Stephanie, Author at Binkies and Briefcases • Page 16 of 80

How to Unclog Your Toilet with Your Favorite Dish Soap

May 8, 2015 By: Stephanie5 Comments

We’re all friends here, right? Okay, so today I’m going to share a tip with you that I’ve shared with a few of my real-life girlfriends lately and all of them have encouraged me to put it on my blog, even though at first I didn’t really want to because it’s kind of gross. But every person I told about this said, “You have to share that. I have that exact same problem with my kids. That’s a tip I could actually use!”

What am I talking about?

Poop.

More specifically, kids clogging toilets. Yes, we are going there today.

One of my children is very, um, gifted (?) in the fecal producing department.This yields especially large dividends, if you know what I mean, which results in a lot of clogged toilets around here. Once, before we discovered this trick, our guest bathroom was out of commission for over a month.

So, if you also have a child who is gifted in this department, how do you deal? I’ll tell you.

How to Unclog Your Toilet With Dish Soap

Allow me to set the scene…

The toilet is clogged. You’ve been trying to plunge it, poke at stuff with a wire coat hanger, etc. but nothing is working. The water level keeps rising and it’s threatening to overrun your bathroom floor with chocolate soup.

It’s going to be okay.

STEP 1: Head over to your kitchen sink and you grab the dish soap. We use Dawn anyway and I have heard that it really should be Dawn for this particular use because it has the most powerful agents to break down…stuff. This is not a sponsored post. I just really do use that brand.

STEP 2: Squirt a healthy amount of Dawn into the toilet bowl (a tablespoon or more), along with a cup of hot water, if it will fit. Then wait 30 minutes to an hour. Longer is better. Adding more hot water in a few minutes is also better.

STEP 3: Wait. Go watch an episode of Dora the Explorer with The Brick Layer and have a snack.

STEP 4: Now we are going in. Dora is over. It’s been 30 minutes to an hour. Ready? Grab a plunger. Yes, the same one that wasn’t working on that mess an hour ago.

Use the plunger. It should be working now.

STEP 5: Repeat if needed. If it did not work the first time, repeat the whole process one more time.

If it doesn’t work after that, say a prayer and call a plumber because you are beyond the power of my help.

But, I can attest that this trick has never failed us.

And thank God for that because I really cannot afford to be calling a professional to snake our pipes every other day.

Frequently Asked Question:

(No one has actually asked this question yet, but I have a feeling it might come up based on previous questions on posts like Is It Actually Green To Pee in The Shower: Scientific Answers from a Civil Engineer and Homemade Dishwasher Detergent.)

Is it really safe to use Dawn in the toilet? How will this affect my city’s water supply or water treatment process?

I asked a licensed Professional Civil Engineer, who happens to also be my husband, that question and this was his response:

“Dawn is designed to break up fats & greases so it actually aids the water treatment process. It’s beneficial to put warm/hot water in the bowl too, if there is enough volume to hold it, when you put the Dawn in. It will make the process work faster. Besides, all that [toilet] water goes the same place as when you wash dishes!”

Well…there you have it.

Good luck everybody!

Amazon affiliate links provided for your convenience.

Don’t forget to pin this tip so you have it handy when you really need it!

Ten Easy Ways To Bond With Your Kids- A FREE eBook

May 7, 2015 By: Stephaniecomment

A few years ago I put together a gift that was exclusive for my newsletter subscribers.

A group of my favorite bloggers helped me put together some of our favorite traditions and activities to do with our kids and I collected them in an ebook called Ten Easy Ways to Bond With Your Kids.

In honor of Mother’s Day being this week, this year I am going to release it to all of my readers for free.

Get your copy of the Mother’s Day ebook!

If you like what you see, I would love to have you sign up for my newsletter or join me on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest!

Mommom’s Maryland Crab Cake Recipe

May 6, 2015 By: Stephanie2 Comments

Credit: Deposit Photo

My grandmother spent almost her entire life in Baltimore. Every summer my grandfather would take out his boat several days a week and he would catch a bushel of crabs and bring them home to be steamed. I stayed with them often in the summer and I have vivid memories of sitting around the dining room table and picking crabs. We would separate the meat for crab cakes or soup or just eat the steamed crab meat on saltine crackers with ketchup.

As a little girl I loved helping in the kitchen and my Mommom was the most patient of all of the adults in my life when it came to letting me be in the room while she was working and letting me help. The other ladies would let me watch, but Mommom would let me actually make the food. She let me put my hands in the batter and form the balls and she didn’t care at all if they came out perfect. As a result, hers are the recipes that are ingrained in my memory. I don’t need to look them up. They are etched in my brain and I can see the pink enamel bowl and the gold flecks on the laminate countertops in her tiny kitchen as I recreate them for my own family.

Mommom’s Maryland Crab Cakes:

1 pound of jumbo lump crab meat
1 piece of white bread (this is a good use for the heel)
1 egg
1 tablespoon mayonaise
1 teaspoon mustard
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon fresh parsley, finely chopped
Old Bay to taste

Directions:

In a large bowl add the crab meat to one side of the bowl.
Break the bread into tiny pieces or crumbs in the other side of the bowl. Do not let any of the other ingredients mix with the crab yet.
Break the egg onto the bread and beat it into the bread crumbs with a fork. Add all of the other ingredients to the bread and egg side of the bowl, whisking with the fork.
Set down the fork, remove your rings, and use your clean hands to slowly and gently work the egg mixture through the crab meat, careful not to break up the large lumps of crab.
Separate the mixture into four equal parts (this recipe makes four crab cakes) and gently pat each section into a patty about the size of your palm.
In a medium frying pan, melt a tablespoon of butter and fry the crab cakes until they are golden brown on each side, turning them once. (You can also broil them, but my grandmother never did.) They do not take long because the egg is the only ingredient that needs to cook.

As adults we have lived up and down the east coast between Florida and Pennsylvania, but I have learned to never eat crab cakes outside of Maryland unless they are being prepared by a transplanted Maryland cook. They are one of those things that are actually incredibly easy to make that people sometimes find intimidating. Mommom and many of the other Baltimore grandmothers had a limited food budget and were making crab cakes because they were economical, we could catch crabs ourselves all summer long and get meat for free. Don’t worry about trying to make them fancy. These crab cakes aren’t supposed to be.

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Old Bay Affiliate link provided for your convenience.

How I Finally Lost the First Ten Pounds

May 5, 2015 By: Stephanie11 Comments

If you have been following my blog for a while, then you know that my weight has been a bit of a struggle for me for the past few years. I’ve written about it before.

Ever since I had Penny, three and a half years ago, my weight had been hovering right around the 180 pound mark no matter what I did. I tried Weight Watchers and joined a gym, I had my thyroid checked, I kept a food journal and took it to the doctor. No matter what, 180 seemed to be where my body wanted to be. The doctor thought it was very possible that it was because we were under a lot of stress dealing with Nicholas’s special needs and I was operating on about 4 hours of sleep per night when I saw him, that I was just not going to lose weight until I could get more sleep and have less stress. (To which every mom of young kids says “Ha!”) Then last fall when I had a serious health scare, I knew I was going to need to buckle down and start getting serious about getting some of this weight off.

Well, I did it you guys! I finally broke the barrier and lost the first ten pounds. It came off super slowly and it took me several months to do it, but I did. Actually, I lost 11. Want to know how?

I accepted that my body is going to work in its own way. My body does not like to lose 5 pounds in a week or cooperate with fad diets that say I can live on milkshakes and cereal. And that is okay. My body, eating vegetables and grains and meat, might only lose a quarter of a pound in a week. Or it might lose nothing one week and a full pound the next week. As long as I’m working on being healthy then I’m not doing anything wrong, even if the number on the scale isn’t going down right away. (It can’t stay in the same place forever.)
I started tracking calories. I stopped trying to follow diets that had certain rules and just put the My Fitness Pal app on my phone. This made the biggest difference for me because I could see how much I was consuming. I can still eat whatever I want, I just usually don’t eat a 300 calorie cookie and a 300 calorie soda on the same day. I started looking at my calories like money. I tend to eat healthier things because they are “free.” If I do have a day where I go over budget with my calories, I make sure to pay for it later at the gym.
I joined the YMCA. I accepted the fact that, while I can work out at home, the fact is that I don’t. We rearranged our family budget so that I could get to the gym. We canceled our home phone line and changed our service to Ooma, which is free after a one-time payment for the device. With the money we saved on our monthly phone bill, we were able to afford a family membership to the Y. Now I have access to their childcare and classes as well as the workout room. I started going to Zumba and doing several miles a week (I try to do at least two 5Ks per week) on the elliptical. I hate running outside, but I find I don’t mind it as much on the machines where I can see the numbers count my calories burned and how far I’ve gone and there is air conditioning.
I got by with a little help from my friends. I have a close group of girlfriends who started a private group on Facebook at the beginning of the year so that we could all encourage each other and hold ourselves accountable. We have posted recipes, workout videos, success and struggles. We weighed in each week. It has been fun to see everyone’s pictures start to shrink over the months. Lately, I have been a little less active in the group, but there is no judgement as people cycle in and out as life throws us curve balls.
I tried to make it fun, but I also recognized that some parts are just going to be work. I think that was the key for me. This sounds obvious, but I think this is what made this time more successful for me than any of my previous weight loss attempts: I gave myself permission to let it suck. The fact is that I really just do not enjoy eating salad while everyone else eats steak or running a 5K a few times a week. But I’m in my 30’s now, and I can’t eat fast food and cake and not expect it to take some sort of toll on me. In the past I would get stuck on the parts I didn’t like about dieting and quit because of them. But anything worth doing has parts of it that I’m not going to like. I did not drop out of school because I didn’t like writing research papers. I did not let the fear and pain of labor and delivery keep me from having children. I shouldn’t let the negative aspects of weight loss stop me before I reach the rewards. I can still eat the “bad” stuff sometimes. I just need to make sure I’m balancing it a little better than I was.

I also did a few obvious things like drinking mostly water. For a while I was starting my day each morning with a warm glass of water with lemon, which I found really did do a lot to help with digestion and making me less hangry in the late afternoon.

I still have quite a way to go. My goal is to eventually get back down to between 140 and 130, which means another 30 or 40 pounds. I’m not putting a time limit on myself, although I think it would be nice to do it before my ten year wedding anniversary next year.

What about you? Have you ever lost a significant amount of weight? How did you do it?

To Baltimore With Love

April 29, 2015 By: Stephanie4 Comments

This week, from an hour north, we watched our hometown burn. We worried about my sister and my husband’s brother, who both live in Baltimore City, and obsessively read Facebook updates from other friends and family who still live in the area.

Yesterday my mother, who lives in Baltimore County, asked me if I was going to write about it and I told her no. What could I say that would matter? I don’t live there any more. I’m a white lady who lives in the suburbs and stays home with my children. But this morning it struck me that my own passive silence was contributing to the problem. We cannot continue to sit and watch and hope that someone else will create change, especially not those of us who are armed with the most powerful weapon on Earth–the pen.

So today I would like to tell you a story about one of the most terrifying moments of my life and one young man’s bravery in the midst of it.

Just last year, until a medical issue caused me to have to resign, I was a middle school teacher in a city school about an hour outside of Baltimore, with a very similar population. One day as our principal was in the middle of giving the morning announcements over the loudspeaker, she interrupted her own reading of the day’s lunch menu to say sternly,

“Teachers, lockdown immediately. This is NOT a drill. Immediate lockdown. I repeat, this is NOT a drill.”

We had done lockdown drills before, so my students knew what to do, but they were scared. I locked our classroom door and covered the windows and we all moved as far away from those windows as we could as we sheltered in place behind bookcases and under computer tables. We did not know why we were locking our doors. We didn’t know if there was a perpetrator in the building or waiting outside. We didn’t know if it was actually safer to stay where we were or to try to leave through the windows. I checked my school email and my text messages as often as I could, but no information was coming through. More and more time passed and, although I thought I was doing my best to be calm and comforting, the tension rose. Some of my students started to cry. Some of them started to pray. One young black man, I will never forget, the smallest boy in my class, looked into my eyes and whispered, “Don’t you worry, Mrs. Giese. We would never let him take you. You got kids. If he gets in here, I go first.”

Of course, I had no intention of letting that happen, and thankfully it never came to that. The person who was driving around our campus with a weapon sticking out of a car window actually left without incident. Later, that brave young man shared with me that he lost his older brother to gun violence and his brother’s children had lost their father. In that moment, when he honestly thought he might die, that young man had been thinking not of himself but of my children. The blonde haired, blue eyed children whose picture was on my desk. He was not about to let them lose their mother.

I do not pretend to understand the depths of the suffering that these children have lived through that has driven them to feel like they have no other options, because I have never experienced it myself. But I have held boys taller than I am as they mourned cousins lost to violence. I have started and run a cheerleading program for fifth grade girls with a $0 budget and learned that many, many more after school programs are needed so they have somewhere to go. Those girls were more grateful for the sweatshirts I picked up at the craft store and let them decorate with craft paint than I ever was for my personally tailored private school uniform. They just wanted to be seen and to be heard.

I have had children look into my eyes and ask me why someone hates them because of the color of their skin and, based on the other person’s behavior, it is usually easy to see why they are asking that question. I do not have the answer.

I’ve told them the same thing I would say to children who were being bullied, “Honey, I don’t know why, but sometimes people are scared of anything that is different than what they know. The only thing we can do is try to show people all the ways we are all the same and all the things that make you special.”

I don’t know any more what is the right thing to say and what is just rhetoric to comfort children.

What I do know is that destruction is only ever destructive.

It is time to start being constructive instead.

I know many people think that the racial divide is a figment of someone’s imagination.

I know I’m not racist.

I also know I almost didn’t write this because I’m white.

A touching piece about Baltimore

What I Learned On the First Day of Trying a Capsule Wardrobe

April 28, 2015 By: Stephanie19 Comments

Apparently I have been living under a rock and capsule wardrobes have been around for a while. I just heard about this phenomenon last week. Caroline from the blog Unfancy is credited with bringing this idea to the masses. Basically, the idea behind a capsule wardrobe is that you get rid of a bunch of unnecessary stuff and try to minimize your wardrobe so that you are left with around 37 pieces per season that mix and match and coordinate with each other. The number is arbitrary, you can pick whatever number works for you, but 37 is what most people go with. (That number does not include your pajamas, underwear, or workout clothes.)

The more I read about this, the more fascinated I became and I knew I really needed to do it. I have been on a huge cleansing spree in other areas of our house this year as well. I really just want to start living with less. I’m very tired of feeling buried by stuff. When it comes to the clothes specifically, I feel like I am constantly drowning in laundry and I still never feel like I know what to wear or like I am truly put together. Capsule wardrobes seemed like exactly the reboot I needed.

How I Started

I didn’t exactly follow the system outlined on Caroline’s blog. Mostly because I didn’t even know where I really wanted to start. The idea is supposed to be to keep what you love and wear only that stuff. Ok, fine, but what *I* really love is pajamas and bare feet and my husband’s old college t-shirt, so that’s not really going to work as my everyday attire. I wasn’t sure what actually looked good on me or what I really should keep.

In light of that, the first thing I did was to search Google images for pictures of celebrities who have a similar body type to mine: a little curvy (and short if possible). I took notes about what those ladies were wearing to public events, what I thought looked good on them and what I didn’t think looked quite as flattering. Then I made a collage of some inspiration pictures.

I noted that boat necks and jackets would probably be my friend. I’m going to need to invest in some more cute, structured jackets. In the meantime, I’m trying to mostly work with what I’ve got.

Purging

Here is the thing: I get emotionally attached to clothes. I don’t really know why this happens, but it does. I have a tendency to keep clothes around forever (and continue to wear them) because they remind me of someone or something.

Case in point, I still actually wear this sweatshirt that Eddie gave me when we were dating. We started dating more than 15 years ago. It is his sweatshirt from middle school that no longer fit him, which he passed on to me when our hometown football team went to the Super Bowl the first time. We are now married and in our 30’s. I totally kept this sweatshirt in my “workout clothes” category as a cheat. What? I told you, I’m still using it.

I had a ton of clothes that were decades old and threadbare, like this sweatshirt from my high school cheerleading championship, that I was still wearing. I don’t necessarily recommend wearing clothes that are literally falling apart, but that thing was seriously comfy.

According to the rules, you are supposed to take everything out of your closet as you purge, but I didn’t, mostly because I’m not really the type to follow the directions on the box. I’m fortunate to have a large walk-in closet, so I just moved things from one side to the other as I decided if I wanted to put them in the “keep” or “seasonal” pile, and I put trash bags on the floor between each section and filled them with clothes to donate as I made my decisions.

I was actually really glad I did it that way because I changed my mind quite a few times throughout the process and I would trade an item in my keep pile for one of my seasonal or maybe items. It was also nice to have things right where they belonged and not have to clean up my entire wardrobe when I was finished. It saved me a lot of time. Interestingly, once something went into the donate bag I was never tempted to pulled it back out. Not even once. It felt good to see all the space I was creating for myself. I did manage to clear out two full trash bags full of clothes and one smaller bag full of shoes.

What I Learned

1. Try on everything. At first I was looking at tags and figuring things would not fit any more based on their labels and the fact that they were old. What I learned is that I that I can fit this curvy 5’4″ body into a size 8 and a size 14, an extra small, and an XXL.

2. It was like shopping. I found things I totally forgot I even had. And they were cute! I kept a Ralph Lauren denim pencil skirt I don’t even remember buying (or did someone give it to me?) as one of my capsule items.

3. Teenage me had surprisingly good taste. For a long time now I’ve tried to buy classic pieces and never really gone for a lot of crazy patterns or super trendy items. As a result, I had a few items that were from college or even high school that actually wound up being pieces I kept in my capsule. I even found myself wishing that I had kept specific items–like a camel colored drape sweater– that I used to own once upon a time but have since given away. They would have been great additions to my capsule. Color me surprised.

4. You don’t have to wear your memories. I do have pictures of almost all of the special moments in my life and I am lucky enough to live with Eddie right now. I packed up three of my favorite ratty old shirts that were too full of holes to donate and I’m saving them in a keepsake box because I couldn’t let go of them yet. Everything else went.

5. I am not very adventurous. My closet was chocked full of stuff from more than 15 years of buying clothes and receiving hand-me-downs from friends and relatives. For example, when my mother-in-law retired she passed her entire professional wardrobe on to me, so I owned a lot of clothes. Somehow I owned 5 pairs of white pants. I have yet to actually wear any of these white pants in public. I did keep one pair because I swear I am going to try it one of these days.

6. The labels do not matter. I am writing the brands and sizes in this post so that you can see what I chose to keep because I know people will be interested, because I believe in full disclosure, and because I think it’s interesting to see how the sizes vary a lot by brand. I kept things that I bought full price at department stores, things I bought at T.J. Maxx and Target, and a J.Crew sweater I bought new with tags at a local consignment shop for a fraction of its retail price. I also kept things I got for free as hand-me downs. It doesn’t matter what the tag says or where it came from, just keep what looks good on you and what you feel good wearing.

7. It is hard to prepare for the weather in our area. Just last week it was 80 degrees, then followed the by a frost warning the very next day. I tried to have a lot of options for layers in my capsule. I figured that since loungewear doesn’t count as part of the capsule, I have plain white t-shirts and a few tank tops in my dresser that I can wear under some of these sweaters and jackets as well to give me even more options.

8. If I’m going to really commit to this then I might need to take the time to do my hair and makeup more often. (More often than never.) That was another thing that all of ladies in my inspiration pictures had in common. I don’t need to be wearing fancy clothes, it does make me feel and look better when I’m just wearing a t-shirt and jeans if I took time to curl my hair or throw on some jewelry. Plus, I actually do enjoy that stuff. It’s one of the fun things about being a girl.

Ok…the moment of truth…what I kept…

Inventory: My 37 Pieces for Spring

Bottoms

Gray Capri Pants–New York and Company, size small
Jeans–Old Navy Sweetheart style, size 12
Skinny Jeans–The Limited, size 8
Black Dress Pants–Maurice’s, size 9/10 short
Khakis–Anne Taylor, size 14 petite
White Pants–Anne Taylor, size 14 petite
Jeans (tapered at ankle)– Ralph Lauren Sport, size 32

Skirts

Denim Pencil Skirt– Ralph Lauren, size 8
Black Pencil Skirt– New York and Company, size small

Dresses:

Purple Wrap Dress– New York and Company, size large
Gray Shift Dress– Calvin Klein, size medium
Printed Wrap Dress– Old Navy, size medium

Tops:

White Sleeveless Button-Up–Worthington, size large
Brown Sleeveless Button-Up–St. John’s Bay, size large
Gray Sweater–Croft & Barrow (Kohl’s), size medium
Flannel Shirt–Merona (Target), size XXL
Gray Sweater– J.Crew, size small
Navy & White Striped Sweater– Croft & Barrow, size small
White Cardigan–41 Hawthorne, size large
Yellow & Gray Long Sleeve Tee–Calvin Klein, size large
Pink Tee– Croft & Barrow, size medium
Striped Tee–Croft & Barrow, size medium
Striped Anchor Shirt–Luna Chic, one size
Blue Short Sleeve Blouse– New York & Co, size large
Purple Sleeveless Blouse– 212 (Kohl’s), size petite XL
Dark Red Top w/ Flutter Sleeves–Topia, size large
Pink Sweater–Old Navy, size large

Jackets:

Denim Jacket– Gap, size medium (this is one of the keepers from high school)
White Fleece-Lined Sweatshirt Jacket–Sonoma, size large

Shoes:

(As far as I remember, those ankle boots are ten years old and from college.) I bought the black flats and the striped shoes this week at Target. I was a little worried that in doing this challenge I was going to find that I wanted to replace a lot of my clothes with more classic or modern pieces and it would get expensive, but I didn’t need to. Everything else was already in my closet.

In the end, it only took me about two hours, I feel much lighter and better organized, and my collection of things for spring looks like this:

I did not get rid of everything else in my closet because I am keeping my seasonal items, like heavier sweaters, snow pants and summer dresses, in there as well. However, I did separate them from the items in this season’s capsule. (The rest of the clothes I kept are located just to the left of this picture. Why would I bother packing and unpacking my seasonal stuff 4 times a year if I don’t have to?)

Abby took a picture of me on my first day in a capsule outfit. This is the kind of quality photography you get when your six-year-old is taking your photo with a cell phone.

Wow, did you make it all the way to the end of this post? That was a lot. Tell me what you are thinking about capsule wardrobes. Do you think you might try it or are they definitely not for you?

I’d love to have you join the discussion on my Facebook page or follow along on Pinterest, where I’ve been pinning inspiration for my capsule this week.

5 Ingredient Dinner Recipe: Honey and Sweet Tea Vodka Marinated Pork Chops with Grilled Pineapple

April 27, 2015 By: Stephanie1 Comment

The weather is getting warmer and for us that means a lot more dinners are being thrown together on the grill.

Last week I had pork chops in the refrigerator that need to be cooked and I took to Pinterest to try to find inspiration for a pork marinade, but I found myself without any of the ingredients for the recipes I had pinned.

Rather than brave a last-minute trip to the store, I decided to get creative with what we had in the house, and the result turned out pretty great.

Honey and Sweet Tea Vodka Marinated Pork Chops with Grilled Pineapple

We like to grill fresh pineapple in the warmer months, so I cut a pineapple into spears and reserved one of the spears for my marinade.

For the pork marinade I threw together:

one fresh pineapple spear, diced very finely (or you could use crushed)
one tablespoon of honey
about a cup of sweet tea vodka (You could totally try using just regular sweet tea if you don’t want to use alcohol, but then I’d probably add more pineapple or some lemon to increase the acid content in the marinade.)
salt and pepper to taste

I dipped each pork chop in the marinade individually, then let them all soak in it in a large bowl covered with plastic in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

We grilled them about 6 minutes per side (the time will vary depending on how thick your pork chops are), let them rest, then cut one open to make sure they were done.

All of the kids actually asked for seconds!

You may also like our recipe for Homemade Dill Pickles:

What Can A Blog Conference Do For You?

April 24, 2015 By: Stephanie3 Comments

When people find out that I run the BlogU conference, the first expression on their face is usually confusion. Sometimes people have a hard time understanding exactly how much awesome is involved in attending a blog conference and how much it can fast-track the success of your writing career or small business. It’s not just about hanging out with friends and meeting the people who live in your computer (although you totally get to do that too). Attending a blog conference is a solid career move and will almost always translate into earning you real money and getting your foot in the door for great opportunities.

You will get face time with brands and sponsors who want to build a relationship with you.

The first time I went to a blog conference it was a big sacrifice for our family monetarily. Between the ticket, hotel, and travel costs, we spent hundreds of dollars. But while I was there I made connections with big-name brands and sponsors and when I got home I had their contact information. I was able to create relationships with them and for the rest of that year I did monthly sponsored posts for one brand in particular. Just eight weeks after the conference I had earned back every cent I had spent on the conference and was making hundreds of dollars a month in extra income for our family. The investment in myself was totally worth it.

There are hundreds of influencers in one place.

If you are a writer of any sort, blog conferences are a great place to network with other people in your field. Many bloggers have transitioned their blogs into books and some have even become New York Times best selling authors! Blog conferences are the place where they spill all of their secrets, tell you exactly how they built up their large social media followings, and share all of their other tips and tricks for getting noticed in the sea of internet anonymity.

If you are a business owner, hosting a vendor table, becoming a sponsor, or donating an item to the swag bag can get your brand noticed by a large group of people with an even larger social media influence.

You will learn from the best.

You can spend all day every day searching the internet for tips on how to build your blog or business, but the speakers at conferences have already been vetted and determined to be the best of the best. They know their chosen topics. You will be learning from some of the top earners and performers in the field and you will be live in the room with them, able to ask questions and interact in person.

You will get unique opportunities.

At our 2014 BlogU conference NickMom and The Huffington Post presented a joint lunch panel where representatives from both gave a presentation and told the attendees exactly what they were looking for in submissions and how to get published on each of their platforms. In 2015, HuffPost Parents is the media partner for the BlogU conference and we are partnering with them to hold our Term Paper of the Year contest, which is open only to BlogU attendees. Four winners will each receive an award during our conference and have their winning piece published on the appropriate HuffPost vertical. That is only one example of the many unique opportunities that attending blog conferences presents.

Our conference is different.

I started BlogU after going to several blog conferences and being consistently disappointed that I bought my tickets to see certain speakers and I never got to really talk to any of them. The speakers would give their presentations and then they would seemingly disappear. BlogU breaks down those “us” and “them” boundaries between those who are successful and those who are just starting out. After our sessions are over we hold “office hours” where all of the BlogU speakers are available to mingle with attendees and answer questions.

We also hold BlogU on a college campus and give attendees the option of staying in dorm rooms. This means that you can buy a ticket to BlogU for the same price as many other blog conferences, but you don’t have to worry about the additional cost of a hotel or food. Because we host BlogU on a college campus with its own catering staff, we are able to include all of the meals in the ticket price as well. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks–once you get there everything is included.

You will find your tribe.

I often hear bloggers talking about finding their tribe. I was lucky enough to find a very supportive group early on. In fact, that “tribe” of women became the same group who helped me start BlogU. If you have been finding a hard time finding your tribe, then a blog conference is a great place to start. Making those face-to-face connections with real people in real time is special. It’s something that can’t always be done through the computer screen.

If you think you might want to consider coming to BlogU this year, you can check out our website here.

Abby is Six!

April 21, 2015 By: Stephanie2 Comments

Yay! Abby is six today!

It’s hard to believe it’s been that long since we brought home a gorgeous 9 pound baby.

Would you believe she was less than six weeks old in this picture? She was a big ol’ baby with a BIG set of lungs. They actually had to separate her from all of the other babies in the hospital nursery because her cry was so loud that it kept waking up all of the other babies and causing quite a bit of chaos. She was a challenging baby who hated to sleep and was very particular about wanting things a certain way. (She gets that from her momma.)

She has grown into a big sister with a kind and compassionate heart.

And a little sister who can’t help but love to instigate a little bit of mischief.

She’s always been our most dramatic child.

She loves art almost as much as she loves learning and will spend every waking minute of her free time trying to teach herself something.

That is, when she’s not too busy dressing up and putting on shows.

She is terrified of tornadoes and spends a lot of time pondering questions that I would have thought beyond her years.

Her favorite colors are pink and purple and she can’t decide if she wants to go to Panera Bread or Chuck E. Cheese for dinner tonight. (I might have tried to persuade her in one direction, but I think she saw right through me.) She’s still obsessed with the characters from the movie Frozen, although, come to think of it, I don’t think we’ve watched it for months.

She was advanced in every area of math on her report card and is very proud of the fact that she can read. She gets annoyed with me when I read the bedtime story to her brother and sister at night because she thinks that she should now and forever be the one who reads all of the books all of the time. She asked her grandparents for her very own desk for her room for as her birthday present. They brought it to us over the weekend and she is in love with it.

Abby has been known to line up every stuffed animal that we own along the sofa or the fireplace hearth and conduct school for them. If you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she will tell you a teacher or a doctor. Lucky for her, there are lots of people who are both. I won’t be surprised if one day she joins their ranks.

In the meantime, Abby is having a lot of fun being six.

An Update on the Shorts from Target, Six Months Later

April 20, 2015 By: Stephanie85 Comments

Last fall I wrote a blog post about the very short shorts that were available for my very young daughters from a certain very large retailer, and it got a very big reaction. (For anyone wondering how many times I could cram the word “very” into one sentence, the answer is four.) At the time, the pictures I snapped with my iPhone at my local Target became international news. Before I knew it, a crew from Good Morning America was in my living room, Glenn Beck flew me to Texas to appear on his show, and I was getting flooded with requests for interviews and permission to republish those pictures. My post really seemed to touch a nerve with parents who were frustrated with the limited options available to our girls in retail stores.

After seeing my post, Target’s Public Relations department reached out to me and made several offers. At first we were talking about me being able to speak with one of their designers. Unfortunately, they decided to take that off the table. But they did allow me to send them some detailed feedback via email and they sent me two shipments of samples from their children’s line over the past few months. The shipment with the shorts for my girls from this year’s line arrived a few weeks ago. Yesterday it was finally warm enough for the kids to wear their new shorts. This year Abby is in a size 6 and Penny is in a size 3T.

Our peach tree is in bloom, so we went out to the back yard to have the girls model some of the shorts that Target sent.

peach blossoms

Target shorts

Target Bermuda shorts

Target shorts with longer inseams

Shorts from Target

girls' shorts from Target

To Target’s credit, they did send several pairs of shorts that met my criteria for length. This means they do have options in their children’s line this year for girls who want shorts with inseams longer than an inch. They also sent a pair that are similar to the ones that Penny was wearing in my original post, A Target Intervention on Behalf of my Daughters. The inseam on that pair was about an inch and a half.

The frustration I have been hearing from literally thousands of moms over the past few months is that when they go into their local Target or other retail stores, the only options on the shelves seem to be the ones with the smaller inseams. We are not sure what the deal is with this.

From wanting their kids to try on the clothes in the dressing room, to not having internet access, to being on cash-only spending plans, families had lots of reasons for needing to buy their clothes in person from a retail store rather than online. Yet over and over longer inseams popped up as online-only, more expensive, “premium” options– not just at Target, but almost everywhere. Moms are speaking out across social media and asking for different options in their price range. The girls themselves have been studied by the American Psychological Association and report that they do not like the options being offered to them. Princeton has done legitimate scientific studies that prove that women who dress in more revealing clothing are more likely to be seen as objects and less human. (The fact that we don’t want that to be true does not make it any less true, unfortunately.)

No one seems to be able to provide a logical explanation for why we are still seeing this trend on our store shelves, but we definitely are.

People may say that stores are only selling it because moms are buying it, but for six months now moms have been telling me that they are only buying it because it is often the only thing available on the shelves.

Here are just a few of the pictures and comments that moms have been sending me:

Ellen said, “I have two teenage daughters and shopping for shorts having inseams longer than an inch is like trying to find water in the desert or modesty in Vegas: it’s difficult. It’s sad when boy short underwear is actually longer than shorts meant as outerwear. And shopping in the women’s department is not an option because with the gradual inflation of sizes there, even a size 0 there is too big.”

Rebecca added, “I can’t find a single pair of shorts for my 15-year-old that are longer than an inch. Although there’s a multitude of boys’ basketball shorts, cargo shorts and jorts for boys that go to their knees, girls are only expected to wear thigh-high short shorts. It’s hard finding a pair of shorts suitable to wear to high school because any of the fashionable shorts available do not pass the fingertip length test.”

And Courtney commented, “I never thought I’d have to buy boy’s shorts for my modest, long-legged 7-year-old daughter. Shorts that fit around her waist are significantly shorter and tighter. As a culture the clothing industry is sending the wrong message to our girls.”

If you are listening, retailers, I still think we can do better.

And if you are a mom who does prefer to shop online, Jess from Don’t Mind The Mess has put together and entire post about where you can find shorts for your girls with longer inseams.

You can also follow along with my Pinterest board, where I’m collecting options recommended by readers.

Follow Stephanie {Binkies and Briefcases} ‘s board Cute and Modest Options for Girls on Pinterest.

If you’re interested, you can read about all of the original reasons I care about this issue. Some of them might surprise you.

If you want to keep getting updates from Binkies and Briefcases, make sure to like my Facebook page or follow along on Twitter or Instagram.

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Abby is Six!

An Update on the Shorts from Target, Six Months Later

Binkies and Briefcases with Stephanie Giese

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