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Bathroom remodel #1

Does your bath­room sing to you? Mine does! Well, it does now any­way. But first, here are the ugly “before” pic­tures (def­i­nite­ly no singing here, just a bad case of the blahs!):     Then, there are the super-cool “dur­ing” pic­tures (“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!”):     And final­ly, the amaz­ing “after” pic­tures (“TADA!”):   It’s

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Professor Reinforced Chrome

My Hero

Thanks to Jim and The Hero Fac­to­ry, I have cre­at­ed my very own alter-ego super­hero. Behold… Pro­fes­sor Rein­forced Chrome: Aw, come on, you know you’re impressed. Aren’t you?

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Literature to Change the World

Many thanks to Mitali Perkins for her recent post enti­tled “How Kids Can Change the World.” It was a short post, but it touched many lives. Per­son­al­ly, I dis­cov­ered a won­der­ful web­site about books for young read­ers (now defunct), read some pow­er­ful essays by Mitali and Hazel Rochman, and found a list of won­der­ful new books to read. This Thurs­day, I

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“Fund Your Dream” Essay Contest for Teens

Teens, pop on over here for more infor­ma­tion about an essay con­test that could help you “fund your dream”. Lisa McMann wants to know, “What is the great­est obsta­cle you’ve over­come?” Answer in 500 words or less and sub­mit your essay to enter the con­test. Lisa McMann and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Simon & Schus­ter will choose one win­ner who will receive

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Why do I write? Because it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

A per­son I feel very for­tu­nate to call my friend, the suc­cess­ful and tal­ent­ed Kevan Atte­ber­ry, recent­ly wrote an arti­cle in the Chi­nook (the quar­ter­ly newslet­ter from the West­ern Wash­ing­ton region of the Soci­ety of Children’s Book Writ­ers and Illus­tra­tors) enti­tled, “On Being a Fraud.” I won­der if he’s read about the imposter syn­drome, because he described it quite eloquently.

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This is not me

I have lived in many dif­fer­ent places, had more than one career, and done a lot of dif­fer­ent things. So, in case you’ve ever won­dered… I can­not speak Swedish, and this is not me. Nope, nei­ther is this, although it’s fun to see my name on Ama­zon. I do not write para­nor­mal romance nov­els, although it sounds like fun and

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Two good things go great together!

Star­bucks and (RED) today announced a mul­ti-year part­ner­ship that will give cof­fee lovers a chance to do good every day. Through­out the hol­i­day sea­son, Star­bucks will con­tribute five cents from the sale of any of (Star­bucks) RED Exclu­sive bev­er­age (the three bev­er­ages that make up the Star­bucks pop­u­lar hol­i­day trio) at all of their US and Cana­di­an stores to the Global

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I’m it!

Wow, I’ve been tagged! I don’t nor­mal­ly do this kind of thing, but I’d do just about any­thing for Jolie, so here goes: 1. What are your nick­names?One of my best friends called me Spoory Laur (since my maid­en name was Lau­rie Spoor). I guess I’m not real­ly a nick­name kind of gal, though. 2. What was the first movie you

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DoSomething.org launches fundraising IPO

Accord­ing to a recent press release: Bor­row­ing pri­vate sec­tor tech­niques, Do Some­thing is issu­ing an IPO that promis­es sig­nif­i­cant Social Return on Invest­ment (SROI). The growth cap­i­tal invest­ment will fos­ter expo­nen­tial growth and bol­ster the orga­ni­za­tion’s self-sus­­tain­ing pro­gram­ming. OK, this is cool, but real­ly just an inter­est­ing way to put out a call to donors and raise funds. Will it work?

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