a peek inside the fishbowl

It’s that time of year agaaaaain. *jazz hands*

Are you ready for this?

For those of you who weren’t with me last year, or the year before, here is my attempt to explain “25 days”  the best I can. :)

The month of December is a busy time of year for just about everyone. And no matter how much I tried, I found myself struggling to find a way to balance the fun of the holidays with my growing list of things that needed to be done. I knew I needed to get organized, but more importantly, I needed Christmas to be joyful again, not just for myself, but for my family.

A few years ago I hit upon a solution that helped me stay on top of the chaos and enjoy the season; I replaced our traditional drugstore brand chocolate-filled advent calendar with 25 small paper envelopes of my own design. I fill each one with a fun task, seasonal event, or family activity. No chocolate, no shopping, and no cheap gifts — just family time.

This will be our fourth year (?!?) with our homemade countdown calendar. It takes some planning but the end result is worth it.

To summarize: my 25 Days of Christmas is about a few different things.

1) Getting organized.
2) Being mindful.
3) Not letting the month of December get away from me.
4) Making it fun for the family and creating some great memories.

I sit down with my agenda in late November and schedule the most time-consuming activities (such as trimming the tree) for early December. Once I’ve pencilled in the things we need to do, I fill the remaining days with things we love to do, most of which are inexpensive kid-friendly activities. The result? Twenty-five days of happy, organized holiday fun which emphasizes family instead of stuff.

It’s been fascinating to see which activities our girls get the most excited about. It is almost always the simplest things that they enjoy the most. As an added bonus our countdown calendar gives me the opportunity to get organized in time for the busiest month of the year. Buying and decorating our tree, giving to charity, and baking cookies were all things we were doing anyway. Planning it out in advance this way made it easier to handle and made it feel like Christmas again. Hallelujah!

How to make your own countdown calendar
Non-crafty types, don’t fear! These are very easy to make. Just be Zen with imperfection. Don’t stress if you can’t cut a straight line (like me!) or you’ve creased your envelopes. No one will notice.

You will need:

• Paper. Scrapbooking paper is ideal because it’s a little heavier (and is often double-sided) and is more durable. You can also use old Christmas cards, wrapping paper, or magazines.
• Scissors
• Glue stick
• Pencil
• Envelope template
• Miniature clothespins and ribbon (optional)

1. Print the template onto heavy card stock (adjusting size as desired) and cut it out. Use this to trace the envelope shape onto your paper of choice.

2. Cut along the outside lines, fold along the dotted lines.

3. Glue the bottom flap to the two side flaps let dry. See! A tiny envelope!

4. We count down to Christmas Day so I number our envelopes from 1 to 25. Use a word-processing program to print your numbers, cut them out and paste them on. You can also use rubber stamps or just write them out.

5. Print your list of activities and cut them into individual slips. Don’t seal the envelopes or number the slips. Add each activity the night before in case you need to switch it at the last minute. (For example, if there’s no snow you won’t be able to go tobogganing.) Use the clothespins to attach the envelopes to a pretty ribbon or display them in a big jar or bowl. Whatever works best for you.

You can count down to just about anything. How about a countdown to Kwanzaa? Or counting down to a visit with grandma and grandpa? Or Winter solstice? Incorporate own holiday traditions and your kids will remember it forever. And they won’t miss the chocolates. I promise.

If 25 is too much, just do 12! Trust me. I get it.

Here is a super pretty photo of a few envelopes I made for an article I wrote for Canadian Family Magazine in 2009 as well as a link to a list of suggested activities.

Keep these few tips in mind:

• Keep your activities fun and family-oriented.
• Consider leaving “shopping” off the list.
• Do the bigger tasks early in the month (I learned this the hard way).
• Mix it up with some cheap and kid-friendly fun activities: building a snowman, stargazing, sledding or skating, making paper snowflakes, hot chocolate, going carolling, giving to charity, etc. See above for link to a longer list of suggestions. Better yet, add your own in the comments of this post.

This may sound like a lot of work, but it is totally worth it! Not only do you get yourself organized for the month of December, but it puts the emphasis on family, rather than gifts.

Anyway, last year I blogged and twittered and Flickrd and was all over the WWW with this and it became a giant group effort, and although it was a lot of fun I think I’m going to be a little quieter about it this time around. If this blog post inspires you to do it and blog about it and link back here, or tweet (#25daysofChristmas) great, but I’m not organizing a big collective THING this year. I will post about it every once in awhile, but I don’t want to let it dominate. I want to save my energy for the important stuff. You know what I mean? :)

Now g’wan and get Christmassy! And let me know how it goes!

ETA: If you want to use the “25 days” image at the top of this post, or the smaller that’s in the lower right-hand sidebar — please do!

Last week Shannon and I hosted our third Ottawa Brain Brain event in which we talked about two recent social-media related conferences.

Every time I walk away from OBD I feel reinspired and all floaty and happy to have the opportunity to learn from so many smart and wonderful people. Thank you to those who braved Elgin Street parking and came out to share your knowledge and experiences with the group! I know how hard it can be to put yourself out there and open up. BUT YOU DID. Thank you for that. New OBDs are being planned for the New Year.

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Blogging about blogging is so META. Isn’t it?

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I’ve been wondering if I’m becoming even more jaded and cynical the longer I hang around in the blogosphere.  Why is it that some people are able to skim the surface, look at things on a superficial level whereas I am seemingly unable to chill out about certain topics?

I am gearing up for a huge rant here – one that has been percolating for a few weeks and I’m finally drumming it out now. I’ve been talking and thinking a lot about this World of Blogging and I want to finally clear my head.

I attended the Shes Connected conference in Toronto (SCCTO) back in October. SavvyMom was one of the sponsors and extended the invitation to me.

SCCTO looked like a great opportunity to meet other likeminded women living and working in the area of blogging and social media. As a time-crunched mama I had to consider the pros and cons of attending.

Pros: meeting people, networking, learning.
Cons: time and money.

The conference itself was free to attend but I’d be driving down and staying overnight. I decided to stay two nights because I didn’t want to drive all the way back to Ottawa after the conference. Thankfully, fuel was cheap (HELLO PRIUS. My consumption was 4.4L/100kms on the trip down. Woot!) and I snagged a deal at a hotel within walking distance.

I haven’t been to as many conferences as some other people out there but I’m willing to bet that conference participants aren’t often stopped, greeted and hugged by conference organizers. But then SCCTO wasn’t like many other conferences. I got a big hug from Donna Marie Antoniadis, co-founder Shes Connected. I was cool with that. In fact, I thought it was nice.

SCCTO was ultimately about connecting brands (i.e. Kraft and Coke and Maple Leaf) with top “influencers” in the online world…  women who influence public opinion within their own spheres (like Facebook, via blogs etc). The idea of “Influencers” is not new. There’ve always been women who like to chat and share information but it’s traditionally been happening at the playground, over the back fence, or over a cup of tea.

Blogging is the new back fence.

I was aware of what I was getting into because I took the time to read the marketing material that was given out to the sponsors (a.k.a the brands) of the conference. (PDF here.) This document was right on the SCCTO website, available for all to view in black and white.

“… brands will have direct access to some of Canada’s top digitally connected women, (moms, bloggers and leaders in social media). Learn how to engage these influential women with your products and services.”

and

“If you connect with 1 influential digital woman at our conference – she has the ability to connect your brand with thousands of other women. Now imagine connecting with 100 of Canada’s most influential women in a one day event!”

Participants should not have been surprised to discover that by attending the conference they were essentially giving brands (who each paid $5000 to be there) permission to pick their brains for the cost of lunch and a conference pass. (Oh, and a bag of swag, which was heavily emphasized in the lead up to the event.)

Brands see dollar signs in the relationships that women have with other women (we’re influencers, remember?). So it was with a healthy dose of scepticism that I attended this conference.

Social media represents a giant challenge to these big companies.  Traditional media cannot accept swag, bloggers can, and blogs don’t work in the same way as print ads and television commercials. Traditional advertising is one-way, and broadcasts a tailored message to a very wide audience. Social media is narrowcasting a customized message to a niche audience, and it’s made even more complicated (not to mention risky) because there’s an added level of interaction that wasn’t there before. At no other time in advertising history have campaigns been able to backfire so horribly and become PR nightmares. Equally so, a great idea can spread like wildfire and gain exposure to insanely huge numbers via viral marketing.

Brands are finding this a tough transition but we are all muddling through as we go. Changing attitudes and changing technologies are making it even harder.

I was eager to attend SCCTO because I wanted to see what the brands are thinking about on their end. What are they doing in the realm of social media? How are they engaging bloggers? What are they looking for? What’s in it for me?

I can’t deny that the idea of employment also crossed my mind. I think I’d make a great sounding board. (I’m still wondering why brands don’t call me up and ask me about campaigns they’re planning. And pay me to do so.)

Part of SCCTO provided some great learning and networking. Other parts I felt taken advantage of. For example, each of the big sponsors had 20-odd minutes to make a presentation to the audience. (Keep in mind, we were supposed to be 100 of Canada’s top social media influencers.) Calvin Klein used their time to give me the hard sell, not tell me about their social media or marketing strategies, or really engage my interest from a business perspective. I was trapped in an informercial – for 20 minutes.

It’s obviously hard for some companies to understand that they don’t need to do the hard sell. This was not supposed to be a trade show. Building brands can happen indirectly by building relationships. CK’s presentation would have been so much more effective if they’d approached the audience as professionals, not as a future sale.

Brands also had the opportunity to talk to us about their social media campaigns in a round-table format with smaller groups. I found myself at the Maple Leaf table. There were four people from their marketing department, including a chef who’d made a presentation earlier that afternoon.

They asked us if we enjoyed our lunch. (It was provided by ML and they’re promoting various “natural” cold cuts and a new line of Dempster’s bread.) The answer all around: a resounding yes.

“I liked your bread,” I said. “But I’m a big label reader and didn’t have the opportunity to read the ingredients. Is there glucose/fructose in it?”

Sidebar: why am I concerned? Why is anyone? This next part is from Wikipedia (from here):

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) — also called glucose-fructose syrup in the UK, and glucose/fructose in Canada — comprises any of a group of corn syrups that has undergone enzymatic processing to convert some of its glucose into fructose to produce a desired sweetness. In the United States, consumer foods and products typically use high-fructose corn syrup as a sugar substitute. In the United States, it has become very common in processed foods and beverages, including breads, cereals, breakfast bars, lunch meats, yogurts, soups and condiments.

Glucose/fructose is derived from corn, and it’s a cheap substitute for sugar.

“Critics of the extensive use of HFCS in food sweetening argue that the highly processed substance is more harmful to humans than regular sugar, contributing to weight gain by affecting normal appetite functions.”

So I asked the question. I had to! There was a pause. No one from Team Maple Leaf seemed to know. The pause grew longer.

And then, as if she was unsheathing a sword from its scabbard, a fellow blogger pulled one of the Dempster loaves out of her bag. WHOOSH.

I scanned the ingredients as the whole table waited.

“Yes,” I said. “There is.”

Aaaaand that’s where the conversation ended, or at least the one that I had tried to kickstart. I could have pushed it but the moment quickly passed and the moment was gone. Whether or not they understood the controversy surrounding HFCS, no one from ML addressed my concerns. An excellent opportunity was lost, but at least I got to make a point. And hopefully it will be passed along to someone who has the power to do something about it. I don’t want to buy your bread if it has glucose-fructose in it.

I know that this conference couldn’t have happened without companies like Maple Leaf. Their commitment meant that I was able to attend for free. But why couldn’t they have been prepared for my question? I know for certain that I’m not the only person who’s concerned about HFCS.

In the end, I have to be honest … and I might be burning a bridge … but I am really on the fence about SCCTO and if it doesn’t change I probably won’t attend future versions of it. Despite the big hug at the outset – the one which signalled to me that I am being embraced by my community – the rest of the event seemed too heavily weighted on brand side and much less so on the community side. And when I think hard about what blogging means to me, why it’s important, it’s because of the community, not about the swag. Or Kraft. Or Maple Leaf.

See? Jaded.

On one hand I was happy for this small opportunity to hang out with my tribe and network with new people, but as I drove home with one thing on my mind: Bloggers, we are undervaluing our worth. Big time.

Gah. I need to break this up into two posts. There’s just too much to cover. More later.

Friday was a teeny bit hectic.

I didn’t have a peaceful night’s sleep the night before – I was too wired – and I was up at the crack of dawn to get ready for the MomCafe event at which I was speaking.

I washed my sweater. It may have shrunk a bit, but I ‘m not sure, but the shoulders were decidedly damp as I ran around the house making sure everyone was up and properly breakfasted.

Until a few days before I had forgotten it was a P.D. day and that I had stupidly scheduled a parent-student-teacher meeting at 7:45. I would have preferred to be relaxing at home before my event but that was not going to be happening..

I walked out the door on Friday morning wound up tighter than a Sealy Posturpedic spring. And this spring was ready to sproing.

The teacher meeting was fine, and after it was over I shuttled the girls off to a friends (they went to Gotta Paint to make Christmas ornaments) and made it to my event with time to spare.

It was great. There were a few friendly faces in the audience too – which I really appreciated. My friend Anna Epp, the event photographer (here are her pics!); Lara who is slowly taking over the blogosphere with Losing It, Kids in the Capital AND her own blog; Donna from Elation Centre, and Sara-Lynn from Macaroni Kid (who was speaking with me!). Everything went off without a hitch, and I got to meet some fantastic women and munch on a lovely lemon-blueberry scone from Viva Loca.

I practically floated out of the room, picked up the girls, went home for lunch and a nap, did a quick phone-interview with a local paper, and then took the girls and the dog for a short visit to Britannia Beach. Unfortunately – except for a small benchless stretch of lawn – almost every part of the park around Britannia Beach is off-limits to dogs, so we picked up and went to Andrew Haydon instead. (Which proved to be a much more dog-friendly part of Ottawa. Yay!)

The light was just about as perfect as you could get. The water was still. The grass was green. The leaves were crunchy. The trees were welcoming.

Overall: a day for the record books.