winner of the Marks gift card

And the winner of the $50 Marks gift card is: Kirsten Sommerville!

YAY Kirsten! e-mail me your address and I will pass it on to Marks so they can send you your prize!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

To all of you who entered the contest, I promise I will vote for you! When I read the fine print it says that "likes" you receive during the last two weeks of the contest are worth more points than ones you get now. So I'll hold off and "like" you guys closer to the end of the contest!

Marks Re-Style contest and Gift Card giveaway

Last September I have the pleasure of being chosen for a Marks makeover. It was so much fun. After a year of feeling frumpy the makeover was a fun way to make me feel good. I could use another one of those right about now actually :)

Smoky effect, flashback music....

Oh that was a fun day!


Last week the PR company for Marks contacted me. They are promoting a Marks contest and they are offering my readers a chance to win a $50 Marks gift card! The winner of the Re-Style contest will win an amazing make over prize pack. Here is the link to the contest and the link to their facebook page. You should go and enter! If you do be sure to let me know and I will go "like" your profile. I would LOVE it if one of my friends/readers won this contest. The top prize sounds pretty amazing! So go check it out!

Oh and don't forget to leave a comment on this post for your chance to win the $50 gift card. All comments (one entry per person) posted by Midnight April 25th will be entered to win!

Edited to add: Please be sure to leave your name (and e-mail if I don't already know you) so that I can contact you if you win! :)

The myth of doing it all

Today I read a post by Mom-101 called The Myth of Doing it All. One of the quote that got to me was "Those of us who are visibly busy I think at times give a false impression of togetherness that's rather unfortunate and unattainable." At the end of her post she asked of her readers: "Do people think you do it all? What are the things you "do it all-ers" don't do?"

I definitely don't think I do it all. If you have been at my home recently you KNOW I don't do it all. But there may be others who look at me and I think I do.

Here is my list of things I don't do:

• Change bed sheets enough
• Vacuum the 2nd level (bedrooms) of my home. Seriously, almost never. I did it last weekend and it hadn't been done in months. 
• Clean the ensuite washroom. It is the only bathroom that is never seen by anyone but my actual family, so it gets ignored. 
• I have toys on my front lawn that have been there for weeks (that is the most visible sign of my not-together-ness)
• Get my hair cut. I haven't had a hair cut in almost a year. 
• Wash my face at night. I am just too freaking tired, and I don't wear makeup anyhow. 
• Wear makeup. Again too much work.
• Exercise. Although I am working on getting that back into my life. More on that another day. 
• Read to my kids. This one is an embarrassment for me. I am often too tired at night to even consider it. We do read on occasion, like once every week or two. But it isn't every night. I need to work on this.
• I only bath my kids twice a week and the baby is lucky if he gets once a week. Although this will increase now that summer is on the horizon and we are faced with bodies slathered with sunscreen and caked with sand. Winter is a respite from the daily bath routine. 

This is only a small list. I am sure I could come up with more. Lots more. But you get the idea. So dear reader, I pass the baton to you. What do you not do?

Hiding

Today I am participating in Capital Mom's Monday Moments series. Today's moment is Hiding.  


Hiding, the steam rising around me.
Hiding, the sound of the water drowning out their voices.
Hiding, to be alone, just for a few short moments.
Hiding, cleaning my body, rejuvenating my soul.
Hiding, breathing deep, letting stress go.
Hiding, I hear a knock. it's more like banging.
Hiding, the patter of little feet on the linoleum floor.
Hiding, a little hand pushing aside the glass shower door and squinting as mist gets into his eyes.
Hiding, "ma ma ma ma" he smiles at me. "You found me" I smile back at him.

I guess I am done hiding for today.

How not to respond to a customer complaint

I recently "liked" a business on facebook. It is a health and nutrition web site that offers coaching for weight loss. They have a large number of recipes on their site and I love to browse recipes online. I had been considering looking into purchasing their coaching services to help me lose weight.

Every day the person who manages their facebook page posts recipes. They post a lot of them, and repeat them, over and over again all.day.long. Yesterday, before I sent my e-mail, I received 30 posts from them in the span of an hour. A few of them were repeats of the first few posts. They do this all day long. Easily posting 200+ times a day. Needless to say this clogs up my facebook stream and annoyed me. But I like the recipes and they seemed like a genuinely nice business. So instead of "un-liking" them I chose to tell them how I felt.

I worked in retail as a teen and young adult. The boss at one of my jobs always said that the worse complaint was the one you didn't get. The customer who had a complaint but didn't tell you. Instead they went and told others. That way you never had a chance to grow and improve. You never had a chance at all, because you don't know you are doing something wrong.

That being said, here is a transcript of the e-mail exchange between myself and this company:

From me:
I want to preface this e-mail by saying that I like what you are doing and I enjoy getting the information that you are posting about on your facebook page. That being said, I have a complaint about the amount of posts and the repetition of those posts again and again all day long. It clogs up my facebook stream. If I take today for example: In the last hour there were 31 postings and a number of those were repeats of the same post. As a person who is very interested in social media (I also follow you on twitter) I am telling you this instead of simply un-liking your page. I would think that you may be losing followers because of the high number and repetitive nature of your posts.

Please take this info into consideration.
Thank You
Chantal

Her response:
Hey Chantal! 

I am sorry you feel that way! If I were you I would just unlike the **** Health page. We are having a great response and have emails everyday from many people saying how much they love all the post to choose from on the wall.  We have over 30, 000 post view per day and are very happy with our growth! 

I think that is is one of those things that you should always consider not giving advice when it is not asked for :) 

 Have a great day! 

*** ******
My response:

***,

I am sorry that you responded to me in this tone. I agree that the
info on your page is useful and interesting (as I noted in my original
e-mail). I only take issue with the number of times you post it, and
it in turn posts in my stream. You may be happy with the response you
are getting, but you might find that if you focus on quality as
opposed to quantity you might get an even better response.

I have unfollowed (facebook and twitter) as you have suggested. Which
really is a shame because prior to receiving your e-mail I was
considering purchasing your services. 

Chantal

Her Response:

Hey Chantal! 

 There is no tone. Again sorry you feel that way. 

 Have a great day!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have removed her name and the business name because I am not going to bad mouth her personally on the internet. But HOLY SHIT!!!! Can you beleive that! I am not an expert in business but I can tell you that this is the absolute WRONG way to react to a customer complaint. If she doesn't agree with me (and it appears she doesn't ;) ) she could just say "Thanks for your input, we will take it into consideration" and file my e-mail in the trash. I had no plans of un-following her page prior to sending out my e-mail. Oh what a difference a few mis-chosen words can make.

Amazing eh!

measurments

I took a moment to weigh and measure myself last night. So here are the details

Weight: 166lbs
Waist: 39 inches
Hips: 47 inches

My BMI is 28.5 which is in the overweight category. I need to get down to 145lbs to have a normal BMI and my goal is to get to 140lbs. This is a weight I had achieved before I gave birth to M while on Weight Watchers.

This go around I don't have time for WW so I am tracking my food and exercise on an awesome (free!) online web site (and iPhone app) called MyFitnessPal. I really like this site and a lot of people I know use it. It has a social element to it, in that you friend people and we all keep track of each other and encourage each other. If you are looking for a food tracking tool give it a try. Friend me on it, I am twohandsfull.

I wasn't feeling up to before pictures last night but I do plan on taking some. I am not sure if I will post them here or not. Depends on how I feel once they are taken.

On the exercise front... I had planned on exercising last night after the kids were in bed. Best laid plans and all that. I fell asleep while laying down with M. Then when I woke up I had to rush to make the home made granola bars I wanted to make (we were out of the store bought ones). And neither boy likes them of course. Why do I even bother. I woke up a bit early today and D2 and I went down the basement to try and get some exercise in. I was doing okay until I lay on the ground to do my sit ups and D2 ran over and body slammed me and smothered me with kisses. It was awesome but didn't help me do my sit ups. Once Kevin got up I managed to get through one set of 6 different exercises before I gave up. It was getting time to get ready for work. Maybe I need to make more of an effort to work out at night. It is had though because I am so tired. But then if I exercised I probably wouldn't be so tired... Vicious cycle it is!

And now that I have posted it here, I plan on sticking to the plan... After I finish the peanut butter cookies a dear friend made me for my Birthday ;)

Trying to get a handle on things

It has been months since I have exercised, possibly years. And boy do I feel it, I am tired, tired, tired. Even though I don't weigh a ton my flab is distributed in the most unflattering way. It is time to do something about it.

It helps that spring is just around the corner and nothing makes me perkier than the warm'ish air of a spring day. Kevin has been working out at a local Martial Arts gym for a few years now and has lost quite a lot of weight in the process. He is also extremely fit, and has appointed himself my own personal trainer :)

Starting this week I will be doing 3 sets of:

3 minutes jump rope
10 sit ups
10 side sit ups
10 V squats
10 some other thing I can't remember the name of.

The whole thing should clock in around 20 minutes and I am sure my abs will be killing me afterwards.

The plan is to do this one day, and run the next. Alternating 6 days a week with one rest day. I am realistic and know that I won't start out that hard core. This week I would settle for 3 days of doing these exercises and not much else.

In solidarity with my friends at Losing it in Ottawa I will post my weight and measurements (tonight when I get home and take them.) I have been wanting to start this exercise regime for a while now and always seem to find a reason not to. I figured if I posted about it I would be accountable. So you guys need to keep me honest okay :)