Category Archives: Life

4 Ways to Become a More Effective Philanthropist

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This post is brought to you by our sponsor, and also contains our Amazon Associates link.

We all want to make the world a better place, but it’s hard to know where to start or if your actions will even make a difference. Fortunately, it is possible for every single one of us to do good, no matter who we are – so today, I’d like to share four suggestions to help you become a more effective philanthropist!

Do Your Research

It’s crucial to do your research before supporting a charitable organization. While most organizations do great work, it’s unfortunately all too easy for well-meaning individuals to get duped by a bogus GoFundMe page or phoney Facebook post. Make sure you know where your money is going before you donate. Is the charity a registered 501(c) 3 organization? What are some examples of the previous work they’ve done? Can you verify their contact information? One stellar resource for verifying a nonproft is CharityNavigator.org, which also evaluates how effective organizations are in using their funds.

Find Your Passion

There are so many charities serving so many worthy causes, it’s impossible to help them all; so you have to narrow down your focus. What kind of cause do you want to support? Are you passionate about a specific topic such as education, human rights, or the environment? If you’re not sure where to start, the book Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Make a Difference by William MacAskill can provide some inspiration.

And if you have a passion for an area that isn’t being served, think outside the box and fill that need yourself! For example, Matt Redhawk began the Matt Redhawk Giving initiative to support others in his community, giving private scholarships to young aspiring pilots to fund their flight training. What a creative way to fill a niche and serve a local need!

Matt Redhawk

Get Your Hands Dirty

No money? No problem! Charitable organizations need helping hands as much as they need funds. Volunteering can be a rewarding way to get involved in your community, do good and make new friends. Not sure where to start? Check with local community centers or churches and ask where there is need. Most communities will have homeless shelters, women’s services, LGBTQ+ centers, animal shelters, and other worthy organizations in need of helpers – so find one and get involved!

Know You Can Make a Difference – No Matter What

Perhaps you’re short on funds and time. But even if your schedule is too crazy to volunteer regularly – and your wallet too empty to donate – you can still make a difference! TheHungerSite.com has been raising funds one click at a time since 1999. All you have to do is click one button, and the revenue raised from their advertisers is donated to feed the hungry. They also have several other partner websites that raise funds for breast cancer research, animal rescue and much more. Clicking through all the sites takes maybe 60 seconds, so it’s not a big time commitment either!

What are YOUR tips for making a difference?

Storytime: My Most Ridiculous Injury

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This is a sponsored post.

What’s The Most Ridiculous Way You’ve Ever Injured Yourself?

There’s one specific instance that stands out above the rest for me, and as with most ridiculous things in my life, it ties into blogging. Years ago, I was invited to test out a new exercise product. I’m not going to say the name of the item, because they aren’t to blame for my clumsiness, but the best way I can describe the product is that it was like a modern version of a ’90s toy, designed for fitness purposes. Do you remember Skip-It? This product worked in a similar fashion in that you tied a tether around your ankle in order to hop over a ball. This was designed by a fitness company for adults specifically – they had no affiliation with the retro toy, but it gave me immediate nostalgia anyway. It arrived around the beginning of a new year, so I thought it would be a fun way to “Kick” off my New Year’s Resolution of working out more.

I eagerly strapped the apparatus around my left ankle, ready to bring back some memories and get into great shape in the comfort of my own home. I swung the ball and begun hopping, but didn’t even make it past one full rotation before I tripped over the ball and fell completely backwards, crunching my ankle as I landed. As I sat on the hardwood floor collecting myself, I knew I had injured my ankle and wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stand up. Fortunately, Jai was upstairs, so I sent him a text saying something like “HELP” since I wasn’t sure if he would be able to hear me calling out to him. (Texting an SOS – now that’s something you couldn’t do in the ’90s!)

Jai helped me up, and we looked at my swollen ankle and both agreed I needed to go to urgent care. As coincidence would have it, while we were in the waiting room we ended up sitting next to a friend of ours, who happened to be in urgent care because he had hurt his foot as well, so there must have been something in the water that day. An x-ray immediately showed that my ankle was sprained, so I was given a splint and sent home. Luckily, since this happened right after Christmas, Jai had received socks featuring great works of art as a present, so I stole his Edvard Munch pair as the perfect fashion accessory for my splint…

The Scream

Personal Injury: Not a Laughing Matter (Usually)

While the sprain was painful, I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of a blogger injuring herself by trying to review a fitness product inspired by a ’90s toy. You couldn’t make it up if you tried! This was a minor inconvenience resulting from my own silliness, but personal injury is not usually a laughing matter. Even relatively minor injuries can cost you a huge amount in medical bills as well as missed time from work. This is simply annoying when it’s a silly accident from being a klutz (like me!), but when an injury is the result of someone else’s actions, it’s a very serious situation. That’s why personal injury lawyers like Kinney, Fernandez & Boire exist – to defend people from crazy situations that aren’t their fault. This firm has several offices across Florida and work on personal injury cases ranging from car accidents to animal attacks – so if your neighbor has an pet alligator that bites you, you know who to call! Sounds crazy, but as my story proves, anything can happen in this life. 😉

So, tell me readers: What’s the silliest way you’ve ever hurt yourself?

Capturing Wedding Memories With Canvas On The Cheap

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Product provided for review.

For our wedding last August, Jai and I enlisted local Portland photographer Jason Hill to shoot the event, and the photos are wonderful! There were so many “Frame-worthy” shots that I have about 10 different photos that I want to get blown up on canvas to display in the house. This has been a gradual process, as canvas prints can be expensive, so I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for coupons and deals – which is why I was intrigued by Canvas On The Cheap!

Family portrait

Family portrait by Jason Hill Photography – click to view full size

Canvas On The Cheap strives to offer quality canvas printing at affordable prices. I was offered the chance to create a 16″ x 20″ canvas for review, and I was eager to see how their product would stack up! For this canvas, I decided to use a family wedding portrait of Jai and I with my aunt and uncle. I’m working on having all of our family portraits blown up so we can display them in our dining room, so this seemed like a great place to start!

The process of creating your canvas is very easy. You upload the photo that you want to use, and their web tool allows you to reposition, crop, flip, and zoom in on the image. I knew I wanted to zoom in so that the canvas would be a closeup of everyone, which was very simple to do; I then carefully moved the image to exactly where I wanted it in the frame, so that the background flowers and trees were still visible, since I knew that would create such a pretty border around the subjects in the photo, especially with the beautiful lighting effects. I got the image exactly how I wanted it and selected a “Mirror image” wrap, so that the edges are printed with a reflection of the image, which was my preference rather than stretching the image across all four sides. My canvas was then ready to go, so I added it to my cart and ordered it!

My Canvas On The Cheap

My Canvas On The Cheap!

The canvas arrived in a timely fashion and was packaged carefully to protect the contents. The print turned out absolutely perfect! It looks exactly the way I wanted. The image is represented beautifully; photos really don’t do justice to how the colors look on the canvas in person. The canvas really highlights the crisp detail of the image – it looks beautiful on the wall and is the perfect way to preserve this once-in-a-lifetime memory with my family, who traveled all the way from England to be with us on our wedding day.

Closeup of the mirror image canvas wrap

Closeup of the mirror image canvas wrap

If you want a beautiful canvas print for your home, I certainly recommend Canvas On The Cheap. The cost of a 16″ x 20″ print such as this runs $17.60, and shipping is under $15, so there is no need to spend hundreds of dollars on the equivalent elsewhere!

How to Gain Readers For Your New Blog

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How to Gain Readers For Your New Blog
This is a sponsored post.

Congratulations! You just launched your first blog. At first, you may feel like you’re talking into the ether when you’re posting for essentially no one. Building a reader base takes time, so for today’s Blogging 101 lesson, we’re going to talk about the basics for driving traffic to your brand new blog.

Gaining & Maintaining Readers: Content, Navigation & Value

If you’re in the process of hiring a web designer and launching a blog for the first time, you may hear buzzwords like “User engagement” or “Customer onboarding” thrown around. UserIQ has a lengthy article explaining what customer onboarding is, which basically boils down to the practice of streamlining your product – in this case, your blog – to make it more user friendly, direct readers to your best content more efficiently, give them an incentive to return, and analyze your traffic data to better refine what you do. For a blogger, your “Customer onboarding” experience is going to focus on three key areas:

  • Content

    • The Internet is an endless rabbithole of websites and entertainment, so if you want to gain readers, you have to offer content that is valuable. What is your blog about? Are you here to entertain, inform, help? Who are you appealing to and what do you want to achieve? Regardless of your niche, you have to offer something that people want in order for them to read. I’ve been blogging for 10 years now, and in recent times I’ve seen a great number of successful blogs fold and shut down. There are many reasons for this trend, one of which is that it’s tough to compete in a saturated market and many people get fed up with it. This is why I think that it’s more important than ever to follow your own voice and offer something unique, rather than trying to follow the same template that XYZ Blog does. What would you want to read? What do you need when you do a web search?

  • Navigation

    • Having a user-friendly blog is very important. If readers can’t find what they need easily, they will give up and move on to the next search result. Make sure your best content is easily accessible so that people don’t leave! And don’t forget your “Other” customer – the PR representatives and companies that you’d like to work with. Make sure your email address and relevant social media links are effortless to find; this may seem like a no-brainer, but I’ve worked on several PR outreach projects myself and you would be amazed at the number of professional bloggers who don’t have an email anywhere on their blog. I wasn’t able to contact those people, even though I wanted to work with them – so don’t let that happen to you!

  • Value

    • If you want readers to return to your blog, you have to offer an incentive. Having interesting or helpful content is the best way to inspire people to bookmark your blog, but it’s not always enough by itself. To maximize the number of readers that you can reach regularly, you can offer something valuable in exchange for them subscribing. Think about offering your email subscribers a special perk, like a free download, an exclusive ebook, or an entry into a giveaway.

What strategies have you found helpful in growing your audience?

3 Halloween Costume Ideas Using Wigs

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This is a sponsored post. All opinions are mine.

Halloween is my favorite holiday! I always have fun dressing up, so I will seize any excuse to put on a costume. I always go all out to make my Halloween costumes as convincing as possible, so I have several wigs in rotation that I’ll pull out and modify to suit the character. Sometimes, a wig is all you really need to pull a costume together! So to give you a little inspiration for your next costume party, here’s a few of my favorite fancy dress ideas using wigs:

Super Villain

Dr. Octopus

Back in 2012, I hosted a Spider-Man themed Halloween party and decided to make my own Dr. Octopus costume using dryer hose! You may not realize it at first glance, but my brown hair in this photo is actually a wig – my own hair was dyed black and blue at the time, so I took a long brown wig that I had and pinned it up to resemble Doc Oc’s famous bowl cut!

Rock Star

My 2015 #Halloween costume: Simon Le Bon of Duran Duran

A post shared by Beeb Ashcroft (@beebashcroft) on

A few years later, I pinned up that same brown wig when I dressed up as Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran.

Adam Levine costume

On another occasion, I used a short black wig and went as Adam Levine for Halloween!

Cartoon Character

And for a costume with true whimsy, all you need is a pink Trolls wig! (And maybe a doughnut dess!)

Super Star Wig

Whether you want to channel your inner rock and roll star for an awesome costume, or just have a little fun with your usual look, Divatress has you covered. Divatress are an online retailer specializing in synthetic wigs, with a slew of fun colors and styles at affordable prices. I’m actually thinking about buying this red Super Star wig for the costume I want to do this year – Elmyra from Tiny Toons! Now that I’ve become the Crazy Bunny Lady adopting multiple pet rabbits, it just seems too perfect, and this wig looks just like her cut and color. I also love that it’s made to be used with hot irons for styling – if I tried that on any of my other wigs, they would melt, so I definitely need a few Divatress wigs in my life! And yes, I love Halloween so much that I’m the kind of person who can decide on their costume in January. 😉

Have you ever made a Halloween costume using a wig?

See a Health Care Provider From Your Smartphone With Health eXpress

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Health eXpress

This is a partnered post.

I didn’t have health insurance for most of my 20s, so any of my doctor’s visits came out of pocket. Anyone without health coverage will know the feeling of putting off hospital visits and waiting to see if an annoying condition like a sore throat is really “Bad enough” to have to make an appointment. I became very familiar with the rates for local walk-in clinics in order to cut costs when I had to go in for something, but would still easily have to pay $100 just to have a doctor write a prescription. So when I heard about Health eXpress, an app that allows you to see a health care provider from your smartphone, computer or tablet, the first thing I noticed was that it only costs $39 per visit.

HealtheXpress App

Health eXpress is a very futuristic way to see a provider. This app uses secure technology to connect you live to a Providence doctor or nurse practitioner, who can see and hear you through streaming video. You don’t need an appointment and can connect usually within 5 minutes. You will only be charged the $39 if your condition can be treated by Health eXpress, so if they can’t provide you with a diagnosis, treatment recommendation and/or a prescription, you will be advised to seek immediate offline treatment and will not be charged. This is a great option for conditions such as cold/flu/cough, allergies and urinary tract infections – things that are easy to treat, but are often tolerated over paying hundreds to see a provider.

Health eXpress is specifically for people in Oregon and Washington and is a part of the Providence family, accepting Providence insurance and other select health coverage plans. Although I’m in my 30s and have fantastic health insurance now, I can still see a number of situations in which a “Virtual” appointment with Health eXpress would be preferable to a standard appointment:

  • Getting a doctor’s note: Many employers require a doctor’s note before they will allow an employee to call in sick, resulting in many people going to the hospital for the common cold – and spreading their germs to everyone in the waiting room. Through Health eXpress, you can have a health care provider confirm your cold and write a note to your employer while you sit comfortably on the couch and keep your germs at home!
  • Help for busy moms: Through Health eXpress, moms can check in with a provider without trying to wrangle their children into the car and doctor’s office, making life that much easier.
  • Seeing a provider after hours: Murphy’s law seems to dictate that we will always get sick at the most inconvenient time. When I was younger, I remember counting down the hours over a weekend so that I could see a provider without racking up thousands for an ER visit. Health eXpress is open from 9 AM to 5 PM on Saturday and Sunday and from 8 AM to 8 PM on weekdays, giving you a lot more options!

To learn more, visit HealtheXpress.com to create a free account and download the app on iTunes and the Google Play store.

Have you ever paid a virtual visit to a health care provider like this? Would you use Health eXpress?

Giving Forward Campaign For Andrew

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My bloggy buddy Virginia over at That Bald Chick shared today that one of her son’s friends, Andrew, is going through treatments for Leukemia. His family has set up a GiveForward page to help with the medical expenses, and GiveForward has announced that it will donate $25 to the family per blog post written about the cause, up to $1,000; and if 30 bloggers post by today, November 24th, they’ll donate an additional $200. So in support of the family, I am sharing my post – you can click here to view their GiveForward page and learn more; they also have a Facebook page with more information here.

Taking The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

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My friend Nicole at SAHMReviews nominated me for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge yesterday, to which I said: Challenge accepted. Jai was a good sport and joined in the fun, so we spent our Monday evening dumping cold water on each other in the Oregon fog. The point of this challenge is to raise awareness and funds for ALS, also known as “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”, by encouraging people to click, watch, laugh, and learn more. Those challenged are asked to make a donation to ALSA.org, which I was glad to do, as the organization has been given a four-star rating by Charity Navigator. You can donate online and learn more by clicking here.

Have any of you been nominated for the Ice Bucket Challenge?

Straight Talk on Blogging – and Teeth?!

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Blog Basics

This is a sponsored post.

Recently, I attended a “Mini Bloggy Boot Camp” presented by The SITS Girls. I’d heard high praise for their events from several colleagues, so I made a special trip to Seattle so that I could attend this workshop. I wasn’t disappointed: Tiffany and Francesca gave informative presentations on everything from “Facebook Math” to blog design. Having a day to step away from the computer and brainstorm was really helpful for me; I left feeling re-inspired and invigorated to complete several big projects once I returned, including a complete overhaul of my portfolio and migrating the Bloggers Britain community to Google+.

I also left feeling re-inspired about a rather different topic: My teeth. This Bloggy Boot Camp event was hosted courtesy of Invisalign, who were on hand to tell us a little about their unique form of nearly invisible braces. In the last year or so, I’ve been seriously considering getting braces, as I never had them as a teen and would love to have straight teeth. However, I got turned off after doing a little research into traditional braces and finding out that it can greatly restrict what you can eat and even how you floss. Uh, no thanks! That sounded like a huge pain, and I assumed all tooth straightening methods must work the same way, so I dismissed the idea of getting braces and figured I’d just live with my crooked smile.

Always smile, it makes people think you are up to something.

But when I got to this event and saw the spread of food at our table, I realized I was wrong: Invisalign purposely put snacks like popcorn, pretzels and nuts at our table to make the point that there are no food restrictions with Invisalign. Unlike regular braces, Invisalign is a removable aligner that you take out while eating and brushing your teeth. All of a sudden, my ears perked right up and I began to reconsider my “Forget braces” stance!

Apparently, I was wrong about a lot of things when it comes to Invisalign. I also thought that treatment could take a long time, but I learned that the average treatment time for an adult is one year, depending on the condition of your teeth upon starting. For those starting the tooth straightening journey a little younger than I am – ahem! – there is the specially developed Invisalign Teen, making this treatment available to teens and pre-teens as well as old fogies such as myself. 😉

Invisalign compared to braces

To help set the record straight, Invisalign also produced this infographic with more information on the treatment process. And that brings us to the next myth: That Invisalign and Invisalign Teen are a more expensive option for patients (And their parents!) than regular metal braces. As it turns out, the price for treatment is generally comparable to traditional methods and is also covered by many dental insurance plans. To determine the cost of braces with insurance, you can utilize the virtual cost calculator on the Invisalign Website.

Aside from price, why would a parent choose Invisalign Teen for their child? Well, stop for a moment and remember your own teen years. If having the option for clear, unobtrusive treatment is a relief to me at 30, just imagine how much of a relief it is to teenagers who already have more than enough to feel self-conscious about on a daily basis. Teens can take the smile assessment online to get more information about what treatment could potentially do for them. Millennials can also learn more by following Invisalign on Twitter and Facebook!

Are you considering braces for your children (Or yourself)?

Taxes, Blogger Friends & Dead Whales

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Today has been quite interesting. I headed to my accountant’s office this morning to pick up my finished tax return so that I could mail it in time for today’s deadline – Jai dropped off my taxes while I was in Florida and this was my first opportunity to pick them up after I returned. After I got that finished, Jai and I met up with my friend Jen of The Mom Reviews, who just happened to be in town with her husband. It was so wonderful getting a chance to meet her in person and we had a lovely time over coffee!

After I got home, Jen sent me this link – apparently, a 40 foot dead whale had washed up this morning and was beached near the turnaround, while we were having lunch at Sam’s totally unawares. So, Jai and I headed back down to the beach. Since I’m pretty much the only blogger in Seaside at this point, I try to report on our local news. You’re welcome:

Dead whale in Seaside

Whale tail

Sad whale photo

Dead whale

No official word yet on cause of death or how the whale will be removed; hopefully, dynamite will not be involved.