CafePress also has free shipping today, but it’s on orders of $50 or more. Here are some stores that I like at CafePress:

Save four bucks on t shirts for Dad!  Use code TSHIRTFORDAD up until midnight pacific time tonight.  Nice to save some coin.  Here are some of my t shirts for dad:

There will be another code tomorrow!

If you have other blogs, it was super easy to set this aggregator up. Let me know if you start one realted to a different topic, and I’ll post it here!

If you have other blogs, it was super easy to set this aggregator up. Let me know if you start one realted to a different topic, and I’ll post it here!

Saturday we went to breakfast with the Easter Bunny and an egg hunt. The girls had a great time. They had pancakes (their favorite), got to see their two cousins, and completely made out at the egg hunt. They each found three tickets, which entitled them to prizes. Chloe got a big and two small prizes, and Becca got 2 mediums and a small. The prizes were stuffed animals. My kids LOVE stuffed animals. There is a strange addiction there that I have yet to break. They were also very nice to their cousins. When I suggested that they each give one stuffed animal to their cousins (because they didn’t get any tickets) they didn’t even flinch. I was a proud mama. They were truly happy to make their cousins happy.

Then it happened.

We left the egg hunt and headed to the restaurant. We sat in a ton of traffic because of the inbound Parkway West closure this weekend. Becca started. “I’m jealous because Chloe got a bigger bunny than me!” Blah, blah, blah. Seems that every time we do something fun, the crabbies come out right after. We made it home, she complained some more, and eventually ended up on time out (I think it was for hitting her sister).

So, we wake up on Sunday and it’s our day to go to the circus. The girls were excited. We all get ready and head down to the arena. They had fun watching Tony squirm as he saw the clowns outside mingling with the crowd. As we walked in and started going up the ramp to our seats, there was a vendor selling light up toys. Tony and I gave each other the “should we get these” look, and we bought one for each kid. The vendor says “twenty four.” Twenty four? Dollars!?! I clutched my heart as Tony dished out the cash. We went in, found our seats, and walked around on the floor for a bit. They were offering elephant rides, pony rides and a big bouncy-slide thing. I entertained the thought of buying them tickets. I walked over to the ticket table and found it was SEVEN DOLLARS A TICKET! Pony ride for seven bucks? I don’t think so. Big bouncy slide (the same one they have at many local festivals for $1 per ride)? No. I may have parted with fourteen bucks for the elephant ride, but the line was enormous. We bought a ‘family pack’ of tickets, which included a drink and hot dog for each person. We went and got our food (and those tickets were worth it, BTW), stopped by the cotton candy booth, plunked down 8 bucks for cotton candy, and headed to our seats.

The girls enjoyed the show. It seemed to drag a bit, but I’m glad we went. We bought more food. Pretzel, pop corn, peanuts and fries. As I emptied my wallet of cash, I was at least happy that we were all together, having fun. The girls were most excited about seeing Spider Man. He came out during the second half of the circus and did a little acrobatic ditty. They were happy, so I was, too. Spider Man made a second appearance with the clowns, but he was sort of like Elvis. Trim, muscular and svelte the first time you saw him. notsomuch the second time

Of course, as soon as we got in the car, Becca was complaining that she didn’t get to go on the bouncy slide. Ugh. I about freaked out. I told her that I may not EVER take her to do anything fun ever again, because she just complains when it’s over.

Yeah…that’s my stellar mom moment of the weekend.

Tony could tell that I was just over this behavior. When we got home, he took the girls up the street for THREE HOURS!!! I had three hours to myself, and I was totally awake. I cleaned. Yeah, not the most exciting or relaxing thing to do, but it made me feel better, and I enjoyed it. I think Tony feels bad that it’s going to be just me and the chicks for Easter vacation…and it looks like it’s going to be too cold for them to play outside.

So, I had a full ‘mommy’ weekend. The restaurant was slower than usual because of the traffic situation. I have a clean-ish house (there was no scrubbing involved). I worked a little bit on my new affiliate site. It still has a long way to go, but I’ll get there. And I had a request for a t-shirt design. I set up a store a while back, with all intentions of putting a bunch of designs in it. But then we, you know, bought a restaurant. So, I haven’t worked on it much, but I have done a few special requests. Here’s the one I did this weekend:

Peace, Love & Baseball Organic Toddler T-Shirt

I still haven’t gotten it up on Zazzle, but maybe I’ll do that now. OK…I think I’ve babbled enough for now. Next post? I think I’ll touch on the fact that Becca is crying every morning because she doesn’t want to go to school. Yeah. Fun.

Let me back up, first. I started blogging as a way to get the word out about the t-shirts and gifts that I design for CafePress and Zazzle. That was almost two years ago. I really didn’t know too much about blogging and such, so I jumped in with a free blogger account. I’ve been pretty happy with it.

But, once I opened the restaurant, I got a blog started over there. And I used Wordpress. I love it! It’s on my own domain, and it’s much easier to tweak things. I have since used Wordpress to set up an affiliate site or two. And I’m getting better at it! I’ve learned so much…how to install wordpress, playing with themes, and so on. I recently did two things with Wordpress, and they’ve made me very happy.

First, I actually PURCHASED a theme. I purchased the Flexx theme from iThemes. I love it! It’s very easy to change the layout, colors and pics. Easy peasy. I also found a plug in for automatic updating. I loved it so much, I actually donated to the author (which is something I can’t afford to do as much as I would like). Here’s the link to the plug in.

Now, am I going to break up with blogger? Nah, I don’t think so. It’s worked for me so far, and I guess I’m sort of attached. I have, however, re-directed links to my own site. So, you can also find this stuff at http://blog.brainlint.net.

Just a little mention of regular life: The new menu starts at Downey’s House on Tuesday, so I’ve been busy! I’m printing them up today. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks trying to get the menu together, programming it into our POS system, and making sure we have all our i’s and t’s dotted and crossed. On top of it all, the girls and I are headed down to Florida on Wednesday. Packing? Haven’t even really thought about it yet.

I also (finally) finished reading Dead Until Dark. I really, really enjoyed it…even though it took me much longer than it should have to read it. I bought the next 2 books to read while we’re in Florida. Hopefully I get enough ‘me’ time when we’re there. If you watched True Blood, the book and the show are pretty similar. But I was surprised that there wasn’t any mention of Tara (the bartender). I’m not going to spoil anything for anybody, so I’ll just say that there WERE differences in the book versus the series. But I think that both are very good.

OK, the girls are complaining that everything is ‘Booooorrrrriiiiinnnnnnnggggg!’ How about an exciting trip to Staples, girls? (OH, that makes me thing of a quick side note: I have always loved the smell of office supply stores. I’m strange. I love the smell of toner and paper. It makes me happy. We walked into Staples yesterday and Becca, with a smile on her face, said ‘Mom, mmmmmmm…it smells GOOD in here! Poor thing.)

Wow…this post really did go just about everywhere. Like I’ve mentioned before, sometimes I just can’t focus Have a great day!

• 4:30 am – Wake up to see 3 year old in front of my face, asking for milk. Realize that I’m in Becca’s bed, and fell asleep around 9:15.
• 5:00 am – Think that it’s a good idea to wake up and get some stuff done. And I actually wake up.
• 5:00-5:45 – Spend some quality time with the husband, who has not gone to bed yet. He also thinks that it is currently still THURSDAY. I continue to correct him, telling him that it’s FRIDAY.
• 5:45-6:00 – Watch 15 minutes of the news. Wish I looked as good as Sonni Abatta.
• 6:00-6:25 – Watch ‘The Office.’ Laugh. It was a good one.
• 6:25-7:00 – Make large pot of coffee. Check e-mail. Log in the numbers from the restaurant last night. Prepare deposit. Figure out the change order. Update our POS system for Friday specials.
• 7:00-7:05 – Drink more coffee. Smoke another cigarette
• 7:05-7:06 – Start vacuuming a plethora of nerds candy from the family room. Realize that it’s 7:06, and decide I need to shower
• 7:06 – 7:35 – Wake Becca. Iron her outfit. Wake her again. Brush teeth, shower, greet crazy-haired Chloe, help Becca into her tights and dress. Come downstairs. Finish vacuuming aforementioned nerds.
• 7:36 – Yell upstairs for everybody to hurry – we have 19 minutes
• 7:36-7:55 – Pack a lunch, make a waffle, drink more coffee, have a smoke, find missing glove for Becca, brush Becca’s hair, grab almost-forgotten library book for Becca. Pack one pretty-looking sweetheart and one bed-head, pajama-clad, slipper-wearing sweetheart into car for 1 block ride to bus stop (it was cold!)
• 8:05-8:10 – Turn show on for Chloe, sit down to write blog post for Downey’s House
• 8:10-8:11 – Get Chloe a banana
• 8:11-8:30 – Finish blog post, check some forums and twitter. See that CafePress is down. Complain about it on twitter
• 8:30-8:31 – Put another television show on for Chloe
• 8:31-8:45 – Hang out with Chloe, tickling her until she begs me to stop
• 8:45-9:05 – Finish up with checking sales and stats online. Look up code numbers for the liquor I’m about to order
• 9:05-9:06 – Get Chloe some strawberries
• 9:06-9:15 – Order the liquor, enter amount into Quickbooks
• 9:15-9:45 – Help Chloe make Kool-Aid for her ‘Lemonade Stand.’ A lemonade stand where there are two customers: Me and a small stuffed bear. Play lemonade stand.
• 9:45-9:55 – Start dusting and cleaning the glass in the family room. Decide I’m not in the mood to really do much more cleaning right now.
• 9:55-10:05 – Spend 10 minutes searching for a copy of our new menu that Tony wrote revisions on. Finally give up, and hope I remember the revisions.
• 10:05-10:10 – Take phone call from the restaurant
• 10:10-10:11 – Start menu revisions
• 10:11-10:12 – Cut up an apple for Chloe
• 10:12-10:20 – Work on the revisions some more
• 10:20-10:22 – Help Chloe in the potty
• 10:22-10:30 – Finish with the revisions. Hope I got them all.
• 10:30-10:33 – Re-wash the laundry I left in the washing machine overnight. Freshen up clothes in dryer
• 10:33-11:00 – Print up a copy of the fixed menu. Remember that I also need employment apps printed up. Do that. Deal with my desktop and what my security scan found.
• 11:00-11:20 – Fold the laundry with Chloe. Yes, it takes that long.
• 11:20-11:23 – Sit down to sign our corporate tax returns
• 11:23-11:24 – Get Chloe some carrots
• 11:24-11:30 – Decide to boil some eggs. Smoke a cigarette
• 11:30-11:45 – Fart around on the internet. Still annoyed that CafePress is farked up.
• 11:45-11:50 – Sew up the back of Chloe’s Build-A-Bear
• 11:50-12:00 – Get the eggs from the stove. Decide to write this post.
• 12:00-12:03 – Make toast for Chloe
• 12:03-12:10 – Continue with post
• 12:10-12:11 – Get a hard boiled egg for Chloe
• 12:11-12:16 – Continue with post
• 12:16-12:17 – Make witty remark on Twitter. Well, I thought it was witty
• 12:17-12:20 – More blog post
• 12:20-12:22 – Get Chloe some Kool-Aid
• 12:22-12:30 (now) more blog post.

So, there’s my morning so far. The thrilling life of a work-at-home-business-owner-mom. You know, throughout this time line, there’s the conversations I have with Chloe. Well, they’re not really conversations. It’s more like a question and answer period. That lasts, um, all day. These kinds of mornings are actually my favorite. I get some business stuff accomplished, get some housework (sort of) accomplished, I get to be social with my online friends, and I get to hang out with my Chloe.

Now, I’m gonna go and make myself some egg salad. I did sneak a granola bar in sometime around 8:00. But I’m hungry!

Want to follow me on twitter? I’m at twitter.com/hdowney