3/22/15: Avery Labels from Shoplet

Shoplet has some wonderful office supplies and at great prices.  I have used Avery products many times and have always loved them.  I was very happy to receive some of their shipping labels from Shoplet for review.

I received a variety of their shipping labels.  I love the brown color of these Shipping Labels.  It makes it look like you have printed right on to the box.

I have used these TrueBlock Shipping Labels for the last five years for our school art show.  I printed them and stuck them to index cards to label the art.  I found the templates online from Avery very easy to find.  Plus there is an Avery Wizard that can be downloaded and used with Microsoft Word and Excel to create your labels.  It makes it simple to bring in an Excel list and format it for these labels.

Here you can see how great they looked as art labels.

These Shipping Labels With Paper Receipts are awesome.  The TrueBlock Technology is great as it blocks out what is behind it.  Plus they are so easy to print on to.

Living in New England we have lots of snow and bad weather.  These WeatherProof Mailing Labels are awesome as they are super strong and can handle the elements.  Plus I had no issues with them getting jammed in the printer.

What I also love about Avery is their support of Box Tops for Education.  As a PTO President I am very aware of the benefits of Box Tops to our schools and love to collect them.  I love that Avery has two on their packages!

You can also check out Promotional Products that Shoplet has.  They have everything for your business and personal office needs.

Disclosure:  I received these products for review purposes.  No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

3/20/15: New Hampshire State Baton Competition

Last weekend Lauren competed in another baton competition.  This was the New Hampshire State Competition where she competed as a visitor.  She did absolutely amazing winning Advanced Mardi Gras Queen, Advanced Best Appearing, Novice Basic March, Novice Open Solo and coming in second in Visitor Solo!

The day started out with the team competition.  Here she is ready to go for the day.

Here she is with more of the Suburban-ettes.

She competed with her team to Surf's Up which took first place!

The girls did awesome.  I love this routine.

 I love that they use hoops, surf boards, beach balls and batons with streamers.

 Here they are in their final pose.

Then they performed to Break Free which also took first place!

 Here is Lauren ready to go.

 I love this with the baton mid air.

 All the girls in their pose.

Last but not least they competed with Conga which took second place.

 They did an awesome job!

 Here is their final pose.

Then there was a break where they announced the team winners.  They also presented a special award in Memory of Linda Lanni who was my baton teacher.  The two ladies running the competition also took from her.  This was very moving for me and I went up to present the award with them.

Then it was on to modeling.  Lauren won Mardi Gras Queen.  Being in Advanced she can wear a dress.

 Here she is modeling.

 Love this picture.

 Interview time.

 Here she is getting her award.

 Here was more of her team ready to model.

Then she did Best Appearing and also won.

 Best Appearing is done in costume with no interview.

Then last up was Basic March and Solo.

 She did fantastic with only one drop in each routine.

 The best part was that after she was done she wanted to do her solo more!  I was not surprised about this since every minute she is home she has the baton in her hand practicing.

Here she is with her coach!  What an awesome day of competition.

Congratulations Lauren!

3/17/15: DreamWorks Home Advanced Screen Passes Available

There is another great kids movie coming out from DreamWorks called Home and I am excited to give you the chance to attend an advanced screening of it for free.  I have 25 sets of 4 tickets to the movie!  That is 100 tickets total!

How to get passes:

To download your complimentary passes, click here: www.gofobo.com/home1234 

HOME AMC Boston Common

Tuesday, March 24th at 6:30PM 

More about the movie:

Release: March 27, 2015, in 3D Director: Tim Johnson Screenplay by: Based upon the novel The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex Producers: Mireille Soria, Suzanne Buirgy, Christopher Jenkins Cast: Jim Parsons, Rihanna, Steve Martin, and Jennifer Lopez When Oh, a loveable misfit from another planet, lands on Earth and finds himself on the run from his own people, he forms an unlikely friendship with an adventurous girl named Tip who is on a quest of her own. Through a series of comic adventures with Tip, Oh comes to understand that being different and making mistakes is all part of being human. And while he changes her planet and she changes his world, they discover the true meaning of the word HOME.

Disclosure:  I received 100 passes to an advanced screening of Home to giveaway.  No other compensation was received and all opinions are my own.

3/16/15: School Art Show

Last week we had our annual Art Show at school and it was a huge success with 60 pieces of art from grades kindergarten to fifth grade.  I have been running the art show since Evan was in kindergarten so this was my fifth time running it.  The kids were great helping me out by handing out programs.

Both kids did an awesome job making art pieces.  They both competed in the 3 dimensional category.  Evan loves Minecraft so he decided to do a creeper.  He individually glued all of those pieces of paper on to it.

Lauren loves Frozen so she decided to make an Olaf.  He turned in to Olaf in summer as he was melting away and a bit large.  He sort of scared me every time I came around the corner and saw him in our dining room.

We have judges come in that are artists in town and judge the art.  I don't know how they do it, as I loved all the kids artwork.  Evan won in the fourth grade for 3 dimensional.

He was so excited!

Lauren won in the second grade for 3 dimensional.  Here she is getting her medal from me.

Lauren was thrilled that she won.

Now a question I have for you is how do you judge if the student made the art?  I had a parent approach me and complain about this on one piece and how do you determine if it is true.  The same goes for a school project that a parent has done for a child.  Do teachers ever send home a project questioning if it was made by the student?  In my mind it is a school art show and the rules are in the registration that the art piece must be done by the student in the last year.  If the student has not made it they have to live with the fact that it was not created by them.  Plus as I always say, I am volunteering and running the art show out of the goodness of my own heart.  I am happy to have others become involved and help run it too if they would like things done differently.  But in general the people who complain the most are generally the ones that never volunteer to help.
 Congratulations to both Evan and Lauren on their wins who made their own art.

 Now I get a little rest until I need to run the Family Fun Dance at school.

3/9/15: Performing in the School Talent Show

I am so proud of Lauren, she did the school Talent Show this year!  Lauren is an awesome performer and has wonderful talent in baton twirling and dance however never wanted to do the school talent show.  She performs in recitals, shows, and competitions but was nervous to perform in front of her peers solo.  I can totally understand as I remember how I felt performing my solo in shows at school.  I am so happy this year that she decided to do it.  She did a baton twirling and knife (don't worry it is not sharp) twirling routine to the song Conga.  I did my first Talent Show at school to the same song twirling the same knife.  She was one of the Winners!!!!

Here are the other Kindergarten through second grade performers.  They all have so much courage to get up and perform and all as soloists.

Here is Luaren doing her routine.  She was fantastic!  I think it also helped that her 2nd grade teacher was the Emcee for the show and she wanted to show her the cool things she does with her baton.  In fact when she was Star of the Week she said she wants to grow up and be a professional baton twirler!

I guess I should have aimed the camera higher, her baton is up in the air.

Here you can see it in mid toss.

She had no drops!!!

Smiling for the judges.

Another one mid toss.

Her finger twirls.

Her split was really good too.

Horizontal toss.

Ever time she performs my nerves kick in for her remembering my fear when performing.  I think my hands were shaking.

Now with her knife twirling.

She did awsome as it is pretty heavy.

AWESOME JOB!

Here is some video of the performance.

Here she is with some of the performers after they were done.

She sure does have talent!

I love this picture with her friends.

Great job Lauren, I hope she performs every year!