Check out your friends in the Blogosphere!

I saw a challenge on Consumer Queen’s site and I thought it was a great idea.  She mentioned how busy we get and we many days do not get to check out each others’ blogs.  She took the time,  working full time and running a successful blog to go around the blogosphere and see what 10 other bloggers were doing and I was thrilled she included me in her list.

I am going to do the same and here are the 10 bloggers and what they were up to today. These are friends I have met online and many in real life at conferences, in no certain order.  By “today” I am meaning Monday November 16th, even though it is now 11pm as I write this post.

1) Mommy Brain Reports - Monica has put out her Gift Guide Today…lots of items in different categories.

2) Crafty Mama of 4 - Kim also has her Gift Guide listed today. (Must be the day…I’ve never done one, but thinking I should and will have to get advice from these ladies!!)

3) Plus Size Mommy - Beth has 3 post for today. One for Dove and 2 giveaways, one for Ice Age DVD and the other for Peggy Lutz Plus Size Clothing

4) Blessed Treehouse - Ali has a cute video of her son Henry playing with a golf club and baby Harper jabbering.

5) Skimbaco - Katja has her Land’s End gift guide posted today.

6) Giftfully Simple – Courtney has the cutest picture up telling about My Twinn doll that is designed to look like your little girl. OMG my 8 year old step daughter would love that.

7) The Copper Brick Road - Rebecca has a deal listed on Toilet Paper. (well..we all need that, why not get a great deal?)

8) Everyday Baby Steps - Mary has listed some great deals on TJMaxx Plus Size clothing.

9) Blueberry Lane Photography – Toni has posted the cutest picture of two toddlers…OMG ALL her pictures are fantastic, you can’t just look at one on her blog…you will spend some time on this one.

10) GoodNCrazy – Carissa – A neat post on the definition of Grace.  (cool)

There you have it. This was fun. I get to talk to many of these ladies on twitter, but I don’t always know what is going on with their blogs…..so try it!   Be sure to go over to the Consumer Queen and sign up and then go blogging and see what your friends have been up to.

Guest Post

Organize Your Email

by Beth Davis

I asked Beth from Plus Size Mommy to be a guest blogger because she is such a wonderful person. I had the pleasure of meeting Beth at Blissdom 09. What a great time we all had! She and I had been twittering and she is always very nice and up lifting. Her blog is great with information and giveaways. Please make sure you visit her blog!
************************************************************************************

When Organizer Sandy asked me to do a guest post on her blog, I was so honored. I had never been asked to do one before. I thought that this was so nice of her to ask me to write one. Then I started to think, wow, I am not a very organized person. I mean I have my things organized but it is by my own “system” that probably no one else could ever figure out.

My husband thinks I am nuts and he doesn’t understand how I ever find anything, but I always do. As a matter of fact, I think if I ever was “organized for real” I would probably not know where to find anything !!

So I kept thinking and thinking, what in the world I could post on an Organizers blog?
I asked around and got a lot of idea’s from people but the idea’s weren’t good enough. After all this IS my first guest blog and I wanted to be sure it was something special. So I kept asking my friend who you all know as @craftymamaof4 (Kim) what she thought. I had her thinking for me for a few days, and then she came up with a wonderful idea !!
Something I never really thought about as organizing but it definitely IS !

KEEPING YOUR INBOX ORGANIZED :

I keep my email organized. As a matter of fact, Kim told me I was the one who taught her how to do this, and that it has really made a difference in her inbox and she can find what she wants much easier. Now a lot of you may already do this, or know how to do this, and it is quite simple, but Kim, who to me is very computer savvy hadn’t done this until I mentioned it to her, so maybe a lot of you who could be doing this aren’t ?

Here is how to organize your email inbox. (I use yahoo email by the way, but I think it is possible to do this with any email system)

1. When you open your inbox there is a column on the left hand side that has
a. inbox
b.drafts
c. sent
d. spam
e. trash

2.Then if you go further down there is a place where you can add folders.

3.You should definitely set up a spam filter in within your email settings.This will screen out any unwanted mail and also helps t block viruses. I do check my spam folder from time to time though because somethings can get sent there that aren’t spam, especially if your waiting for an email that doesn’t/hasn’t come.

4.The drafts folder is where you can keep emails that might not be quite done or are needing more info. before you hit the send button. Hint: this is also a great way to vent!!
I have used this folder many a time to write an email if I am upset over something and I save it to drafts overnight, if when I wake back up I still feel I want to send it I do, but usually those get deleted because it was something I felt like saying but really shouldn’t and what a difference a day makes when your mad, lol It still feels good to write that down though, even if you go back and delete it.

5.The SENT and TRASH folders are self explainable, but the sent mail is useful to go back and refer to if you need something in the future.

.6. Now for the REAL organizing part. If you go to where you can add folders, under MY FOLDERS. You can make a folder for anything you want. for example, Kim told me she does a lot of surveys, but only when she feels like it and has time. So she created a survey folder, Tons of surveys come into your email everyday so now she has them all going into that “Survey” folder and it doesn’t clog up her normal emails. To do this you just have to tell it to put anything with “survey” in the subject line to go to that file.
I use this for Home Interiors, I buy home interiors a lot so my consultant sends me emails about sales and things, so all of them go into that designated file and when I get a chance I will go there and read them.
It is a wonderful system and really keeps your inbox organized well. ..

Thank you Sandy for asking me to do a guest post on your blog I am touched and honored you asked me to do this.

Beth AKA PlusSizeMommy