The Blonde Diaries

Learning can be fun!

Growing up how much I learned about a subject depended entirely on the teacher who was teaching. Unfortunately, I did not have the best history teachers so I learned about the Native Americans but not much after they settled. In college I focused on World History as that seemed more interesting to me. If you have a high schooler who is in a similar situation - loves history but isn’t learning the subject very well - I have a great site to show to you. Brightstorm.com is a website that offers high school level courses in History, Geometry, Algebra II, and SAT/AP test prep on various subjects. You can Sign up for a free brightstorm acocunt and check out the course offerings. Each course runs around $50 for a 12 month subscription. You can watch the episodes online anytime you want and learn at your own pace. The “teachers” have great personalities and can really catch your attention during the lesson. I have signed up for a 12-month course on US History to see if I can learn a few things that I missed during my schooling years. The sign up and check out process was very easy. After I registered, I received an activation code. Upon receiving and confirming my account, I was able to choose a course and add it to my shopping basket. I checked out and immediately my course and episodes were available for me to start watching. I have an excited British girl teaching me about US history right now. She is giving a course overview and it sounds like we will be covering quite some ground in this upcoming year on a variety of history topics as well as the culture of the times. I look forward to the activities I will be doing as we will be required to use our critical thinking skills as well.

For more information visit partners.brightstorm.com/sheridan.

Create an Inviting Home without spending a fortune

After Mike and I moved in two weeks ago, I started to dust and put things away. I also started noticing a few things like how knicked up some of our furniture pieces are and how dull our drawer pulls were on our respective dressers. Instead of throwing out our furniture like most people our age do, I decided to look online to see what I could do to spruce things up around here. I found furniture pens that match the various shades of wood to help fill in and cover knicks and scratches so that they wouldn’t be obvious from a distance. I also found some decorative hardware, aka drawer knobs, from Invitinghome.com for about $30 each. Since I only need a few the price isn’t too big of a deal. I found these ones which are Victorian Knobs in Antique Brass finish with Blue Sodalite. I love the color blue and the brass would match the color of my wood drawers beautifully as that is the color of the plain knobs I have now.

If knobs aren’t what you are looking for, Inviting Home has lots of other ways to spruce up your home without spending a fortune. Their website is very inviting for browsers, very much similar to their name “inviting home”. The website has an inspiration section, an installation section for do it yourselfers, and a decorating ideas section to help you figure out different ways to spruce up your home. One way to make a dramatic improvement would be to install crown molding which is very easy to do yourself. Inviting home has instructions on installing crown molding and multiple pages of different crown molding designs for you to choose from. You are guaranteed to find one that you love at a great price.

Weekend Planning

I am so ready for the weekend. I have had such an uneventful week that I am ready to regroup over this weekend and get some things accomplished. First, I want to hit Old Navy and return a few items I bought but do not have a use for. I want to go now rather than after black Friday so I can beat the shopping madness. I don’t understand how people keep their retail jobs through the Holiday season but kudos to them. After the return to Old Navy, I want to run by my Super Marshalls to check out a few of their items for possible holiday gifts. When my mom and I were in there last week they had Bliss body sets like you would find at Sephora for next to nothing. Lastly, I want to try and hit the gym all 3 days to get me in a routine and ready to face next week. How is your weekend shaping up? Anything fun or exciting?

How to market and promote your business in this economy

I had another “Go Green” meeting today and one of the things that was brought up was how our firm was looking into some cost cutting measures which would also aid in our “Go Green” initiative. One of the items mentioned was decreasing our travel expenses by holding more video conferences instead of flying/driving/using hotel rooms for a one hour meeting with our colleagues in other offices.

The idea of video conferences or virtual conferences is not something that is new but it is something that is getting a new look with the downturn in the economy and the “Go Green” initiatives by many companies. Marketing seems to be one of the first places to cut costs which leaves many people wondering what they can do next to keep awareness on their business or products. Yovia and Marketing Sherpa have come together to present a virtual conference on How to Viral Market so that you can learn how to plan and execute your campaigns as well as what has worked for companies and what hasn’t worked too well so you can avoid doing those things. This virtual conference will be held on their website on December 10, 2008 from 2-3:30pm Eastern Standard Time. If you are looking for help in this new and important area of marketing this is one conference you will not want to miss.

Thank goodness for dial up

Thank goodness for dial up and a little savvyness with blackberries.  Last year one of my associates was talking about how he didn’t have internet at home, rather he used his blackberry as a modem.  I’ve never really looked into this but after getting off of the phone with AT&T tech support once again I have learned that I will not have internet until Friday if the latest thing they are trying works.  Totally unacceptable.  So with a little searching on my Blackberry and trying a few things out I have learned how to connect my Blackberry to my computer and use it as a modem.  I finally have internet at least temporarily.  Now I am going to the gym before coming back and visiting some Wordless Wednesday participants and seeing what photos are being posted today.