When I got my royalty statement from Getty Images last week, I was pretty excited. Not only was it my highest-grossing month to date with 10 sales, but it had some pretty interesting-sounding buyers: a couple of European ad agencies, Microsoft (!), and Macleans magazine. I was particularly curious about the Macleans one, not only because it paid a pretty penny. Not in my wildest dreams could I picture a more awesome use than this!
See that bottom-centre photograph of the skaters? I took that one on my lunch break on a freezing but brilliant day back in January!
Talk about proud Canadian moments!
And I found this one, too, which isn’t nearly as awesome but interesting nonetheless:
That’s my picture of a caiman, snapped at the boys’ school Halloween party featuring Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo, masquerading as a crocodile on the website for NBC Miami, channel 6. 
I tell you, between having a picture of Lucas and Willie used to support the concept of “cutest kid/pet picture ever” and Macleans using this one to define the ultimate Canadian moment, Getty has been doing as much to boost my ego as line my pocketbook!
So you think this qualifies to enter as a “Proudest Canadian” moment?
So February is definitely birthday season in our house — Simon last week, Lucas this week, and my mom a couple of weeks from tomorrow. But there’s another birthday squeezed in there — SEVEN years ago last week I wrote my first blog post. Who could have ever guessed where it would lead? I can’t even begin to enumerate all the great things that have happened in my life due to this crazy little blog, but who would have guessed it would have lead to a career in social media and a part-time photography business? Those are no small potatoes!
A few of you have been here from the very beginning, when the blog lived on blogspot and the wayback machine says blog looked like this:
(I don’t miss that design, but it was fun to see my little footprints I loved so much back then!)
If you joined the party a little later, you might remember this design:
I’d almost forgotten about the crayons! And funny, that was my ‘look’ for two years. Tempus fugit, eh?
Speaking of fugiting tempuses, I try to update this “time traveller” meme every couple of years, just because it’s fun to look back and see what a lousy prognosticator I am.
15 years ago today I would have been:
- Living in sin with Beloved in our tiny two-bedroom attic apartment in the Glebe.
- About a year away from finishing my degree.
- Driving an antiquated but dearly loved little black Mazda 323 hatchback everywhere
.
10 years ago today I would have been:
- Fatly, blissfully pregnant and already on my maternity leave in anticipation of Tristan’s arrival one month hence.
- Fresh from an assignment with Industry Canada, my first official job in communications with the government.
- Busy teaching myself HTML and building our first family website on Geocities.
5 years ago today I would have been:
- Trying very hard to get over the loss of one pregnancy and just a few months shy of discovering another.
- Just about to find out that I would be creating a social media team for the CRA.
- Blogging about dead iPods and stomach viruses and the search for decent daycare
.
1 year ago today I would have been:
- Working with the Army and becoming increasingly unhappy.
- Turning my toe anxiously in the carpet as I tried to decide if I was “good enough” to officially try to sell myself as a family and portrait photographer.
- Blogging about photography and Ottawa and our quirky home in Manotick
.
This year I am:
- So very happy to be back with the CRA where I belong, and extremely happy to be leading the social media team. Again!
- Still a little overwhelmed by the success of the whole photography thing — did I tell you I got FIVE bookings this week? That’s almost a third of all the jobs I did in all of 2011!!
- In shock that Lucas — my baby! — is off to junior kindergarten later this year
.
Today I:
- Feel like I’ve got the world by the tail.
- Am toying with the idea of a blog redesign.
- Would like to lose about 10 lbs before summer
.
Next year I hope:
- To continue to grow all facets of the photography business.
- To be planning a vacation for somewhere that involves an ocean.
- To get back to blogging more like I used to back in the day
.
In five years I hope:
- To be within a decade of (gasp!) retirement.
- To stop being freaked out by the idea of being within a decade of retirement.
- To have all three boys in school full time (gasp! with one in high school!) and free of the daycare dilemma forever!
(You know what I learn from doing this meme every couple of years? I am really good at setting and pursuing short-term goals, but I continue to be a lousy
at making any sort of long-term plan. ENFP anyone?)
This is a fun meme, and it’s fun to look back on where I’ve been and how far off my expectations and ambitions have been! And hey, can you believe I’ve been doing this for SEVEN YEARS?!?
I think I might actually be a grown-up now. This is such an astonishing revelation that it bears sharing here on the blog.
It started, as it usually does, with a fit of covetousness. I have an iPhone 3GS. I’ve had it for about a year and a half, since the eve of the release of the iPhone 4. I’ve always been rather proud of my thriftiness, buying the newly-reduced 3GS instead of the hot new toy. Never mind the fact that the iPhone itself is a mad indulgence.
At the time, I had no idea how deeply attached to the iPhone I would become. I call it my umbilical cord, and I have it with me always. I find myself using it to check Twitter while waiting in long queues at the grocery store, checking the weather sitting in the Timmies drive-thru on the way to work, and most sweetly indulgent of all, checking my e-mail in the morning before I even part the flannel sheets to let in the cold of a fresh new day.
[click to continue…]
When I was in Toronto for the Blissdom Canada conference, I had the chance to speak to CBC’s Ira Basen about mom blogs, sponsorships, advertising and working with brands. It was an interesting conversation, especially as I tried to mentally juggle my relationship with Fisher-Price and Mom Central Canada (the sponsors who brought me to Blissdom Canada) and my own strongly held opinions on the matter. You can tune in this Sunday to CBC Radio’s The Sunday Edition to see how it all turned out. Here’s the aperçue from the Sunday Edition web site:
There are four million mommy bloggers in North America, women sharing with other women the trials and tribulations of bringing up babies and making more and more money at the same time.
In the past decade, social media for mommies has gone from a nurturing, supportive, chat-across-the-back-fence virtual village to a massive marketing vehicle for everyone from toy companies to the makers of minivans.
On the site you can also hear a quick promo of the show, featuring one of my biggest bloggy crushes and the woman I coincidentally befriended on the shuttle ride from the airport to Blissdom, Bonnie Stewart. Thanks to Judy Gombita on Google+, here’s a list of some of the others featured in the documentary:
PhD In Parenting – Annie Urban http://www.phdinparenting.com/
5 Minutes for Mom – Janice Croze http://www.5minutesformom.com/
Common Cents Mom – Hollie Pollard http://commoncentsmom.com/
Crib Chronicles – Bonnie Stewart http://cribchronicles.com/
Mom Central Canada – Cora Brady http://www.momcentralcanada.com/
Fisher Price play panel http://www.fisherpriceplay.ca/moms/
Child’s Play Communications –Stephanie Azzarone http://childsplaypr.com/
Judy also quotes Ira Basen’s summary of the 27-minute documentary:
“It is basically about the pros and cons commercialization of the social media space, and mommy blogs are the best example of that. On the one hand, the bloggers who have chosen to monetize their blogs by hooking up with brands via sponsorships, sponsored posts, compensation etc., are being rewarded for the work they do and are providing a service that many readers must find valuable. On the other hand, as one person (Bonnie Stewart of PEI) says in the piece…
‘There are people now who are perceiving that social media is a great way to build platforms so that you can get a corporate job being a brand spokesperson for Kraft Foods, but they are not necessarily as interested, and possibly not even as aware of the creator/consumer model on which original social media was based. I’m not sure that the “I’m here as a consumer of opportunity, in a space that’s crowded with marketers” is social media. I have a feeling that that might just be an interactive way of getting eyeballs and shilling for traditional corporate interests. And if enough people allow that to become the norm, then I think a lot of the power and potential of social media goes away.’
Heh, you can totally tell why I have a blog crush on Bonnie after reading that, eh?
I’d almost forgotten about this and was pleased to hear that it wasn’t relegated to the cutting room floor. If you’re curious, tune in this Sunday to CBC Radio One. It’s currently scheduled to run at 9:13 am, barring interference from pesky world events and breaking current affairs. You can stream it from CBC Radio, too, or catch the full-length podcast after the fact.
Seriously? You thought you might get through one Christmas season without the annual Donder reindeer rant? Sorry to disappoint you. As long as I have pixels to purvey my message, the reindeer rant will play out at some time in the month of December.
New around here? Darling, this one is for you!
“You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen;
Comet and Cupid and DONDER and Blitzen…”
As you might know, my last name is Donders. As such, it has been my lifelong quest to set the record straight and right the wrongs entrenched by Johnny Marks and Gene Autry.
Here’s a little history lesson for you. The poem “A Visit From St Nicholas”, commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas”, was written back in 1823 and is generally attributed to American poet Clement Clarke Moore (although there have been recent arguments that the poem was in fact written by his contemporary Henry Livingston Jr.) The original poem reads, in part:
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name.
“Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on Dunder and Blixem!
As explained on the Donder Home Page (no relation):
In the original publication of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” in 1823 in the Troy Sentinel, “Dunder and Blixem” are listed as the last two reindeer. These are very close to the Dutch words for thunder and lightning, “Donder and Bliksem”. Blixem is an alternative spelling for Bliksem, but Dunder is not an alternative spelling for Donder. It is likely that the word “Dunder” was a misprint. Blitzen’s true name, then, might actually have been “Bliksem”.
In 1994, the Washington Post delved into the matter by sending a reporter to the Library of Congress to reference the source material. (In past years, I’d been able to link to a Geocities site with the full text, but sadly, Geocities is no more.)
We were successful. In fact, Library of Congress reference librarian David Kresh described Donner/Donder as “a fairly open-and-shut case.” As we marshaled the evidence near Alcove 7 in the Library’s Main Reading Room a few days ago, it quickly became clear that Clement Clarke Moore, author of “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” wanted to call him (or her?) “Donder.” Never mind that editors didn’t always cooperate. […] Further confirmation came quickly. In “The Annotated Night Before Christmas,” which discusses the poem in an elegantly illustrated modern presentation, editor Martin Gardner notes that the “Troy Sentinel” used “Dunder”, but dismisses this as a typo. Gardner cites the 1844 spelling as definitive, but also found that Moore wrote “Donder” in a longhand rendering of the poem penned the year before he died: “That pretty well sews it up,” concluded Kresh.
So there you have it. This Christmas season, make sure you give proper credit to Santa’s seventh reindeer. On DONDER and Blitzen. It’s a matter of family pride.
BUT WAIT! There’s more!! After six years of recycling the same holiday post, I was thinking I needed something a little extra to drive my point home. I’m not sure whether this is a testament to the fact that I’ve been spending WAY too much time on Pinterest lately, or the fact that I need to get the heck out of Photoshop once in a while. I am sure, though, that I am no iminent danger of quitting my day job to become a graphic designer, because designing these damn things is WAY harder than it looks!
Ahem, anyway, for all you pinners out there, do me the favour of pinning this one around? I’m thinking there’s a great untapped medium for my message out there on Pinterest!
Easy-peasy one-click pinning: Pin It
And to all a good night! 
This week, CBC Ottawa has been doing a series on savvy spenders, featuring ways to save on your groceries and on your clothing budget. And today, they’ll be airing a segment on free activities for families in Ottawa — featuring me and the whole family! It’s been about three years since I wrote what was to become one of my most popular posts: 40 (mostly) free family fun ideas, the post that caught CBC’s eye. I’ve updated it a few times, but I thought it would suit the theme of the CBC segment to repackage it as the story was originally pitched: seven ideas for seven days of free family fun in Ottawa.
Day 1: Be a tourist in your own town
When’s the last time you went up the Peace Tower? Walked around the paths between the Ottawa river and Parliament Hill? Said hello to the feral cat colony near the West Block? Visited Maman the Spider? (And now there’s a brand new Haida totem pole right across the street from Maman.) Not too long now and you can bring your skates for a trip down our very own UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Rideau Canal.
Day 2: Visit the RCMP Stables
We still haven’t gotten around to this one, but it’s definitely on my list! At the RCMP Stables and Musical Ride Centre, you can meet the majestic horses and be charmed by their beauty and friendly temperaments, tour the stables where the training begins, stop by the Riding School, visit the farrier station and see the stately carriages used in royal escorts of Her Majesty the Queen.
Day 3: Enjoy free City of Ottawa programs
Did you know the city of Ottawa offers 247 (!) free outdoor skating rinks — or at least they will if this absurdly warm fall ever gives way to winter. And there are dozens of free splash pads and wading pools for free family fun in the summertime.
Day 4: Find freebies galore at the Ottawa Public Library
Everybody knows you can get books for free at the library, and most people know you can now borrow music on CD and movies on DVD. But did you know you can also borrow Wii, Playstation and Xbox games? After all those video games, you might also want to borrow a pedometer! Or how about museum passes for family admission to the National Gallery, Museum of Science and Technology or the Museum of Nature or even a three-in-one pass for the War Museum, the Museum of Civilization and the Canadian Children’s Museum? And that’s not even mentioning all the cool stuff you can download for your handheld devices! Phew!
Day 5: Go for a nature walk
Ottawa is criss-crossed and surrounded by gorgeous open spaces with easy walking paths perfect for families and even easily negotiated with strollers. Stop at the Bulk Barn and invest 35 cents for a big bag of bird seed, then head out to Mer Bleu Bog in the east, Hog’s Back trail in the middle of town, the Stony Swamp in the west and spend some time feeding the chickadees. Simply put a little seed in your hand and the chickadees will land on your fingers to feed — I’ve yet to meet a kid or adult who wasn’t charmed by this one!
Day 6: Take advantage of free museum days
Starting in December through the winter months, the animal barns at the Agriculture Museum (aka the Experimental Farm) are open on a pay-what-you-can basis. And the fabulous Children’s Museum at the Canadian Museum of Civilization and the National Gallery are both free on Thursdays after 5 pm.
Day 7: Visit free local attractions
Did you know that Watson’s Mill in Manotick is haunted by the bride of the first owner, killed tragically just days after the Mill opened in 1851? Or that there is a free Currency Museum in the heart of downtown Ottawa? Other free local attractions include the Nepean Museum, Pinhey’s Point (admission by donation), the Goulbourn Museum, the Osgoode Township Historical Society and Museum, and Vanier’s Museopark.
Isn’t that amazing? So entertaining the family doesn’t have to break the bank! If you’re looking for more ideas for free or inexpensive family fun in Ottawa, try these posts for some ideas. And please do feel free to share your ideas for frugal family fun in Ottawa in the comment box!
