Blog Bits: How Email Subscriptions Work

Warning: this post is not intended for experienced bloggers with email delivery programs set up and running. I'm actually writing this for the large majority of my readers who are not bloggers, many of whom have asked me questions lately about how it works when you subscribe to a blog through email. Newbie bloggers might take away some helpful info, and of course everyone is welcome to read on!

How it works from the reader's end:

If you love a blog (like This Mom Loves, of course) you can usually find a spot on the homepage directing you to sign up for blog updates through email.

Mine is a little logo that looks like an envelope at the top of my sidebar, and if you click on it, you are directed to a FeedBurner Email Subscription page for This Mom Loves. (I chose to go with FeedBurner, but there are other popular services like MailChimp that you can use to send out your posts for you.)

You enter your email address, type in the captcha that's shown, and click on "Complete Subscription Request". There's still one more important step: you'll receive an email called "FeedBurner Subscription Confirmation" (check your spam if it doesn't arrive right away), and you MUST open that email and click to verify the subscription before you'll start getting updates.

After that, you'll receive any new blog posts from that site in your email daily (though I don't post that often), which some people appreciate so they don't have to keep checking the site regularly for new posts. Most bloggers send links to their new content through social media as well, but if you don't want to have to go looking anywhere, you can get posts delivered right to you, which you can read and/or delete at your leisure.

If you want to head to the blog to read the post, you just click on the title of the email. Sometimes people choose to do this because they want to see what comments have been left (they don't appear in the emails) or because photos or videos can't be seen properly. After I posted the video of my first CHEX Daily appearance a couple of weeks ago, I quickly learned that most people reading my posts in email could not see the video I had embedded in the blog post. From now on, I'll include a link to the clip as well to make it easier to find.

I have my FeedBurner subscriptions programmed to be automatically delivered to readers at 9 a.m. each day (which hopefully reinforces to you that I am not sitting at my desk in my classroom blogging when I should be teaching!)

When the emails land in your inbox, the "from" line reads "This Mom Loves", and the "subject" is the title of that day's blog post.

I made a choice to have the entire posts available in the body of the email, but this is a heavily debated topic in the blogging world. Many bloggers just email the start of the post, with a "click here to read more", directing you to the blog to finish reading the post in its entirety. I find as a blog reader, it bugs me when I have to take that extra step. I sign up to receive blog posts because I WANT to do the reading in my email, and it's an inconvenience (however slight) to click, open a browser, and pick up where I left off.

As a blogger, I understand the theory that your pageviews may very well go down if you make it too easy for people to stay away, (and stats can be very important when it comes to working with brands, plus advertising revenue is often based on how many times your blog is seen online) but I'd rather respect my readers' preferences and keep my content circulating.

It's easy to unsubscribe if a particular blog just isn't doing it for you anymore, or if you decide you'd prefer to read it directly on the web instead of in your email. On that note, I have a confession to make: when I first started using FeedBurner, I checked off the box "Send me an email whenever people unsubscribe". Why on earth did I do that? Those messages, though infrequent, would always bring me down. (Interestingly, there's no option to be notified when someone new signs up!) When putting together this blog post, I made a decision to uncheck that box...and it feels so freeing!

Subscribing through email can be a very convenient way to get new content from your favourite bloggers right in your inbox. Why don't you go ahead and sign up for This Mom Loves right now?

If anyone has questions, I'd be glad to answer them, and comments are welcome as always!

Girl's Bedroom: Facelift # 2

It's been a busy summer! You may have already seen our bathroom reno, or my older daughter's bedroom facelift. Today we're moving on to Maggie's room (she's the six-year-old).


BEFORE:

This bedroom was the last room in our home to have the original paint colour (from 11 years ago). It started as a guest room, then became the nursery for Frannie, followed by Maggie, who has been in there ever since.

Here are a few "before shots":

AFTER:

Maggie selected her bedding from Target, and while at first she was drawn to the patterns with horses, etc. I convinced her to choose a pattern that would grow with her, as I don't plan to redo her room for several years.

She knew she wanted pink walls, so we grabbed several paint chips to bring home and look at with the bedding, and I gave her a few suitable choices, leaving the final selection to her.

We considered changing the girls' flooring (they still have carpet) but it wasn't in the budget so we gave it a good cleaning and will keep a change on the list for the future.

I had the bright idea to move her dresser into the closet, which I did before I thought to grab the camera for the "before" pics, but it's definitely helping with organization "after".

Here's what it looks like:

Quick idea - I used some adhesive shelf liner to dress up Maggie's play table (and cover up all of the marks from being so well used).

Before:

After:

I had framed one of my Grandma's doilies (an idea I saw on Cityline) and it was in the bathroom prior to our latest reno. It didn't match anymore, so I painted the frame white, picked up a roll of wrapping paper at Dollarama to use as the background, and gave it an update to work with Maggie's new colour scheme. 

Before:

After:

More AFTER shots:

Yes, I'll admit, I wanted to move the doll bed to make the room look cleaner for the photo, but I resisted!

Maggie has become a "beauty products" junkie (lip balm, moisturizer, hand sanitizer). These new bins keep things contained on her headboard.

I'm absolutely loving the dresser-in-closet move. 

Our next big task will be to go through the girls' wardrobes for fall!

And that, dear readers, should be the end of our home renovating/redecorating for 2014. Thanks for following along!

Lainey Lui: Behind the Scenes at THE SOCIAL

My take on celebrity gossip queen Lainey Lui evolved over the course of my day on the set of THE SOCIAL.

When we first met in the co-hosts' office, she stood up to greet me, and offered a polite handshake. I told her I enjoyed her book (Listen To the Squawking Chicken, about her Chinese mother) as well as her Smut Soiree event, she thanked me, then got back to business.

This didn't surprise me, as Lainey is known on the show as being very direct, matter-of-fact, and unsentimental. I wasn't expecting her to throw her arms around me and start braiding my hair.

I do think that I underestimated how much actual work and focus would be happening before the show. I had envisioned these four friends, chatting it up while getting their makeup applied, but it seemed like there was always something to be done: a producer talking to them or research happening on the computer, not leaving much time for idle chitchat. (Lainey herself has more jobs than I can count, co-hosting THE SOCIAL being just one of them.)

My little notebook was full of questions for each of the co-hosts (some of my own, and several submitted by readers), but as time flew by and 1:00 neared, I assumed that I wouldn't be getting any one-on-one time with the gossip maven.

However, after the show, Lainey made a point of coming over to the publicist who was helping me out for the day, who relayed that Lainey would like to make some time to speak with me later, if I didn't mind following her over to eTalk, where she was needed on set. Uh, no, I didn't mind.

Once we made our way over to her second desk, she could not have impressed me more. She sat right next to me and I felt like I had her entire laser-focus. She leaned in, looked right into my eyes, elaborated on her answers and gave me exactly what I needed for her profile.

Here's what we chatted about:

I loved the book. Any plans for another one?

Eventually. I spent all last year writing and promoting the book, and I feel like writing and words are like a well and I have depleted my well so I need to build it back up again.

Any themes in mind?

I have some ideas. It wouldn't be memoir-y, it probably would be fiction. We'll see. Or maybe I'll never write one, I don't know. I've got enough jobs!

You've spoken before about the importance of gossip is society. How do you feel intelligent women with rich lives can justify such an interest in what's happening with celebrities?

It's about balance. We can still do our cerebral reading and our jobs and also make time for entertainment. I think sometimes it's an unfair question because nobody asks a man when he's doing his job and has an important career why he takes time out to watch the football game. I feel like the more that question is asked the more I bump up against it because men don't have to justify why they watch sports, so why should we have to justify why we like knowing about Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie, especially when the conversations about Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie could lead us to a better understanding of ourselves. In my TEDTalk I talked about the sociology of gossip and what those conversations reflect back to us about our culture and our understanding of each other and I don't think people are having those understandings when they're watching a home run, but I do think that there is an exchange of information that can happen when you're talking about the breakdown of a celebrity marriage or the breakdown of a celebrity friendship.

I'm going to take advantage of this time with you right now to put you on the spot about my favourite celebrity. At Smut Soiree you talked a bit about her indirectly in terms of her marriage, but I'd love to know what she's really like as an individual: Jennifer Garner.

Professionally Jennifer Garner is really nice. When you're interviewing her, when she goes to a junket, she's there to give you what you need. She doesn't complain, she isn't rude. A lot of celebrities can make you feel that you're beneath them or wasting their time but she doesn't. In terms of how she is in life, this is somebody whose image is the soft earth mother, and it's true that she cares about her children, but she's a lot more calculating and ambitious than people credit her for. I don't think these are two bad adjectives, but I think many people who have this image of her as being the perfect mother would consider it a little duplicitous.

Let's move on to country music stars. Are there any country musicians you find gossip-worthy, or can you give us the scoop on anyone?

I haven't interviewed a lot of country music artists, but I have interviewed Tim McGraw, who is probably the biggest one. He was very accommodating, very on point, there's not a lot of warmth that comes from Tim McGraw from interviews which doesn't mean that he's mean, he's just not warm and fuzzy. He's not Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson!

I've been at a party with Taylor Swift, and essentially, no matter how you feel about her she is totally in control. She's about as successful as you can get, and I think that's worthy of discussion. And she hasn't fallen off the rails yet, and for a child star, quite rare. Some people would say "give her time", but I think the difference between Taylor Swift and a lot of other artists who start young is that she had to make her way by writing her way, whereas a lot of them were prepackaged with material made and tweaked for them whereas she actually knows the construction of a song, and I think that's going to carry her forward.

There's no better gossip in country music than Miranda Lambert and Blake Shelton, the way they got together, the rumours swirling about them now, those two are definitely watchable. I would like to have this conversation with you in five years and see what we say about those two because I think some shit's coming! Only by virtue of the fact that nothing lasts in this business. When they got together she was quite young, and there are so many obstacles thrown in the way of love when you're famous that it's rare for a relationship to last so I'm not saying anything is wrong right now, but because it's so rare for relationships to last, I wonder what's going to happen and what they're going to have to deal with.

With all of the different things you do - writing a book, working on two shows, maintaining a hugely successful blog - do you have any time-management tips to offer? How do you manage to be so productive when you've got the same 24 hours as everyone else?

I see it as the same 24 hours, so I know that this isn't the sexiest answer, but I think sleep is overrated. I think people can happily function on less sleep than is prescribed. From Sunday to Thursday I work on four to five hours' sleep. When it's Oscars season and I'm in LA for eTalk and we're shooting during Oscar weekend and on Oscar night I don't sleep. We do a red carpet show that ends local time 5:30, then we watch the Oscars, then I start working on my blog all night, then I do voiceovers for eTalk the next day and then about noon LA time I'm on a plane headed for home. I think that when you use all your hours you do more. 

People are like "Well, the doctors say you have to have eight hours' sleep," or "I can't function on less than seven," or "I'm a zombie," but I feel like that's a self-fulfilling prophesy so you believe it. When you wake up after having only four or five hours of sleep you think "I'm going to be useless today". But what if you woke up and said "I've gotten enough sleep, and I just gotta do what I gotta do"? I say this too because you do it when you get up and feed your baby - so I hear - and I say if you can keep a child alive during that time it's a pretty big responsibility, so if you're able to keep something alive after that little sleep, I'm pretty sure you can go to work and push a few buttons, take some calls. That was a long way of answering that I just don't sleep that much. And I'm okay with that.

*********

When I asked for a photo at the end, Lainey made a point of finding out if we could use the eTalk set for a better background, and also took time to pose with a friend of mine - and huge LaineyGossip fan - who had been in the audience with me and joined us after the show.

Conclusion: Like Tim McGraw, Lainey Lui doesn't come across warm and fuzzy (and she has never claimed to - last week on the show she jokingly referred to her "black heart"), but I'm afraid I have to out her here and say that her kindness and consideration certainly showed in her actions. Plus, THE SOCIAL (and the world of celebrity gossip) wouldn't be nearly as interesting if she was all sweetness and light instead of the "CompLainey" we know and love.

Follow Lainey on Twitter, check out all her celebrity gossip (and she has GOOD stuff) at LaineyGossip, and of course catch her on eTalk and THE SOCIAL weekdays on CTV.

My CHEX Daily Debut: Keep Kids Learning Over the Summer

Thursday night I made my debut as an education guest on the CHEX Daily Show!

I was super nervous, but once we got started it was great, and Teresa Kaszuba and Mike Judson were very easy to talk to. The time went so fast, and I was WAY overprepared in terms of content (a lesson for next time), but I was happy with how my outfit, hair and makeup looked on camera, which is much more important anyway. (Just kidding. Sort of.)

Here's the video, if you missed it (I come on a few seconds after the cougar. By which I mean the animal at the zoo.)





A point I really wanted to make and of course forgot:

Modeling reading for your kids is so important too, and that might fit in very nicely with your summer plans. Just think: when you curl up with a good book or magazine and tell the kids that no one can bug mommy during her special reading time, that's actually GOOD parenting. Remember that.

Also: when incorporating real-life Math into activities with your kids, don't forget that they're learning everything in metric. We are so used to talking about measurements like heights and weights the "old fashioned" way (because of previous generations, but also due to American influence) but kids need to talk about how many metres and centimetres tall people are, and how many grams and kilograms things weigh. I have trouble with that myself! Even with temperature, I have caught myself telling the girls the outside temp in degrees Celsius, then five minutes later reporting the heat of the pool in Fahrenheit. No wonder kids get confused!

Main point of the segment: summer is for fun and relaxation, not "WORK", but there are a lot of natural, easy-to-incorporate activities for kids that will keep their brains sharp over the summer!

Let me know what you think, and if you have any ideas for future segments you'd like to see. I'll also be enlisting an email group of fellow teachers to give input on topics every couple of weeks (so I'm representing a range of educators). Please give me a shout if you'd like to be part of that! (katewinn77 at yahoo dot ca)

Thanks to everyone for all of your support for this venture through email, texts, Twitter, Facebook...I am so lucky to have such wonderful people in my life.

Family Fun at Medieval Times

I know you've heard about Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament, where guests journey back in time, enjoying a four-course medieval feast (eaten only with the hands, of course) while taking in games of skill, falcon and Andalusian stallion performances and the main event: the jousting knights!

This week, we visited the Toronto Castle (the only Canadian location), and the girls both say it's the highlight of the summer so far.

Upon entry (after paying $11 for parking at a pay-and-display machine), guests are given a table card color-coded to indicate which Knight of the Realm you will be cheering for, which in our case was the Black and White Knight. Next, there's a photo op with one of the characters (Frannie and Maggie were thrilled that they got to meet the princess).

After that, we headed into the great hall, offering a bar, merchandise for display, and lots to look at. You can even take a peek through windows at the gorgeous stallions.

Once the "call to table" occurs, guests make their way into the arena and find their colour coded tables. Your "wench" greets you (yes, you're supposed to call her that), drink orders are taken, and the show begins, with portions of the meal being served intermittently. We feasted on tomato bisque soup, garlic toast, a huge portion of oven-roasted chicken, spare rib, herb-roasted potato and an apple pastry.

My girls loved watching the falcon and horses, but by the time the knights were showing off their skills, the kids were eager for the actual jousting to begin!

We cheered hard for our Black and White Knight, and both girls were thrilled to received a carnation from him during the show:

While our Knight did not ultimately win the competition, the girls were still absolutely thrilled with the experience, and I would highly recommend it as a family destination. It's not a cheap outing (regular price for adults is $66, kids are $43 with children under 3 free), but check out the Special Offers section of their website when making plans. The current deal has adults for $40 and children for $30 which is a huge discount, so be sure to look for bargains so you don't have to pay full price.

As a testament to how much action and adventure was involved in our afternoon, this was Maggie on the ride home:

P.S. I also recommend it as a class trip destination as well. I've gone twice, and both times it was fantastic. There are special group rates, and kids LOVE it.


Disclosure: We were provided with a free Medieval Times experience for review purposes. Opinions are, as always, my own.

Girl's Bedroom Facelift # 1

The girls' rooms are finally finished and all back together again! Today I'll give you a tour of the room belonging to my 8 year old, "Frannie".

BEFORE:

Newborn Frannie originally came home from the hospital to the corner bedroom, which was the guest room when we built the house. Originally I chose yellow for that room, thinking that it would be a nursery someday, which worked out perfectly. Then when I was expecting Maggie, we decided to move Frannie over to this room, which was a sage green (see "before" photos of bathroom for colour) office.

I chose the paint colour for Frannie's first "big girl" room more than six years ago, and I'm not sure how it's coming across in photos but it was PINK. A little too pink.

As you can see from the "befores", getting the room organized was as important as any other changes (Frannie may *look* like a mini-me, but....) so we spent a lot of time sorting through drawers and deciding on items to donate, sell or pitch. I'm teaching her to be ruthless!

Yes, there was a closet in my house looking like this. I try to let them have ownership of their space...

AFTER:

The basic idea was not so much a renovation as a facelift, which we accomplished by changing the paint colour (to Dulux Night Magic), putting up crown moulding and a fresh coat of white on all of the trim, new blackout drapes (instead of the plain white roller blind) and a more streamlined system of organizing her "stuff".

She selected her own bedding (from Target) and paint colour (I gave her a few choices), which looks incredibly soft and fresh in the updated room.

I made the decision to move Frannie's dresser into the closet (I did this with Maggie as well) because the space in there wasn't being used very efficiently (she didn't have many items to hang), and it seemed like she had a ton of furniture filling up her room. This has worked out really well so far.

It will be hard to get much work done with that beautiful view...good thing she never works at her desk anyway! The curtains are a bit monochromatic with the paint colour, but that's okay (I couldn't find ones to match the other colours in the comforter, which of course I feel the need to do).. In Maggie's room you'll notice much more contrast.

There's even an empty shelf! You have no idea the joy that brings me. For real.

Frannie quickly volunteered to be part of the "after" photos!

A much more efficient closet.

Frannie decided to create some of her own artwork, and framed this fashion design. (The photo is cut off because of course she autographed her masterpiece with her real name!)

The walls are pretty bare but I'm hesitant to mess them up with anything yet. I've ordered a cool Shutterfly photo collage for Frannie with memories from the past year (it was included for free with a frame I received from Hallmark) which I'll hang above her headboard, but that will be it for now. Since I'm expecting this room to grow with her for several years, I'm sure it won't be long before the walls are covered in posters of some sort anyway!

Thanks for following along! I'll share Maggie's room with you in a few days. I'm already thinking about which room to do next...definitely not this summer though!