Freebies

During random trawling the past few weeks, I’ve taken advantage of a number of specials and it suddenly occurred to me that I’ve been able to score a few great freebies, and thought I’d mention them here.

 

A little while ago, I upgraded  my flickr account to a pro account. With that came 10 free Moo Mini cards.  Now often when you get ‘deals’ like that they don’t apply to anyone living outside the US. Well in this case they didn’t seem to mind and I just paid a dollar or two for shipping/postage. In my mind that still qualifies as a freebie.

 

Then I came across a site that did a whole variety of printing products Vista Print, which I’ve been looking into, in order to better promote my photography and stuff. I joined their mailing list and hey presto! Suddenly I was getting emails from them with the most incredible deals! Yesterday they emailed me to offer me 250 free premium business cards (they don’t have a local office, so I dealt with the Australian version of the site, but they are in the USA/UK/Germany and *many* other countries), the 250 cards were truly free, and would only have incurred a cost had I wanted special paper, or any other add-ons (like double sided printing etc), so again, I just paid for shipping which came to AUD $9, which is R54 (about US $7.20) - for shipping them all the way from Australia to South Africa - score!  If I’d gone to a local printer here, and ordered 250 business cards they would have charged me at least R150 for the design and at least another R300 for 250 cards. As it was, I used one of their templates which are fully customizable, and it’s easy too, and voila - I have 250 cards winging their way to me now for less than a burger and fries at a local restaurant!  They’re also offering stuff like 1 free rubber stamp, note cards, post cards, flyers etc - the deals really are very good, they only charge you shipping - or if you want special extras (which is clearly where they make their money).

As many of you may know, my MIL and FIL are currently away working in the UK, and one thing I always do when one of their birthday’s rolls around, this time it’s MIL’s on May 23rd, is have a photo book made for them of the latest photos of hubby/bubby etc.  I decided to try a new company this time, Zazzle, and while this isn’t strictly speaking a freebie, they offered me 10% off my next purchase simply because I emailed a friend about their service. Oh - and in fact this time around instead of a photobook, I made a calendar. In this case because I was shipping to the UK, the cost was even less.

 

Also - I received an email from one of Babyzone’s partners, York Photo, and they offered me 30 free 4×6″ photos, just for registering. Honestly they look and function just like snapfish, so I reckon they’re part of the same company.

 

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I found more stuff, but can’t think of it right now, but I’ll post the links here as soon as I remember them, so y’all can take advantage of some of the good deals out there.  FYI I’m not being paid to advertise these to you

Oops I did it again…(wiggles butt and does dance move)

I just went and registered a domain name - I got an awesome one. …and I ordered a hosting plan to go with it.

Why?

Because I’m inspired.

By whom?
Actually several people Pioneer Woman, and Bathtubjunkie in particular. (There are many more of you out there, but I can’t blog about all of you)

 

Why?

 

Well Bathtubjunkie has always got a wonderful fresh looking blog template (I love wordpress but there’s only so much you can do with the standard templates hosted by them), and Lisanne has shown us that you can  do great sponsored posts that are really interesting, and without driving away loyal friends and readers. Plus she has so many cool widgety things that you can only do when you have your own web server space thingy, yeah that’s real terminology too. Cos I’m geeky like that.

 

Pioneer woman - well, she’s so freakin’ awesome and wonderful that I’d like to be her! Well her blog is like something mine could only ever aspire to be - because well - her life is so much like I’d like mine to be! Okay - I’m exaggerating here, of course I love my life/family/etc, but her blog is so great in that it tells us all about their ranching life (I’ve always dreamed of such an existence) - and oh god her photography is like mind-blowingly great (again, I’ve learned so much from her), and holy crap this woman has recipes on her site with photos that make me want to lick the screen. I actually made her roast garlic mashed potatoes and my husband was like, “OMG these are INCREDIBLE!” - and he NEVER compliments my cooking, because honestly it’s just not that great (only from lack of effort on my part I might add, it’s not that I’m a bad cook, I’m a lazy cook. Baking, though, *that* I can do. But thou shalt not live on baked goods alone).  Plus her life includes things like wide open spaces, mustangs, horses, horse poo, dogs, did I mention wide open spaces, getting up at 4h45am and a million other things that I want in my life, like hot cowboy butts in wrangler jeans and chaps…hee hee. Things that I aspire to do and see. Hey there are things she does already that I do too, like sitting around in yoga pants all day instead of doing what I’m supposed to, like house work. Ha.  Plus her blog does so well (can 14000 commenters on one post be wrong?), that it makes money. Money which she channels back into the blog to make it even more cool. That allows her to do incredible contests and giveaways etc. That’s cool. Cool in a way that I’d like to be able to do. I’m not intending to copy her in anyway, of course not, I could never be *that* cool, I just think that what she’s able to do with her blog is well, cool. My high school English teach would be scrawling all over this in red ink right now saying, “USE ANOTHER ADJECTIVE!”

 

So that covers what’s inspired me, in a nutshell. 

 

Here are my reasons:

 

1. I want to be able to have a great looking blog, that I can customize myself (or beg more web savvy friends of mine to help me with). 
2. I want to be able to have more storage than WP offers right now, for all the photos I’m going to be posting etc.
3. I want to be able to do sponsored posts - which WP doesn’t allow on it’s hosted blogs. Why? Because I want this blog to be a source of income. Granted it doesn’t have to be huge, but every penny right now is going towards getting my family out of here.   We have a lot of expenses involved in our big move including, permanent residence applications for all of us (about R12 000/US-$1600), flights (about R34 200/$4560), quarantine for our 2 dogs (about R30 000/$4000) I’m NOT leaving them behind to the unknown, Storage and transportation/moving of our personal possessions (at least R10000/$1325) - we’re not taking any furniture, just personal items like clothes, photos, laptops, albums, a few books, we’ll sell everything here and buy new stuff over there. Believe it or not this works out cheaper than shipping furniture half way around the world. I’m not complaining either, since I plan on having a bit of a Ikea-fest when we get there. Then of course we need to set ourselves up there with first few months rental/cars etc. Granted we’ll have our two cars to sell when we leave here, but they both still have loans on them, so we’ll get some money out, but not a huge amount.  Once we’re over there and settled, any income will go towards the kids college fund, (and not whatever fancy schmancy iMac has just been released that I can’t resist - that will have to come from my *real* income producing photography

 

Having talked about sponsored posts so much you guys are probably thinking this blog is going to be a total snore, and full of ads. Not so. It’s going to be much the same fantastic funny witty incredible stuff as here, just with some neat and tasteful ads in the sidebars, and the occasional sponsored post. One thing I am resolving to do, is blog at least once a day. At least. Unless I’m sick, or too busy with my real life, or have kids hanging off both my eyelids, which in fact is the case right now, so I’d best be off.

 

I’ll let you know when it’s up and running and lookin’ good, which may be a little while, until then stay safe peeps.

 

 

Um, Mothers Day?

So I have a great husband. I admit that regularly.

 

There’s just one thing. He *really* sucks at stuff like celebrating mothers day. I mean he’s quite thoughtful in that he buys my favourite stuff for breakfast. But he’s not the kind of guy to arrange any kind of surprise or anything.

 

Granted I wasn’t exactly expecting breakfast in bed, given that I was likely to be up with new baby anyway, but hubby wanted to make me pancakes for breakfast, and needed to know how to do it. So I had to measure out the ingredients for him etc (what he can’t look it up on the internet, or call H - one of his friends’ wife who is the Bree van de Kamp of baking?)  Also, hubby went shopping with Bubby on Saturday, and when they came back, Bubby comes running up to me and yells “HERE MOMMY!” and hands me an envelope. Inside the envelope is a voucher for a head and neck massage from my regular hair/nails/beauty salon.    I turned to hubby and said, “Is this my mothers day gift?” and he sort of unceremoniously said, “Yes it is, Happy mothers day.”  (on Saturday?)  

 

Yes, it’s very thoughtful, and yes I will certainly enjoy using it. It’s just that I *really* wanted to get my highlights re-done, and I’d even gone so far as to specifically ask him to get me a voucher for that (to make it easy for him to know what to get). With money being so tight at the moment since I’ve been unable to work, basically since December because I was so heavily pregnant, I’m okay with using things like my birthday/valentines day/mothers day to get my hair done as my gift (because it’s *SO* expensive), but now I’m stuck with 2 inches of dark roots and a truck load of disappointment.  (and now a home highlighting kit on my shopping list)  Maybe I would have taken it differently if he’d presented it to me on Sunday morning with a big hug and a kiss, and maybe a ‘thanks for bearing my children’ or some other thoughtful sentiment.  But nada.

 

I don’t even feel like a should complain, there are so many single women out there who would give a limb to have a nice good looking, polite, faithful and helpful husband.  One who helps around the house, does the shopping when necessary, loves to cook, cleans when necessary, and even feeds the baby when asked. 

So last night, when he decided to pick a fight with me, and start to tell me how disappointed he was that I was doing so little around the house lately (hello! we have a newborn!), and he really feels hard done by that he’s having to do so much. What a nice way to end my sh*tty mothers day, and I really had to suppress the urge to shout F*CK YOU.

Getting my groove on…no not that one!

Yes, get your minds out of the gutter on that one. That’s *one* thing that I *am* going to wait the full six weeks for…if you know what I mean. Abstinence making the heart grow fonder and all that. I’m taking my recovery *very* seriously on that front. At least thats my story, and I’m sticking to it.

 

What I was actually talking about, was my photography. I’m positively *ITCHING* to work again.  I’ve been going through older stuff, and re-editing, and just really enjoying the art of it all. I’ve been inspired by stuff I’ve seen on redbubble (that site I told you about - link below), where I sell my stuff.  It’s where I’m keeping my favourite shots for resale to anyone who’s interested in buying nice photographs for their walls, framed or whatnot.  Anyhoo - my normal horse-show work is still at the same place…you can see it here if you’re interested.  Anyway - my point is that with all this inspiration, I’m feeling like I want to be driving around in my car just looking for interesting stuff to shoot.  Maybe I’ll load up new baby tomorrow while the Bubby is at school and tootle around looking for stuff.  But maybe that’s trying to force my creativity and the shots will probably come out crapola. I guess maybe I should just keep the camera in the car if we go somewhere in case the inspiration strikes me (the way it did at L’Ormarins Wine Estate the other day), and then get all shooty and creative.  I have big plans to put my best works into Calendars, Books and DVD’s which will be marketed by Amazon, that place that I simply cannot stop shopping at!

 

For now I think I’ll just update my portfolio both online and ‘real’ and make sure I have all my latest favourites in my black folio in case the opportunity for work outside the horse show scene arises.  One of the moms at the Bubby’s school had a sign on her car advertising kids parties, so I moseyed over (something I never do - I just can’t pimp myself, and I should do more when it comes to potential work) and asked her if they supplied a photographer along with all their party goodies - to which she replied that usually the client organised their own. So I handed her some of my cards and asked her to give them to clients if they were interested in having their little darlings special moments captured on disc by moi, you know, a real pro. Hee. Geez for crying out loud I’m an artist who’s sold countless prints of their work, covered sporting events, weddings, schools and other stuff, and yet I still feel funny calling myself a pro. Time to crank the confidence up a notch.  How else am I going to take the Australian photography scene by storm when I get there?! Ha.

 

Catching up

I started driving again today. It’s a bit sneaky since I’m only 4 weeks post-c-section, and I’m supposed to wait 6 weeks, but I just couldn’t stand not being able to get around and do stuff. Besides I’ve been meaning to get out to a local baby clinic to get new baby weighed, and also be able to fetch Bubby from school I just can’t rely on other people to keep driving me around and doing all this for me.  So new baby is doing really well! (yay for formula) he’s now 4.175kg, his birthweight was 3.325 so he’s way past that which is a good sign.

 

I’ve also got this huge urge to start shooting again (photography, not crime related stuff…ha ha), and I’ve been taking my camera everywhere with me the last while to get my ‘eye’ back in.  I’ve got some horse shows lined up for later this month, and I’m really looking forward to raking in the cash again! If you want to see some of the stuff I’ve been doing lately, you can click on the flickr bar (top left) and that will take you to my flickr profile and my latest shots - i captured our visit to the Franschoek Motor Museum, the wonderful scenery there, and some of the vintage/classic/exotic cars on display. The kids you see are from lunch yesterday - those are SIL’s two little ones.  I keep my immediate family stuff on ‘friends and family only’ so if I know you (whether in real life or blog world) - and you’d like to see them let me know and I’ll add you as a friend. Also - if YOU have a flickr account, let me know and I’ll add you as a contact.

 

Furthermore I’ve started selling prints on Redbubble, if you’d like to see some of the stuff I’m offering for sale (you can choose, print only, matted prints, canvas etc) simply click the red bubble link that I’m going to be posting at the end of each blog post from now on. I’m all about the hard sell baby! Okay, only kidding, but if you *do* purchase any, know that the money is going straight into our ‘get out of South Africa’ fund and you’ll be helping us to get out of here sooner - and with our pets too (quarantine is hugely expensive). There’s my guilt trip for the day Now go buy. Only joking. No really. Cough up.