I have organized some amazing upcoming events for just for Tip Junkies! It’s my way of saying “Thank You” for an incredible year of fabulous ideas and lots of new readers and friendships.

Mark your calendars and tell all your blogging buddies. Believe me, you won’t want to miss out on any of the amazing ideas or free goodies.

1. To help promote & feature some of the amazing women who have joined the Mom-preneur Shop-a-thon, I have set up the 12 Days of Christmas, um I mean Junkie! It will start tomorrow, Monday November 9th.

It will run similar to the Birthday Bash back in June; where each giveaway will last only 24 hours and a winner will be picked each morning. There will be two winners each day!

This HUGE giveaway has 2 purposes:

1. To spotlight women’s products in hopes that you’ll find something you love and then buy or barter for it.
2. To give away products for you to use at home or save some cash and give as a gift.

Other events coming up:

2. Christmas Card Challenge: November 17th (3 winners)
3. Christmas Tree Contest: December 8th (3 winners)

I hope you’ll come on over to Tip Junkie to check out these fabulous Mom-preneur products and hopefully win some fabulous prizes!

Laurie
www.tipjunkie.com

P.S. Tip Junkie is your hook up for creative Christmas tutorials and handmade gift ideas. As well as fabulous Thanksgiving DIY and tutorials!!

Jessica over at Life As A Mom is doing a series on taming the lego monster. You know I love a fun theme!

In our home Legos provide great joy and hours of play time. My boys are little engineers and therefore they make the coolest things and create entire worlds in their room. With 3 boys and 5 sets of grandparents, we have a LOT of Legos.

How do I store our Legos? Labeled bins and large under the bed bins.

1. One for the Mars to Mission Legos.

2. Another for the “work in progress” or “completed” Lego creations. This way they can store their Lego creations safely in this large bin and not have them get broken. It also solves the “I’m working on that!” issue when it comes to clean up time.

3. I also cut up the cardboard boxes and keep the pictures of the completed Lego projects for inspiration and future Turk boy play time. I keep all of the instructions manuals and cut out cardboard pictures in it’s own little bin for easy clean up and safe keeping.

I have the Indiana Jones Legos in their own bins which we keep in Dylan’s room since he got them for his birthday.

I try to keep the Bionicles, Mission to Mars, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and other themes in their own containers. However, that doesn’t always happen. I don’t stress out about it and just try to encourage only 1 theme to be opened at a time.

Soon, we are going to convert our guest bedroom to a Star Wars bedroom for Dylan. Then Dylan will have a long shelf to hold all the finished Star Wars Lego vehicles. It will serve several purposes as a storage solution, a brag wall to show off his hard work, and decorations for the room.

How do you store your Legos? Be sure to head over to Jessica’s post and let her know: Taming the Lego Monster.

I’ve been a fan of Darren the ProBlogger for quite a while. He’s the guy in the know and has created the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog workshop which is free and full of fabulous tips. I’ve followed his workshop for 2 years in a row with great results.

So you can imagine my excitement when I read this article How to Promote Your Blog with a Giveaway from guest blogger Olivia over at ProBlogger and saw the Tip Junkie Giveaway Directory mentioned in today’s article. {{squeal in delight}}

Shut up! {{said in complete denial}}

Tip Junkie was listed 3rd behind Prize.net which charges a fee because they are so widely used.

I launched the Tip Junkie Giveaway Directory in February because I was recovering from back surgery and was receiving over 100 e-mails a week from people wanting me to announce their giveaways. I wanted to help but could no longer undertake the work load. It was created out of necessity and on a complete whim.

In all honestly, I haven’t done a thing to promote the giveaway directory. I’ve felt a little guilty about it at times. I guess that worry was for nothing and it’s doing it’s job. {{whew}}

Drake has been cranky all day and it’s been terribly difficult to get anything done. I so needed this little uplift to the day.

Everyone needs a little validation every once in a while.

The boys had vacation bible school last week as well as started swim team. Our first meet is tomorrow! It’s been a crazy week as Jason and I have been putting the final touches on Tip Junkie’s make over.

Today is the day! My little girl is all grown up and has on some new digs. What do you think?

Jason has been working for over 2 months learning WordPress and PHP code to bring Tip Junkie to the next level. It’s still not completely done as we’ll be tweaking it and making it more user friendly and cohesive over the next several weeks.

Monday I will host a Going Dot Com Birthday Bash and give away 50 amazing prizes. I hope you’ll come on by and participate. I’ve been entering giveaways to stock up on Christmas and birthday presents. Anything to save a buck these days. {{evil laugh}}

I’ve also created The Tip Junkie Community where creative women can network, market their products, and become a sisterhood. It launches tomorrow – so you’re the first to know about it!!

Jason and I have been re-designing Tip Junkie and converting it over to a WordPress blog. I’m so excited about the new layout and design. It will load faster, be able to support the traffic, with tons of great new features.

Tip Junkie will also turn 2 years old this week. To celebrate, Tip Junkie is having a Going Dot Com Birthday Bash June 15 – 19th. I’ll be giving away 50 amazing prizes. {{whoohoo}}

I hope you’ll help me spread the word and then come participate and win some fabulous prizes!

I just created the coolest Mother’s Day Gift guide over on Tip Junkie using only products from women in business!! {{squeal in delight}}

My favorites:

Portrait Tile Charm from Eclisse Creazioni’s shop.

Time For Beads crazy fun watches.

These shoes from Whitney Caroline.

Wall vinyl from E.A.D Designs.

Madison Reece Designs with her amazing prices and fabulous jewelry.

A fabulously chic camera strap from ShabbyStraps Shop.

Ahh the loveliness! Be sure to check out the Tip Junkie Mother’s Day Gift Guide, pick out your favorites, and e-mail the link to your man. {{sneaky}}

Be sure to place your orders soon. Some of these items are handmade and will take extra time to be shipped.

I’m so excited to announce that the Tip Junkie Mom-prenuer Shops have a new look and are open year-round! You won’t believe the amazing products and gifts now at your finger tips. {{giddy}}

All year long, the Mom-preneuer Shops will feature blogs/shops/sites where you can purchase products created or owned by women. So if you sell a product and are a woman, you can sign up here.

You can sign up for e-mail updates and even become a fan on Mom-preneur Shops on Facebook. Be sure to check it all out!

7 years ago I had this dream to have a website called Executive Homemaker. I had it meticulously planned out in my head and on paper. It took a year of coding & designing and finally my dream became a reality a little after Drake was born. Since then I’ve discovered blogging and a much easier, way to inspire women.

The problem with having a website is that you need a webmaster. It’s all very complicated and having one character out of place can bring down an entire page. Currently, we’re having problems with Executive Homemaker and so I asked Jason to take down the entire site.

Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would care. I don’t do anything really to market it and it’s just hanging out there on the web. We’ll, to my surprise I’ve been getting tons of hate mail. Yes Ladies, apparently people are having up coming birthday parties and NEED my transformer bingo and star wars bingo files. People are also unsubscribing because they are angry that the site is down and can’t get their files. {{the drama}}

I can understand the frustration with wanting something you no longer have access to. I completely sympathize with these women. However, reading so many of them is exhausting. I had decided to take the entire thing down completely when I read this e-mail:

“I cannot thank you enough for your materials designed for special needs children, especially for your son Davis. I have five children (ages 8, 7, 6, 3 and 2). My middle child, Trey, has special needs. He has been in Speech and OT on and off since 2 years old. His neurological testing ruled out Autism but yet my husband and I feel it still may be a mild form. Trey is being mainstreamed but each year we try to give his elem school teachers/sunday school teachers an explanation that he’s different than most kids. I loved your book to explain Davis. It sounds like my son almost to a T. I nearly cried when I read it. I am going to provide teachers with this type of book from now on. Sifting through and IEP doesn’t personalize children like this book will. Thank you so much. I also loved the Book About Myself. Trey will receive that well when I adapt it for him. Thank you so much for sharing this. You have been a great support. Judy”

To be honest, everything on there I made for Davis. He’s one that needs extra visuals, structure, and motivation. I can’t thank Judy enough for her kind words. She single handed saved Executive Homemaker from being taken down all together. I’ll have my hunky webmaster with mad-skills make it a priority to fix Executive Homemaker so everyone can have my files.

I just want to share what I have made, not make anyone angry or frustrated. Executive Homemaker doesn’t make any money and right now isn’t even designed too. I did it out of a passion to help and inspire. That’s it.

Hugs to Judy for giving me the lift I needed to keep moving forward.