Yay!

Hey, Yay! Those pics posted the right size. Whew!

`t

PPP Direct

The good folks at PayPerPost have come up with yet another way for bloggers and advertisers to make the most of the blog marketplace. If you like to use your blog to make money, PPP Direct could be for you.

Basically, PayPerPost is taking the middleman (THEM!) out of the equation. This is an opportunity for advertisers to request specific bloggers and bloggers to request specific fees for their services.

Pretty cool. How does it work?

Basically, you pick your price and install a badge on your site stating it. When potential advertisers click it, they are taken to PayPerPost to work out the deal.

What's in it for the blogger?

Yes, you could hammer out some of these deals yourself, but you gain some valuable perks by going through PayPerPost. Mostly, it's easy to use, you gain marketing through the PPP directory, you automatically have tax reporting done, and there is more security than hashing out deals completely on your own.

This has been done before, you say? Why choose PPP?

The main reason here is simple. Cold, hard cash. While competitors charge 50-100% markup and keep money that could be yours, PayPerPost charges only 35% for their self-service model. This passes the money on to the blogger and allows the advertiser to get more for their money. Everybody wins.

~t

TheNewsRoom

I just "mashed" my first news story! Not only was it totally free, it was also quite easy. I have been looking at expanding the content on Musings, and I really like the idea of mashing select news stories. I think it's a great way to use your blog to create a difference as well. In general, I think the news focuses a little too much on tragedy, so I liked this story about Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum in London making a new "green" (aka environmentally friendly) version of Prince Charles. I visited Madame Tussaud's back in '96, and I loved it. (Of course, it might have been more environmentally friendly, just to leave the old one. But hey, I still give 'em credit.)

So, how did I accomplish my cool news mashing? I used The News Room. Not only do they provide relevant, timely news, but you also can make money via advertising with CPM starting at $1. Nice. There's tons of video and content choices and you can earn prizes like vacations, electronics, and cars just for participating. The choices are conveniently organized by category so you can find the type of news that will fit your blog best. Categories include: US, Local, World, Business, Politics, Health, Sci-Fi, Entertainment, Sports, Life, Press Releases, Reference, and Campaign 2008, for all you politicoes out there. (My story was from the Life section.) You can also mash it from my blog, too. Cool.

Check it out!

~t

New Theme! YAYYYY!

Look at the cool theme Retta made for me! Isn't she rad? I'm so happy to be less generic. I LOVE IT! I hope y'all like it, too. Of course, now I have to re-tweak everything and re-add a lot of stuff, but it is SO WORTH IT! See, I may not have been blogging regularly, but I'm still thinking about it. (And avoiding my training homework at 9:49 pm. Ooops. MUST STOP PLAYING WITH BLOG THEME.)

~t

A Bit of a Bloggy Holiday

As you can see, I sure haven't been blogging much. I've been trying to get the rest of my life in balance and then I'll be working on fitting blogging back into that.

I started my new weight loss program, which is taking up some time, and ironically, not working yet. (Just made some alterations, so fingers crossed, next week!)

I finally had everything together and got our taxes done. Yahoooooo to that!

I'll be going to training for a week starting next Wednesday to finally be in the right job at work. Yahooooooo to that. I'm really looking forward to it.

After that, I hope to have a regular schedule (and a regular income to go along with it.) Then I'll be able to get my bloglife a little more in order. I am a bit concerned that my schedule may still be up in the air. Grrrrr. Not a fan of that one, but we'll see what happens. I've got a couple more weeks to float through anyway.

So, stay tuned, and I'll pop in when I can. Or see you more in April, I hope.

It's all about balance. Balance is good.

~t

Why do I blog?

Dear Sweet Retta tagged me about a million years ago on this one. I'm supposed to come up with 5 reasons. I'll tell ya right now, I'm not tagging anyone. I'm such a rebel.

1. Heather talked me into it. She pressured me.
2. I stopped putting things in Zane's baby book earlier than most. This is my excuse.
3. It's fun and creative without being overly stressful.
4. It's the above and I still am making some money at it.
5. I've met some cool people this way.

Those are the reasons. Who am I tagging?

YOU! If you are reading this, go do this meme. Link back. Go on. Do it. Ha ha ha. Maybe #6 is that I get to be bossy and no one seems to care. (or no one reads it.)

~t

Coming to a future near you: Pluto in Capricorn

I've been reorganizing my online life a little bit more lately. I've been using Google Reader to read more blogs lately and one I really like but always forgot to go to is a great little astrology blog called The Pisces Chronicle by fellow Washington Stater, Pat Paquette. I've not met Pat, but perhaps someday I will. I've been doing a bit of back-reading tonight. She points out a great astrology article in Vanity Fair about the long ranging effects of Pluto for the United States. I thought it was fascinating. And Vanity Fair. And astrology. How cool. Check it!

~t

Postie Carnival 2: Worthy Causes and Charities

I know, I've been a carnival freak lately. (ha ha ha.) But, I couldn't help participating in this one for a couple reasons--first of all, this the Carnival of Worthy Causes and Charities. There are a lot of these near and dear to my heart, but apparently the nearest and dearest is till good ole Ten Chimneys. I feel like I grew up in my job there and it will always be special to me. Second of all, my friend and fellow Postie, Suni, is hosting. So hop on over, and check it out. I'm sure you'll learn something of value and maybe even feel inspired to give in some way.

~t

Fuel My Blog

Here's a cool way to advertise your blog for free. It's for a limited time only, and guess what else? They have GREAT taste? Why, you ask? Because I'm currently blog of the day in the lifestyle section! Yay. Thanks, Kevin from fuelmyblog.com!!!

~t

Feeling Introverted - Kid Party Shell Shock

It's so funny that my last two entries have been about online popularity contests and I just can't seem to write a real post the past few days. I thought of something earlier and now I plum forgot it.

I have a lot of pictures to go through from Caspian's kid party yesterday, but thinking of that intimidates me. And then I might have to relive it. ::shudder:: Kid party. ::shudder:: We had approximately 7 kids here and we might as well have had 70.

The upside? We don't have to do it for at least another year! Yaaaaaaaaayyyy! We always hate doing the kid party. We got out of it last year. Other times we feel guilted into it. This year it was because we are new here. How could we not invite his new friends over? So we did. We are not the picture perfect parents. We are fun, sometimes. But not fun in the way of wanting to be involved in kid-related things. We are not fun in that way. So, this is what we do out of guilt. NOW, everyone is asking us if the party is a SLEEPOVER? Are they INSANE? This was 2 hours and it was PLENTY. Plenty, I say. Plenty.

Ok, I found one photo. If I ever get my shit together, I might have more.

(See, here's the problem. Blogger is not letting me upload. So I have to upload to Flickr. Or I could use dropshots, but I'm at my limit. It's a pain to upload to Flickr. I tried to upload their tool, but it didn't work. Arrrgh. Technology.)l

Anyway, here it is:



~t

I'm a FIVE

Holy heck, people, Google updated, and I've finally got some PR! Wanna check your PR? Go here:




Woo hoo, I'm unstoppable now!!!

Thanks to everyone who's linked here!

~t

I'm about to be booted from Top Momma!

Well, I can't say that I'm surprised that I ain't Top Momma. I've had my 4 hours in the sun. Top Momma is a cool new site advertising blogging Momma's. You get your pic on the top board when you get there and then if you are popular via clicks (through to your site) and referrals, you get to stay. I ain't so popular. But you can help! If you are a blogging Momma, go there via this link.


Maybe I'll last more, but it's looking unlikely. Go on over there and SAVE ME from annihilation.

Later edit: I think I must be assuming it's still just Heather, my husband, and my brother who read this blog. But my new blogging friend Mel didn't know what to click! Look for this picture of me and Zane and click it:



~t

Animal Carnie

No, that's not animal meat, it's animal carnival. It's the latest edition of Bestest Blog of All Time's Carnival, hosted by Morgen over at It's a Blog Eat Blog World. Yours truly is paticipating once again. (And we thought I wasn't a joiner!) Go on over and show the carnies some love. Tell 'em I sent ya!

~t

For Mr. Fabulous: COOKIE!

Oh dear, Tricia's Musings just gave me some FABULOUS linky love. There was a comment from Mr. Fabulous asking if we had cookies over here. This one IS half eaten, but you can just take it as proof that there is more where that came from, Mr. F. Enjoy! (I also just remembered that I have more cookies on my other site. Those are REALLY great.)



Thanks Tricia, you're the rockinest. (I think I hear that on Noggin all day.)

~t

Weight Loss Wednesday

I know, I know. It's Tuesday. But I've been struggling with my weight loss and heard about this meme. Or rather, my lack of weight loss. It's not because whatever I'm doing isn't working, it's because I'm not doing whatever I'm doing. Some fellow bloggers have started a new meme, Weightloss Wednesday. I'm thinking perhaps the added accountability might help me. It's another way to build community among bloggers and help you to think about what you're doing.

Basically, you check out the link, and if you want to participate, grab their pretty little header, and post each Wednesday about how your week went, Weight Loss wise. Then, it's a good idea to go back and post to their blog so they can check you out. I've been blogging my weight loss (or lack thereof) for a while. At first I was wondering if this would make a difference. I guess the way I've been doing it, it's hard to know if anyone is even reading aside from the comment here or there. This way you KNOW someone's coming by to check on you. I think it's a good idea. Maybe I'll even change my weigh-in day (which has been Monday FOREVER) to Wednesday. Well, I'm not sure I could make THAT big of a change. ha ha. We'll see.



~t

Another Carnival!

Lookin' for a laugh? Check out the newest Bestest Blog carnival over at Dr. Blogstein's today. It's the Funniest Posts of 2006. I'm in it! (Well, because I submitted my favorite post.) But go on over, and give 'em some love.

~t

LoudLaunch Launches

The world of advertisers hooking up with bloggers got a little bit bigger with the recent entry of LoudLaunch. They are now officially up and running.

What does this mean? Well, a couple of things. It's another arena for bloggers to get paid to help advertisers get their news or press releases out to the public. And from the other side of the fence, it's another avenue for advertisers to find bloggers who will spread their word around the internet. What is especially nice for advertisers is that they can start a campaign with as little as $50! Of course, putting more into the campaign will yield more, but this is an advertising opportunity that doesn't have to break the bank. Nice.

Check it out.

~t

LoudLaunch - Compensating bloggers for their unbiased opinions, reviews, and analysis. View the LoudLaunch campaign release this post was based on.

PPP Affiliates

Are you a blogger? Do you like to make money. First of all, if you haven't already, you should sign up for PayPerPost. You should do it from that link or the box in my sidebar. Why is that? Well, because it's a smart thing to do. You get paid to blog, which you'd do anyway. And, if you sign up here, I get a nice $15 referral fee. And then, when you sign up, YOU can join the referral program and then YOU can start getting $15 every time someone signs up under you. It's a pretty sweet deal. So, why wait? I've already made hundreds of dollars, and you can too. Go on, sign up!

~t

Postie Carnival!

Hey, Jessie over at Hunna's Happenings is hosting (what I think is) the first ever PayPerPostie Blog Carnival. Yours truly is taking part as well as a number of other great Postie friends and writers. Start your year right by checking it out!

~t

Great group of sites from a fellow Muser

Tricia over at Tricia's Musings and her husband, Chris, have a couple of other sites worth visiting, if you haven't seen them yet.

It's so funny, I was initially drawn to Tricia's Musings because I saw she had visited my site and we had chosen the same name for our blogs. (Plus, she has a funky-cool avatar that reminds me of one of my favorite periods of my hair.)





That's me, circa 1996. The color is actually a little faded in this shot. It was more like Tricia's avatar when it was first colored.

Kinda weird, huh?

I really like her site because it's visually appealing and has a great variety of content that includes substance and fun. So, I was excited to hear that she had another blog called Celebrity Scoop. I do like myself a little celebrity gossip, even though I try not to indulge too much. (It makes me feel guilty for some reason. I guess I feel bad for the celebrities' lack of privacy. Of course, some of them just thrive on it.) I do like that Tricia puts her own unique spin on the stories, including highlighting political figures like Saddam Hussein as well. Very interesting.

Her husband Chris' site, Odd Planet, reminds me of my husband Kevin's Shameless Stuff. How funny, huh? Tricia and I must be soul-sisters or something. While we girls write about our lives and like to peek in on the celebs, the guys are all about the weirdness in the world. Kevin's tagline reads, "Observations on the shameless world around me. Gads, we're all so weird!" The description for Odd Planet, is described as such, "Odd Planet is a humor/ entertainment blog that brings you odd new stories, stories about dumb criminals, and strange people. You’ll also find a good number of funny pictures and videos on the site as well." Perhaps the guys should write about the weird parallels amongst all our lives?

OMG, both Tricia and Chris are participating in Photo Hunters Scavenger Hunt. And oh boy, did they pick different topics. How funny. You have to go check it out to compare, especially if you know me and Kevin. It's very like how we might do something. I swear Tricia and Chris, we are NOT stalking you.

Anyway, get on over there and check out those blogs. They are worth a looksee. Yes, I just said looksee. So, sue me. I like weird words.

Happy NEW Year! (Maybe I have to try this photo scavenger hunt thing. Hmmmm.)

~t