The View from White Pine Lane

Just Do It - Dream Trip of a Lifetime

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 23:36:00 +0000

Thirty years ago I spent my sophomore year in France, and made an incredible group of friends (four American girls, one French gal and one French guy) that have remained my dear friends ever since.

We girls had always said that one day we would come back, and bring our families with us. (This was, of course, before any of us had families, and before some of us had even met our future husbands!)

This year we made that dream come true. Not everybody made it - one of us girls had an incredible job opportunity come up and couldn't go at the last minute, and not all of the husbands and kids were there - but we had a huge group of 6 of the original 7 friends and seven family members.

We had the best time! We fell right back into comfortable old friendships, and did many of the things we had always dreamed of doing "someday" with our kids in tow.

Financially, this was not a good time for my family to be making such an expensive trip - but really, for most families, when is a good time? Years and years could go by and there would always be something that seemed more important to spend your money on than jaunting off to Europe with old friends.

My advice - just do it. There will never be a "perfect" time, and if you wait too long it will be too late, and then instead of beautiful new memories you'll have only regrets. The bit of belt-tightening we'll have to do now is nothing in comparison to the fantastic trip of a lifetime with my old friends and my darling family!

Below, photo of the friends that was a bit blurry, so I made it into a "watercolor" on Photoshop, then made it into a greeting card on Shutterfly! Fun, huh?

5x7 Folded Card

View the entire collection of cards.

Life is Short

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 02:54:00 +0000

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” -Steve Jobs

Rest in Peace, Steve. Thanks for following your heart.

Project 52: Phantasmagorical Fog over Long Lake

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 03:52:00 +0000

12:52 Phantasmagorical Fog over Long Lake
Originally uploaded by WhitePineLane

Hey - remember Project 52, my once-weekly photography project that fell by the wayside about a year and a half ago?? Well, it's back - and since I make the rules, I'm picking up where I left off, with week 12 of 52.

Phantasmagorical Fog Over Log Lake. You don't think it's too big of stretch to make the alliteration, do you?

The Royal Wedding and the Horror that was Princess Bea's Hat

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 21:46:00 +0000

What a day yesterday! What a glorious day for love and lovers everywhere. Sadly, it was also a day filled with horror for fashion-watchers everywhere, even the Queen....

I had gone to get a cup of coffee and had missed Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie getting out of their car and walking in. Some time later, though, I noticed the most unusual thing I had ever seen - there was a reindeer seated behind the Queen and Prince Philip! A reindeer? No wait - what was that?? Augh! It's Princess Beatrice's HAT! As we say en francais, << C'est pas POSSIBLE!>> Good Godfrey what was that girl thinking??

I've heard various hypotheses, including that Fergie dressed the girls as revenge for not being invited, which sounds plausible.

Anyway, the Royals all had a hard day, putting up with that hat. We really have to give them credit for their stoicism.

Thanks for the material, Princess Bea! It was a fun day!

I haven't forgotten

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 23:36:00 +0000

Update: Here is a 9/11 piece that's much more my style

(although I still like the video below):

from The Onion, Sep 26, 2001:

"God Angrily Clarifies 'Don't Kill' Rule"

Thanks to my friend Louisa for sharing this article on Facebook.

Today is 9/11.
And as much as I hate these wars we are involved in and I think they need to end, when I saw this video posted on my friend Lani's blog, I thought no, I haven't forgotten.
It really is important to remember how we felt that day nine years ago.

My kids were just little that day. They didn't understand what was happening. Here my mom and I had just stepped outside with them after five or six straight hours of watching the horrors unfold on the TV.

I believe Afghanistan and Iraq are two completely different things, and that only one of them relates to 9/11.
I DO NOT like country music (generally). :-P :-)
I'm not really a political person, I just think it IS important to remember.

Thanks for visiting. On a completely different topic, I'll be around a LOT more starting the week after next when I am BACK TO BEING A STAY-AT-HOME MOM! Woo-Hoo! :-D My motto of the last five years is coming true!

Photo Friday and a Purple Star!

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:32:00 +0000

Well, here we are at Photo Friday, and I can't believe I'm three weeks behind in posting pictures. (Actually I can believe I'm three weeks behind; that's totally how I operate!)

In any case, you get "treated" (lucky you!) to four (count 'em, four!) photos from Project 52 tonight.

The first is something many of us are dying to escape from right about now:
The Bars of Winter (above)

The other three share the same subject (a little nest in the tree outside my den window), but are taken at different times.

Nobody Home

(This is my favorite)

My Little Chickadees

This one is toooo small

In other news, I'm very proud and excited to have earned my fifth Purple Star on Squidoo this week! And it's on my new Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz lens! As he would say, that new lens is a real Purple-Starinator! I hope you'll check it out! Have a great weekend!

Festival of Light

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:29:00 +0000

I found a fun blog called A Canadian Family that's about genealogy, family history, and vintage postcards. The blog regularly hosts "carnivals" where they request blog posts on a certain topic, and bring all the submitted posts together to form a sort of online magazine. The subject of their current blog carnival, with submissions ending today, happens to be "A Festival of Postcards, Series 7, Light." [Note: Series 7, Light is now open, and my post is featured in the first section! You can visit the carnival here.]

I have a pitiful collection of vintage postcards (three, to be exact), but my collection happens to include one that fits the "Light" theme beautifully: Electric Fountain, Olcott Park, Virginia, Minn. (above). This postcard also fits in nicely with A Canadian Family's genealogy theme. I bought it because of my interest in the Virginia area on the Iron Range in Northern Minnesota, because that's where the paternal branch of my family hails from. My husband and I own a cabin on the Iron Range that once belonged to my grandmother, and we are familiar with many of my distant cousins since we spend as much time as we can there in the summer.

I've written a Squidoo lens on things to do in Northern Minnesota, and Olcott Park, a 40-acre public park in Virginia, is on the must-see list. When my kids we younger, we would often picnic at the fountain, where they'd try to catch the frogs that swam there!

The fountain in Olcott Park is no longer lit at night (due to financial constraints), but in the mid-20th century it was a major tourist attraction for the area. It was built as part of the government's back-to-work efforts as The Great Depression was ending. It's in a beautiful sunken garden with stone walls and stairs.

As the website IronRange.org explains:

The park also became famous for its illuminated fountain. Constructed by General Electric Company, the fountain was one of only a few built in the United States. When it opened in 1937, policemen were posted at the site to control the traffic. Its fascinating combination of colored floodlights and sprays was created by a seven-projector device with 360 variations per hour. The operation was controlled in the base of the fountain by an electric motor with rotary switches which ran from 8:30 in the morning until 10:00 at night.

Interestingly, Olcott Park is also home to the Museum of the Historical Society of Virginia, which has a vast collection of... historical vintage postcards! See how it all comes together for this one blog post, which I submit to the Festival of Postcards, Series 7, Light!

Photo Friday: Hawk Alights

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 01:19:00 +0000

Project 52 continues with this week's pic: A marsh hawk that flew up into the grand pine tree across the street while I was sitting at my desk! Took this through the den window, with my camera that (luckily) was sitting right there. (I do love where I live!)

Was completely poised and focused to snap a shot as he flew away, and just as he did, I pushed the button... and the batteries died.

Ah, well. Not too bad for week six of fifty-two.

This week's kind-of-pitiful runner-up: Morning Frost. (Which was taken on my iPhone and can only been seen at the incredibly small size you see here).

Announcing Project 52

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 01:51:00 +0000

Inspired by all the bloggers who have attempted and/or completed a Project 365 (taking and posting a photograph a day, and becoming an amazing photographer along the way), I have decided to start my own photography blog project. But not wanting to bite off more than I can chew, I've dubbed it "Project 52". I figure I can come up with one awesome photo a week! Sure I can! Who couldn't do that? I can do that! I can, right?

Anyway, I want to smoosh the whole project into 2010. So I'm already 4 weeks behind. Or 5 if you want to count that first Friday. Which I do. Soooooooo...

Here are the first 5 photos of Project 52, Photo Friday! Ready, set, go....

Oh wait! Rules! Rules, rules, rules. First, if my photos suck, I can and will PhotoShop them. This is as much to hone my PhotoShopping skills as my photography skills. Second, if I get behind, I can smoosh multiple photos into one Friday (like today). OK, I think those are all the rules.

Oh and also, I'd like to say that my inspiration (high praise indeed after this flawlessly crafted introductory post.... Sorry, Dani!) is DaniGirl of the FABULOUS blog Postcards from the Mothership. Her photos throughout the last year have been SUCH great fun to look at, and now she's found that she can't stop at 365, and has gone on to re-name her project "Project 1000". She just keeps going and going. Which is what this introduction is doing. Now, on to the photos!

Wait! I have to say "also inspired by"... ALVN, the amazing Amy from WhisperWood Cottage and Junkologie blogs. (And also a contributor on JunkMARKET Style!) Amy is a person who has that "eye" for photography, and SHOULD BE A PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHER.

OK. It's like I'm at the Academy Awards and the orchestra starts playing because my speech is running over....

So now... the photos!

Wild Turkeys in the Lane, Winter

I took this out my car window on my iPhone. It was somewhat blurry, and had the frame of the car window in it. But when I cropped it and put the Fresco effect on... I thought it was somewhat impressionistic! (Just call me Renoir!)

Crabapple tree in hoarfrost

Same deal - blurry iPhone pic with PhotoShopped effect - Manet, n'est-ce pas?

Hip-hop birdie

Sweet little birdie tracks by our front door one morning....

Happiness and high-fives

Tyler is thrilled with the birthday present Lauren gave him. Any shot with them not fighting is golden...!

Corgi with snowflakes

Our Coco girl loves the snow!

And there you have it - Project 52, up and running!

Comfort and Joy

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 05:49:00 +0000

'Tis the season, and finally (finally!) the kids and I are off work and school for Christmas. I can't remember Winter Break ever starting this late - it just seems wrong! So much left to do, and tomorrow's Christmas Eve already.

So before I run out to do the grocery shopping for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day (yes, tonight - out in the insanity of last-minute shoppers), I'd like to borrow an idea from one of my favorite bloggers, Dani Donders over at Postcards from the Mothership. Dani's post today is Five things that are making me happy this Christmas. Here's my take on that with five things bringing me comfort and joy this holiday season!

1. Listening to my husband and my son laughing out loud in the family room while watching Phineas and Ferb together. It's one of the kids' and my favorite shows, but my husband's never watched it before. It's nice just to hear them laugh. It makes me feel good.

2. This little video that I ran across tonight (also thanks to Dani's blog!), Goodnight Moon, read by Susan Sarandon.

It made me teary, as does anything that was dear to us when my kids were small. (I can't hear the theme song to Little Bear without tearing up either!) It's such a comforting little story.

3. Being safe and warm inside, and knowing I don't have to go anywhere for Christmas Eve and no further than ten minutes away for Christmas Day. There's a major snowstorm that's started tonight, and it's supposed to just keep snowing and snowing for three days - they're saying 12 to 20 inches. I'm so grateful not to be driving somewhere, or flying somewhere, and just to be sitting here in my cozy den, with my feet up on my desk, watching it snow out the window.

View Through a Window Looking Out at the Snow
Buy at AllPosters.com

4. The music of Christmastime. Oh sure, there are some songs I can't stand, or I'm sick to death of, but overall, isn't it comforting to know all the songs and be able to sing along with everything?

5. Feeling the whole household relaaaaaaaaax now that it's winter break. There's a completely different feel to our family when we don't have all the stress of school/work/activities, and it's a feeling I wish we could keep hold of for longer than a week.

Here's wishing you and yours a safe, happy, comfortable and joyous holiday week!

Third Time's the Charm? Nope - Three Strikes, They're Out. 1-800-No-Flowers.com

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 04:34:00 +0000

Well, after giving 1800Flowers.com every opportunity to make the situation right (see last post: Bye-bye 1800Flowers.com), they dug themselves in deeper and deeper, and I have decided not to shop with them again. I'd like to offer a little lesson the the folks at 1800Flowers.com. Pay close attention, now:

For those of you who wonder how the story ended, here it is, in all its ridiculousness:

After the complaint about the second delivery (the laughable replacement for the unsatisfactory first delivery), I decided to send them pictures, so that they could see for themselves. They then sent me notice confirming that I had received my order. (Um, thanks. I know that. That's where the pictures came from). 1800Flowers.com then told me to look over their site and order something in a comparable price range. I responded that all I wanted was what I had originally ordered, thank you. They responded by canceling my order and refunding my money. (No explanation, no apology, just canceling).

I can't say they never apologized, but it was only form e-mails: "We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused." Not the "My gosh, we totally screwed this up, but we will make it right for you" that you might expect, being a regular customer. I thought I'd give one last chance, told them that they are losing a good customer, that they're turning someone who once recommended them into someone who will warn people away from them, and, to be fair, told them that I'm blogging about the experience. I also asked that a manager review the situation and get back to me.

Their response: Another Customer Service rep (no manager) gave me more generic form-letter babble about their "policies" and their "hope that [their] service has been satisfactory in the past" (Um, yeah, I would hope so too, but how would I know?) and their hope that they will have a chance to regain my trust in the future. I'm usually loyal to a fault, but there're only so many chances I'll give when I can tell the company isn't even trying to make sure I'm satisfied.

Many of my friends, and a very nice commenter on my last post, have recommended going strictly local for ordering flowers. Before this happened, I might have said that 1800Flowers.com uses local florists, so it is local. I encourage you to read the comment by Sandy Buss on the previous post. Sandy is a florist, and she explains in detail how the relationship between the online "order gatherers" and the local florist works. With the enormous fees that the online floral sites charge, going through them doesn't benefit the customer or the local florist. Better to go directly through your local shop.

I'm serious about not shopping with 1800Flowers.com again. I feel so embarrassed that the people I have sent flowers to over the last few years might have received the kind of crap I received this week when I finally placed an order for myself. (I have to say that when my mom saw the atrocious second bouquet today she exclaimed, "Oh Kim - I wouldn't even want that if someone gave it to me as a gift!")

I've been researching my local florists this afternoon, and I have some good ideas for where to go next time I order flowers. If you're considering making the same kind of move, here's a helpful website: FloristDEX.com. This site not only gives you contact info for florists in your area (along with maps to their shops), it gives links to their websites, information about flowers, ideas for what to write on the card, and all kinds of other good info.

Overall, going directly through your local florist seems to be a win-win, and I repeat what I said originally: Bye-bye 1800Flowers.com!

Bye-bye 1800Flowers.com

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 21:41:00 +0000

My husband and I haven't hosted a holiday for the extended family for a few years. When we decided to do Thanksgiving this year, I thought I'd splurge, and get a big, beautiful, expensive bouquet from my favorite convenient online floral place, 1800Flowers.com.

I picked out the absolutely gorgeous "Fields of Europe, Fall" bouquet, and ordered the large size for $60 (pictured, above right). Beautiful, isn't it? I wanted it for my front hall table so people would see it as they came in. I was excited. I am a frequent customer with 1800Flowers.com, but I've never bought for myself before, so this would be a treat.

The flowers arrived the day before Thanksgiving, as ordered. I ripped open the packaging, and was disappointed to see that the arrangement was considerably smaller than I had pictured it being. Sure enough, I pulled up the picture and the measurements online, and it was indeed smaller, in fact two sizes smaller, or the equivalent of $20 smaller! It also had a different vase, and the "river rocks" on the bottom looked like fish tank gravel (and dirty fish tank gravel, at that). See what you think:

What I got was very pretty, but it wasn't like the pictured bouquet. I measured it, and rather than 17" tall and 14" diameter, it was 15.5" tall, and 11"-11.5" in diameter (which is their small size). I e-mailed in my complaint at around noon on Wednesday. At 8:45 on Wednesday evening, I got a terse e-mail reply asking if I wanted them to have the florist come back and pick up the bouquet and deliver a large one. Um, well - since that's what I ordered, yeah, I guess so. Could they get it to me before noon on Thanksgiving? No. (Of course not). I also made it quite clear that I wanted the vase, rock and raffia to be identical to the image they presented on the website.

Friday morning I got a message on my cell phone saying that they couldn't find anyone who could deliver the replacement bouquet Friday, but that a different florist could get them to me Saturday. The person, without apologizing, said that she had specifically spoken to the new florist, and that they had the correct vase and rocks, and that they had all the necessary flowers except one, so there would be one substitution. Whatever.

So this afternoon (Saturday), the new bouquet arrives on my doorstep. If the first bouquet was a joke, this replacement bouquet showed that the joke was on me. Here is the pitiful thing:

Vase? Wrong! Raffia? Wrong! Rocks? Acceptable. Size? WRONG! (15" x 12", instead of 17" x 14") Type of flowers... Did they even know which arrangement I ordered??? Colors? FAIL!

Seriously... in whose world is it acceptable to charge $60 for flowers that look like the picture at top, and to send the bouquet at right?? They knew this was a replacement for a disappointed customer, and not only is it wrong, wrong, wrong, but the large lily in the front is crushed and damaged.

In my original e-mail I told them that I am a regular customer and asked how often this type of thing happens. I said that I am somewhat concerned that what I have been buying and paying for is not what my friends and family have been getting. I received no response to that.

Is bait-and-switch their standard modus operandi? I have a new e-mail in to their Customer Service. Unless I receive some kind of plausible explanation and amazing apology, it's time to say goodbye to 1800Flowers.com, because for all the perceived convenience, it seems they've been taking me for a ride. And had I not decided to splurge on myself, I would've blindly kept shopping there, never knowing that what I've been paying for isn't even remotely close to what I've been getting.

Having a Zen Moment

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:47:00 +0000

A few weeks ago I won a contest on Twitter by a place called ZenBlocks.com (@ZenBlocks) wherein I guessed the species of the next batch of Zen Blocks to be made. Working for a woodworking retailer, and trying to keep up on all things wood-related, I had just read an article on a spectacular batch of old-growth mahogany that had recently been uncovered. So, just for fun, I entered the guess of old-growth mahogany. Well, the answer wasn't old-growth, but mahogany was correct and I was the winner!

Got my Zen Blocks today and I love them! I have been coveting these things since I first saw them several months ago!

I'm one of those people who either paces, doodles, or plays with things while on the phone. My current fidget-item is a little glass bowl filled with polished rocks that we picked up on the beach at Lake Eshquaguma (where our cabin is). I love to put my fingers in the bowl and just turn them over and over. (I'm very tactile).

These Zen Blocks are the same kind of thing. They just sit there begging you to touch them and play with them. I adore them. If you'd like your own set, you get get them at ZenBlocks' Etsy store. These would make a great holiday gift. They come in different species, and some even have fancy inlaid stripes.

Thanks so much, ZenBlocks, for sending them to me! Signing off to go meditate now....

Web Tangents: Around the Web on a Wednesday

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:20:00 +0000

First off, HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS, PEOPLE? There is an Eggo Waffle shortage, and we may have to live without Eggo waffles until early 2010. Wha... at?? No NutriGrain Whole Wheat Eggo Waffles on a Saturday morning? I am new to reading The Blogess ("Like Mother Teresa, Only Better"), but enjoying her so far. She fills you in on the whole Onion-like crisis here. My favorite is one of the comments on her blog post: "Waffle we do??"

Oh, and speaking of The Onion, did you know that December has been named National Awareness Month? Check it out!

Next, we roll back over to Twitter, which is where I first heard of the horrible waffle shortage of '09. A few tweets earlier, I had re-tweeted (by hand, mind you, not the stupid new-fangled way) my displeasure with the new Retweet system. My work Twitter account had been included in the beta today, and I was not at all pleased with what I saw. I heartily agree with Lisa Barone of Outspoken Media when she explains Why Twitter's New Retweet Feature Sucks. Fresh from retweeting to my tweeps about the Retweeting Function sucking and the global waffle crisis, I come back to my Twitter home page I find that my account is now in on the Retweet beta. Augh! No likey.

Over on Facebook, my friend Yvonne is looking for Zhu Zhu Pets for her cutie little twins. I looked around and sent her this: Got Zhu Zhu? Top Ten Ways to Score a Hamster!

Then I'm suddenly struck by a brilliant idea - I'll go over to Squidoo and make a Zhu Zhu lens! I'll make a mint in the month before Christmas, with all the Zhu Zhu searchers out there! Hmm, well. Fortunately, I searched Squidoo first to see what I was up against, and found... 70+ lenses about Zhu Zhus. Squidoo got Zhu Zhu? Yes... yes we do.

Meme Time!

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 05:45:00 +0000

My friend Amy over at WhisperWood Cottage has passed on two lovely awards to me here at The View from White Pine Lane!

They are the Premio Meme Award and the Honest Scrap Award. Both of these prestigious awards require that I tell you, my readers, a certain number of things about myself (7 things and 10 things, respectively) and that I then pass them on to the same number of other deserving bloggers (7 and 10, respectively).

Amy did graciously say that I was allowed to change these rules to suit myelf. Phew! Letter A): I don't know that I can think of 17 interesting things to tell you, and B): I almost certainly don't know 17 other bloggers upon which to bestow these awards next! So, let's wing it, shall we?

Hmmm, what to tell, what to tell? What do we want to know about meeeeeeeeee?

1. I met my husband when we were 14 years old.
2. I used to have a horse named Yuban.
3. I have been to northern Africa twice.
4. Coffee preference: Hazelnut latte (Caribou, bien sûr!)
5. I have a Master's Degree in International Management.
6. I am adopted.
7. Je parle français.
8. I am stuck in the 80s (or at least that's my children's opinion!)
9. I'm not officially a junker, but I've become fascinated with junking/repurposing.
10. I'm totally at home in the 'burbs - not an urban girl at all.
11. Favorite special meal: Châteaubriand with Béarnaise sauce, Châteauneuf du Pape, and bananes flambées for dessert!
12. I have a horror of people who spit!
13. From Kindergarten through high school graduation, I went to seven different schools.
14. I love little lap dogs.
15. I can only sleep with a fan noise on, and have been known to pack a fan in my suitcase when going on vacation. (My husband jokes that if we're stuck somewhere without a fan, he has to go "Whooosh, whooosh, whooosh" all night so I can sleep!)
16. I am hyper-organized at work, and extremely disorganized at home. (And I hate that).
17. I hate to wear socks, and even hate closed shoes. (Yes, I love Crocs).

OK! Wow! I can't even tell you how long it took me to come up with that list, but I'm glad that's done. Now, to pass on the awards! Thank, Amy for allowing us the chance to make our own rules. Rule # 1: The Premio Meme Award is by request only. If you'd like it for your blog, put a note in the comments and it's all yours! Rule #2: I'm cutting the number of recipients on the Honest Scrap Award to five! Yes, seven lucky gals (from five great blogs), all of whom have dealt with plenty of honest scrap! Rule #3 Award recipients can also make their own rules!

My choices for the Honest Scrap Award are:

Kathy of Sylvia's Vintage Daughter

Candy of Junk Sophisticate

Gretchen of Mimi-Toria's Designs

Lanette of Cottage Elements

Trista, Alicia and Jen of Kountry Junkers

Be sure to check them all out! These are all awesome blogs that will inspire you can get your creative junking juices flowing!

Congratulations, ladies! Grab your Honest Scrap Award for your blogs, and tell us ten things about yourselves. Then pass it on to ten more bloggers!

Have fun with it (and bend the rules, like I did, in any way that suits you)!

Don't forget to come back here and make a comment when you get your ten things up! Can't wait to know more about all of you creative junking women.

Regular eBay Sellers: The Quickest and Easiest Way to Make Money

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 05:16:00 +0000

I have made a discovery today that may shock you. It may astound you. You may even recognize yourself in the tale I'm about the recount...

Are you ready? The quickest and easiest way to make money on eBay is to...

list things!

Yes, I know. It's amazing. It's astounding. It's seemingly incomprehensible. Something so radical is bound to cause an uproar.

But I've found it to be true.

I have neglected my eBay store for months now, not listing anything new. Oh, it's still open, and every now and then I'll have the odd unexpected sale. I've generally been making just about enough in a month to cover the store fees. Pitiful, I know, but I've been concentrating on other things lately.

Today, though, I decided it was a good eBay day. I took pictures and got several things listed. I've actually sold two of them already, making about $60.00, or more than I've made in the past several months!

If you're like me, and you have several hundred items in your basement in Rubbermaid storage boxes waiting to be listed, the secret to selling them seems to be... list them! Just do it!

I'm so encouraged that I'm going to try listing 4-5 things a day (which seems do-able), and go back to actually making some money on eBay.

So think it over, and I think you'll agree with my findings: you won't sell anything on eBay unless you list it. Ingenious, I know. Sometimes I amaze myself. Try it for yourself, and see if you don't agree with me! Good luck!

Midnight Sun Depression

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 17:28:00 +0000

Am I 14 or 47? Hard to say, by my latest reading obsession: the Twilight series. I finished all four books in 3-1/2 weeks, and with the busy-ness of my life right now, that is some kind of personal record for me. I just "finished" reading Midnight Sun on Stephenie Meyer's website last night. And now I'm depressed.

For those of you who don't know - and apparently live under a rock - Midnight Sun was to have been the fifth book in the series, and is a re-writing of the first book, Twilight, from Edward's point of view rather than Bella's.

And it's so goooo-ooood! *said in an extreme whining voice*

The problem is, the first 12 chapters were "leaked" onto the Internet last summer, and Stephenie Meyer feels so violated by that (as she has every right to be) that she has put the book aside, and says she doesn't know if she'll ever be able to come back to writing it! (She has now posted the draft of the first twelve chapters on her own site: StephenieMeyer.com).

And my problem is... I'm depressed by this! I cannot get enough Twilight! And Midnight Sun does such an amazing job of "rounding out" the story....

Oh please, Stephenie Meyer, (because I'm sure she'll be reading this!) take pity on us, the poor souls who came to the end of chapter twelve and feel like they just fell off a cliff.... (I really want to read the meadow scene!)

On Blogging, Tribes, and Time

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Or: With a tribe behind her, eight lenses to create, and three blogs to write, will she now make time for what she wants to do (which is to write)?

I've just been accepted into RocketMoms, a group of awesome women who make excellent Squidoo lenses, and who help each other to make even better ones. Hey-- I'm suddenly one of the smartest women on the web! Going through RocketMoms over the next eight weeks, my task will be to create at least eight new Squidoo lenses. I'm thrilled about htat, but the thing is, I also just became the blogmaster for my company's blog last month, and I just started a new blog with my kids!

Anyone who's reading this blog (all one or two of you-- hi Mom!) will know how I struggle to find time to write for it. It's not lack of ideas, or ambition, just a lack of time and energy. In April I started Darren Rowse's 31 Days to Build a Better Blog (31DBBB), and I didn't even make it past day five. And that was something I really and truly wanted to do. (Thank God he's got a workbook out now, and I can go through it at my own pace-- excellent!)

The idea behind RocketMoms is that it's a very involved support and learning group of lensmasters-- a real tribe, as Seth would say. The 31DBBB in April was a kind of a tribe, too-- and it certainly had a great leader in Darren-- but RocketMoms is smaller, more intimate, and I already know many of the lensmasters in the group. I'm hoping that will make me be more accountable, and motivate me to make the time to write.

Among several other books, I'm reading one right now that my mom bought for me: The Woman's Book of Courage: Meditations for Empowerment & Peace of Mind. It's not normally my kind of book, but it does give me things to think about. It talks, for instance, about your life as if it were a bank account, and how you have to make as many or more deposits (doing things for yourself) as you do withdrawals (doing things for others). Well, blogging and writing and Squidooing count as doing things for me, so I just need to make it a priority to set aside time for them.

But truth be told, maybe it's not only lack of time, but lack of confidence in the work I'm turning out. I guess if you're going to sit around waiting to hatch a post that is pithy, profound and perfect, your blog will look a lot like mine-- pretty empty. And I'm also guessing that the way to get closer to consistent pithiness, profundity, and perfection in posts is to practice! (Good Godfrey, it must be National Alliteration Day!)

I read a blurb on Lauren Elkin's blog 'Maitresse' last week about Virginia Woolf's work ethic, and the amount of writing the woman cranked out every year. Lauren's response to that will have to be my new mantra:
"Well, back to work then!"

My Five New Favorite Techie-Geek Websites

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:28:00 +0000

Back to blogging! And let's start out with my five most recently fave'd websites. Being a Techie-Geek Girl extraordinaire, who as of about six months ago makes her living in Internet Marketing, these all fall into the Tech/Geek/Social Media category:

5. Butterscotch.com
Tasty tech, and delicious downloads!
This little site is filled with info and tutorials about all the things you want to do online! I am currently having my mom watch their Facebook for Grownups series of ten quick tutorial videos. It's perfect for noobs, but there's lots of good stuff on the site for those in the know as well.

4. SmashingMagazine.com
A weblog dedicated to web-developers and designers.
Helpful downloads, tantalizing templates, beautiful fonts... it's like a candy store for web designers. I find resources-- often free-- that I'd never find anywhere else.

4. Problogger
Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging
I have to say I really don't read Darren Rowse's site to help me make money, which is not the main goal of my blog. I read it because it's full of information on how to make my blog a better blog. He's bright, to the point, on right on top of all the latest. He's my blogging mentor (even though he doesn't know me!)

2. Mashable
The Social Media Guide
Mashable knows everything there is to know about all the social media sites, and they are there to get that info to you. From Facebook resources and insights, to what's up with Google this week, to the latest in Twitter apps, to what works with new WordPress themes, it's the cutting edge of social media news. An indispensible resource for the Social Media Queen.

1. Twitter!
What are you doing right now?
I've been tweeting the answer to that question since last summer, but just over the last few months Twitter has become increasingly important to me as I've seen the power of what it can do. I use it to communicate-- mostly with colleagues, online acquaintances, and customers-- but more and more lately I use it to get my news. If I hear something's going on, I get on Twitter Search immediately. And almost as immediately, I get the scoop. Often before the news channels have it. The power of the tweeps. I'm loving it.

If you haven't checked out some of these sites yet, take a look, and let me know what you think in the comments here. I'd love to hear your opinions of some of my new favorites. Maybe you'll find a new favorite too!

The Blog that almost isn't, and what she's going to do about it

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 17:37:00 +0000

When is a blog not a blog? When you never have time to post, even though you have a lot to say! That has been the case so far with The View from White Pine Lane. I was actually mortified when I submitted my blog to the BlogHer network a few weeks ago, and was turned down, for posting too infrequently. I'm glad they turned me down-- you have to have some standards! I only posted once in December, and on this last day of the month, this is only my second January post.

I think part of my problem, and one I've fussed about here before, is that The View from White Pine Lane is too unfocused. So my thought is to start a second blog, to be more about family and parenting and tweeners (their likes and dislikes, tweener pop culture, etc.) This blog would be more focused on my online activities: Squidoo, eBay and social media.

So, if I don't have time to keep one blog up, how will I ever manage two? I'm not sure that it will work, but I'm going to give it a go! So watch this spot for the new blog's url. If you haven't subscribed to the feed from this blog yet, try it! I promise to be more entertaining in the future. If you are a subscriber, well... at least you can't accuse me of spamming your Reader account!

Mini Web Tangents for today:

http://twitter.com/Genny_Spencer
A Twitter account that posts a line-a-day journal kept by an Iowa farm girl in 1937. Mundane, and yet fascinating at the same time.

The Social Path
The blog of the David Griner, who's tweeting the Genny Spencer account. Genny is his great-aunt, and he explains how the twitter account came to be.

I'm following David Griner on Twitter now, with my Twitter account. Moments later: And now he's following me. See how that works?

Another of those fascinating-ly random things found on Twitter:
Twitpic of Jerry Trainer's Dog at a dog park this morning.

And from Jerry Trainer's dog, to my iCarly Squidoo lens. You work out all the connections there.

Web Tangents for January 2, 2009

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:41:00 +0000

Happy New Year, bloggy peeps! A new year, a new Web Tangents post. Started off at my Google Reader... with 1000+ unread items. Not a good way to start the year! Did you know that Google has implemented a new feature that turns off the "# of unread items" figures (in case they're stressing you out)? And also-- if you're not using Google Reader to keep up on things yet, why in the world not?? I don't know what I'd do without it!)

One fun blog that I like to keep up with via Reader is called Maitresse. It's written by a literary americaine ex-pat a Paris, and it's an entertaining way to keep me somewhat connected to the city. Plus she does this little thing called "around the internet on a tuesday" that may or may not have inspired Web Tangents... but I digress. Two things on Maitresse caught my eye today: first, a Monet that I had never seen before, La femme a la cape rouge, that author Lauren Elkin used for her Christmas post (enchanting!), and then a link to an article on the U.S.'s most literate cities (she lamenting that her native New York was not even near the top ten..!)

What is the number one most literate city in the U.S. for 2008, you may ask? Why, it's Minneapolis! (OK, so Mpls is tied with Seattle-- but that's not the point here....) I have to say I'm not surprised. In fact, since part of the judging is based on book sales, I may have carried the city myself! Oh! and do we notice something? City # 3 is St. Paul! Seems Minnesota isn't some hick backwater after all.... (Plus, it gets damned cold in the winter and there's not much else to do but read!) :-)

Skipping over to my other favorite American/Parisian blog, O Chateau: Stuff Parisians Like. I liked this post on Jeans, even though that's certainly not the way it was when I lived there (we won't say how many years ago...), and also an earlier post on Berthillon. And I adore how author Oliver Magny ends each post with useful tips, and "Sound like a Parisian"! « Faut qu’j’m’achète un jean…» Read quite a few more posts at O Chateau, LOL'd, spoke French to the air, then moved on to Twitter. Where I've been a lot today. 'Cuz it's my JOB now! (OK, a little, teeny part of my job, but still-- MY JOB! W00t!)

Most interesting tweets today: Twitter flash mob helps homeless, and Pete Brown(MVP)
Got this shirt for Christmas :) The shirt: Pluto gets demoted, ThinkGeek makes a shirt. ThinkGeek. Now there's a website with my name all over it.

And that's where I have to end my tangent for tonight, because I have a bad head cold, and when you have a bad head cold you can't make good segues, write clear conclusions, or be pithy. At all. See you next time.

Personal Day

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:03:00 +0000

Everyone needs a personal day now and again... even if you're Darth Vader. I know I could use a whole slew of personal days right about now. I was a SAHM for eight lovely years, and now I hate it that my kids are off for a two-week break, but I'm not off with them. Doesn't seem right somehow. Maybe I'll have to take a cue from Darth, and take a day for WhitePineLane just to be WhitePineLane. My back hurts.

Web Tangents for November 30, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:11:00 +0000

Welcome to my first Web Tangents post, where I detail my crazily tangential web surfing for the day. (Alternate title for today: How I Started With Seth Godin and Ended with Greg Brady).

Started my day by looking at a post on Seth Godin's blog about Creating a clearance sale culture. Is discounting everything right now really the right thing for your business to do? My husband and I had just been talking about that very topic!
Enjoyed that, so I subscribed to Seth's Blog.
When it showed up in Google Reader, another of his posts immediately caught my eye: Don't Know What You've Got 'Til It's Gone: IwantSandy is folding.... Wait a minute... wha??? Sandy is my personal assistant! She can't quit-- she's not even real! What does he mean...
Read through that, getting really bummed out, then clicked through to the I Want Sandy site, where I saw this:

Apparently I want Sandy, but she doesn't give a flying **** about me.
Really happy for Rael and all, but... geez.

Next I went for the ~~breakup line~~ explanation. Rael Danforth's post titled A fork in the road didn't really make me feel any better. Oh I'm glad Sandy's DNA will live on at Twitter, and happy for Rael, I guess. I'm sure the Twitter gig will be a lot easier than running a free 2.0 service. Still... ya know?
I told my husband about Sandy, then I tweeted this: Told my husband my personal assistant (Sandy) just quit-- bought out by Twitter. He said (honest to god), "What's a twitter?" Ai yi yi.....
On Twitter I saw that JaguarJulie had just updated her Squidoo lens Martha Stewart is reading MY lenses! I LOVE Martha Stewart, and I love Squidoo, so I had to go check that out...
JaguarJulie's Martha lens was one of the best lenses I've ever seen! Well researched, funny, visually pleasing, with lots and lots and lots of great links and information. It's no wonder that JaguarJulie is a Giant Squid with 1019 fans! And it's so funny how very many topics Martha has done on her show that JaguarJulie already had lenses on.... Well, Martha does have to get her ideas somewhere!
In the lens intro, Julie says Martha and her staff must has recognized the topicability of Squidoo lenses. She then wonders if topicability is a word-- I love that! Well, apparently it is a word now, because further down I see that Julie has stated a second blog called... Topicability!
I clicked the Topicability link, but instead of taking me to her blog, it took me to a Squidoo lens explaining her blog. A good idea, since her blog is a little unusual. JaguarJulie features Squidoo lenses that she deems to be spot-on topical. A fun idea! I never actually made it over to the blog, however-- I ended up being too engrossed by all the fascinating stuff on the Topicability lens.
One of the very topical lenses mentioned was Squidoo Co-Branding, which is by another Giant Squid, bdkz. All about Squidoo's "other" portals, with examples of each: SquidBids (eBay lenses), SquidBoo (Halloween lenses), SquidWho (people lenses), SquidLit (book lenses) and more. Under SquidLit, one of the examples was
Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, which I actually read (the lens, not the book-- give me some credit!) because, well-- I'm that age.

And that's where I ended up my pleasure surfing for the morning. From Seth Godin to Greg Brady-- now that is one heck of a tangent!

(Spent the rest of my morning helping my husband get set up on LinkedIn, which is a professional networking site. If you're not on it, you should be).

More off-topic (way-off-topic) Web Tangents to come!

Two American Girls Visit American Girl Place at the MoA

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 03:34:00 +0000

Yesterday was a big day in the Twin Cities... at least for tweener girls and their moms. Minneapolis (it's Bloomington, actually, but we won't quibble about that) has been graced with one of only seven American Girl stores in the country, and it opened yesterday.

As you can imagine, the MoA (Mall of America, to those of you not from these parts) was mobbed with hoards of tweener girls clutching Kit, or Samantha, or Jess, or Mia, and waiting, waiting, waiting to get into the store. Because there was a wait. Yes, a waiting line to enter the store. And a waiting line to get into the waiting line to enter the store. The girls' moms were clutching their cell phones and tweeting or writing on their Facebook walls about the crazy-long wait in line. (At least that's what I was doing!)

Mall security leading us ("Single file! SINGLE file!") from
the line-to-get-in-line to the line-to-get-into-the-store.
The wait didn't turn out to be quite a long as the one-and-a-half hours that mall security had told us it would be, but we would've waited that long and then some.

Finally entering the magical store was a beautiful moment. The doorman asked us "How many?" I replied "Two." "Four," he corrected with a smile. He gestured down to the Julie and Mia dolls that my daughter was clutching in the AG Place-exclusive double doll carrier that we had picked up in the flagship store in Chicago last year. (That bag was the object of much envy among the others in line, to our delight! There were many whispered comments of "OH! Look at that girl's bag!", tugging of parental sleeves and pointing of little fingers).

Once inside, I couldn't help comparing this pared-down version to the flagship store, and it doesn't quite stand up, obviously-- but if you haven't been to the big ones in Chicago, New York or L.A., you won't feel any sense of disappointment. There were fresh flowers everywhere; huge glass cases filled with dioramas of the historical girls and all their accoutrements; and big, comfy benches to soothe tired shoppers. They also have HUGE (they have to be huge to hold the doll boxes) signature red shopping totes to hold all the loot before you head on up to the cash registers to shell out what feels like a month's salary for the little love clutching your hand and saying, "Thank you, Mama."

The first thing we did was head straight up to the bistro-- we hadn't eaten and were starving from standing in line all that time. Well, of course they were full, and all the reservations for the rest of the day were already taken.

They did happen to have two spots open immediately at the desert bar.... So guess where we ate? We bellied-up to the bar with Julie and Mia, and lunch was a luscious strawberry cheesecake and an even more luscious molton chocolate cake. Mmmm.

After that, it was down to some serious shopping. We covered the upstairs, then the downstairs, then the upstairs again, then the downstairs again. Lauren had to decide what to do with all that birthday money. Then she hit on it: Samantha's being "retired to the archives"... she'd get a Samantha doll!

We scooted over to the Samantha case; six left. Lauren (good little shopper that she is) grabbed one. We circled back around to the Samantha area three more times while we were there: two Smantha dolls left... one left... none left! Good call, Peaches! (She's an excellent shopper. I take great pride in that!)

After that we searched in vain for an American Girl Place Minneapolis shirt (like the Chicago shirt Peachy has on in the photos). Wouldn't you think they'd have those??

We settled on two other cute shirts for Lauren, and after a very long line at the cash register, we were outta there! Tired, but happy after our long day at AG Place. Will we go back? The only question is when!

High School Musical 3!

noreply@blogger.com (WhitePineLane) — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:50:00 +0000

I'd better start off right up front admitting that I get just as excited as my kids about High School Musical. (OK-- maybe even more so). Yup-- I've got all three soundtracks on my iPod, and I've seen 1 and 2 countless times.

I grew up LOVING musicals. The 1960s were replete with epic musicals: Mary Poppins, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and my favorite of all time: Camelot (stage version more so than the movie....) I knew them and loved them all-- and still do.

High School Musical brings the musical genre back to a new generation, and for that, I truly adore it. So naturally my 9-year-old daughter and I were there on Friday for the opening night of High School Musical 3! What did we think? We loved it! Still, I'm not sure it was my favorite of the three...

It was certainly larger than life! The biggest difference, in my opinion, was that there were all kinds of fantasy/daydream sequences. That's very typical of musicals-- but more so of musicals of the 1950s (think Debbie Reynolds). Here's Ryan and Sharpay's fantasy sequence number, I Want It All:

End of song:

Oh-- they were just imagining it all:

That's kind of cute, but it's not the kind of musical the first two were. (With the exception of parts of the song Fabulous from HSM2).

There was even a nod (you could call it a very blatant copy, but I prefer to think of it as a nod) to Fred Astaire, when Troy danced up the wall, across the ceiling, and down the other wall during the song "Scream"! (That also reminded me of my new iPhone app, iChalky ($0.99 on iTunes):

iChalky dude, Troy, Fred Astaire

So, all-in-all the movie was great fun. My daughter and I thought it had a somewhat weak ending, though-- especially compared to the ending numbers of the first two! We're All in This Together and All for One were both FUN, upbeat songs, and the look was great. They left you in a great mood, thinking "That was a GREAT movie!"

This grande finale song was actually called "High School Musical"-- which is not a good start right there. The senior class danced around in their incredibly floppy gowns during graduation, singing "High-Schoool-Mus-i-cal. Who said you have to let it go?" over and over and over. Lame. Disapppointing. Bad ending.

Where I think they might possibly have made a mistake on this one is that I am certainly not going to see it in a theater again. It was great, but I won't go again. Part of the intoxicating thing about the first two was that you saw them on Friday, then again on Saturday and again on Sunday! Since our babies were toddlers, we've known that the more you see a show, the more you love it! (Blue's Clues, same episode five times a week, anyone?)

Well, we now have to wait... and wait and wait and wait for the DVD. Good idea? I'm not sure. It means we'll forget. I already can't conjure up all the scenes and songs in my mind. By the time the DVD comes out will I still want it? That's the gamble Disney took.

OK, the movie broke box office records for a musical, but will kids be as crazed for the DVD? I can't predict. I already can't remember how much I liked it.

What do you think?