1.  Imaging USA.  I had a blast hanging out with Erin Cobb, Marla Lamarie, Kelly Kuntz and Amy Shertzer.  And Ty got to go hang out with us for the day too, he did good and when we left he said “Mom, your friends are FUN!”  He may or may not have called Erin “sassy”  😉  Meeting them was absolutely the highlight of our trip.  I’ve “known” Erin since very early on, not too long after I picked up my first dslr actually.  So to finally meet after 5 years of online friendship was really awesome.  I also came home with a few new labs to try (I was lab shopping), a bunch of product ideas and the huge urge to get this year started off right.  And did you hear?  Imaging 2012 is in NOLA baby!

2.  Teagan and I went over to hang with Marti and her crew for a quick playdate last week. While I was there she handed me a copy of this book that was written by a friend of hers. Oh. My. Word. Changing our house and home page by page. And she has a website, you may have already heard of it, simplemom.net. Check it.  Everything from mom’s to kids to food to organics to homeschooling to improving your life with less STUFF and more LIVING.  I’m there.

3. I always always enjoy Jason Lee’s year end personal slideshow of his girls. Entertaining and heartwarming. Worth a click over.

4.  My mom got Taryn a tag reader for Christmas. Both of the kids love it and I’m thinking a second one would be a good idea for Teagan’s 3rd birthday coming up.  The first time he got a hold of it without Taryn around he sat on the floor in my mom’s living room touching the pen tip to the word “but” over and over said, laughing an evil little laugh and said “huhuhu, it said butt!”.  Boooooys!

5.  Anyone looking for a few free valentines day templates?  Try Florabella, MCP & Style Crush.  Here is quite a good list of free Valentines downloads from Tatertots & Jello.  And a cute guitar valentine idea at Zakka.  Know of any others?  I’m a template spending freeze for the entire year.  Self inflicted.  And it hurts.  I need free to get my fix.

6.  I have started to research essential oils and their uses in healing.  I have a long way to go to really understand it all and figure out the best way to put them into use for our family.  I am pretty sure this homemade lotion is going to be one of my next projects though.  I’m especially interested to see if Taryn’s skin can handle it because she is so super sensitive to everything.

7.  Does anyone know a baby or little girl 4 or younger named Taryn?  I have a ton of monogrammed stuff I’d love to hand down but we don’t know another Taryn.

8.  Our garage sale rained out last weekend so we put a bunch of stuff up on Craigslist.  Thankfully, our extra refrigerator, an old coffee table, our gas grill and Teagan’s old bed all sold in just a few days!  We only have one listing left for several big floor pillows from The Land of Nod.  You can see them here if you are interested.  We’ll still have a garage sale, maybe even this coming weekend if the weather cooperates.  We are getting rid of a ton of stuff and it feels so good!

9.  Are you a lunch box addict like me?  Check out this round up post, it’s a good one!

10.  This is absolutely brilliant.  A food magazine for kids.  I hope it lives up to expectations, because it has awesome potential!