It was a dark and stormy night in Ottawa, but it was dry and bright with brilliant colours inside the new Ikea during the special media sneak peek last night! ZOMG, what an awesome, enormous store!!

It’s laid out on two levels – if you walk the maze through both levels, you’ve traversed an impressive 1.3 km! At the entrance, there’s a giant sort of foyer area with a huge kiddie play area along one wall and an escalator up to the showrooms. There are 55 inspirational room settings, and three full living areas (ie complete condo/apartment layouts with bedrooms, living room, kitchen and bathroom), and 29 (!!) kitchens set up. Here’s @MrsLouLou and @missfish standing in my dream kitchen. *covet*

(I figure it’s a year, maybe two, before we find ourselves sitting at one of the dozen or so lovely little consultation areas near the kitchen inspiration section. One of our cupboard doors fell off last week, and other is wobbly. And really? The faux painted brick backsplash from the 70s has got to go! Once the furnace replacement is paid off, the kitchen reno project is next on the list, and I am giddy to get started. I can’t imagine starting a kitchen reno anywhere BUT Ikea!)

Everything about this new Ikea is bigger, better and brighter than the old store. There are more parking spaces (1200, half of them covered), more shopping carts (600), more seats in the restaurant (640), more space (from 113K to 427K sq ft), and more stuff: from 4500 products to 9500 products. There were 12 beds laid out in the old Ikea; there are 31 in the new one! As the manager of the bedroom furniture area said, “That’s a lot of beds to make each morning!”

The new store has a lot of stuff that the old store simply couldn’t make room for. They have a fabric section, for example. (The carpet section in the new store is the size of the entire textiles section in the old store.) The fabrics are laid out on the back wall here:

The whole store is epic, rather jaw-dropping in its proportions. Store manager Isabelle Auclair explained that the new Ottawa Ikea is now more in line with some of the other stores, with the inspiration rooms laid out across the upper floor and the “Marketplace” with the smaller, non-flat-packed items spread out through the lower floor. I could have spend days (and dollars!) just wandering about the kitchen and bath sections. Oooo, pretty colours!!

I think if you went through my house and rounded up all the empty picture frames, you’d find more than a dozen. Maybe even two dozen. I have this weird compulsion to buy them, and then I get all non-committal and have difficulty deciding what to put in them or where to hang them. Still, this frame section made me positively drool with covetousness.

Did you hear they are expecting 13,500 visitors the first day? Not in the first week, or month. The first DAY alone. Yikes! So I’m guessing you’ll wont see the checkouts looking quite so empty for some months to come!

But, there’s an impressive 36 cash lanes, and they’ve hired an extra 100 or so “co-workers”, adding about 50 per cent to their staff for the new store. Here’s another neat fact from the press kit: more than 45 per cent of the co-workers at the Ottawa store have been there more than 10 years. And you could really see the pride of the managers showing off their setions last night — it was a really neat insight into a company I’ve always been curious about.

There are a few more pictures on Flickr, and more information about the grand opening festivities on the Ottawa Indoor Beautification Facebook page. I’m grateful to Ikea for the chance to have a sneak peek and Ikea is sponsoring the blog this month, but as always all opinions are entirely my own.

The night got a little hectic for me when I realized that my iPhone was not, in fact, in my coat pocket where I thought I left it. I had a few very unhappy minutes when we went out to the car and found it also not there, and I was sick with the idea that I’d lost it. We made one last quick stop at the Starbucks where Beloved and I had met before the preview — and someone had found it and turned it in to the baristas there.

So thank you, Ikea Ottawa, for the amazing preview to your new store. I will be spending many, many hours there in the months and years to come. And thank you, kind Starbucks patron, for finding and turning in my lost iPhone. Together, you made a dark and stormy night bright and warm.

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It’s been a looooooooong wait since we first heard the news back in January of 2009 (eek, I was just starting my very first 365 project that month, seems like a hundred years ago!) that Ikea would be opening the Largest! Ikea! in Canada! right here in Ottawa. It will be 427,000 sq. ft. of inspiration, with 55 show rooms, double the product selection, and a whopping 640 (!) seats at the restaurant. It’s the size of eight football fields, people!

I’d be pretty excited about this under ordinary circumstances, but I am way over the top excited about the grand opening next week for a couple of reasons. First, Ikea has offered to be a blog sponsor for the month of December, to help spread the word about the new store. Check out the new ad in the sidebar over there on the right. —>

And then Beloved and I were invited with a bunch of other Ottawa bloggers and media types to a special preview event on Monday, just two days before the big grand opening. Stand by for giddy tweets and a blog post on that!

Ikea has been a part of my life as long as I’ve lived in Ottawa. I remember going out to the old store in Bells Corners when I first moved out here in 1988. In fact, one of the few remnants from my “practice marriage” is a pine dresser we received as a wedding present, purchased at Ikea and one of the few pieces of anything I deemed worthy of keeping when we split up in the early 1990s. There’s not a room in my house that doesn’t have Ikea *something* in it, right down to the bathrooms. Cabinets, dressers, beds, pots and pans, shelves, picture frames, plates, coat racks, toy bins, shower curtains; I can’t imagine how bare the place would be without Ikea’s influence.

It’s serendipitous that I’m writing this post about the new Ikea as I listen to the thumps and bangs of a new high-efficiency furnace being installed in the basement beneath me. No, Ikea is not (yet?) in the business of home heating, but they recently sent me an interesting press release explaining how the new store will be 40 per cent more energy efficient than the most recently built Canadian store (built back in 2004.) More from the press release:

Growing more than 360,500 square feet in size, the store will be going from Canada’s smallest to its largest. The new building will use an automation system for increased energy efficiency, and will take advantage of available technologies in lighting and water sensors, low flow plumbing, efficient light sources and highly efficient restaurant equipment. The Ottawa store will be equipped with facilities and equipment to allow the store to achieve a goal of diverting 90% of its solid waste from the landfill.

True to form, Ikea has found a fun and unique way to invite the citizens of Ottawa to join in the fun and festivities of the grand opening. I saw the truck with the “Ottawa Interior Beautification Plan” driving around earlier this week, but didn’t catch the Facebook promotion until a few days ago. Here’s what the Ikea folks are up to:

To build excitement around the opening, we are introducing the Ottawa Interior Beautification Plan which will will include:

1. Setting up trade in locations for Ottawans to exchange their old items for beautification credits (IKEA gift cards). Locations To Be Announced.
2. Conducting drive by beautifications, where we will drive our IKEA truck through different neighbourhoods, trading unwanted items for Beautification credits to anyone with our Beautification signs in their windows. The signs can be downloaded from the IKEA Canada Facebook page or clipped out of the December 3rd Ottawa Citizen.
3. Giving away new IKEA items at outdoor beautification boards all over Ottawa.

You can get more information on Ikea’sOttawa Beautification Plan on their Facebook page.

I have to say, of all the things I’ve hauled home over the years, among my favourites are the plates and bowls I picked up last Christmas, navy blue with white stars and white with navy blue stars, and these multicoloured daisies I bought by the handful this summer. I have them all over the house, and you can see them in this picture.

(Ha, also perched on a bistro table and matching chairs from Ikea! And the vase? Ikea, of course.)

So tell me, what’s your favourite Ikea purchase?

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This is the story of two companies, one big and one small, that impressed me over the holiday break. I think businesses get a lot of flack when they do poorly, but not nearly enough props when they get it right.

On the Monday after Christmas, I walked into the Manotick Village Butcher looking for some ground beef for meatloaf. I am so impressed with their locally grown, ethically and sustainably raised meat that I will now do most of my shopping at the grocery store while making a special trip there for the meat. And it’s close and convenient enough that I can just pop in to get the meat fresh on the day I need it, rather than thawing out freezer-burned hunks and having to plan ahead.

Well, when I walked in there last Monday, I was temporarily flummoxed to see the place dark, with nothing in the display cases. I cast a surprised glance at James (I’m pretty sure he’s the owner) and said, “What happened?” thinking they had suffered some sort of power outage.

“It’s Monday,” he replied. “We’re closed on Mondays.” Oh right, closed on Mondays. I knew that, but completely lost track of my days during the holiday break. “What are you looking for?” he asked.

I told him I was looking for some ground beef, and he said he had some in the back. He returned with the meat and as he dropped it on the counter in front of me, I reached for my purse. “Oh, don’t worry about it,” he said. When I protested, he replied, “No, really, it’s okay. We were just going to freeze it and use it for cooking anyway.”

Isn’t that great? Small-town service with a smile. And, he’s a photographer, too. Have you seen this set of Canada Post stamps featuring historic mills of Canada? James took the portrait of Watson’s Mill featured on one of the stamps. Pretty cool, eh?

The second story is one of customer service gone wrong, and then right. In November, we bought a Whirlpool 70-pint dehumidifier for the basement from Canadian Tire. In mid-December, we went to unplug it and the third prong of the plug stayed in the wall. All the paperwork that came with the dehumidifier said, “Do not bring this product back to the retailer. Call this number for service.” So I called that number, and was told I’d need the original receipt for service. Which was lost. That was thick in the middle of the failing furnace and mould remediation and what seemed like an endless stream of injustices, and a $380 dehumidifier rendered useless by a $3 plug was the icing on the cake.

That’s when I found out that if you pay for an item at Canadian Tire with your interac card and you bring your bank statement to customer service, they can recreate your receipt for you. It took about a week and a half, but it was better than throwing the money down the toilet.

So, new receipt in hand, I called the third-party company that handles Whirlpool’s dehumidifier repairs back and re-explained the whole story to them again. By now it was three days before Christmas, and the basement repairs had mostly been done and we were twitchy to get our dehumidifier working again. We’re pretty sure the issues that had caused the mould were fixed, but the humidity in the basement is still on the high side.

I pleaded for quick service, and was told someone would get back to me to arrange a service date soon. Shortly after that, I received a rather apologetic e-mail from the clerk to whom I had been speaking, saying that the warranty did not cover the plug. They could ship a replacement cord at cost, but it would be at my expense and I’d have to repair it myself.

I think steam actually came out of my ears as I was re-dialing the service telephone number. I got a third person, and after I re-re-explained the whole thing, she put me on hold for a very long time while she read up on the file from her end. Then she came back and said, “Well, that doesn’t seem right.” We agreed on how not right it seemed that I’d be out nearly $400 for a $3 part on a six week old dehumidifier. She told me her name was Emilia, and that she was personally going to make this right for me. She called me three more times over the next week, updating me as she escalated my claim first to her supervisor and then to Whirlpool itself. Long story a wee bit shorter, the part has been ordered and someone will be dropping by to install it in the next week or so.

Isn’t it great when someone gets the customer service thing right?

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Okay bloggy peeps, here’s another debate that started on Twitter but simply needs more than 140 characters to be fully explored.

I am in the market for a new Christmas tree. I have an ‘artificial’ tree that is one of the last surviving remnants from the practice marriage. It’s nearly 20 years old (holy crap, is that true? OMG, it is. Oh my sweet lord, I am getting older faster with each passing year!) and it is a gorgeous tree. It’s just over seven feet tall, full and bushy and lovely. Every year I looked forward to putting it up — it was truly one of my most treasured holiday heirlooms. And, if you’ll remember, last autumn it was infested by rodents. And by infested I mean I found small amounts of mouse turds in the bottom of the Christmas tree bag that the mice had chewed their way through, and shredded bits of the festive red bag woven into some of the branches.

It’s a tainted tree now, even though I put it up and decorated it last Christmas and it was indeed lovely. After I shook the (literal) shit out of it. But ever since the mousecapade, I’ve just lost that lovin’ feeling for my beautiful tree.

I’ve been perusing trees in stores, online and in flyers, but none of them are as lovely as mine once was. I’d actually intended to sanitize our tree by leaving it out in the blazing sun for a couple of days this summer (did you know UV rays neutralize hantavirus?) but alas, I never got around to it. Sigh.

And then this week, it occurred to me that there was another option entirely — a (formerly) live tree.

You can see that I struggle with nomenclature here. Some people call formerly live trees “real” trees, but I can assure you that my plastic and metal tree is entirely real. And I can’t bring myself to call them live trees because, well, they’re well on their way to dead the moment you hack through their trunks. Hmmm, let’s go with “natural” and “artificial” for the distinction. Does that work?

I have never had a natural tree at Christmas. In fact, my father (never to be confused with an environmentalist at the best of times) used to say “In the spirit of Christmas, let’s kill a tree!” I have no idea how to care for a natural tree, and really know nothing about them except that people seem to complain a lot about the mess of getting them out of the house.

I asked the Twitterverse for their opinions on natural versus artificial trees, and got nine responses. Six were enthusiastic promoters of natural trees, one considered switching to a natural tree until she saw the amount of accessories that would have to be acquired, one happily switched from natural to artificial and never looked back, and one lamented the year when the natural tree was knocked over four times, spilling water over the hardwood each time.

Water to be spilled? Oh dear. Three rambunctious and curious boys and we’ve never yet knocked down a tree — but then, we’ve never had gorgeous new hardwood floors, either. You just know that those floors will be a magnet for water to be spilled.

So I’m making a list (and checking it twice) of the pros and cons of each kind of tree.

Natural trees:

Pro : lovely scent of evergreen in house
Pro : can make a family expedition out of acquiring one (insert romantic visions of red-cheeked boys, sleigh rides and Rockwell-esque winter scenes here)
Pro : don’t have to store it in the garage where mice can poop in it
Pro : apparently eco-friendlier than I would have thought, as they’re grown particularly for harvest. Nobody laments the harvesting of carrots, right?
Con : must buy a new one each year
Con : you can’t predict what you’ll get with a natural tree (I like sameness, remember)
Con : have to get (potentially wet, snowy, dirty) tree onto the car (insert comical vision of Beloved, several meters of rope, and the roof rack of the Mazda here) and then into the house
Con : natural trees require maintenance and must be watered regularly
Con : gigantic PITA to get it out of the house without a forest of dropped needles everywhere
Con : sad to see discarded trees at the curb, waiting for garbage pickup
Con : have to take down tree according to garbage-day pick-up schedule

Artificial trees:

Pro : flexible schedule – can put up in October and take down in April if I am so inclined
Pro : one investment now should last 20 years or more
Pro : having the same tree year after year has strong nostalgia factor
Pro : no need to be at the mercy of capricious weather for acquisition of the tree
Pro : artificial trees come packed in tidy boxes that fit handily in the back of my car
Pro : no open containers of water waiting to be spewed onto the hardwood
Pro : less needly mess
Con : needs rodent-free off-season storage space

What say ye, bloggy peeps? Natural or artificial and why?

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I adopted a new coffee maker this week. This is a momentous occasion in our household, as the coffee pot is often the last safety rail between me and the gaping maw of insanity. I don’t just like coffee. I need coffee. My name is DaniGirl, and I am a java junkie.

We got our last coffee maker about a year ago. Its predecessor had unceremoniously passed, and I had exactly one lunch hour to find a replacement. I went with a Hamilton Beach model from Home Sense, thinking I was getting a fancy-ass coffee maker at a discount. In fact, it was just a discount coffee maker. I accidentally broke one of the hinges on the carafe lid about the second week we had it, and the coffee has gone from mediocre to awful in the last month or two. And, it had an annoying propensity to overflow without warning, flooding the counter with hot coffee and grounds — something that is very not good for our septic system. And yet, we tolerated it because the idea of spending money on another coffee maker when we have a functioning one rankles me, even if the coffee it makes is nearly undrinkable. The final straw came when it seemed to be emitting random puddles of water, even when turned off. Time for a new coffee maker.

Even though I am a copious consumer of coffee, I do not have high-end coffee maker tastes. We got an espresso-cappuccino maker for our wedding that collected a lot of dust until we got rid of it at a garage sale a few years back. I won a Tassimo through Twitter last year, and couldn’t find a blend I liked. Beloved loves the Tassimo, though, and absconded with it to his office. In all the years I’ve been buying and replacing coffee makers, I never could justify spending any more than $20 or $25 for the basic model. Does it make coffee? Then it’s good enough.

This time, though, I noticed a mid-level Black and Decker model on for half price at Canadian Tire. It’s fancy, but not pretentious. Now I know. When you graduate to the mid-level coffee maker, you get features like brew selection (mild, regular, strong) and adjustable temperatures on your warming plate. Those are nice features, I suppose, but I still wouldn’t pay $80 for them. it has the usual timer feature, so you can set it to brew first thing in the morning, and an auto-shut-off, which is invaluable. It has a little blue LED that lights up the reservoir, which again is nice but kinda useless. And, it has a digital display that tells you whether the coffee is “fresh” or “not fresh”.

This last one I was a little too excited about. And then I read in the manual that the coffee maker thinks “fresh” coffee is less than 20 minutes old. Harrumph. If I get to a cup of coffee in the first 20 minutes after a pot is brewed, it’s the exception rather than the rule. To me, “fresh” coffee has been turned back on after the auto-shut-off only once. Heck, sometimes “fresh” stretches its definition all the way to ‘was brewed today’. I am not fussy. I will drink, if I must, coffee that is burnt, or cold, and not irregularly, both.

The proof of the coffee maker, though, is truly in the drinking. I divested it of its packing material this morning (sidebar note: it now seems that small appliances are being shipped with the same amount of ridiculously overwrought packaging that one previously experienced only with toys) and cleaned it out. I brewed up a pot and was highly impressed with its near-silent operation – our current coffee maker rivals the dishwasher and passing garbage trucks for decibels. And the coffee? Divine. I am in love. In fact, I’m on my third cup, twice rewarmed, and it’s still tastier than the first drops out of Hamilton Beach’s poor excuse for a coffee maker.

Sweet brown ambrosia, you lubricate my mornings. And afternoons. And occasional evenings. Don’t judge me, it could be crack, yanno.

What about you? Do you have one of those high-end coffee makers and does it make your mornings worthwhile? Or are you more like me, unable to see what features beyond “makes coffee” one might need in a coffee maker?

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Found this and had to share! “Ever dreamed to go space journy with your R2D2?? Unfortunately, such a dream can’t be true at the moment. But now this tiny R2D2 can serve you Soy Sauce by your one-hand little move, leaning the R2 body a little to put appropriate Soy Sauce on Chinese or Japanese fried rice.” The only thing better than an R2D2 soy sauce dispenser? These light sabre chop sticks. OMG, I love the Internet!

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In the ongoing evolution of the Great Moving Project of 2010, we have moved beyond the rush of finding, the excitement of buying, the panic of preparing and the pain of selling. While we endure the seemingly endless wait until the waiver of conditions, anticipated for late this week or early next, we now turn our attention to the thrill of acquiring new stuff to cram into the new house!

The new house comes equipped with a stove that seems fairly similar to our current one and a dishwasher. I was going to bring our well-loved high-efficiency washer and dryer with us, and buy a new fridge, but the people who are buying our place are coming from a rental and wanted all five appliances. Long story short, we now find ourselves in the market for a washer, a dryer and a fridge.

The washer and dryer are a no-brainer for me. I’m quite happy to simply reacquire the latest version of the LG front-loading washer and dryer I currently have. In fact, at one of the local appliance shops right now they have a sale on that makes them about $200 cheaper than what I paid for a set with a few less features back in 2008.

The fridge thing is another issue. Actually, it’s several issues. First, the spot for the fridge in the new house is on the small side, and the height clearance is only 66 inches. We took a good look at the cupboards over the fridge, though, and decided it would make more sense in the long run to simply have someone remove those cupboards for us so we can get a decent-sized fridge. With three teenage boys on the horizon, we’re gonna need maximum fridge capacity! I’m not sure what our current fridge is, but I think it’s either 17 or 19 cubic feet.

Who knew there were so many fridge features to consider! Freezer top-mount or bottom-mount or along the side; pull-out shelves in the fridge on some of the higher-end models; french versus full doors… there’s a lot of options! I already know I don’t want stainless steel and I don’t want a water dispenser, so that narrows things down a little bit.

I’ve already decided I want a bottom-mount freezer, and I am toying with the idea of that “french door” style, like this one. I was all ready to go with an LG, but I was peeking at a couple of the GE Profile models in the showroom, and they seemed to have a bit more solid feel to them, and an extra pull-out basket in the freezer that I liked.

So here’s where we play “ask the bloggy peeps” again. What do you love and hate about your current fridge? What features do you covet, or find useless? I’m especially curious to know if any of you have the “french door” model and find that the doors don’t close well — maybe because they’re lighter than a traditional fridge door, but they don’t seem to seal themselves as well and I’m worried the boys won’t remember to push them closed all the way. And pull-out shelves in the fridge compartment — worth getting?

I’m also wondering if it’s worth the effort to pull out the small bit of wall that marks the edge of the fridge’s space in the kitchen to give us the extra inch we’ll need to move from a 19 cubic foot to a 22 cubic foot fridge. It may mean the side of the fridge impedes into the doorway into the kitchen by half an inch or so, but may well be worth it for the extra space. Thoughts?

Brands, features, loves, hates or cautionary tales? C’mon bloggy peeps, talk fridgey to me!

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Sheesh, can you tell I’m on a self-improvement kick? Healthier foods, the 100-push-up challenge (are you in?) and now — I’m thinking of bicycling in to work. Can you tell I get all fired up by the spring sunshine?

It’s about a 10 km jaunt from home to work for me. Most of it is along Woodroffe Avenue (four lanes at 80+ km/h — eek! — but with a lovely bike lane set off from the road) and it’s largely flat. I just need another week or so to psyche myself into it, and a day with nothing planned for first thing in the morning, just in case it takes me two hours instead of the anticipated 40 minutes to make the trek!

And of course, like any new convert, now that I’m thinking of biking seriously I’m also thinking about upgrading my gear. Just this past weekend I bought myself a nice 1L coffee thermos so I can make a pot to go rather than ride through the drive-thru at Timmy’s, which was my biggest hurdle. Oh wait, you mean I’m supposed to be coveting bike-related gear? Yeah, that too!

I have a really nice bike. It’s about 15 years old, and has had, um, only moderate wear through the years. Let’s just say it got a lot more wear in the seven years before the babies arrived than it has since! It was a good investment at the time — I spent about $400 on it, and it’s still in pretty good shape. It’s not the most comfortable bike in the world, though. The handlebars are too low, and I have tried unsuccessfully to get them raised. I want one of those new cushy seats, too. Let’s face it, an ass in its 40s deserves a bit of comfort!

A year or so ago, I saw one of those retro-cruising bikes, and instantly coveted it. The big white-wall tires, the fenders, the pastel colours? Covet! But, are they practical? I don’t even know which type of bike I want — or, more specifically, which one is the best investment for the kind of riding I’ll be doing. A one-speed cruiser might be a little simplistic for the 10 km communte, no? (Who am I kidding, even with my current 21-speed bike, I only use about three of them and usually only then when I change gears by accident!) The hybrid bikes look like a good choice, and my cousin suggested I make sure I get something without those big knobby wheels if I’m planning on doing a lot of city riding.

Gah, so many choices!

I was surfing around the bike shop Web sites, and it seems like the base bike-shop price is more than $500 — about double what I was thinking I’d spend. (And think of the gorgeous camera lens I could get with $500!) But then, my existing bike is a testament to investing in a good product. Canadian Tire has a bunch in the $200 range. Can someone tell me the difference, and whether it’s really worth the extra $$ for a casual rider like me? I’m not out to win any races, I just want a comfy bike that will make me want to ride it.

Talk bike to me, bloggy peeps. What features do you love and hate about your bike? What do you covet? What should I watch out for? Is it worthwhile to invest in a $500+ bike that will last me another 15 years? (Ack, just realized that will bring me to age 55 and retirement — I think I have to go lie down now. When did I get to be so old???)

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So I got an iPod Touch for Christmas, as I mentioned. And, as I mentioned, even though I hadn’t even asked for it and when I opened it, wasn’t entirely convinced I wanted it, in the two weeks I’ve had it I’ve come to love it dearly.

It didn’t take long for me to start exploring the app store, and most of the apps I downloaded were the freebies. (I have to admit, I am highly impressed by what you can get for free. And, in a delicious coincidence, my new task at work is to figure out how to make our Web site more mobile-friendly, and even look into creating an app of our own. Wicked cool, and wickedly serendipitous.) But, of course, there were a few games that sucked me in. I had no problem forking over $4.99 for Sim City, and I think Tetris set me back $2.99. The one I play most often is Boggle — I think that set me back another $2.99. I didn’t mind splurging a bit on games, though, because Beloved also gave me a $25 iTunes gift card to go along with it.

(Many of you are nodding along, because you know what’s coming. I have to admit, I had no idea, but I am peeved.)

I didn’t realize anything was amiss until I happened to see the $1.99 and $2.99 charges to my Visa card. Apparently, in Canada you cannot use an iTunes gift card to buy apps. That is annoying in and of itself, but to me even more annoying is that I had no idea. Not when we gave our niece and nephew $25 each gift cards for Christmas to use on their new iPods, and not when I entered my iTunes password to purchase the apps. It did not give me any sort of indication that I was bypassing my $40 gift card balance and instead charging the purchases to my Visa card. A friend of mine with an 11 year old didn’t notice until there were nearly $100 worth of charges on his credit card, so I guess I got off lucky.

So I started poking around on the Internet, figuring there must be some sort of workaround out there somewhere, but there isn’t one that I could find. What I did find was post after post after post of angry consumers, many of whom had contacted Apple and received paltry compensation like a credit for a free song or two. Apple seems to be claiming that they are unable to allow the use of gift cards to purchase apps because of what one Apple customer service rep called “Canadian Commerce Laws”.

Then I found a guy named Jim Whitelaw who showed a hell of a lot of initiative and managed to get Industry Minister Tony Clement to address the issue in a letter to his own MP. I mean, if the Minister of Industry doesn’t think it’s a problem, and if Sony and Nintendo and other companies allow the use of gift cards to purchase games and software, I have a hard time understanding why Apple is choosing to draw this particular line in the sand.

I’ve had lots of reasons to interact with Apple over the years, and I’ve always found them reasonably responsive. But this totally taints my opinion of them. I’ve been seriously considering both an iPhone and a Mac, but if this is how Canadian Apple customers get treated, then I’m not sure I want to invest any more of my time or money with Apple. It’s a bit of a tarnish on my love of my shiny new iPod, too. I’ve written to Apple (feel free to do so yourself if you’re as ticked as I am — they say they are responsive to customers) but don’t expect anything more than a cursory response.

Consider yourself warned, if you haven’t already found out about this one the hard way like many of my friends already have. The policy itself is bad enough, but the lack of information is inexcusable.

Edited to add: while Apple did respond to me, the response was rather unsatisfactory. The first e-mail told me, rather unhelpfully, that gift cards could not be used to redeem apps in Canada. When I replied that my initial query stated that very fact, and that I was asking instead about the “why” of the policy, I got a second response that said:

According to Apple policies, canadian customer’s are not able to purchase Applications using Store Credit. I know this must be really frustrating.

I encourage you to use the iTunes Feedback page to submit your feedback below, it may help us to improve our customer satisfaction. We will be considering your feedback very carefully:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html

Your efforts to share your feedback are very much appreciated.

So, I took their advice and I encourage you to do so, too. Have at ‘er, bloggy peeps!

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When my friends at Hill and Knowlton asked me if I’d be interested in sponsoring a Loblaws / President’s Choice holiday giveaway, I was torn. I have a very intense relationship with Loblaws, even though I’m pretty sure Loblaws doesn’t even know I exist. (Seems alarmingly like most of my high school relationships, now that I think of it.)

See, on the one hand, I love Loblaws. I shop there or at the Independent across the street every single week, and I love their stuff. I especially love the Insider’s Report, and I’m absurdly and perhaps unhealthily excited when new products come out. On the other hand, Loblaws does occasionally make me so crazy that I want to divorce them and run away with Sobey’s. On the other other hand, you know I love Hill and Knowlton and the fun projects they bring to us. And when I accepted their offer of a bunch of new products from the Insiders Report based on a caveat that we could also put together a giveaway for you guys, they didn’t blink an eye. Really, I got on board this bloggy giveaway as much because of H&K as because of Loblaws.

So I knew I would be getting a big box of samples to try, and I knew we’d set up a giveaway for you to share in the bounty. What I did not expect was this:

I mean, that’s a REALLY big box. And do you know what was inside? I so love this! They had individually wrapped and labeled 25 packages with the numbers one through 25. The box arrived on December 1st. Yes, they mailed me a giant grocery advent calendar full of President’s Choice products from the Holiday Insider’s Report. How awesome is that?

The boys were beside themselves with excitement at this amazing box of presents, and had a great time lining them all up in numerical order. (Lookit me go, presents + free food + teaching opportunity! What fun!) Then they opened up package number one, which was a bottle of PC Mulled Cider (I looked, but couldn’t find a link. Another thing that makes me squirrelly about PC – the search engine is questionable at best). The boys don’t really like pop, but they asked for a sample of this with dinner and both agreed it was a sparkly twist on plain old cider.

The December 2 package contained a shiny (ooo, shiny!) new PC Cake Server. I’m not sure if I can be patient enough to keep opening just one package per day when I know there are some really yummy treats in there, but so far we’re having a lot of fun with this.

(As you’ll see in the background of the photographs, we’re in the middle of transitioning from carpet to laminate, and finding a place to put 25 23 individually-wrapped grocery items is proving to be a lot more of a challenge than it might have posed on an ordinary week, since everything from the living room and dining room has been moved elsewhere in the house, including my overstuffed and oversized love seat and sofa taking up the entire kitchen. Currently, most of the treats from Loblaws are stacked in the front hall closet!)

So while this has been an unexpectedly delightful bloggy event (can we pause again to say how much I love H&K?) on my part, it gets better! Our friends at H&K have put together an amazing gift basket that one of you lucky bloggy peeps will win just in time for holiday entertaining season. (Or, the holiday “go away, it’s MINE, get yer own!” season, depending on how it rolls at your place.)

The gift basket is loaded with some of the best items for the PC Holiday Insiders Report, with holiday entertaining in mind.

The gift basket includes:

• PC Mulled Apple
• PC Raspberry Martini Mocktail
• PC Chocolate Egg Nog
• PC Mini (6”) holiday crackers
• Belgian chocolate cookie tin
• PC gingerbread bites
• PC Scottish Shortbread
• PC Apple Pecan Gourmet Topper
• PC Holiday Chocolate Figurines

And lookit how they packaged it all up in a reuseable PC Green Bin tote for you. Awesome, eh? So here’s the details:

The contest is open from now through noon on Monday, December 7, 2009. There are three ways you can earn a ballot to enter this contest:

1. Leave a comment below and tell me one treat you look forward to during the holiday season. Grandma’s shortbread? Your special-recipe stuffing? Swiss Chalet’s Festive Special? What taste tells you it’s holiday time?
2. Write about the contest on your blog, linking to this post, and come back and leave me a comment with the URL to let me know about it.
3. Tweet the contest on twitter using hashtag #PC_Holiday and linking to this blog post, and leave me a comment with a link to your status update. (You can create a direct link to your Twitter update by clicking on the time of the update and saving that link.) You can use tinyurl http://tinyurl.com/ye6ayq2

The fine print: this contest is open to Canadian residents only. One winner will be chosen by using the random number generator at random.org, selected from all eligible entries. The winner will be announced the afternoon or evening of December 7, 2009. You must be willing to share your mailing address with me, and I will share it with Hill and Knowlton Canada, who will ship the prize directly to the winner.

You can buy President’s Choice products at Loblaws, Independent, Extra Foods, No Frills, Superstore, Fortinos, ValuMart, Zehrs, Maxi, Provigo, SaveEasy and Dominion — here’s an online store locator!

Thanks to Loblaws and Hill and Knowlton for another fun giveaway. Good luck to all!

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I‘m always glad when November turns to December. Despite the short days and cold weather, December is a bright month filled with warmth. We got our first dusting of snow yesterday, which helps to add a festive feeling, and there’s plenty of talk of pending holiday lunches and get-togethers.

I even ordered my Christmas cards online last night! For the first time, inspired by your suggestions, I’ve made cards based on one of my photographs, which I just this moment realized that I forgot to upload and therefore cannot show you. (Oops!) Trust me when I tell you that it’s an adorable image. Here’s an out-take from the same photo session that I did not use, but which will give you an idea of the unbearable cuteness of it all:

Aren’t they lovely? I swear, I love them more each time I look at this picture. And this is the out-take!

After much dithering, tinkering, uploading and testing, I was surprised to find myself choosing Costco’s photo lab for the cards. I’d toyed with Shutterfly, TinyPrints and a few others, but the price and functionality of the Costco site got me in the end. And since I do most of my photo developing with them, I know at least the photo quality will be high. I’ve ordered actual folded 5×7 cards instead of just flat photo postcard-style cards, and there are photos both inside and out. For about $1 a card, it was the best price by far, and with in-store pick-up, there is no shipping nor US$-Cnd$ conversion to worry about. The only thing I’m forgot to check is whether envelopes are included. If I remember, I’ll report back on the quality issue when I pick them up next week.

Do you feel the pull of the holidays yet? Are you mostly ready or just getting started? What’s next on your holiday to-do list?

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This time of year, it seems like every website, TV show and magazine is offering up the “Best Bet” toys for the holiday season. I’m always a little bit skeptical though: can I trust Disney to objectively assess the other guys’ toys, or am I just getting a thinly disguised “Best Disney Toys” list?

That’s why I’ve always enjoyed reviewing the Canadian Toy Testing Council Best Bet Toy lists. The Canadian Toy Testing Council (CTTC) has been assessing toys on the basis of design, function, durability and play value since 1952. Here’s their schpeil:

Every year, hundreds of toys are selected as representative of those being offered on the market. These toys are then tested by Canadian children in everyday settings, to assess design, function, durability and play value. The Council rates each toy, awarding Three Stars, Two Stars, One Star, Novelty or Not Recommended. You can find the ratings and a review of each toy tested in editions of the TOY REPORT, published by the CTTC. The Council also reviews and evaluates Canadian children’s books to promote child literacy.

Toys tested by actual families? That’s the kind of review I want to read. The CTTC released their list of the Best Bet Toys for 2010 on November 16, along with a Battery-Powered Toy of the Year award and a Children’s Choice category.

I can tell you from personal experience that their Children’s Choice recommendation of the Step 2 Sand and Water Transportation Station is right on the money. Our was well-loved by the 7 year old, the 5 year old and the toddler, right out of the box.

One of their “Best Bet” recommendations is Ganz’ Webkinz, which continue to enthrall all three of my boys. The big boys love them equally for the cuddle-factor and the online component, and the little guy just likes to hug them and make piles of them.

I am intrigued by the recommendation for Uno Moo. Lucas might be a tiny bit on the young side, but it looks to me like a game all three boys could play together. Uno is one of those classic games that the boys seem to love. Another unbeatable classic is Lego, which has my boys enthralled in a full-on addiction. I tried Tinker Toys one year, thinking the building factor would hook them, but we found the pieces annoying to assemble and not very versatile. Have they changed Tinker Toys since we were kids? Didn’t they used to be better?

My other favourite toy recommedation continues to be Cranium’s Super Fort. We gave one to my nephew for his birthday a year or two ago, and just this past weekend my sister-in-law was mentioning what a great gift it was and how much play value they got from it. (Ha, I just googled “cranium super fort” to find the link, and came up with my CTTC post from 2007. Apparently I am starting to repeat myself!)

By the way, you can also read the full report on all of the toys reviewed by the CTTC’s testing families online. I wish it were a more interactive, searchable database, though. You can even sign up to be a testing family – something I keep meaning to do but never seem to get around to.

Shhh, don’t tell the boys, but this Christmas will see a lot of Lego under our Christmas tree. That, and Wii games. Wii is coming out with Lego Rockband – it’s like they’re reading our minds! It’s the perfect family gift.

Care to share your inspiration? What do you think will be a big hit at your house this holiday season?

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As you may remember, I made a (ahem) somewhat involuntary switch from driving a Dodge Grand Caravan to a Mazda 5 last July, when I wrecked the van and it burst into flames. (You know, I’m still a little twitchy even five months later?)

I’ve been meaning to write a follow-up post for months. Even though I was a very reluctant comer to the title of minivan owner back in late 2007 when we bought the Caravan, I had come to love the feeling of driving around in a spacious, elevated and insulated little world of my own. As it turns out, we had the minivan for exactly the right amount of time — I’m not sure we could have easily managed those earliest days with a newborn, when you never leave the house without a stroller and a bag and a bumbo or some sort of other seat and a ridiculous amount of other gear. One thing I’ll say for the Grand Caravan, we never lacked for places to put stuff.

That was my main concern in switching back to a car, even a station-wagon sized car like the Mazda 5. Would we all fit, with a car seat and two boosters? Would there be enough room for a full load of groceries? Would it be up to the task of hockey bags, strollers, and the rest of the crap we haul around with us?

Turns out, the answer is yes.

Truly, I love the Mazda 5 to death. Not only does it have more than enough space for us AND our stuff, but it doesn’t have that soul-sucking stigma that a minivan has, and it’s way better on gas. Here’s five things I love about my Mazda 5:

1. It fits a full load (and I mean *full*) of groceries without flinching. I usually fold down one of the seats in the third row (it has a 50/50 split) and that together with the bit of space at the back is more than enough room. And, when I had to bring home new closet doors from Home Depot, to the amazement of the young fellow helping me cram them into the car, I managed to fit an 7′ x 4′ box into the Mazda and close the hatch by folding down every seat except the driver’s seat and the one directly behind the driver.
2. Even with all the seats in use, there’s still plenty of room for day-to-day stuff. There’s just enough room in the back for a couple of grocery bags, or a folded up stroller, or a couple of backpacks, and it seats six quite comfortably. (Can you tell I have issues with space?)
3. It has heart, and pep. I drove a little Mazda 323 for about a decade, and this car reminds me of why I loved it so. When you press the accelerator, it wants to go. It doesn’t feel heavy and lumbering like the minivan did. It feels, even with the automatic transmission, like you’re driving it instead of just steering it.
4. It’s cheap to fill. The $75 fill-ups with the minivan made me choke every single time. The Mazda takes $45 to fill and I can get 500 to 600 km of city driving from that.
5. I can park it easily and I don’t need a step-ladder to scrape the windows. The minivan was just a beast to manouever, and a bear to clean off in the winter time. I haven’t had to do anything more than an ice-scraping so far this year, but at least I can do that in a couple of minutes. And, I can reach the middle of the windshield!

In the interest of fair reporting, there’s a couple of things I’m still not quite sold on. The automatic wipers are a little flaky. The ride is not as smooth as that of the Grand Caravan — but to me, that just adds to the “driving instead of just steering” enjoyment of the ride. I miss the giant double glovebox of the Caravan and the extra space around the seats, and I think the middle seat might get a little messy in the winter with kids with snowy boots clambering over and around it to get to the back row of seats. Ingress and egress from the back is not bad, but was far easier in the Caravan.

We haven’t yet attempted a road trip with the Mazda, so that’s the last hurdle to be attempted before I give it a full five-star rating. When we bought it, the dealer threw in a free Thule roof rack system, so there *should* be plenty of room for our stuff. We’ll see!

In all, we had the minivan for exactly the time we needed it: our first year of adjusting to being a family of five. I’d read a lot of press on the Mazda 5 before we bought it, and many people opined that it would be a perfect car for a family of four but maybe not more than that. In all, I have to say that it is the perfect size for us. I may not feel that way when I’m the shortest one in the family, but I’ve got a couple of years left to worry about that!

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Sheesh, as it if it weren’t bad enough that gullible Canadian parents have been excluded from the Baby Einstein refund offer, now comes news that Canadian parents aren’t included in the recently-announced recall of Maclaren strollers, even though the strollers are the same in both Canada and the US and all strollers are apparently a potential “finger tip amputation” (!!) risk. Guess I’d better be especially careful when folding up my handy-dandy little Triumph that I keep tucked in the back of the car!

Corporate America just doesn’t care about Canadian kids, I guess…

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A few tidbits that have dribbled out of my inbox lately, worth a mention but not quite an entire post…

Remember when I blogged about the MoonJars? I just received their newsletter, and now you can enter to win a set of 25 standard MoonJars for your child’s classroom. Follow this link for details. (The contest is aimed at classrooms or community groups for Grades K-3. Entries should be submitted on behalf of classes/groups through their teachers or parents.)

I won my first-ever auction on eBay this weekend! I’ve bought stuff before, and I’ve bid and lost things, but I’ve never actually won an auction. I’m so stoked! The item was shipped from Mississauga yesterday, and I’ve been using Canada Post’s tracking feature to watch it migrate across the province. Did you know you can get e-mail tracking updates? How cool is that? I’m ridiculously excited to watch its progress across the province. It arrived in Ottawa at 6:36 this morning — with any luck, it will be waiting for me at home tonight. Yippee! (You’ll have to wait to see what I got, but it has to do with the 365. Fun!)

There’s a kids’ consignment sale happening on Sunday, October 18 called My Kid’s Funky Closet . According to the e-mail I received, ” It has been happening for 4 years now at The Glebe Community Center in Ottawa. The Ottawa Police provide their child finger printing service and Little Rays Reptiles put on a show. They collect for the food bank and snowsuit fund as well. They have consignors who make money selling their gently used children’s items and maternity wear and people at the show have an opportunity to dress their children at a fraction of the cost of buying new. There are toys, games, bikes, strollers, baby equipment, clothing, maternity wear and vendor booths to visit as well.”

Those of you with daughters might be interested in this one.

Plan Canada just released the 2009 edition of their ground breaking series of reports Because I Am A Girl (BIAAG). These reports highlight the plight of girls around the world and the unique role they play in the fight against global poverty.

Plan Canada in support of the 2009 BIAAG report is filming a documentary across Canada and will be in Ottawa from October 2nd to the 5th filming at locations across the city. This documentary is aimed at capturing the experiences of teens, tweens and their inspirations. These experiences will be captured and replayed as a documentary to be released in Spring 2010.

If you think your teen or tween might be interested in participating in the documentary, the latest filming schedule will have them at the Rideau Centre downtown on Saturday, October 3 from 12 pm to 2 pm.

If people are unable to attend the events they can still support the campaign by visiting www.becauseiamagirl.ca and find more ways to get involved. You can also follow the documentary crew as they blog about traveling across Canada and talking to girls who are helping to achieve positive social change around the world.

And finally, I’ve been chatting with one of the producers for All in a Day on CBC Radio. They’re thinking of doing a sort of parenting panel debate on when is the right time to let kids walk to school by themselves. We’ve had a lot of similar discussions here, so I said I’d ask y’all to see if anyone is interested. Even though I’m still shepherding Tristan back and forth at age seven, I think I’m pretty close to letting him walk by himself — assuming he’s ready for it.

I’m a little conflicted on the subject, but want to subscribe to the “free range kids” kind of ideals and believe that it is just as safe now as it was when I was a kid for kids to be roaming the neighbourhood. If you want to debate the issue, and especially if you’d argue a more conservative approach, let me know and I’ll pass your information along to Sarah at the CBC.

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It’s been two weeks since the whole “oh my god the van is on fire” nightmare, and I’ve finally managed to restore pretty much everything to a state of equilibrium. I’m not seeing the crash in technicolour every time I close my eyes anymore (that went on a lot longer than I expected, actually) and the bruises and burns from the air bags have faded to muted tones of ocher. Last but not least, we are a two-car family once again!

We’ve spent the last two weeks cramming our family of five into our 5 1/2 year old Focus wagon, and it hasn’t been pretty. (Insurance would have paid for a rental van, but try to find a minivan for rent in July!) Two booster seats and one child seat do fit across the back seat of the Focus — but you have to seat one child, buckle him in, put the second booster in place, and then buckle that child in by reaching in behind the car seat. Not. Pretty. Plus, the boys were about to kill each other, sitting in that close quarters!

My first instinct was to simply acquire another Grand Caravan. Must restore equilibrium! There aren’t a heck of a lot of choices for a family of five on a limited budget, and we’d narrowed it down to the Kia Sedona, the Grand Caravan, and maybe a Kia Rondo or a Mazda 5. (My friend loves the Kia Rondo so much he got one for his wife, too, and they also have three boys.) I didn’t want to shop for a new car, I was tired and had a lot on my plate and just wanted to get it over with.

Having never been in a crash before, I didn’t realize at the time that the whole “bursting into flames after the impact” thing was particularly out of the ordinary. However, the shock on the part of all the professionals who see accidents every day — the tow truck operator, the insurance people, the impound lot operators — was giving me serious concern about why a year-and-a-half old Grand Caravan with less than 20,000 km burst into flames in what was actually a fairly minor collision. Then another sweet friend told me about hearing a podcast where a Caravan burst spontaneously into flames at around 30,000 miles. I had all that rattling around in my brain as Beloved and I set out last Saturday just before the Worldwide Photo Walk (what! a! week!) to look for a new vehicle.

Our first stop was the Kia dealership. I dearly wanted to make the Rondo work for us. While I did love the van for it’s spaciousness, I did not love its egregious gas consumption nor its abject lack of maneuverability. But we took one look at the back of the Rondo with all three rows of seats in use and knew it would never work. There’s not even enough room in the back for our Maclaren travel stroller.

We took the Sedona van for a test drive and were underwhelmed. Meh. It’s like going shopping for a new outfit and trying on a uniform — it fits, it keeps you from being naked, it does all the things clothes should, but lacks any style whatsoever.

We were on our way, even more resignedly, to the Dodge dealership where we got the first Grand Caravan when we saw the Mazda dealership next door. I waffled — if the Rondo was too small, the Mazda 5 wouldn’t be much better, and we were short on leisure time for browsing. But we were right there, just across the parking lot. What the heck. So we walked over.

I’d been admiring the Mazda 5 from afar for quite some time, and figured it would be the car we bought when the Focus finally sputters to its eventual end. The first car I ever bought was a Mazda 323 back in the day, and I drove the crap out of that car over its eight years with me. When I saw the Mazda 5 in the showroom, I was hooked. The sales guy couldn’t even get his spiel out — I just wanted to see under the hatch to see how much space it had. And to my great surprise, it had more than the Rondo. Not tonnes more, but enough for a folded up stroller and a backpack.

We took it for a spin, and we were hooked. We *almost* got the fancy GT model with the sunroof (be still my heart!) but they didn’t have the colour I wanted in stock and that gave us just enough thinking time to realize that paying an extra $40 a month for a sunroof was an indulgence we really didn’t need.

By the time we signed the deal, they’d thrown in free window tinting, free roof-racks, a free Thule roof box, free oil changes for five years (!) and a financing rebate from the bank to the tune of $2500 or so. The sticker price was a couple of grand lower than the Grand Caravan, and the gas consumption should be about 40% less, from what I’ve heard.

And the best part? I love it! I will love it every single day, except for the days when we have to pack it up for a road trip (thus, the free Thule roof box!) As a matter of fact, when I made Beloved promise he wouldn’t lose his cool trying to cram everything we needed for a road trip into the back, he grinned and said “No problem. I won’t pack the car for our road trips!”

We picked it up last night, after my CBC interview. (Did I mention what! a! week! ?) We haven’t put Lukey’s car seat in yet, but the big boys were instantly charmed by the Mazda’s friendly “HELLO” on the dashboard when I turned it on. It’s got that peppy Mazda zip that I remember, tonnes of energy and so easy to drive.

Hello, Mazda!

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So it’s been a little less than a week since we’ve had our fancy new digital cable box, and you know what?

Even with 600+ channels, there’s STILL nothing on TV.

Worse, I now spend my precious hour or so of TV time each night scaling through the digital TV Guide gadget looking for stuff to watch instead of actually, you know, watching stuff. There may yet be a learning curve so I don’t have to scroll painfully through all 600 channels looking for a particular channel or, worse, hoping to serendipitously find something worth watching, but right now the TV is actually adding to the agitation rather than distracting me from it.

I’m paying for this experience? (Ha, well, not for the next 5 3/4 months I’m not!)

In the last week, I’ve watched about two hours of the Food network, and the boys have come to love 1970s-era superhero cartoons on early morning Toon Retro. And that’s about it. Everything else is just 50 timeshifted or HD or who knows what versions of the same crap that wasn’t worth watching last week, either.

There are a couple of things I would have liked to watch on the retro sitcom networks, but we don’t get those channels. Beloved was excited to get the National Geographic channel, but we don’t get that channel. And I would have invested an hour or so on Saturday afternoon in MuchMusicRetro (it’s my fave at the gym) but — wait for it — we don’t get that channel, either. Just about everything I found in the electronic guide that made me say, “Oh! That looks good!” ended up with a screen telling me that I don’t have access to that channel. For an additional fee, though, they’d be happy to hook me up. Bah.

And just by the way? Why can’t all the on-demand stuff be on the same channel? I spent at least 20 minutes yesterday trying to figure out why the Treehouse-on-demand show I had saved for the boys was nowhere to be found on the Rogers-on-demand channel until I realized they were two separate entities.

All in all, I’d have to say that my first week of digital cable has left me unimpressed. We haven’t even tried out the PVR yet because there was simply nothing worth recording.

Oh well, I suppose I can always use my former TV time to catch up on my blog reading…

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The nice folks at Hill and Knowlton* sent me an e-mail the other day, asking me if I’d like to take a new HP Photosmart Wireless Premium Fax All-in-One printer for a test drive. No need to blog about it, they said, but we saw your posts about your 365 project and thought you might like to try out one of these printers on a four-month trial basis.

Huh, I thought. How about that? But, we already have a printer that we practically never use anyway. And Beloved had actually bought me a little Canon photo printer for Christmas that we ended up taking back on Boxing Day, because we figured it would be cheaper to just print out the photos at the local big-box store. Could we really use a printer like this? What do I know from printers?

So I flipped the e-mail over to Beloved and asked him what he thought. He e-mailed me back two words: “Yes, please!”

When the box actually arrived last week, Beloved spent a while setting it up and testing it out. (I have absolutely no patience for that sort of thing.) When he realized what a really nice printer it is, not just a printer but a fax and scanner, too, with wireless and bluetooth capabilities, he had what he endearingly termed as a “technogasm.” He’s really quite pleased with it. My eyes started to glaze over a bit when he went on about duplex printing and printing on CDs and ethernet connections, but then he handed me a photograph he’d just made from one of my pictures on Flickr, and I said, “Oh, well, now you’re talking my language!” I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference between the photo that came out of the printer and one I had developed at a photo counter. I put it in a frame right away.

So then came the challenge of figuring out where to put it. It’s wireless, so we can stash it just about anywhere in the house. I suggested the basement family room, on a nice shelf far away from climbing toddlers and the other mischief-seekers in the house. Beloved, infatuated with his new favourite toy, had other ideas. No sense hiding this beautiful piece of machinery away in the basement, according to him.

I vetoed this idea.

And this one.

And this is definitely not going to work.

We’ll have to keep negotiating this one, I think. The nice thing is because we have WiFi, we can pretty much stash it wherever there’s an outlet.

This give-a-blogger-an-all-in-one-printer campaign is a part of HP’s new focus on the impact of the digital age on moms and families. Another facet of the campaign involves its new Moms for Simplicity site, built with the idea of bringing moms together to discuss how technology can be a big help in simplifying their lives, and HP is offering YOU the chance to win a $5000 “technology makeover”:

To do this, together with champion Olympian swimmer and mother of one, Dara Torres, HP has just launched the Moms for Simplicity micro site and photo mosaic contest. HP and Dara would like to hear how you have used technology to make your life easier (in about 200 words and with a photo to add to our mosaic.) Submission is really easy and along with your contribution to the Moms for Simplicity photo mosaic- you are automatically entered to win an HP technology makeover worth $5000 and a trip to watch Dara swim at the US Nationals!

Pretty cool, eh?

Edited to add: sorry, I didn’t realize that the technology makeover contest is only open to residents of the US. The e-mail for the Moms for Simplicity site and the printer e-mail came from different people, but I assumed they were part of the same campaign. I’ve asked to see if anything can be offered to our Canadian readers. Sigh.

*(I like Hill and Knowlton. They really “get” blogger relations, and I don’t just say that because they give me free stuff. Well, it helps, but it’s not the only reason I like them! They said I didn’t have to blog about the new printer, but it only seemed right that I do. Besides, it’s not every day I get a chance to work a term like “technogasm” into conversation.)

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This is a clever promotion. Bring your losing “please play again” cup from Timmy’s Roll Up the Rim to Win contest to a Country Style and they’ll give you a free medium coffee. Free coffee! Woot!

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Via RedFlagDeals, this offer for 10 free issues of Pregnancy Magazine’s digital edition. I loved pg magazines almost as much when I was pg as I did when we were infertile and TTC. Can’t beat the price at any cost!

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