Archive for the ‘PSA’ Category

Dude, I ALWAYS wanted to do this. Alas, I’m several years too old to be Stuck at Prom! However, this years contest is gearing up, and starts March 1st! What contest, you say?

The one where you and you’re prom date make your prom outfits entirely from Duck Tape! INORITE?! Here in Alaska the joke is we can fix anything with duct tape and bailing wire, though shockingly the entries from Alaska for Stuck At Prom are few and far between!

Check out the gallery! There are some AMAZING outfits (that’s last year’s winner on the left here)! And it’s not all just for fun and giggles, oh no – they’re giving away 20 Scholarships to celebrate their 10th Anniversary!

It’s really very simple! Here are the rules, and then it’s just four steps, really. Create an outfit, Make the top 10, Earn Votes/Survive each Week/Win Scholarships! This year the first place winners receive a $3000 scholarship, second place will receive $2000, and third $1000. Runner’s up get $500.

If nothing else, if you enter, you KNOW that you’ll have the most unique prom outfit at your school – so there’s nothing to lose! So, what’re you waiting for? break out the Duck Tape and design away!

Wonder if THIS would convince my boy to go to prom this year…

So – we’re knee deep into winter now, and this is right about the time that everyone in my household succumbs to the Sickness to some level. It usually has to do with the temperatures dipping to negative AreYouKiddingMe? degrees, and my teenagers inability to actually WEAR the coats they own. Because, like, that’s SO uncool, mom… (coughhack sneezeshiver fevergroan).

The ever lovely Mary Ann dropped me a line recently (and I’ve been a BADBLOGGER, and kept her waiting while I hibernated! So sorry, Mary!) to let me know that Triamimic totally has our back once again. Worried that it’s not just a cold, and it’s that dreaded flu everyone’s talking about? Wondering just how much danger of contracting said flu you child is in? Absolutely fascinated to know exactly where all these flu germs are coming from in your state?

No problem! You can keep tabs on the spread of flu in your state by clicking around on the little map basted on data from SDI Fan and track the activity levels in your area so that you can prepare, and hopefully get YOUR teenagers to wear their coats! Maybe even a HAT that like, won’t totally mess up the ‘do! Though, if you discover how to make Teenage Boys wash their hands regularly, you may have done the impossible, and I might have to beg for lessons…

Not only that, but if you click on the image above, you can get a coupon for Triamintic, and you can click here to play with the map (those darn Anchoragites are in the red! Maybe I should move to Wyoming!) to check out the Could and Cough guide, get tips on how to fend off the Flu, and even FAQs about Triaminic itself!

See – I TOLD you they had our back! Check it out today!

Now that Christmas is over, many of us are fearing opening our credit card bills as they come due this month – making smart money choices isn’t something many of us grew up with – or if we did, sometimes it’s simply hard to remember when it comes time for the holidays. And when your teenager asks for $10 bucks for this, for that, and it adds up… suddenly the thought of teaching them to make smart money choices might be a good idea!

And you’re not alone. Experts agree that starting early is a major key to later financial successes – and the National Foundation for Credit Counseling has recently announced their 2010 Poster contest to get kids involved and give them a head start toward a smart financial future.

The ever lovely Julie dropped me a note not long ago to make sure I knew about the contest, and now I’m passing that information on to you. This years theme is “$mart Money Choices = A Brighter Future” and in an effort to increase interest in financial literacy in our nation’s youth, they NFCC is sponsoring the Be Money Wi$e National Financial Literacy Poster Contest. Here are some of the details:

The contest is designed to get young students thinking about how to manage money efficiently and offers them a creative outlet to demonstrate their knowledge. It also provides the opportunity for local and national recognition for student artwork. All finalists will receive a commemorative t-shirt, and each national grade category winner will receive an award plaque and a $100 savings bond. In addition, the National Winner will be given an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., with a parent or guardian and will be given official recognition in April as part of the Financial Literacy Month on Capitol Hill!

Who can enter? All school-aged children grades 3-12 are eligible, and there will be local and national winners chosen from three grade categories. The entries will be judged by expression of the theme, artistic style, creativity and need to be submitted through an NFCC Member Agency for judging. The deadlines are all in February 2010, so be sure to check out MoneyWisePOsterContest.org to get more detailed information, rules, entry forms, and find out where to submit!

So what are you waiting for? Get your kiddo creating and learning today!

Wow – lookit that! After I hit publish on this puppy, I will have posted 15 days in a row, one for each day in November! Of course, it’s not always in the morning, and once there was even a “oh crap! here! have a picture of snow!” – but none the less, we’ve made it halfway through the month! Hurray! How are my other NaBloPoMo-mates doing?

(…don’t ask about NaNoWriMo… Shhh.)

So! Today, I wanted to point you to another site, which my lovely Mama pointed me too. She works for the local Women’s Shelter, which councils women who are in domestic violence situations. As we know, this often starts in the teenage years – with the first relationships, so that’s where we need to start, and Start Strong is an initiative that aims to do just that.

Start Strong: Building Healthy Teen Relationships is the largest initiatve ever to be funded to target the 11-14 year olds. It aims to rally entire communities to promote healthy relationships, and uses the Start Strong Mode to:
– educate and engage youth in and out of school settings,
– educate and engage teen influencers such as parents and caregivers, teachers and other mentors,
– change policy and environmental factors, and
– implement effective communications and social marketing strategies.

Start STrong has started in 11 communities, and hopes to expand. If you’re near Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Bridgeport, Bronx, Idaho, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Oakland, Providence or Wichita, please check them out, and consider getting your teens involved.

Healthy relationships start at home, and every added bit we can do to educate our teens is well worth it – so check them out!

It’s November, and that means our Strong as Steel sweepstakes is winding down soon! Have YOU entered today?

If not – get that clicking finger ready, because have I got a deal for YOU! The ever adorable Deana let all of us bloggers participating know a little secret – They’ve created a page that hosts thumbnails and links to EVERY PARTICIPATING BLOG!

Oh yes they did! That means you can enter once a day every day on any of the participating blogs until November 15th!

So what are you waiting for? Check out some other great blogs – and don’t forget to use the widget right over there —> to enter the sweepstakes before you go!

Happy Saturday, everyone!

It’s PSA Saturday, that’s what it is!

What’s PSA Saturday? It’s the day I clear out my inbox of all the AWESOME things a group of LOVELY ladies send to me to pass on to you guys! Check it out!

First up – Deana wants to know – Have you signed up for the sweepstakes yet? WHY NOT? once a day every day for another month, and you could be the proud new owner of a brand new GE Strong as Steel Appliance! Hank and Lisa have another set of helpful hints for us – this time by letting us know three of the common cooking mistakes folks make. Which one of these have YOU done?

* Not allowing their cookware or oven to heat up. It’s best to start with a hot surface, and then add food – just like you should always warm-up before diving into a workout!
* Not using enough salt and pepper. Always use it! Seasoning is important!
* Not having fun. Don’t be nervous. It’s only cooking!

Not only are the GE Appliances shiny andnew – they’re also proud owners of Energy Star Ratings! All of the ENERGY STAR qualified GE refrigerators sold in 2007 were designed to avoid the emissions of more than a whopping 944,000 metric tons of CO2 over the course of their lifetime compared to an equal number of conventional refrigerators! WOW. That is equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of more than 180,000 cars on the U.S. roads.

So what are you waiting for? SIGN UP TODAY – the widget is right over THERE -> !

Next up is Kristen and the Discover The Forest campaign! We talked a little bit about it before – the Discover the Forest “Where the other You lives” campaign hopes to stir your interest and rekindle a love of nature in you and your kids. Their website has a bunch of ideas of where to visit and what to do, and now? There’s a chance to win CASH in the Discover the Forest Sweepstakes!

It’s not just any sweepstakes either – oh no! The Discover the Forest sweepstakes is an interactive photo/art sweepstakes that encourages kids to head into the forest and return with a photo or piece of artwork that somehow represents their journey. Go out, explore and then go to the sit and upload your child’s photo or drawing depicting their nature experience. Then you can vote on all of the pictures in the gallery! Entering a picture and sharing your adventure with the world!

All those that submit artwork are eligible to win a $100 or $1000 The North Face Gift Certificate! Also, anyone who votes is eligible to win a $50 The North Face Gift Certificate! It’s a great incentive to get your families and friends to check out your child’s masterpiece online.

So what are YOU waiting for? Sign up for the above sweepstakes, then go outside and get your Nature-Walk on, and enter to win awesome gear from The North Face!

And last but CERTAINLY not least, Mary Ann knows this is a little off topic, but hey – Teenagers need pets too, right? And Mama always said – all you can do is hope and pray they make the right choice – and this choice involves the adopting of a Shelter animal, instead of going to a pet store or breeders.

The Humane Society of the US and Maddie’s Fund, along with the Ad Council has a new campaign called the Shelter Pet Project. The website includes a lot of great adoption resources, including a Pet Personal matching questionnaire and e-cards to send to your friends and family.

The site is easy to use, and a lot of fun to look through. beware though – faces like these:

Are totally hard to resist! Check it out today – and find your perfect furry friend at a shelter near you!

A couple goodies for you today!

First off, thanks to my BFF in California and the Bakersfield Californian, today’s PSA is all about the Coupon Cutting at Save At Home Mommy!

Now, a lot of these coupons don’t work for me, being as I live in Alaska and we don’t have the same stores – but a lot of them do, too – and when you’re feeding a gazillion teenagers and their friends, you know it’s all about pinching those pennies until it HURTS. Kerri Scarlett understands, and delivers daily deals and coupons to print out – and even recipes to go with some of the sales she discovers! Today, for instance, London Broil is on sale at Albertsons for $1.79/lb – and she includes several ideas of what to do with the meat to help it stretch farther, as well as links to some recipes to help get you started.

There’s also Frugal Finds Friday – where everyone helps finding exciting deals across the country – so be sure to check it out! That extra buck or two you save could mean an extra Diet Coke for Mom!

Even better? Free Chocolate Friday. INORITE?

So check out saveathomemommy.com today!

Next up, it’s Hey Josh!

I’ve featured him a couple times before, and the link to his site is right down there on the sidebar too – Josh Shipp is funny, engaging, and “In your face, but on your side!” With his snark and fun and honest take on honest problems – including unsolicited advice to the Australian Girl who got lost in a storm drain and instead of using her cell phone to call for help – used it to update her Face Book Status with a call for help.

…

Yeah. I know.

ANYWAY! Josh has a couple new exciting projects – one is a weekly advice show on youtube. Every Wednesday, Josh answers emails and gives some honest and real helpful hints on how to deal with everyday trials our teens face. And he has the Owl of Wisdom. Who doesn’t love an Owl of Wisdom?!!? Here’s the most recent show…

Josh has another project coming up too – a television show called “Jump Shipp” where it’s not all about his dating life, which was my first thought because I’m really 12, but about helping those who want to leave the job they hate and jump ship to a career they find rewarding and fun. It’s going to be on the Halogen network, and you can read more about it here!

So, apparently, there’s this big habbabalou circling schools and the internets and all sorts of things right now, concerning a presidential address to the kids in school tomorrow. (Can you tell I don’t watch the news? Heh. I only know because it came through my feed reader and other mom’s are talking about it.) Tomorrow, I guess, is the traditional first day of school for most folks, though most everyone I know has already been in school for a couple weeks.

I think the best coverage I’ve seen on this subject is from Rachel Sklar, with Mediaite, and her article “President Obama Is Coming For Your Children!” Mostly, because she starts out with the same exact thing I said.. “Seriously, are people in this country CRAZY?”

Presidents have addressed our children before – Just say No, anyone? – and the only difference is that Media is used more often in the classroom today than it was in years past – giving easy access to it. Even so, it seems people are more upset about the message, the propaganda, the BRAINWASHING OF OUR CHILDREN by the leader of the Free World.

What is this message? Well – there has been no releasing of his speech, but if the president himself is to be believed in a recent interview with a school child, where he said:

“On September 8th…I will be making a big speech to young people across the country about the importance of education, the importance of staying in school, how we want to improve our education system and why it’s so important for the country.”

OH NOZ! The President is gonna tell our kids to GASP STAY IN SCHOOL and LEARN MOAR STUFF. SOMEONE STOP HIM!

Also, there’s a teacher’s guide being passed around that’s also subject to debate, because it (GASP) suggests that Teachers TALK TO THEIR STUDENTS about the Presidential speech. It suggests that they ask the students to ask themselves questions, like “What is the President trying to tell me, asking me to do, what challenging ideas is he asking me to think about.. is he asking things of my parents, teachers, American Citizens?”

Oh no. Critical thinking at such an early age. IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT! (…and I feel fiiiiiiiiiiiiine…)

The teachers guide goes on to ask the students to share their ideas and thoughts about the speech. So what are many schools doing? (Not mine, though I live in a predominantly Republican state – in fact, they didn’t even do this mass panic LETTER TO THE PARENTS thing either. I don’t even know if they’re showing the speech, here. No matter.) They’re sending out mass messages, warning the parents, giving them the option to skip school, attend school with their child to view the speech, etc. While folks online are comparing this to Hitler’s Youth groups.

It’s all a bit ridiculous, don’t you think? Our president, not the first by a long shot, is going to encourage our kids to stay in school and work hard. Teachers are going to encourage the children to think on their own, and figure out what the message means to them individually. President Obama is not going to brain wash our children with a single speech – and even if he did, that’s not his fault, but YOURS for not doing a better job parenting your children and teaching them critical thought, but making them mindless sheep and followers.

…what, too harsh? My quick little speech there doesn’t make you instantly think that you’re a bad parent raising sheep and followers? It didn’t make you bundle up your kids and take them to school to force feed them a presidential speech? It didn’t make you THINK about anything you haven’t already thought of?

Yeah. This “propaganda” thing is a little harder than it looks, huh?

Seriously, folks. If you’re doing your job as parents, and brainwashing your spawn with your own ideals properly on your own before they get to school, this isn’t going to change their thoughts on anything at all. It’s a speech. And given Obama’s flair for speeches, it’ll be a good one. Relax, and enjoy it.

PS – While I was posting this, they actually released the speech – you can read it here. Here’s an excerpt:

Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.

That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, “I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it.

I do that every day. Asking for help isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength. It shows you have the courage to admit when you don’t know something, and to learn something new. So find an adult you trust – a parent, grandparent or teacher; a coach or counselor – and ask them to help you stay on track to meet your goals.

And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country.

The story of America isn’t about people who quit when things got tough. It’s about people who kept going, who tried harder, who loved their country too much to do anything less than their best.

Yeah. Break out the picket signs, ya’ll – they’re gonna brain wash your kids into learning more and working hard. GASP.

My girls are all about projects: drawing and creating and writing and coloring and painting and everything in between. I have boxes and boxes and piles and walls FILLED with their masterpieces, each one special and unique and showing another part of my daughters’ creative spirit – something I love to encourage.

The ever-lovely Marissa contacted me recently with a new site to check out – The Creative Park for Creative Minds site, sponsored by Cannon. It’s fun, free, and has a TON of craft projects for you’re little budding artists to try. They have ideas and templates for any lesson plan (for those teachers among us!) and helpful tips too! There’s 3D Paper Crafts, scrapbooks, calendars and even some tips for your digital photography! There are interactive projects that help teach kids about geography, history, social studies, science and more! Who doesn’t want to teach our kids something when they don’t even realize they’re being taught? Sneaky teaching is fun!

To help take those projects to the next level, check out the Learning to Create site, and then pop over to the Cannon Creative Park for even more ideas and projects for the whole family!

Can it be done, is it being done, and how do you know?

We’ve heard that the government can do it, and has done it, but there are ways for the every day joe willing to pay the price to tap into our cell phones too. Nana sent me this link, which is an investigative report done on just such a thing.

It boiles down to this – someone was able to download a spy software onto a ladies phone, and then they were able to track her moves – getting a satellite update on her location, get her text messages, and all her incoming and outgoing calls.

Scary stuff.

So what can you do for you and your teenagers? First and foremost, keep a close eye on your cell phone – don’t let anyone get a chance to put anything on your phone while you’re not looking. You can also put a security password in so no one else can use it, if you feel you’re vulnerable to this sort of thing. You can remove the battery when you’re not using it, and look for these signs that something may be wrong:

- Cell phone battery is warm even when your phone has not been used
- Cell phone lights up at unexpected times, including occasions when phone is not in use
- Unexpected beep or click during phone conversation

It seems excessive, sure – but when it comes to protecting ourselves and our teens, the best thing we can do is be aware of what CAN happen, so that we’ll be prepared if something DOES happen.