“The first draft is the hardest.” That’s what she said. I agreed that after almost ten years of not writing a word, those first drafts of Annie’s Odyssey were difficult-tooth-pulling agony. But, I knew in my gut that the hardest was yet to come. This first cut was definitely not going to be the deepest.

You see, I wasn’t used to multiple drafts. When I was finishing up my 27-year-quest for a bachelor degree at Trinity University in D.C., I could whip out outstanding, A+ papers in one draft. Research the topic, think about it, spend twelve hours at the office on Saturday and walla it was finished. I liked the efficient beginning…middle…end of the process. It did not prepare me well for book writing.

I suspected that Beth’s words about first drafts were part of the strategy of the Writers’ Support Team to keep my fingers on the keys and words appearing on the page. It worked. So did her complements. I confess to feeling a blush of satisfaction when she told me my five-page first draft of the first story was “good writing”. Memories of those A+ grades.

But it was that word first that was so ominous to me. It implied months, years of work to come. Am I whining? (The cats are keeping silent on this one.) The next draft wouldn’t be so hard, she said. She was wrong. No matter how painful it was for me to write those five pages I knew the next and the next and the next drafts were going to be as or even more difficult then this first.

But to put things into perspective…I remember hearing that Yann Martel was handed back his “finished” manuscript and told to rewrite the whole thing…from the beginning.

…on to Draft Number Four…

Over at Los Angeles’ top PR Firm, PMBC Group, the notion behind these top competitors has always rose questions such as: what is the real difference between these competitors? As of today the two major office suppliers, Office Max and Office Depot, were considering merge in a $1.17 million deal to together compete against Staples. Office Depot was going to acquire the smaller rival OfficeMax Inc. and we’re excited to see how this pans out for all stores involved.

Where do you get your office supplies?

PMBC group is a multi-level PR firm based in Los Angeles, specializing in Corporate PR and Tech PR. Visit us at www.pmbcgroup.com.

All of this has made me a bit picky.  If you offer me a cheap ball point stick pen with a cap, I won’t pick it up. If you offer me a smooth writing gel pen, I’ll look at your logo every time I need to scribble out a shopping list or sign something for my kids’ school.  At some point, I’ll pause say “this is good” and check out your website or product.  I will develop a favorable opinion of you and your brand.

As a newbie author with only Winter Fairy to my name, I cannot afford to spend a lot of money.  I’m not a New York Time’s best seller like Cathy Maxwell, who gives out the best swag.  Between kitchen utensils and a tote bag, Cathy is on my mind everyday.  That cheap stick pen from an aspiring author or  multi-published author? It’s in the trash heap.

So how do you find good swag? Here are some questions I used to evaluate potential giveaways:

1.     Is it memorable?  To me – this is the big one.

2.    It is useful?  You want your giveaway to be used, not languish in a drawer.

3.     Is the quality acceptable?  I have yet to find a seller of promotional items unwilling to send a sample item. If you don’t like the quality, don’t buy it., even if the cost is low.
4.     Does the item fit logically with my brand?  I considered Emery boards at one point, but none of my books are set in nail saloons. Likewise, a jar opener in the shape of a cowboy boot would be out of place for my midwestern books, but perfect for someone who sets their books in Texas.
5.    Is the item affordable?  Remember to add artwork and shipping costs.
6.     Where will I store this item?  500 bookmarks don’t take up much space.  A box of 500 water bottles will.

7.      Where will I distribute this item?

8.     What is my branding goal?

At this point, I don’t know whether my sticky flags have led anyone to purchase my book.  I am certain they are being used by the recipients and developing my brand.  As more books come out, I’ll expand my swag options and when I reach Cathy Maxwell’s level of success, y’all will come running for what ever I’m giving for free.

So tell me, what’s the best swag you’ve received?

Colors are super muddy which irritates me but doing this digitally looses its quality. Something about painting with a brush invites mistakes and brings welcomed changes. Well see how this goes :/

Now here is a thoughtful gift that won’t cost you much but willl surely touch her heart this valentine’s month . . .

Press Release:

It’s the time of the year again and love is already in the air!  As Valentine’s Day is fast approaching, we are definitely thinking of ways on how to make it special for our loved ones. How about bringing to life the almost-forgotten form of communication? Love letters, in this case, will never go out of style!

Here are some tips on Love Letter Writing this Heart’s Month:

Touch  and melt a heart

Share your intents with sweet notes using Post-it® Super Sticky Notes in heart shape!  Call that special one with those sweet terms of endearment.  It won’t fail to make them smile. It’s time to be creative!

Praise and make someone’s heart skip a beat

Being appreciated and praised is something that everyone longs to hear. Just put the positive lenses on and look deep within someone’s strength. You may say, “You are my idea of ‘strength,’ Mommy!” “You’re a good man, Dad! One of the best there is!” or “You are made of great possibilities. Keep your hopes up and move mountains, dear!” Remember that simple deeds can drive and motivate people to do better and excel. Be that cheerleader to those tired hearts this Valentine’s Day!

“Thank You!” from a grateful heart

Not only an exchange of “I Love You’s” can be given on Valentine’s day. A simple Thank You note in Post-it® Super Sticky Note in heart shape can work wonders! You may write, “Thank you for always preparing my baon,” “The world is a better place with people like you. Thanks for being around,” or “Thank you for helping me solve my Math problems, teacher. You are the best!” You may use rubber stamps with cute designs and use colored pens to do this.

Write the things you can’t say personally with a sincere heart

There’s nothing more worth keeping than a heartfelt note. Disclose your heart and say what you want to say. Express your love and those sweet words you are unspoken for and melt their hearts.

Entice excitement by giving incomplete notes

Send them hearty lines in trickles and let your loved ones feel the thrill in looking for the series of your notes. Secretly, distribute and stick them on your loved one’s things and let them be surprised! Have a Post-it® Note within your reach with Post-it® Notes Heart Dispenser and just write what you feel anytime of the day.

Give love and make this moment worth remembering!

About 3M

3M captures the spark of new ideas and transforms them into thousands of ingenious products. Our culture of creative collaboration inspires a never-ending stream of powerful technologies that make life better. 3M is the innovation company that never stops inventing. With $30 billion in sales, 3M employs 84,000 people worldwide and has operations in more than 65 countries. For more information, visit http://www.3M.com or follow @3MNews on Twitter

1. A woodburned piece of art.

Most of my friends know about my obsession with Hello Kitty and Harry Potter. If you’ve known me for more than 10 minutes then I’ve probably already made about 14 Harry Potter references and you’ve noticed the millions of Hello Kitty stickers on my iPhone case. Somehow, my boyfriend found a way to combine both of these loves in the plaque below.

2. A meme scrapbook featuring you, your pets and your best friends.

Laying under the tree this year was a meme scrapbook personalized just for me! Secretly, I wish this Christmas present went viral. These were some of my favorites:

3. A personal recording of his/her favorite novel.

Before my boyfriend went away to Marine Corps training for the summer, he made sure not to leave me empty-handed. He made me a personal recording of the first five chapters of Twilight. I was so excited that I couldn’t wait and I listened to the entire thing that night. Being able to hear his voice when I couldn’t readily call him was one of the best presents I’ve ever received.

4. A crocheted hat.

Simple, yet timeless. Keep your significant other warm and show them you care! I found a very simple hat pattern and personalized it by adding a detachable crocheted beard. Below is a slightly creepy picture of me wearing it…

5. A romanic gesture made out of post-it notes.

It was love at first sight when I saw this beautiful paper heart!

6. Some sort of baked creation.

Everyone loves something edible. This year for Valentine’s day I made my boyfriend heart shaped bacon-whiskey sugar cookies. They tasted about as good as it sounds (meaning… not very). Nonetheless, Mama always said it’s the thought that counts!

Do you have any great DIY Valentine’s gift ideas? Please feel welcome to share your wonderful ideas.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

I’ll admit, I have a slight addiction to school supplies… my room kind of looks like an office supply store…

But here are a few of my ULTIMATE FAVORITES

1. G2′s. These bad boys are the best pens out there! They’re a little pricey but totally worth it.

2. INDEX CARDS. I’m definitely a flash card user, not everyone prefers this method but I still think they’re pretty handy to have around

3. PAPER CLIPS. I hate hate HATE when I run out of paper clips. Trust me, these are so useful when you have pages and pages of hand written notes scattered all over your desk!

4. POST ITS. Who doesn’t love post its? they’re so fun and colorful! When I’m trying to memorize certain rules or laws I write them on post it notes and put them everywhere! 

5. HIGHLIGHTERS- color coding is KEY

6. STOP WATCH:Timing is everything. You need to time yourself using your flashcards etc.

7. STARBUCKS. Need I say more>

Pie in the sky ideas? Use these unusual pie chart sticky notes to diagram your daily memos and slice up your thoughts £3.49

Millimeter Milligram (MMMG) philosophy recognises the importance of finding meaning and personal statement through small detail and style. They design with a slight retro take on three core design elements: mind, heart, motion. These understated quality products have such creative thought designed through them they will provoke your own imagination to “write down the day and draw a picture of tomorrows plan”.

Just yesterday (Feb. 5), we went to Sunday2pm in which my friend hasn’t gone to. It’s her first time there actually, and it’s my 2nd or 3rd time I think.

I ordered Hot Choco Mocha and their new added menu Snow Toast, which is truly delicious! ♥ While my friend ordered Ice Cafe Mocha and Choco Loving Toast. Choco Loving Toast was the first one I have tried when I went there for my first time!

I personally love the place and makes me want to go there over and over again, and will try their new menus that I haven’t tried yet; even my friend find it so cute. There are a lot of post-its on the wall, on the shelves, and even on the tables! You can also read a lot of books, from novels to facts, not just in Korean but also in English. You will have a time of you life there! ^_^

Hot Choco Mocha

Snow Toast (gonna order this again!!!)

–Find your post-its here– ♥

Me and my “food-trip” bestfriend! ^__^

We also celebrated one of our classmate’s birthday in advance, so we made this for her! ♥ We really took a lot of time in doing the “Happy Birthday Hygeia”, also we don’t know where to put the post-its since the place where we seated had a lot of post-its already~~ so our solution was just to clip them, thanks to my friend who saw some clips! Hehe >__<

Another thing that made me love this place is that it plays some K-POP songs! ♥ Also, if you will visit the place, you will find a LOT of pictures of some K-POP idols like Super Junior, TVXQ, EXO, BOYFRIEND, Big Bang and a lot more!!!

Here are some pics!

I just put the pictures in one photo and edited it, as you can see above! ♥

And below was my last post-it I had written before we left the place! Hehe >__<

I even have friends who are from other countries and when they saw the pictures above (KPOP groups) they really want to come and visit this place! I even told them that I will be their tour guide if they will come here, in which I really hope will be pretty soon~ ^^

I will definitely come back to this place! I definitely will not be bored in coming here!

>>The cafe can be found at Sarrosa Hotel, Mabolo, Cebu City, Philippines.
>>They also have their Facebook page and Twitter account!

**gwapo sad ang nag.bantay sa cafe~ hehe *peace* ♥ (only Cebuanos can understand this! hehe)

~Gleshie~

#officelove

-S

I’m going to write a bunch of inspirational stuff on post its and put them around my school. It’s gonna be so awesome. I’ve seen posts on other people’s blogs about how they do it and how much fun it is.
One day at school I saw a paper stuck to someone’s locker and it said “Take one for a good day” and there were little tabs you could take off that had smiley faces on them. It made me think, “Wow, there are good people in this world.” If it made me feel good about this world, I’m sure others felt the same. So the main reason for me wanting to do this is so that others feel good and excited about living especially after all the stress they go through at school.

Have a nice day/night!

-Zara

Second, REUSE (a.k.a. repurpose)!  That might be why we’re thrift store junkies, but you don’t have to go Goodwill hunting to reuse.  Here are some simple things you can NOT buy but instead use common household items in place of.  And, on that note, I would like to dedicate this post to my Grandmother Elliott, who lives on in my memory as the most practical re-user I’ve ever known.  I like to think I’m channeling her thrifty spirit now and again.

10. Post-Its

How many pieces of paper with blank backs do you throw away or recycle each day?  And why buy special, oftentimes fluorescent paper (which can’t be recycled due to the heavy dye) when you can reuse paper with a tiny piece of tape?  I quarter my letter-sized sheets to reuse both at work and at home (I’m also the office fairy who hands out stacks of this paper to my colleagues).  Admittedly, this has caused some marital strife in our house when Keith tried refusing to pack and move to our new house a ten-inch high stack of quartered sheets that had once been drafts of my Master’s thesis. Fortunately, I packed it when his back was turned.   Now when he looks for a piece of paper, I say helpful things like,

“Wow.  It’s a really good  thing we have all this scrap paper handy.  So glad we moved it, huh?”

a funnel of the wide-mouthed variety

9. Plastic Funnels

How many plastic bottles do you toss every week?  Whether it’s a wide-mouthed juice bottle or a streamlined soda bottle, cutting off the bottom half of your plastic bottle produces a lovely funnel. I’m all about owning a nice metal funnel for canning and hot liquids, but if you’re going to buy a plastic funnel anyway, you might as well use some plastic you already have.

8. Microwavable Neck Pillow

My mother always had what she called the “Lonely Socks Club” sitting on the dryer, a repository for all of those singles to wait…and wait…to find their sole mates again.  But every now and then, it would become apparent that some of those lonely socks would never again be a pair.  If you, too, have a Lonely Socks Club, you have the casing for a microwavable neck pillow:  just add rice and herbs and tie off the sock with a piece of string.  No sewing is necessary, and you can congratulate yourself on having saved $14.99 you might have spent on Amazon.

oh, so many uses for this product

7. Pet Fur Remover (brush or stone)

Our sure-fire method for removing cat fur from sofas, blankets, clothing, upholstery, carpet, and pretty much any other cloth surface is the magic of a rubber glove.  No, really.  Those rubber gloves that you have lying around for washing dishes can double as pet-fur removers.  Simply put on the glove and run it over the furry surface.  All the hair will clump together, and you can just pick it up and throw it in the compost–because pet fur is, in fact, compostable, as we have previously discussed (just make sure to get the really basic ones, not the ones with extra-lasting power or what-not…when they add extra plastic and stuff to make the gloves tougher, it decreases the fur-clumping abilities of the glove).

6. Travel Toiletry Containers

Reuse these and avoid buying more plastic!

Because we all need more small plastic containers in our lives…um, not really, no.  If you look around your domicile and in your purse or backpack, you’ll find you already have plenty of travel-sized containers: pill bottles, dental floss containers, hand sanitizer bottles, empty chapstick tubes or tubs, small plastic bottles, to-go dressing containers, empty spice bottles or jars, plastic containers for cake or ice cream sprinkles, plastic Easter eggs (come on, I know you hunted for those when you were a kid), jars of fingernail polish, small plastic containers with candy (M&M’s or Pez to name a few), tubs for face cream or other moisturizers, etc., etc.  When I travel overnight, I put the face wash in one side of an old contact case and the moisturizer in the other.  What’s that you say?  “Sarah, I don’t have any of these types of containers.  I live a plastic-free life!”  “Wow,” I respond, “Kudos for being more awesome than the rest of us.  But I’m pretty sure your neighbors or friends have some small plastic containers you can borrow.”

5. Rubber Bands

Each of these is reused–nothing new here!

If you’ve ever bought produce at the grocery store, you have rubber bands.  They come around the green onions, the celery, the leeks, the asparagus, you know, things that are long and green.  However, if you never buy produce at the grocery store (I applaud your commitment to local produce or I question your healthy eating choices, depending on why you never buy produce), you can reuse those rubber gloves from #7.  When they are worn out from washing dishes or removing pet fur, just make a cut all the way across the wrist of the glove about an inch from the bottom.  Voila! A one-inch, heavy-duty, stylishly yellow rubber band (and you can make more than one rubber band from a pair of gloves…even a small pair yields at least three).  I learned this trick from my aforementioned thrifty Grandmother Elliott.  Thanks, Grandma!

4. Reusable Grocery Bags

Okay, I do buy these every now and then…as a tax on myself when I forget a bag.  In Europe, they charge you 10 pence/cents/pennies/pfenigs/whatever-you-call-it or so each time you have to use a plastic bag instead of bringing your own.  So if I forget mine, I buy a reusable bag because I figure I should have to pay for the resources I use.  BUT there’s no need to buy them on purpose because you don’t have enough.  You can reuse an old t-shirt to make a grocery bag…WITHOUT SEWING it.  There are two different methods, beautifully explained by our awesome friends at Trash Backwards: 1) The Upcycled T-Shirt Bag and 2) The No-Sew Hobo Bag (the English teacher in me loves the rhyming name of the second, but the time-limited crafter in me loves the first one and has made several).

3. Pet Poo Bags

Where all our bags go to die…

Seriously, think about how many bags you already throw away or recycle: the bags inside your cereal box, the tortilla bags, the chip bags, the Triscuit or Cheez-It bags, the bread bags, the bag around your newspaper, the plastic packaging around your toilet paper, the bagel bag, the bag of lettuce…I could go on and on, and I haven’t even mentioned the obvious grocery bags or produce bags (because we really try not to ever get those–did you know there are reusable produce bags, too?).  Even if you, as we do, make a lot of your own bread or snacks, you still probably have way more bags than you want to admit.  So DON’T BUY SPECIAL BAGS FOR PET POOP.  Just don’t.  There’s absolutely never a reason to do so.

2. Cleaning Rags

We all like that virtuous feeling of cleaning out the closet and donating old clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army: “Ahhh.  My closet is clean, and I’ve helped the needy,” we think (perhaps a tad self-righteously).  However, I have worked in a thrift store before, and I’ve volunteered to sort things for many a donation center.  What I can tell you is that people donate the most awful, disgusting, and unusable garbage you can imagine.  They donate expired food to the Food Bank, sweat-stained clothing to the Goodwill, and broken toys to the Toys for Tots program.  Oh, yes, they do.  And if you think about it, you probably have done one of these things yourself.  My friends, if you are too grossed out to wear it, most other people will be, too.  There are places that you can donate old, stained clothes to farm workers spraying pesticides so that the clothing can be disposed of afterward, but some clothing with holes, you should reuse yourself as cleaning rags.  Really, there’s no need to buy cleaning rags when old t-shirts, boxers, and tank tops can be used to wash cars, clean bathrooms, and scrub floors.

1. Plastic Leftovers Containers

First, I try to be conscious of packaging.  Does the item come in glass, metal, or paperboard instead of plastic?  If so, I buy that.  Think of the few extra cents you might pay as an environmental tax of sorts.  Then reuse those glass containers for storing bulk foods, making yogurt, or holding leftovers (hey, glass is microwavable while plastic isn’t).  But when there is an item that does come in plastic and nothing else, keep the container.  For a kid’s lunchbox, for giving away food to friends and neighbors (I do a lot of this), or for freezing things, you might want plastic instead of your more versatile glass.  So save those cottage cheese, yogurt, and peanut butter containers to reuse!  You don’t have any of these containers?  That’s okay.  Your neighbor’s trash will yield plenty.  Just wait until nighttime to raid their garbage bin, or you might have some explaining to do!

Updated: Feb. 7 at 10:00 a.m.: Want more ideas?  Check out Trash Backwards’ new post: 10 Things You Should Never Have to Buy!  I challenge all of you to make and share your own top 10 lists of things to reduce and reuse.  If we all share our best practices, we can learn from each other!

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