. What has made this obsession worse? Me. Well… yes I’ll admit me. But more importantly DVR. Oh DVR how I have a love/hate relationship with you. I decided to record Dora’s shows when they are on. I did this so when Gabrielle was in the mood for it and nothing else was on, I could instantly provide her favorite show for her. Stupid, stupid Andrea. Don’t you know better?

Because of this move on my part I now must go through temper tantrums, fits, and demanding that Dora be on the television for all of my daughters waking hours. I’m sick and tired of it, and as Dave Ramsey says… I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired!

Today I have declared war and deleted every single recorded show of my daughters off the DVR and also cancelled all future recording. Muahaha! Oh dear child today will be a fun day of battling between me and you. Though perhaps with commercials (always muted) I can convince you to do other fun things besides playing with Dora.