Have you ever wanted to meet new bloggers? Have you ever wanted an insane amount of comments? Yea, I think we all have to be honest. If that’s the case, well, then you should check out the blog party going on over at 5 Minutes for Mom next month (April 9-16).
Every year for the past couple of years, the ladies over at 5MFM hold the Ultimate Blog Party. It’s an annual event where you can visit a shit’ton of bloggers and people, win prizes and make some new friends in the process. I’ve personally made some new friends in the 2 years I’ve participated in the party and gotten some new regular readers to my blog as well. But the awesome part is *leansinclose*, you don’t have to be a parent or a blogger to join either. Non-parents and non-bloggers are welcome to party as well.
If you wanna find out more about it, just check out their post here. I hope you do join. You’ll love it and you get so much out of it. 
I have this really awesome movie called Kamikaze Girls. It’s about two teenage girls in Japan who are finding themselves. They come from two different “worlds”, meaning one is into Lolita fashion and lives in “doll” clothes and the other is a wanna-be bike gangster.
It’s a good movie. It came out in 2006 and I was one of the I don’t know how many who pre-ordered it. And it is my all time favorite movie to date. It’s also how I discovered the (omg to die for) music of Japanese singer Anna Tsuchiya (she plays Ichigo who is on the right). I have all her cd’s. The other girl in the movie (on the left) is an actress I’ve never heard of till now, Kyoko Fukada. The movie is actually based on a book written by Novala Takemoto called Shimotsuma Story (the book she has in her hand above). I’ve obviously never read it because it’s in Japanese, and I don’t know how to read Japanese. 
I wish I did though. Wish I knew how to speak it too. It tells of how these two girls became friends. Here’s a small bit from the site about the movie ’cause I haven’t watched it in months, and I can’t really recall it.
Momoko (pop idol Kyoko Fukada, pictured above) yearns to live in 18-century Versailles than in her back-country hometown of Shimotsuma, heartland of the yakuza. To escape, she loses herself in the dreamy, doll-like fashions of the “Lolita” scene. Her idol is Akinori Isobe, chief designer of Baby, the Stars Shine Bright—her favorite Lolita design hose. She travels all the way to Tokyo to shop at their store.
One languid summer, to help fund her expensive hobby, Momoko runs a classified ad of brand-name knock-off clothes (produced by her dad) for sale. She encounters a buyer named Ichiko (the real name is Ichigo), who happens to live in her neighborhood.
Super-rebel Ichiko (model and J-rock icon Anna Tsuchiya, pictured below), is a “Yankee”-style member of the Ponytails motorbike gang, one of Ibaraki’s “Wild speed tribes,” whose teeth-rattling customized bikes are decked out with fiberglass shields and bannered backrests.
Somewhat against Momoko’s will, she and Ichigo slowly develop a strong friendship as they share their feelings on the odd goings-ons around them.
I think, as well as the story which is very touching, I loved the fashions. Momoko (Kyoko Fukada) shops at a Japanese Lolita fashion store called Baby the Stars Shine Bright. Out of pure boredom and curiosity, I looked it up. And low and behold, there it was! It’s a real store. And they’re opening a branch in San Fransisco. That made me the happiest girl in the world. I can’t wait till it comes. I am so going on a shopping spree (online of course). I totally recommend this movie to anyone with little girls or even for themselves. It is in Japanese so you’ll have to do some reading but it’s totally worth it. And as a bonus the movie even comes with a video of Anna’s song, Taste My Skin. Awesome song. So yea, check it out. Let me know what you think of it!! And watch this movie. You’ll be sorry you didn’t.
This is a guest post by Sandie Lee of Family Matters.
Looking for a fun, engaging and educational way to spend time with your child? Then look no further, the U-Play Mat is here.
Designed by Pediatrician (and mom of two sets of twins), Dr. Jennifer Canter, or Dr. Jen as she likes to be called, designed the U-shaped mat and accompanying picture cards “with the goal of enhancing interactive floor play between toddlers and parents.”
The U-Play Mat is a U-shaped, 4ft x 3ft deep mat with 15 large, clear pockets on its surface. The innovative “U” shape allows the child to sit inside the opening of the “U” with full access to the 15 pockets. Your child now has full visual and tactile access to the whole surface, without having to crawl atop the mat. The see-through pockets are child-safe and secured to the mat surface. U-Play Mat comes packed in a cute tote, with 8 outer pockets to store the cards in. Plus, a handy instruction booklet to help get you started.
To begin play sit across and engage the child in a variety of exercises using the adorable theme-based card decks, (ie. Food, Home, Play, Dress). There is no writing on these durable cards, so you can play/teach your child in any language. Here’s a look at some of the things you can do with U-Play Mat:
Exercise 1: Identification, works on receptive vocabulary
Exercise 2: Labeling, works on expressive vocabulary
Exercise 3: Matching Skills: understanding same/different
Exercise 4: Same
Exercise 5: Different
Exercise 6: Yes/No
Exercise 7: Wh’ Questions: ‘who, what, where, why, when; foundations of conversation
Exercise 8: Using More Words: improves on communication skills
Exercise 9: Making Connections; helps with recalling information
Exercise 10: Following Directions process information skills
For more information or to order your own U-Play Mat, please visit http://www.playthisway.com.
While surfing the mommysphere (mommy blogs), I came across a post that got me wondering. This article talked about adding your link(s) to web directories. It gave some good advice, and there was some stuff I didn’t know about that really helped me. But seeing as I run two myself, there was one thing that concerned me.
The author of this article stated that if a directory linked sites in this way…
http://www.yourlisting.com/click.php?linkname
instead of listing them this way…
http://www.yourdomain.com
that you should move on to the next. I can see the logic in this, I really can. It’s all about the link back, right? People are greedy for them, and they want good PR (even though Google won’t give more than three from what I’ve seen). Personally, I don’t care which way they do it. I’ll confess, my listings link sites in the /click.php?linkname manner, but that’s how the script creator wrote it. That’s not my fault, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Anyway, back to the rant…
So if they’re saying this to people looking for places to list their sites, then what about the top 100′s that people add their sites to that link site(s) in this way…
http://www.yourtoplistsite.com/out.php?id=101
There’s no link juice coming out of that, and people seem to be fine with it. I think people are too worried about PR and link popularity instead of who is seeing their links to begin with. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter how a directory or listing displays your link(s). Add them anyway. At least then you won’t be missing out on all that potential traffic.
What’s your opinion? Do you care? Do you have a preference? Share with us
So, we all want people to check out our blogs. Hell! People have come up with a lot of ways to get other bloggers and people in general to follow them in some way, be it through their site feed(s), Twitter accounts, Technorati favs (didn’t that go out of style?), site listings in online mags…the list goes on. I, myself, was looking at a few ways to get people to notice my blog since it seems to be slowly dying and going unnoticed. I haven’t run out of shit to say!! There was a lot of things to try out on Mom Bloggers Club, so I started poking into it further.
Aside from my idea of offering free WordPress themes, I found groups where you post your FaceBook Network Blogs url, groups where you post your Twitter profile and get followed by other people, and groups where you can get your posts voted up on social media sites (omg more of those please!). Even the idea of when people post contests and giveaways, they list following them in some way or another as a way to enter. We’ve all seen those, I’m sure. Now, that’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, unless your a high profile blogger with a well set group of roadies, you got nothing really. Just a lot of clutter in your profiles.
You know what I noticed? And I don’t know if this has happened to others. I’ve run two giveaways on this blog, one of them being unsuccessful which sucks cause it was awesome. People subscribed, followed, commented as they were told to do to enter. But when the deal was done and the giveaway was over, I started getting emails saying this person unsubscribed from my feed and/or that person unfollowed me on Twitter. I don’t think I’m the only one this is happening to, but what was the point in asking them to do so if they were gonna undo it later? It kind of defeats the purpose and it makes my site (and me) sad that people don’t think I’m worth keeping up with. They’re probably right, but still!!
So, in conclusion, unless your already popular and have been around for a while and are known, I don’t think it’s worth trying to get up to your eyeballs into all of this social business. Granted, it takes time to build readership, but personally, I don’t think it’s working out for myself (being the comment whore I am) and a lot of other people I’ve seen having the same issues. I’m not saying I’m giving up though. ‘Cause I’m not! I shall own the internet one day, you watch. And I’ll be the super networker everyone wishes they were. Mwahahaha!!
