Congratulations, Karen! You have been chosen by my highly scientific selection process (”Hey son - pick a number: 1, 2, 3 or 4!”) as the winner of my impromptu drawing announced at the end of You’re Going to Read How Many Books This Year? I hope you’re enjoying Todoodlist as much as I am, and thanks for entering!

I spent part of my Christmas afternoon out at my ex-mother-in-law’s place learning how to shoot. My oldest son’s father was my instructor. First time I’d ever held a gun in my hands and not only did I not hurt myself or anyone else, I hit the target….multiple times!
Before the afternoon was over, I’d shot a .22 handgun, a 9mm automatic and a 30/30 rifle. I did the best with the .22, not surprisingly. It was much smaller and easier to handle than the other two, though still …

Love to read fiction but never seem to have the time to sit down? Feel guilty about all the things you ’should’ be doing if you take the time out to read for pleasure? How ’bout some fiction on the go?!!
Diva Fiction Bytes to the rescue!
For just $14.95/year (only $9.95/year if you become a member before Dec. 31st!) you can get a FictionByte in your feed or your email every Friday!
The Diva at DivaFictionBytes is Djuanna Brockington and she’s a kick-ass writer who’s created a way for those …

I want to say a big Thank You to Lisa Kitter for inviting me to speak on her Marketing 101 teleclass tonight. I had a great time and got some great feedback from her class participants via email afterward.
Lisa’s got a 4-week class coming up on January 6 called Creating Your Vision for 2009 and Beyond! and she’s running a promotional special now through the 30th that allows you to register and bring not one, but TWO, friends along for free! Do the math, folks - that’s called get …

Please help me welcome Michelle Lee, CH to not only the vAS family of websites, but to the wonderful world of WordPress!

Michelle was previously blogging over at Blogger, but decided to make the switch to WordPress (yay!) with the Set Me Up, Get Me Started & Guide Me package to ensure she’s able to hit the ground running.

Take a minute and visit Paradigm Shift. Leave her a comment and let her know what a great decision she’s made moving to WordPress.

Hey everyone, help me welcome Karen Bierdeman, M.Ed, The Guilt Free Mom Parent Coach to the vAS family! Karen’s specialty is coaching moms with strong-willed children.
As the parent of a couple of strong-willed children, myself, I found myself on the pages of Karen’s free e-book, “Secrets and Lies About Parenting Strong-Willed Children: What You Need to Know Now!” After reading it, I have a few more tools for my parenting toolbox - ones tailored specifically to me and my strong-willed children!
Go visit Karen today, get your copy of …

Today I just have to crow a little bit, give Christa of Giggle On! a virtual high five, and to point out for the rest of you that you don’t have to be a geeky-programmer-type like me to realize your SEO goals.
Christa made the #1 position in Google for her main keyword phrase two days after she implemented the action items she took away from her blog consulting session on Tuesday of this week! Topic? DIY SEO: Do-It-Yourself SEO. I had told her I was writing the series …

I’m happy to welcome Raelee Peirce of nobleMother.com to the vAS family of websites. Raelee wanted both a move from WordPress.com to a self-hosted installation and a move from a traditional blog format to a heavily customized magazine-style layout, so I did both at the same time. That’s the beauty of WordPress - you don’t have to stick with what your chosen theme gives you out of the box. You can use it simply as a place to start! The most fun part of this project was creating this logo. …

Come on everybody! Get your Giggle On! Help me welcome Christa to the vAS family! I had SO MUCH fun building this site! I’ve already subscribed to the feed, and I suggest everyone do the same.

If you’ve upgraded your WP blog to WordPress 2.6 and are the only author of the blog, you might want to consider turning off the post revisions feature to keep your database from becoming bloated. Most single user blogs do not require the post revision feature.