Cards Direct Giveaway!

I am so excited about this!  You’re familiar with Cards Direct, right?  They are a company that specializes in personalized, beautiful greeting cards for all kinds of occasions.  And with fall fast approaching, the holidays are just around the corner! (I know I can’t believe it either!)  Have you ever wanted to send out those beautiful Christmas Cards or  other Holiday Cards that other people seem to find the time to do?  What about some stunning Photo Cards of your family portrait?  I never get around to it either, but I think this year is going to be different.

From their literature:

CardsDirect offers the very best in personalized greeting cards for business or personal use.  Over 2,000 card designs are available in categories that include holiday cards, birthday cards, thank you cards, photo cards, baby shower invitations, Baby Announcements and many more!  With free personalization and custom imprinted verse, CardsDirect offers an easy online ordering process and top quality cards with the best selection, customer service and pricing found anywhere.

So here’s what they want to do.  They would like one of my readers to have a great card giving experience this year and they’re going to give one of you 25 greeting cards, up to a $50 value!  All you need to do to enter is leave a comment.  If you’d like to Tweet it, or post it to Facebook, let me know in a separate comment on this post and that will get you an extra entry.  The contest will end on September 30th 2010 and is only open to US residents (sorry!). On October 1st, I’ll randomly pick a winner and you will get your redeemable code that day.

Exciting, right?

Full Disclosure: Cards Direct did agree to send me a gift of cards to thank me for helping them to bring their great product to you.  Full disclosure policy can be found here.

Gold’s Gym Dance Workout

So, part of the Mean Girl Cleanse Exercise this week talked about Being Impeccable With Your Word which really resonated for me because I have not been impeccable with my word to myself. One of the things I committed to at the beginning of the summer was moving my body more and while I certainly did improve in that area, I didn’t reach my goals exactly and the last couple of weeks I’ve been really slacking off.  I’ve felt guilty about it and that’s only made it worse.  You know how that goes right?

So yesterday I was thrilled when this came in the mail!  It’s Gold’s Gym Dance Workout for the Wii, by Ubisoft.  I love to dance and really don’t do it like I used to – you know,  back in the day – (yeah, I said it).

So, this morning when I woke up and once again the weather wasn’t cooperating for pool cardio, I decided to give this a whirl.  I popped it in the Wii and went through the instructions.

It’s compatible with the Balance Board, but not necessary.  I don’t love the balance board because… well, I’m unbalanced.  Seriously though, it’s just not big enough to dance around on. I was surprised by the idea of using two controllers, but I picked them both up, filled out my profile info, picked a trainer and started to play.  Also, a much appreciated feature or lack thereof is that your avatar doesn’t get all “fluffy” when you put your real weight in – Hello Nintendo, I’m talking to you.

I did some Latin dancing and some boxing, both of which were a great workout and a lot of fun.

Then I started to explore some of the mini games.

Here I am, dodging the bulls in Matador.

And here I am practicing my sword fighting moves.  So Jedi.

All in all there were great, fun workouts and lots of instruction if you run into a problem. There was plenty of content to keep your workout varied and keep you (me) from getting bored.  Boredom is my worst enemy, but this looks like it might be a great tool for keeping myself on track.

I was selected by Ubisoft and Clever Girls Collective to be part of the Ubisoft Champions social media program. While Ubisoft provided me with this game to review, the opinions I’ve expressed here are solely my own and represent my honest viewpoint. Ubisoft and Clever Girls Collective promote Blog With Integrity

Giving Up Gossip

Not familiar with the Inner Mean Girl Reform School?  Check out this post!

Week 1 in the Inner Mean Girl Cleanse is about giving up gossip.  The discussion questions were:

1. What’s the cost of gossip?
2. What’s the benefit?
3. What’s the truth?

I don’t often participate in gossip and most of the people I know don’t either.  I’m not perfect and occasionally I do have moments where I feel slighted and my first reaction is to resort to hurtful words – but when I really look at it, it’s more about my feeling of inferiority that makes me want to pull someone else down with me and then I feel guilty for having that kind of spiteful reaction.  And that, in a nutshell, is the perfect explanation of my particular inner mean girl. She is all about the fear of not being good enough, of being inferior in some way or another.

So. I know that gossip isn’t good for me, or anyone else and I’m pretty good about dealing with it.  (again, not perfect, but pretty good).  I know I’ll keep working on that and continue to realize what and why I’m saying.  However, there was something very interesting about this week’s lesson and that was the realization that I’ve become more involved with celebrity gossip than I ever admitted to myself!  We all love a good snark, right?  Some clever repartee, maybe? Well, there are a couple of celebrity gossip sites that I read and I realized that participating in, reading about, or passing along information that’s not nice isn’t just bad if you know the person, it’s bad period.  And it’s not about the celebrity, it’s about me.  It’s more of the same feeling of inferiority, or superiority over said celebrity.  We don’t look to feel superior to someone if we’re already feeling good about ourselves, right?  It’s all tied together.

I realized that I was clicking through on links that were stories about who was getting divorced, who cheated on whom, what the wronged spouse got in the divorce settlement and because my focus is on improving my outlook in that area, I was able to see that I lot of what I was following on Twitter and Facebook were just gossip sites.  Interesting.  If you had asked me if I was “into” celebrity gossip, I would have emphatically told you that I had better things to do with my time. And then I might even have gone into a diatribe about what a waste of paper People, The Star, the Enquirer and the NY Post, really are.   Hmm…  Is that gossip about gossipers? So I hid those particular sites from my Facebook newsfeed and I’m not clicking through on gossipy news items on Twitter and apparently I was spending an awful lot of time on that. Yikes.

Christine Arylo talked about a different form of sneaky gossip in her post: You May Be A Gossip and Not Even Know It.

As an aside, part of the discussion was about “Being Impeccable With Your Word” and I realized it had been far too long since I picked up and re-read my copy of the Four Agreements.  Seemed like a good thing to do.  Have you read it?  Are you reading it now?

(affiliate link)

So why don’t you join me (affiliate link)? C’mon – it’ll be fun. Maybe we’ll learn a little bit about how to stop being so mean to ourselves.

I am participating in the Inner Mean Girl 40-day Cleanse as a Self-Love Ambassador. To thank me for my participation, I will receive a self-love gift from the founders of the Inner Mean Girl Reform School

Inner Mean Girl Reform School

Do you have an inner mean girl?  I know I do.  And she’s really mean.  But she’s most especially mean to me. I know I shouldn’t listen to her, but I do – every day. I listen to her tell me that I’m not smart enough, or thin enough, or talented enough, or loving enough, or just… enough. And I know that I need to figure this out so that I don’t pass it on to my own daughter (my son too, but girls seem to be especially vulnerable).  So when I received an email from Stacey, the project manager, inviting me to be an Ambassador for  Christine Arlyo and Amy Ahlers’ “Inner Mean Girl Reform School”, I knew I had to be a part of it.  You may remember back in February when I participated in “Madly In Love With Me Day“… Well this campaign is from the same people and I think it’s really important for not only me, but most of the women I know to stop being so hard on ourselves. So I’m taking part in this six week program to stop listening to such negative thinking and be more honest and loving with myself.

From the website:

Through our work with women around the world, we’ve identified six of the most self-sabotaging habits your Inner Mean Girl (IMG) uses – and the corresponding self-empowering and self-loving habits your Inner Wisdom can use to beat her every time! Take this cleanse and you will:

• Shift six of the toxic habits weighing you down (what’s possible without comparison, guilt and self-judgment?)
• Release bad habits that block deeper female connections (we need each other to survive this crazy world!)
• Pick up and strengthen habits that fuel you vs. drain you (who couldn’t use more good energy these days?)

And best of all, you will integrate these habits into your daily rhythm without having to put another to-do on your list. And, the IMG Cleanse is FREE! We believe so strongly that women want and need this shift that we are offering this 40-day cleanse for free for the first time ever.

So why don’t you join me (affiliate link)?  C’mon – it’ll be fun.  Maybe we’ll learn a little bit about how to stop being so mean to ourselves.

I am participating in the Inner Mean Girl 40-day Cleanse as a Self-Love Ambassador. To thank me for my participation, I will receive a self-love gift from the founders of the Inner Mean Girl Reform School

Absence Makes the Heart Grow…

I have been conspicuously absent from here.  Well, at least I hope it’s conspicuously… If no one noticed, don’t tell me, I’ll cry.  No seriously, I’ll cry.

I’ve been going through something lately. Lots of things actually.  Many of you know that I’m under quite a bit of stress lately.  My husband is in Arizona working because the auto industry here in Central Florida was so bad that he needed to do something else for a while.  And while I’m thankful that he had the option, it’s still hard. He’s been gone for four and a half months and it’s hard to raise two children and run a household, a life and a business all by yourself.  I know that there are women (and men) who do this everyday and I do know how much I have to be grateful for, but that doesn’t negate the fact that this was not the plan and is very hard.

When Jim was at home, my days would consist of taking care of everything I had to take care of and when my day was done, Jim would come home from work (somewhere between 9 and 11 PM), have dinner and then we would spend our evening however… watching TV, a movie, getting other things done whatever.  He’d go to bed and I’d take about an hour or two for myself (the first time I’d been alone all day) and then go to bed somewhere between Midnight and 2 AM.  Now when I’m done with dinner and clean up and the children are settled for the evening I have time to myself.  That’s a good thing, and it’s given me the space to work on some issues that I have to deal with, but it’s not something I would call pleasant.  I’ve been working on some of my own issues.  Issues that have been neglected for far too long.

Like many “moms”, I’ve put myself on the back burner, or even off the stove completely. I’ve neglected my health, exercise, nutrition, and emotional well being.  I’ve made some progress in the last couple of years with the nutrition, but I have some real issues with food and emotions and I’ve become very focused on that. And ya’ll?  It’s hard.  Looking at the reasons that I act compulsively, whether it be with food, or whatever my current obsession is, has been a real shocker. I wonder how I can possibly be so unaware of my own emotions and I believe that I’ve come to a realization…  I think that while I give great advice about taking care of yourself and “filling the well” and the idea that you can’t take care of anyone else unless you take care of yourself, I don’t practice what I preach.  And in saying that out loud, even just to myself, I feel that I’m whining; that I don’t have the right to ask for anything just for me.

Now why would I feel that way? Could it really be as simple as the ideas that served me when I was a child, that no longer serve me in my life today are keeping me from living my best life?  I’m a smart, capable woman.  How could it really be that simple? How could I really be that simple.

So while I uncover what the heck it is that my mind is doing and work through that I might be a little random over here in the Pink.  Thanks for your indulgence.

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