Happy #AWBU week, ladies! We are so excited to have a SOLD-OUT event full of fantastic women bloggers converging on the Ozark Folk Center this Friday. If you can’t join us for the event, we hope that you are enjoying updates and picking up some interested tidbits (and making plans to join us next year)! Don’t fret – we also have other meetups planned throughout the state, so we hope to see all of you in person very soon.
Even in these final days leading up to the event, we still have LOTS of exciting updates for you daily! For example:
WE ARE THRILLED TO ANNOUNCE:
Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers
AND
Ziploc® Brand Containers
are our newest Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged Conference sponsors!
Why is this exciting for you, dear blogger? Well, it means that there are some incredible goodies in store for you at the event! Plus, we know you will be completely hooked on these fabulous Ziploc® products – lucky for you, they are available at your local Walmart ~ aligning perfectly with the charge: Save Money. Live Better!
We could tell you all about the reasons having Ziploc® involved will be so fun, but we wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise. Here’s what’s particularly nifty about our two sponsoring Ziploc® brands:
Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers allow you to store, heat and to serve—all in one container. When it comes to preparing meals for you and your family, Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers make life easy. These dishwasher-safe containers are made from tempered glass, so you can use them to store food in the fridge or freezer, to heat food in the oven* or microwave, and serve food on the dining room table.
Ziploc® Brand Containers offer One Press Protection You Can HEAR!™ Ziploc® Brand Containers make it easy to store gifts, household items and food while locking in freshness! You can hear the lid securely close with just one press. When you have a secure seal you know you are keeping food fresh, which saves you money.
Yay! Please join us in welcoming Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers and Ziploc® Brand Containers aboard as sponsors for the Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged conference this weekend! Those of you participating in Foodie Friday will get to know these fantastic products extra well, but all our bloggers will leave a bit more knowledgeable about these great options available from Walmart. Be sure to hop over to our AWBU 2012 Sponsorspage to connect with Ziploc® and our other event sponsors online and via social media!
Or, What I Wish I’d Known About Parenting and Ancient Sea Monsters Circa 2003.
Details on an Arkansas Women Bloggers Twitter Party tonight (Tuesday 8/14 at 8p CST) AND a free conference registration giveaway in this post!
When I was pregnant for the first time nearly a decade ago, I went through what I’ve learned is a common ailment affecting many new mothers-to-be: behavior best defined as psychosis.
First, I grabbed copies of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and, naturally, What to Eat When You’re Expecting. In case you’re unfamiliar, these are massive volumes. I began reading and nearly had a mental breakdown. I bookmarked pages for my husband (which he dutifully ignored), informed him I was giving up sugar in all forms (which caused him to laugh out loud) and made copious notes on all my findings (which only increased my certainty that I was incapable of parenting).
At some point early in my pregnancy, I remember hearing that as a future Arkansas mom I could order my very own copy of the Happy Birthday Baby Book, and I pounced on the telephone (mounted to the wall) to dial what is known as a “toll-free number.” Foreign concept, I know. I waited for it to arrive in the mail, and found that it was pretty full of resources for parents in Arkansas as well as a quick, easy read.
Fast forward to today (that kid is entering the third grade on Monday, by the way): I’ve had another daughter who has cemented my belief that while I’m capable of parenting, I may barely survive the childhood of the Kraken. Yes, that’s what we call our second-born, in reference to Liam Neeson as Zeus in Clash of the Titans (2010) yelling “Release the Kraken!” in reference to a threatening monster from Hades.
A likely Kraken: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1870). And yes, this is how I often feel with my little Kraken.
Here’s the point of that diatribe (sometimes I have one): just like my intelligent and helpful older daughter, the Happy Birthday Baby Book has grown up. And, I’m far more likely to somehow emerge unscathed from the Kraken’s childhood thanks to the assistance of that intelligent and helpful older daughter AND the intelligent and helpful new Happy Birthday Baby Books.
There are now TWO super useful editions: Book One (Pregnancy through Age 1) and Book Two (Newborn through Age 5), and they come in either ebook form (hallelujah!) or a very useful purse or diaper-bag size hard copy (click here to check them out and order copies!) We shared recently that we were exceptionally excited to have Healthy Families as the Presenting Sponsor for the Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged Conference (click here to read that post!) next week.
Click here to read online or order your free copies of the Happy Birthday Baby Books!
Thanks to these books, I’m receiving the counseling I need to raise a good little Kraken. For example: Plan play dates, but remember that your 1-year-old is too young to be expected to share (Book 2). Oh. Right.
Also: regarding the comments I’ve made to several of you about the Kraken being very OCD: Your 2-year-old may want to eat the same thing every day. WHAT? I’m telling you – the Happy Birthday Baby Books people know everything there is to know about parenting.
Now, don’t check out on me if you are a) not likely to have kids anytime soon, if ever b) SO DONE with pregnancy and childbirth, and wondering why we don’t sponsor a nanny giveaway already or c) enjoying feeding sweets to your grandchildren on a regular basis as revenge for the wrinkles their parents caused you.
Here’s the thing, bloggers: Healthy Communities Are Every Blogger’s Business. That’s why I am making note to start ordering copies of these books for every mom-to-be I know. I may even keep some extra copies in my car – I’ve been known to accost people who talk about politics with voter registration forms, reminding them they are welcome to share their opinion with me by visiting the polls. I’m thinking I may start giving copies of these gems to random pregnant women. That should help me win friends and influence people – right?
All kidding aside – we want you to join us in our enthusiasm at working with Healthy Families. Put very simply, they get it, ladies. We all want more healthy moms, healthy pregnancies, healthy babies and healthy communities – it’s good for all of us. So join the fun: place the badge above on your own blog, tell everyone you know about this phenomenal program, click the links to check out the website and the books, and… (drum roll please):
Join us tonight (Tuesday, August 14) for our FINAL pre-#AWBU Twitter Party! It’s a short one, and it kicks off at 8:00 p.m. CST. You may want to click over before then to http://www.HealthyFamiliesNow.Net/ebooks to do some checking it out, because we will have some questions for you to answer tonight that just may win you goodies or a FREE conference registration! Join us even if you are already registered (we’ll let you give the last spot away!) or even if you can’t come to the conference, we promise it will still be worth your time! Just set up a Twitter column to follow #AWBU and #HFNow, and be sure to use those hashtags in every tweet so we can keep up with you!
Following is a guest post by Amy Webb, Communications Director for the Arkansas Department of Human Services. Healthy Families is an initiative of DHS.
About two weeks into my maternity leave with my daughter, I remember thinking, “My friends lied to me.” I wasn’t filled with adoring, loving thoughts of motherhood; and my baby wasn’t quietly cooing in my lap as we “enjoyed” our time together. All she did was cry for HOURS, and no amount of swaddling or attempts at bonding seemed to make a difference.
Depressed and worried I was doing something wrong, I turned to people like you – moms who had blogs filled with real stories about their own parenting struggles, depression, colic and concerns of not bonding immediately with their
children. The relief was immediate. I wasn’t a horrible mother, and my baby girl wasn’t malfunctioning. (And in fairness to my wonderful friends who supported me during that time, I just don’t think they wanted to scare me before the baby
was born!)
Eventually, my family settled into a routine, and I took a job as the Communications Director for the Department of Human Services. One of my first assignments was to help revamp the Healthy Families program, which included the Happy Birthday Baby Book. The first line to moms in the book read, “Congratulations! Having a baby is a special and exciting time.” I thought, “The author forgot, ‘hard’ and ‘exhausting!’” Don’t get me wrong. I LOVE being a mom, and my now toddler is an amazingly sweet and funny child. But as rewarding as parenting is, it is hard work and people don’t always tell you that before you have children. So I wanted to make sure the new Happy Birthday Baby Book gave moms all the information they needed to be a successful parent and have a healthy child.
The women working with me on the book – and its sibling Happy Birthday Baby Book: Book Two – agreed, and we added all kinds of new information. There are sections for dads and grandparents. There’s information about how to cope with
crying and how to create a crying plan. We also added information on domestic violence and created an entire new book dealing children from birth to age 5. Oh, did I mention that I also changed the opening line. “Congratulations! Having a
baby is one of the most exciting yet difficult journeys you’ll ever take.”
I hope you enjoy the books as much as we enjoyed working on them and the new Healthy Families website. There is tons more information in the books and online than I could ever mention here. The books are free and easy to order online. And you don’t have to be a parent or a mommy blogger to get one. Order them for your pregnant friends, neighbors and co-workers. Or just tell them, to read them online.
Amy Webb, is a former journalist, who has been working for the Department ofHuman Services and the Healthy Families campaign for just over a year.
Do you ever look back at a time or event and see now that it was life changing? Perhaps you understood a little bit of that at the time, but the true depth of it escaped you for a bit longer.
I look back at Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged last June as one of those moments. I was like a geeky fan at a celebrity event, except everyone there, however polished and with however many blog numbers, was that same geeky person inside. It was like a family reunion with people I *wanted* to be with- no matter what we looked like or blogged about.
What this weekend was to me was more than just a weekend vacation from my kids. It was more than a scenic drive into the middle of nowhere. That weekend changed my life- I awoke, was reborn or whatever cliche, cheesy phrase will fit here. I felt alive again!
I could write a blog post on my top reasons you should attend #AWBU and it would be a great blog post, however I feel this post should all be about how that weekend affected ME personally, because, I’m a blogger and well, that’s what I do best…
4 ways AWBU changed my life:
1. I finally understood what all an online community was about . People who understood me, knew more than me and wanted to share their information with me. I felt my heart pounding when the reality that these people were for REAL sunk in. I felt home.
2. I’d experienced blogger cliques before. I was nervous going to the AWBU weekend, but I figured that at a minimum I’d at least learn something. I think every meal I sat with someone different and people eagerly engaged in conversation with me. It wasn’t networking, it was friend making.
3. I hadn’t realized how depressed I had been. That I felt guilty feeling unfulfilled staying at home with my 2 kids. My husband had lost his job the month before and I was still trying to deal with that on top of everything else. Being with people who were honest and transparent about their struggles was refreshing in a way that I never knew I was missing so much. Just not feeling alone is healing in of itself.
4. I learned to believe in myself for the first time in my life. I never took my writing seriously and then in the middle of a session, in front of a group, Beth Stephens told me that she thought I was a very gifted writer. In that moment, a part of me that I had repressed for years came alive again. I wasn’t pretending to be a writer, I WAS a writer.
The truth is that AWBU changed my life. I now have a very challenging and fulfilling job at at a company that was a sponsor at AWBU actually- and I can honestly say everything started that weekend. I’m sad to be missing this year’s AWBU but I’m there in spirit and hope that some new blogger has the same experience that I did. Welcome!
There is still time to register for AWBU 2012. You can find more information here.
Today and tomorrow are Tax Free days here in Arkansas! You can purchase school supplies, clothes, and shoes under $100 completely tax free! Chances are many of you will be hitting the malls and department stores today to stock up on everything you or your kids need for the upcoming school year and fall season. I hope you will consider using this time to give back a little to the community to which you belong.
While you are out shopping today, Arkansas Women Bloggers wants to encourage you to give back by picking up a few school supplies to donate to a school, teacher or child in need. Stores like Walmart and Target are already running sales on items like notebooks, crayons, pencils and so on in addition to the fact that you will not have to pay taxes!
If you are planning to attend AWBU we want to encourage you to buy supplies and bring them with you to the conference. We plan to collect items and donate them to children in need in the Mountain View area, one of the poorest counties in our state.
If you will not be attending AWBU (there is still time to register), we want to encourage you to take your supplies to a local school or church to be given to a child in need.
There need not be a lot of fanfare. Feel free to include a note with your donation if you wish but sometimes quiet giving can be even more beneficial when you expect absolutely nothing in return.
If you decide to donate something, please snap a picture of your loot and email it to julie@arkansaswomenbloggers.com and list the city where you donated your items. I plan to put together a special post regarding the donations sometime after the conference.
We are exactly one month away from the kick-off the 2012 Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged Conference! I hope you are as excited about the conference as we are! We know you may have questions about the conference and what to expect so we have planned a Twitter Party for tonight. This will be your chance to interact with other attendees and get all the details about the conference. Come prepared with any questions you may have! See you on Twitter, tonight at 8p CST!
Want to learn more? Follow @ARWomenBloggers and #AWBU on Twitter and register for our Twitter Party on Tuesday, July 24 at 8p CST to interact with other attendees and get the details!
You might also want to follow our Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged conference sponsors – we have some exciting announcements! Here are just a few details on our sponsors – watch for detailed blog posts coming this week…
PRESENTING SPONSOR:
The Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged 2012 Conference is presented by Healthy Families!
Watch the AWB blog for more information about this fantastic program this week, and be sure to visit the Healthy Families website – it’s chock full of great parenting resources and FREE books! At our Twitter party tonight, one free conference registration will be provided by Healthy Families – keep up with mentions of #HFNow!
I loved summer camp! From the time I was seven years old I spent at least a week and as many as 8 at summer camp. I even spent a summer before college serving as a camp counselor.
My whole kid-year revolved around camp. I thought about it and planned for it all year long. I would spend weeks prior to camp perusing the isles of CVS stocking up on travel sized toiletries to fill up my Caboodle, gathering Archie Comics and Teen Beat and collecting candy to hide in my suitcase. (Twizzlers and Atomic Fireballs were my favorite!) I spent hours each night listening to my favorite radio station (Q106) waiting for the best songs to come on so I could hit record on my cassette player and make an epic mix tape that I would play on my “against-camp-rules” walkman that I would sneak in in my pillow case.
I learned how to shave for the first time from one of the “cool” older girls at camp. I met my future college roommate and one of my bridesmaids at summer camp. I fell in love countless times and even wound up engaged (which was later broken-off…thank goodness!) to a guy from camp. But most importantly I formed some wonderful friendships and created some wonderful memories to last a lifetime.
But…I’ll let you in on a secret…going to camp was REALLY HARD for me. I loved it but I was also very nervous about it. In fact, I was so nervous about camp that I honest-to-goodness believe that I threw up EVERY MORNING of EVERY DAY that I ever stepped foot on the grounds of Ganderbrook Christian Camp. True story!
My maiden name was Bulissa. I was known as Julie BARFLISSA for my entire camp career. Even now, if I bump into someone from my old camp days and they don’t remember me I just say “Barflissa” and they start howling with laughter and memory. I would wake up so jittery that I was pretty much useless all morning. I couldn’t even go near the lodge/mess hall until well after breakfast was over as the smell alone would have me retching. By 9am I was a-okay and ready to go for the day.
Weird? Yes. But weird is my M.O.
Anyway…my point is that sometimes things are difficult but those same things can sometimes have the biggest impact on who we are as people. Camp really helped mold me and form me into the person I am today. A lot of who I am was shaped in those early years in the woods of Maine.
One of our goals with Arkansas Women Bloggers Unplugged is to provide that “summer camp” kind of feel. We will learn some great things from some talented people, we will form bonds with other like minded women and we may even do some arts and crafts! (Morning calisthenics will be optional! HAHA!) You are not expected to have 5000 facebook fans or to get 30,000 daily hits on your blog. Even if you DON’T HAVE A BLOG we want you to join us! If your blog has been sorely neglected for the last 4 years, we want you there. If you have no desire to monetize your blog, we want you there.
Coming to a conference is really stepping out of your comfort zone for a lot of people. Myself included! It is scary and that’s okay. I totally get that. But we want to welcome you with open arms! So please don’t let fear, jitters, or whatever you want to call it be the reason you don’t attend #AWBU! You can barf every morning if you want to because at the end of the day it will all be okay!
Want to learn more? Follow @ARWomenBloggers and #AWBU on Twitter and register for our Twitter Party on Tuesday, July 24 at 8p CST to interact with other attendees and get the details!
Want to learn more? Follow @ARWomenBloggers and #AWBU on Twitter and register for our Twitter Party on Tuesday, July 24 at 8p CST to interact with other attendees and get the details!
Lyndi Fultz is the cultivator of nwaFoodie.com. She will be hosting a special Foodie Friday add-on option during the Arkansas Women Bloggers conference, jam-packed with food styling, photography, content and tips for food bloggers and those who just happen to like food… and blogs. Visit www.nwaFoodie.com to check out her awesomeness, or read her posts as Miss January 2012 – the featured blogger on the Arkansas Women Bloggers site!
10. Learn new blogging strategies, tech tips, and writing tricks. Discuss at some length and with great earnestness how much correct punctuation and grammar matter on your personal blog.
9. Put a real live person with a Twitter handle! Ever wonder who @DyingForCheesecake or @MysteriousTwitter52 is? You could meet her at #AWBU!
8. Add more blogs to your Google reader or feed burner that you won’t have time to read and will feel guilty about not getting to until the day you read 400 in one sitting and realize all the great stuff you’ve been missing. You also may find out that a close friend or fellow blogger has started a new business/had a baby/gotten married/gotten divorced/got a job/lost a job/published a book/discovered the secret to no-fail merengue. That’s never happened to me; I’m just saying it could happen.
7. Find the peace and quiet you always say you are wanting! Except for the times when you have a bunch of women bloggers together and then all the laughing, giggling, and sipping could get pretty noisy.
6. But seriously. Peace and quiet. Unplugged. Step away from your phone. Unplug those Interwebs. Exhale. Breathe in mountain air. Get a good night’s sleep.
5. See the always humorous, always engaging Lela Davidson as the keynote speaker. This woman has a few things figured out and she is happy to share her secrets. The things she doesn’t have figured out she is happy to ‘fess up to and make you feel better about just being you.
4. Hear women say some of the most inappropriate and ridiculously truthful things you’ve ever heard. And then reply with something equally inappropriate that you can’t believe is coming out of your own mouth. Again, that didn’t happen to me last year at all; I’m just saying it couldhappen.
3. Awaken the giant blogger within! Just being in the presence of other creators, writers, content generators, mothers, and women in a gorgeous environment will rev your blogger engine and send you home ready to write. You’re sure to get at least one new blog post out of the weekend!
2. Make new friends. Make friendships that already exist even stronger. Establish business and networking relationships that reap benefits throughout the coming years. This did happen last year (well, it’s just the thing I’m willing to cop to) and the relationships over the last year have been fruitful and significant. At the very least, you’ll go home with new people with whom to play Words With Friends.
1. Take your blog to a new level! Seek and you shall find—revamp or redefine your blog’s mission, update the look and feel of your blog, gain new writing and personal.
Want to learn more? Follow @ARWomenBloggers and #AWBU on Twitter and register for our Twitter Party on Tuesday, July 24 at 8p CST to interact with other attendees and get the details!
Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers 
Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers allow you to store, heat and to serve—all in one container. When it comes to preparing meals for you and your family, Ziploc® VersaGlass™ Containers make life easy. These dishwasher-safe containers are made from tempered glass, so you can use them to store food in the fridge or freezer, to heat food in the oven* or microwave, and serve food on the dining room table.
