You might never guess that I love fashion … especially if you know me in real life, but I do. Don’t get me wrong, I REALLY love comfort and tend to lean that way … but there is a special place in my heart for a designer dress and a good pair of heels.

One of the things I love so much about television is seeing the actresses and what they are wearing. Shows like Desperate Housewives, The Deep End, Regis and Kelly, and The View, as well as all the soap operas, are a wonderful place to see great outfits, shoes and accessories. It’s very inspiring.

Being an average person, I know that I’d never be able to afford the clothes that I see online. Target, J.C. Penney’s and Kohl’s have similar looks at more affordable prices. But, the inspiration, for me, is definitely television. It seems more “in reach” for me as opposed to magazine fashion.

One of the things I love best about The View is the online piece called “What I’m Wearing”. Taped with Elisabeth and Sherri, they go through piece by piece and tell you what they’re wearing. It’s awesome, especially when some of the pieces are from stores/designer’s that I know. I’ve put a couple of things on my Wish List and will watch for them to go on sale.

Here’s a link to “What I’m Wearing“.  Don’t you wish all television shows did this?

* I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.

I’ve been blogging since 2004 and somehow I’ve managed to never attend a blogging conference. I’ve seen all the posts and nearly die with envy every time as I see pictures popping up like wild on Twitter … but it’s  never worked out for me to leave work and family to attend.

With the Mom 2.0 Summit being [practically] in my backyard, I really wanted to go. There were some early conflicts that kept me from purchasing a ticket, so I had  counted out the possibility of this being “my first conference”. Some last minute changes opened up my schedule, but by that point, the ticket price was outrageously high. It was WAY past the Early Bird discount date, and even coupled with not having to stay in a hotel, it was still out of my reach. I was so disappointed.

Less than 24 hours before the first session began, I was sponsored. My sweet friend heard of a sponsor with an open ticket and put us in contact. It was a complete fluke that it worked out and even more crazy that it was a company that I had used religiously throughout both of my pregnancies. Amen. {More on this amazing company soon!}

I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect. I mean, I thought I knew, but until you are actually there – you really don’t know. The Mom 2.0 Summit had three tracks to pick from. One was a personal track (I chose that one), one was a professional track (I’d chose this one if I had it to do again), and the third was for business people (product oriented).

Friday’s summit began with a special keynote with Gretchen Rubin and Heloise. Yes, that Heloise … the one with the helpful hints in the society pages of your newspaper. She was lovely … as was Gretchen.

I did three sessions on Friday. All of them were very useful. It was great for me that they primarily focused on writing! I’d taken a conference day and needed to be able to say that I honestly got 8 hours worth of content! I learned so much about writing, community, and engagement. It’s something that I’m really striving for within my blog, but also REALLY working for in my day job. Our team spends a lot of time on these concepts and we are getting ready to have to face these topics again.

The highlight of Thursday, if we’re being completely honest, was riding in the Weinermobile. I mean, who woulda thunk that the Weinermobile would be available for our group. Too funny … or actually Bun Believeable!

Friday began with a keynote panel with Heather Armstrong, Gabrielle Blair, and Maggie Masongie. It was incredible. They shared, what to me, were next steps for where I’m at right now. I would have paid dearly to have been able to crawl into their heads for even more time. They were candid, funny and charming. I so appreciated their advice and mentor-like attitude.

The sessions on Saturday were not as strong for me although I did enjoy them all. (It was more the subject matter that wasn’t my favorite.) There was a live Twitter stream in every room. With several of the sessions, I could see tweets from other conference rooms and thought “crap … I should have done that session.”

I think I am at a odd crossroad with my blog and job. I could have easily fit into several tracks here. I needed a clone.

With that said, I have now learned that it’s easier to decide what conference is for you after you attend one. I now know what sessions really resinated with me and which ones are still challenging me days later. In the future, I’ll look for conferences that are catered that direction. There are a zillion great conferences out there now … I can’t wait to really dig into the offerings.

I would recommend Mom 2.0 Summit. It was well-run and completely organized. The speakers were top-notch. Even the sessions that weren’t my favorite were led by completely qualified and engaging women. The entire experience was very inspiring and motivating.

Now … to put it all into practice!

Enjoy this video – a highlight of my weekend.

* I was not paid by PageOnce. This is purely something that I ran across on my own. I am not an endorsee, just a happy customer.

Are you a frequent airline customer? What about a top-notch rental car consumer? Is your spouse “Elite” or “Gold” and enjoy the lounges from sea to shining sea?

Oh … you too?

Then you will love the free app that I found today. It’s called “Trip Tracker”by PageOnce. What I love about the app is that it has a feature where it “automagically” remembers information. For example, I have a flight booked for mid-April. I put in my Continental frequent flier number and it pulled up my reservation automagically! It even pulled in my rental car … something I had completely forgotten about!

I had another travel app until recently. Every time my husband would book a trip, I would have to go in and manually enter his flight info. Not too difficult if you are on a full-sized keyboard, but doing all that typing on an iPhone is a little much.

Now with “Trip Tracker”, I just put in Don’s Frequent Flier number and his pin and it loads it for me! Amazing …! And those trips he forgets to tell me about until I see him packing a suitcase – now they are all loaded when they are booked and I’m not left feeling surprised!

Do you have a favorite app? Please leave me a comment. I’d love to know what you use on a daily basis.

I’m ready for beach scenes like this again …

Orange Beach, Alabama – August 2008

As a working parent and a mom of two, I crave girl-talk … conversations between women about regular things that are not daycare pricing, the latest virus, or fundraising forms. Because of my schedule, I rarely have time to talk to anyone that isn’t in my office or over the age of 6.

Enter The View.

Many weeks ago, I filled out a form to become a Brand Ambassador for The View. I immediately filled it out. I love the show and appreciate so many things about it. After forgetting that I’d applied, I found out that I was accepted!

Let me introduce you to The View if you haven’t seen the show before. It is an ABC daytime talk show featuring four female anchors:  Joy Behar, Elisabeth Hasselback, Sherri Shepherd, Whoopi Goldberg, and a part-time Barbara Walters. I love something different about each of these ladies. Joy is hysterical and says what you really want to say, but wouldn’t dare. Elisabeth has the conservative values that I hold (although she’s a little more fanatical than me). Sherri is a great mix of all the ladies. She really brings a balance to the table. Whoopi speaks her mind and really plays the devil’s advocate on the cast. She, many times, makes me consider the other side of the coin. Barbara Walters, a great of the industry, has such a wealth of pure wisdom and knowledge. She is an amazing woman.

The show opens up with a segment called “Hot Topics”. This portion covers topics that you’ve most likely heard about on the news. Sometimes it’s political, but often it’s just an interesting news story. The women discuss their views on the subject in a no-holds-barred manner. Following that, there are interviews with celebrities, musical artists, or other noted people.

In today’s episode, the interview section was with Chandra Wilson from Grey’s Anatomy. I have just started watching Grey’s (not sure what took me so long!), so I really enjoyed getting to know a member of the cast. The segment following that was about “sexting”. They brought two sides to the conversation: one was a girl who had sent pictures to a boyfriend that then spread them throughout their town; the other was a boy who had forwarded pictures of a girlfriend. It was so incredibly sad to hear the stories of how lives have been torn apart by this new teen fad. But, in true The View fashion, it brought a topic to light that we all, as adults, need to understand and try to put to a stop.

I’ve had a sick child, so I’ve gotten to watch the show in the comfort of my home the past two days. That’s a welcomed, but not a typical treat for me. If you visit the ABC website, you can watch full episodes online. (They are approximately 38 minutes long.) Since I bring my lunch to work each day, it’s the perfect amount of time for me to stream the show while eating.

Right now, there is an exciting sweepstakes going on. One lucky winner will be randomly selected to receive a trip from Mom Central to head out to NYC and watch a taping of The View. The sweepstakes is open until February 28. Fill out an application here!

During the next four weeks, I’ll be able to give you some cool information about The View. I hope you’ll enjoy the posts and check out the show. I think you’ll really like it.

Disclosure: I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.

Avery’s teacher is beautiful. He’s never indicated that he has a crush on her, but I’m beginning to think that there may be a little spark. It’s cute … and, I mean, he is his father’s son so it was bound to happen sooner or later.

This is his Valentine card for her. He made it himself. (It’s also my Project Life picture for yesterday.)

Clicking on photos will enlarge them …

Isn’t that the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? Yes, that’s the two of them on a grassy hill. All but holding hands. I love it.

Here’s a closer look:

I love you in block letters with hearts drawn on the inside … he’s really killing me. SO CUTE!!!

And, now … the poem that he made up all by himself.

Even on a rainy day – we wele have a grait Valentine’s day.

I mean, come on. Isn’t that the cutest poem you’ve ever read? He definitely gets this romantic talent from his dad.

I’m so glad that Avery has a natural sweetness. He’ll be a FABULOUS husband.

Now, to pray for him a Godly wife …..

(Please forgive the horrible photography! No time to Photoshop today!)

The last 12 hours of my life have been some of the most stressful I’ve ever experienced.

Ok … let me start by saying that some of you will say “This is NOT real stress.” I realize that I didn’t lose my job. I didn’t lose my home. God forbid, I didn’t lose a family member. But, I did lose memories, and in a sense – a large part of my life.

I started blogging long before it was “the thing to do”. One of my first entries (on another domain) is in August of 2004. I was pregnant with my second child and like so many other moms, I began blogging so that out-of-state family could keep up with our goings-ons.

Somehow it grew. I began to make blogging friends and have wonderful opportunities come my way because of my site and relationships I was building online. It became more than a hobby … it was (is) a large part of my life.

Jump forward to February 10, 2010.

It was 5:10 PM-ish. I was wrapping up my day at work, preparing to head to church for Kindergarten choir, and thought I would throw a Wordless Wednesday post online quickly.

Now, get ready for some very technical language here. I know just enough about web design/postings/etc. to be dangerous.

I opened my FTP thingy to upload a high res picture that I wanted to store on the site. Long story short, the phone rang. {Let me state here that I AM NOT a multi-tasker.} For some reason, I must have been pushing down on the mouse and in the process was deleting files. Like … all the files.

All.

Every. Last. File.

Gone.

Panic would probably be a tad of an understatement. I immediately enlisted the help of my web-savvy coworkers. They gave a couple of options,  all of which resulted in nothing.

Since I’m a wordpress person, I’m hosted. My boss, also a Dreamhost customer, told me about a restore function that they had. I got online with their customer support via chat (do people not have phones anymore?) and they led me to the screen with the restore button.

Found it.

Clicked it.

Got the message that “they’ll email and let me know if it was successful.”

It wasn’t, so like any good person in a tizzy, I tried it again.

It didn’t work. So, OF COURSE, I tried it again.

Fail.

Once I got home from choir, my Facebook was full of things to try and I had an offer from a great friend (thanks Brad) to do some support via phonecall. Nothing worked.

I’m pretty positive that I said a “fuzzy word” at this point. I’m just sayin.

Finally, I decided that I would just start over. I’d capture what I could from Google reader and print it for archive’s sake and begin again. I have another domain that I’ve been itching to launch and I’ve spent a lot of time and energy on thinking through rebranding. This was my chance. I was sad, but I believe strongly that things happen for a reason. It was time to move on and make the best of it.

Of course, I didn’t sleep a wink. Sometime around 3:00 AM, between child #1 having a nightmare and child#2 just wandering around aimlessly in the dark, I remembered that when I built my own theme about 6 months ago – I had backed up my site. I decided that perhaps I would just reload from that file. Isn’t it better to have just lost 6 months worth of data than several years? I thought so too.

I don’t know how it happened. I’m not sure why it happened. I’m positive that I couldn’t do it again if I tried, BUT when I uploaded the old file EVERYTHING … images, content, comments …. It was all there. Like all there … up to the present day kind of “all there”.

Here’s the lesson … Back.Up.Your.Stuff. I assumed that my host was doing it. {Not sure why I assumed that, but I did.} They, obviously, were not backing it up. Nor was anyone else.

I will be running a full backup on my own every Friday. Dreamhost will allow me to do it every 30 days. I’ll do it through them on the first of every month.

Regardless of how much you post, how many people read, or what the quality of your site is … it’s important and worthy of a backup. Take a lesson from me.

*Google “backup my blog” and whatever platform you are using (Blogger, WordPress, Typepad, etc.) and you can easily find directions!

Thanks to those that send words of encouragement and support via Twitter and Facebook. It really did mean a lot.

This has been the wackiest winter ever in Houston. It has been cold. Yes, I know … it’s winter – it’s supposed to be cold. But, here in the deep south, we prefer it to only be “coolish-cold”.

It seems that in the three years we’ve lived here, we have gotten into the high 40′s quite a few days in January, about half of February, and by March – you can venture out in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. None (or very little) of this “low to mid 30′s” garbage! YUCK.

Needless to say, I’m MORE than ready for either (1) SNOW or (2) HEAT. At this point, I’ll take either. I’m not picky.

I’m just fed up. Pick a season and go with it!

You might have noticed that I have a Grocery Game page. It will tell you the basics you need to get started with the program. I’m coming on my third anniversary with the program and I’m still raving as much now as I did when I started.

I love our Kroger here in Texas. We are lucky that they double/triple coupons which makes savings go a little further. But, even if your store doesn’t double/triple – it’s still worth the effort.

I subscribe to Kroger, HEB, and CVS. Although I don’t shop HEB every week, I do save enough there to cover my expenses. Kroger and CVS are my biggest stores. I ADORE them!!!

Here’s my haul from last night:

6 boxes of Kleenex Anti-Viral Tissues
3 bags of Solo Cups
1 Trident gum
3 Chapstick Moisturizing Lipbalm
2 Suave Deodorant
3 Mission Tortillas
1 Nutrigrain Whole Wheat Bread
4 bags of Kraft Cheese
4 bags of Sargento Cheese
1 Sister Shubert’s Frozen Rolls
6 Green Giant Valley Fresh Steamers Frozen Vegetables
5 pounds of 80% lean Ground Chuck
4 I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter
1 Kraft Cheese Singles
6 Propel Fitness Water
4 Quaker Quakes Rice Cakes
2 Pepperidge Farm Goldfish
2 Nabisco Triscuit Crackers
4 Hormel Low-Sodium Chili
3 boxes of Capri Sun Pouches
4 Quaker Chewy Granola Bars
3 Nature Valley Granola Nut Clusters
2 bags of Kroger Spaghetti
2 jars of Kroger Spaghetti sauce
2 boxes of Ritz Snack Mix
2 boxes of Kroger Popcorn
3 boxes of Kroger Toaster Treats
2 cans of Kroger Kidney Beans
2 cans of Kroger Diced Tomatoes
2 cans of Kroger Tomato Sauce
2 boxes of Kroger Rice Bitz
1 box of Kroger Baking Mix
2 pounds of Bananas
1 gallon of 1% milk
1 Rotisserie Chicken

TOTAL – $207.06

Manufacturer Coupons – $26.50
Bonus Coupon Savings – $6.70 (double/triple coupon savings)
Kroger Plus Savings – $81.32

TOTAL OUT OF POCKET – $92.54 (Saved 55%)

$92 for 92 items!!! I’ll take it

If your grocery bill is out of control … try the grocery game. Email me with questions. I’m always happy to help! [stephanie (at) stephanieclick (dot) com]

Saturday night was a huge event in our house – Miss America 2010 pageant. I’ve loved pageants my whole life. And, now, I’m so pleased to announce that I have a pageant-loving daughter. It began last year (remember this post) and I’m happy to announce that it’s been confirmed this year.

All day Piper asked “how long until the pageant?”, “how many more hours?”, “is it on yet?”

All.Day.Long.

Piper loves to dress up for these things, so I started getting her ready. She got a new dress … I helped her pick her jewelry … she picked a crown. (Note that I had to pin a blanket on the bottom/back of her dress. She made sure that I knew that “every pageant girl at Miss America has a dress that drags the ground.”)

At 6:00 PM, “Behind the Crown” came on. We watched the tips and tricks of the pageant contestants. We watched as the girls prepared for the pageant, competed in the preliminaries, and shared their experiences of the week. It was a one-hour program …

Somewhere around the 6:54 mark, Piper fell asleep. Out. Done. Could not wake up.

We didn’t hear from her until 7:05 AM the next morning. Thank goodness for DVRs.

It was worth every penny.

So, on Sunday after church, we all watched the pageant again. Piper was adorable. All dressed up again. She wanted to be Miss Texas and “whoever wins”. (Congratulations Miss Virginia!)

Here is a picture of a sweet brother crowning his sister.

Because she really is our Miss America.