Winners!

A quick recap for you - I've had a few contests end while I was busy at BlogHer (yikes!). I've contacted all the winners below, and all have claimed their prizes already.

Congrats go to:

Amy Anderson who won the Spinbrush giveaway!

Joanna Jenkins who won the JumpStart Get Moving Family Fitness game for Wii giveaway!

Alicia who won the BusyBodyBook giveaway!

More giveaways and reviews are coming - just give me a chance to recuperate a little from BlogHer! Congrats to all the winners!

Giveaway: BusyBodyBooks

In the interest of full disclosure, I was sent a BusyBodyBook for my review. I did not receive any compensation, and all opinions expressed are my own.

I am an organization freak. Lists and details make me happy. Needless to say, calendars are my friend. I remember being in college and having my beautiful calendar - ahhh the days of being responsible only for myself - organized with each color representing a different type of obligation outlining my commitments' timeframes. It was a thing of beauty, and I always knew where I was supposed to be when.

These days, I have not only my schedule but my husband's and the wee ones' to worry about, too. And my calendar isn't nearly so neat. I have a traditional calendar with boxes for each day and random things written on it by random people in random places. I may have an evening event for me on the top and a morning obligation for the wee ones on the bottom. And we always run out of room.

Enter BusyBodyBook.

They have created the ultimate family organization schedule - although admittedly, I would have loved this in college, too. For each day, there are five columns that you can use for different people in the family to better organize what's going on.

I am no longer trying to figure out who a particular entry applies to, and running out of room is a thing of the past. Note that to the left of each weekly calendar, there is space for notes and a to do list. Have I mentioned how much I love to do lists?

Needless to say, I immediately started entering everything that I know for 2011 into the calendar. And interestingly, I actually have quite a bit to add already! I will say that I was slightly disappointed upon opening my BusyBodyBook to find that it contained the calendar year of 2011 because the cover states that it is 2011 Academic Year. So until the calendar turns to December 27, I will still be trying to remember my 2010 commitments in my head. Once we hit 2011, however, my BusyBodyBook will be going with me everywhere!

I love that it's 7x10 inches, which means that it fits perfectly into my purse. Since I have PTO and babysitting co-op meetings that generally require a calendar, I love that I won't have to cart my huge wall calendar with me anymore. It also is spiral bound, which menas that whether it's January or November, I will be able to fully open it easily. The protective hard plastic cover means that living in my purse won't destroy it by January 5th.

In addition to your typical calendar functions - although can I really call the innovative columns typical? - the BusyBodyBook offers a number of other super useful features. There is a little pocket in the front and back, perfect for holding receipts and other miscellaneous papers I seem to carry everywhere. It has a monthly quick glance where I can write down my big picture appointments and plans for 2012 - no more scribbling on the bottom of the December month and hoping that I can read my tiny chickenscratch once I get the next year's calendar.

I am also a prolific note-taker, and there are five pages front and back with room for notes. I love how this is done in three grids (room for one set of notes across the top, one wider down one side and a narrower one down the other). I rarely require a full page for notes, and this is a great way to separate out various topics without wasting paper.

And the to do lists.... there are seven pages of perforated to do lists, with four per page, so that I can keep track of what I'm supposed to do. And when I'm done? They simply tear out and disappear. Or if I'm assigning the to do list to someone else? They now have it, and it isn't an ugly ripped off little piece of paper.

With the thought of the perforated to dos comes one of my disappointments with the BusyBodyBook. When I have weekly calendars, I really like to be able to easily flip to the current time of year by having the top corners perforated to tear off. The BusybodyBook doesn't have this, although I can just cut it off myself. Since they've already gone to the expense of perforating some pages, it would have been nice to continue this theme. While there is a bookmark at the back of the book that you can pull out and reattach to mark your place, I've already found that once it detached, it doesn't stay in the book again very well. It's fallen out three or four times, and I know I will quickly lose it.

Needless to say, I'm pretty thrilled with my BusyBodyBook, small nits aside. I love that the book has a sense of humor - from calling the whitespace to the left of a week "To Doodles" to including what I should be thinking about at that time (e.g., putting away my holiday decorations, wishing Canada a happy Independence Day, making brunch reservations for Grandparents' Day).

For me, it's a perfect size with the five columns - one extra for the "random" obligations that always pop up. Those with larger families aren't out of luck though, and you don't necessarily have to share space like you do everywhere else! The wall calendar has seven columns on the grid.

Are you excited yet? You can win your very own 2011 BusyBodyBook just like mine.

So what do you have to do?

First of all, let me stress that you must follow all the rules. If you do not follow the rules, your entry will not count!

This contest is open until Tuesday August 3 at 7pm CST. I must have a valid way to reach you, so leave me your email address in your comment or be sure your profile has your email address visible. No duplicate comments will count. This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and older. Winners will be selected via random.org and must respond within 48 hours of being notified by me or I will select a new winner.

Mandatory Entry: What is your best organization secret?

Bonus Entries (leave a comment for each entry - if you put it all in one comment, I'll count it as one entry):

1) Earn one additional entry for following me on Twitter and tweeting this contest (leave a link to your tweet as your comment).
2) Earn one additional entry by following this review blog publicly via Google Friend Connect.
3) Earn one additional entry by following my “regular” blog Honest & Truly! publicly via Google Friend Connect.

Good luck!

SV Moms Chicago Event - Part II

Back to the SV Moms Chicago Event recap - Part I if you missed it is here.

I left off with my stop at Bit Defender, a great resource for computer and online safety, with an educational component in their organization BitMoms.

My next stop was eBay Classifieds, which until last month was named Kijiji (go ahead, say it again - that was fun!). It's essentially an eBay-run Craigslist type program. You can post ads on their site and screen potential buyers (and sellers!), which is something that I will be doing very quickly once I get some "free" time, as we have a lot of items from a like new Graco Pack 'n Play to a kajillion Bob the Builder toys that we no longer need I want out of my house. You can even post the ads online using your smartphone, although sadly it's for iPod Touch and iPhone only - I'm a Droid user myself. More than 200,000 ads are posted every month, which attests to its usefulness - and I'll be adding another oh sixty or seventy myself. It is a free service - and it complete classifieds, so it includes job postings, housing, and more, in addition to items for sale. Now if they just created a Droid app, I'd be thrilled. And broke.

From there, I chatted with Peapod. Now I'm one of those rare people who actually enjoys grocery shopping. Go fig. However, with two small children who keep me somewhat tethered to my home or busy elsewhere, there are times where we get creative with our food - dinner of hummus on tricsuits for example because we're out of peanut butter and bread. This would be the perfect opportunity for me to utilize Peapod (oddly, when working I had more freedom to grocery shop because I could just stop on my way home). They have a huge warehouse right near me, and I'm excited to tour it and learn more about it how they do what they do (especially since Mister Man's school toured a Jewel on a field trip I chaperoned last week). I love they they're introducing their own line of more healthy products, as I'm a somewhat picky mom when it comes to packaged foods - we don't do fake ingredients, for the most part. They also have prepared dinners that they make themselves each day, which I'm intrigued to try out. And yes, with the $25 gift certificate (I was a miniscule movement away from clicking onto the $100 gift certificate, bummer!) I won from Peapod, I'll be trying out some of their stuff very soon! Just looking at their specials, their prices are very comparable, and they have a much larger selection of brands and organic items than my local grocery store does. I love that you can do printable coupons with them and simply give them to the delivery driver for a credit when you receive your order.

Up next was litl, a company I'd never heard of before. They are a new company that makes laptops for home use. While these aren't power models made for road tripping and the like, they have some cool functionality. Because they use all cloudware, the operating sysem is very small, requiring less parts and memory, etc resulting in a very thin and lightweight computer. Oh, and did I mention no additional software to buy? It folds over so you can rest it standing up such that you can see the screen, great for baking, monitoring the weather, displaying photos, and the like. You can also plug it into your television to display the images larger with an HDMI cable. Pretty cool. The laptop costs $699, but they provided us with an offer for $100 off with free shipping and a free remote by going here.

I also had a great chat with the folks at Powerade Play, where I embarrassed myself and proved that basketball is not my game by making only one of ten tries as a basket. Do I get to blame it on not being a regulation sized basketball? Regardless, Powerade Play is a sports drink aimed at kids. While my wee ones are currently not running around enough to require more than water, once they start into soccer and other more draining sports, I can see this being the sports drink of choice. It has no HFS (which we don't ingest) and fewer grams of sugar (15 v 21) compared to G Thirst Quencher. It also includes Vitamin C, Bs, and Zinc to get some more vitamins in children. I appreciate that it's 12 ounces, as a seven year old has no business drinking a much larger drink filled with unneeded calories.

I then hopped over for more food with Stonyfield Organic. I have to break for a moment to mention that I love yogurt, as does Mister Man. However, we have been reduced to buying plain yogurt and adding honey or pureed fruit or vanilla ourselves because all the other yogurt carried by my grocery store contains high fructose corn syrup, which we don't ingest as discussed above. Stonyfield? No HFCS. Ahhh. And did I mention the flavors? They let us try the new Greek yogurt OIKOS that they make in either caramel or chocolate. Yum! They are also the makers of Yo-Baby, which was the only yogurt the wee ones had until they were well out of babyhood. I also discovered that they make O'Soy yogurt - a dairy free alternative that Little Miss would be able to eat. And when I got home and checked, it is sold by a Super Target near where I do some shopping, so she'll get her special treat. Unfortunately, my local Dominick's (boo, Dominick's!) carries a very limited selection of Stonyfield, although I have requested that they get in the OIKOS and O'Soy yogurts. We'll see if it happens. I may be shifting more of my shopping away.

The most heartwrenching booth I stopped at was the Army of Women. This is sponsored by Avon but is not a fundraising group. Instead it focuses on getting women for research towards finding a cure for breast cancer. They are working towards getting one million women involved and have well over three hundred thirty thousand so far. You simply sign up with minimal information, and they periodically email you listings of studies that need participants (ranging everywhere from specific subgroups of suvivors on specific treatment regimens to those who are genetically predisposed to those who have no history). If you are near the study location and are interested, you click for more info. I love the idea behind this, and I am absolutely a soldier for the army of women. Go here to join up yourself.

I spoke quite a bit with Schlage after that. I'd heard of Schlage before, as they make the locks we installed on our house when we moved in and I was on a kick of changing every single door handle, electrical outlet and light switch in the house (by myself, mind you). They were showing off some new products that have a keypad that unlocks the door called Schlage LiNK. Brilliant for those of us who have full hands and can't dig out keys or who have kids who lock themselves (or us) out of the house. I have a keypad on the garage, but when we're coming back from a walk, I hate opening the garage and having an argument with them over whether we're getting out bikes or chalk right then. Problem solved! The lock is powered by a battery that lasts for three years, and not only that - you can access your lock via your phone or computer. Forgot to unlock the door for cleaning ladies or contractors? Let them in remotely, and the door locks again so you don't have to worry that they'll leave your house unprotected. Yes, ours is already installed. The front door was the one lock I never got to. Fortuitous, no? Ignore the need to fix and repaint the door.

The Oprah Store was also a sponsor, although again I somehow missed out on the fact that Oprah had a store. Shame on me. The coolest thing about the store I learned was that outfits she wears are sold there (like... the actual outfit, not a replica), with the proceeds going to charity. I love those little touches about businesses and finding unique and creative ways to give back. The store itself sells all sorts of items from baby onesies to jewelry and everything in between. We got to see a neat selection of some of the items the store carries.

My final stop was with 1800baskets. This is a subsidiary of 1800flowers, I discovered, and they make gorgeous baskets for all sorts of occasions. The baskets aren't that expensive, and I actually ended up purchasing an adorable one for my cousin's daughter's baptism this weekend. They had a number of their baskets on display from a wine lovers basket to a cookie tower and more. I ended up taking home the vanilla spa basket, and I can't wait to take some time to indulge with it! Even more fun? The CEO of 1800flowers (and baskets) was on Undercover Boss right after the event, so it was pretty cool to see how they run their company after having talked to them for awhile!

Chevy was the title sponsor, and I love what they did. They collected clothing, shoes and linens for House of the Good Shepherd, which is a program to help battered women and their children put their lives back together. It was amazing to see all the items that were brought in and donated by the women attending!

Not present at the event but providing a neat takehome in our bag was BusyBody Book, which is a wonderful concept (provided your family isn't too large!) - it's a notebook calendar with everyone's schedule laid out next to each other so you can very clearly see who's supposed to be where and what conflicts are arising. Let's just say that it's a good thing that in my family my parents are available and willing a lot of the time, as we frequently discover at the last minute that my husband is supposed to be home later than I expect and I or the wee ones need to be in other places. There's also an online component to it, and I can't wait for us to all get (literally, in this case) on the same page.  And do you see the great plastic cover that will protect the calendar and keep it from getting destroyed?  Someone was thinking when they created this!

It was a wonderful event where I was able to meet and see again so many of the women that I've heard about and read. The SV Moms is really a great community, and I learned so much about products and companies that I would never have known existed otherwise. Thank you again to SV Moms and the Chicago Moms Blog for hosting this - especially Linsey, Jill,  MJ Tam (and everyone else!) who put in a ton of effort and did a great job!

In the interest of full disclosure, I was invited to the event which was free and provided with sample products from many vendors, including those listed above. I did not receive any compensation and am providing a recap of my own volition.