For the third year in a row, Domino Sugar is the presenting sponsor for Share our Strength’s® Great American Bake Sale to help fight childhood hunger. The Great American Bake Sale raises money to fight childhood hunger across the U.S. by encouraging individuals, families, organizations and schools to hold bake sales and donate the profits to help Share our Strength provide millions of meals and snacks to America’s children.

As part of this campaign, Domino provided me with a $25 gift card to buy ingredients so I can buy the ingredients I needed to bake up some delicious goodies to have at our neighborhood bake sale and since it’s just too hot to have one here in South Carolina (believe me, we tried – we had the whole thing planned out and it was so hot we couldn’t have it), I’m giving away the gift card to one of my readers so they can host a bake sale of their own! (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

Go Random. Go To The Un Mom. Right Now. Well, Read This First. Then click this. She's hawt.

Eight years ago, I lost my best friend.  I’m dedicating today’s Random Tuesday Thoughts to Joey, because he did more random and spontaneous things than anyone I’ve ever met.

Joe took me to my first concert.  It was Genesis (with Phil Collins).  It was when the Jack Daniels alcoholic beverages were around, and I had myself a Texas Tea.  I’m pretty sure the concert was great – I don’t remember.

Joe shows up at my door with a 18 pack of beers and a golf club and tells me, “Let’s go!” and I went.  The next thing I know, we’re sneaking out onto a golf course playing golf in the  middle of the night.  We ended up doing that a lot. For years.

Joe was my best friend.  We were only friends, nothing more.  He was my brother.  He and my sister were together for quite some time and he was family, I want to make that clear. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

In 2008, I went to lunch with a very close friend of mine and I was in a shit mood.  After lunch, we did the usual hug goodbye and in that hug, I felt so much better.  Just one simple hug can turn your mood around.  You see someone you know in the grocery store and you get so excited because it’s been so long, you squeal and hug (most likely the ladies but I’m sure some men may as well).  There is a lot of power in the hug.

The video above is what prompted me to once again take a look at the different types of hugs out there and I encourage all of you to watch the video above.  I didn’t make it, my dad sent it to me but it’s beautiful and inspiring and it absolutely made my day.

To show the variety of hugs out there, I’m going to do what I did in 2008 and give some picture examples (using a few different pictures).  Just to show you the variety of hugs we have and how one simple gesture can change your day. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)

I really want to know the answer to that.  Because sometimes I like to swear (okay, all the time – whatever) and I think of catchy titles and then I think that some people who subscribe to my feed might get a bit offended if I swear in the title.  Then I think that if I don’t swear and the title is amusing enough to bring them over, they’re going to get slapped with a bunch of naughty words.

Does anyone else think saying naughty sounds dirty?  I just said it (clearly) and it made me feel dirty.  Maybe I should have said “bad words” but if I did that, I wouldn’t have been able to write this part so I’m just going to roll with it.

I know that prior to this past week I’ve always had a specific story to tell but for some reason, I’ve been a happy rambler.  I don’t have much to talk about because my drive home from Syracuse was so horrendous, I would only depress everyone, especially since I came home to a dead fish.

I decided to put that picture in because I made myself sad by talking about my fish, Mulder “Bob” Maloney (R.I.P.) and my two year old rocking out to Guitar Hero in diapers and a hoodie makes me giggle. (It gets better. Click to continue reading…)