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Everyone needs a little Starbucks in their lives. So why not enter The Naked Ledger’s contest to win a $50 gift card to Starbucks (or any other ClubMom vendor)? All you have is leave a cool budgeting tip (and cross your fingers that you get picked). What could be more simple than that?

And speaking of simplicity, have you signed up for the MomBlogs Daily Alert? You pick the ClubMom blogs that you like to read and ClubMom will send you one email per day with excerpts from our latest posts.

Save money, save time, and have a little coffee on ClubMom. Then take a gander at these coffee themed kids’ books:

• The Bug in Teacher’s Coffee: And Other School Poems
• The Coffee Can Kid (about overseas adoption)
• The Queen and the Coffee Bean

Technorati tags: contests, gift card, Starbucks, coffee, ClubMom, children’s books

(Thanks to Kristie Wells for the beautiful picture of Grace with the newspaper story about Blogher.)

What follows is a very long post about BlogHer ‘06. While usually I’d blog this at my personal blog, A Mama’s Rant, I feel an obligation to my editors at ClubMom who gave me the pass to the conference and to my fellow ClubMom bloggers as well. I’ll come back to books and food tomorrow.

BlogHer ‘06 was amazing. And I’m still exhausted. That’s what 13 1/2 hours of sleep over 3 days will do to you. (When Arianna Huffington in the closing keynote talk mentioned that sleep deprivation is a huge issue, I had to laugh.)

First, meeting many of the ClubMom bloggers, as Amy has already documented so well, was thrilling. These women are smart, fun, silly, serious, haughty, goofy, lovely, warm, generous and every other adjective you can think of to describe a group of awesome women. There’s great joy in finding such like minded people who 1) know what a blog is, 2) can have deep conversations about blogging, politics, motherhood, and business plans, and 3) can have a lot of fun too, like the me. you. me. discussion and drunken yoga at 3 a.m. (I think it was Jenny of Big Slice, but it was dark out.)

But there’s sadness, too. I have a lot of acquaintances but few deep friendships outside of my family. There’s very few women I’ve met in my life that I truly click with. Several are in the Chicago/Milwaukee area, one in San Diego, and a couple down in Denver. With one exception, many of the women I’ve been hanging with locally don’t "get it" whether it’s about blogging, motherhood, politics, feminism, music, or education. And my girlfriends who do "get it" are far, far away or too busy to get together except for a couple of times per year, if that.

I have so much more in common with the women who attended BlogHer (those at ClubMom and women who blog elsewhere) than I do with people in my neighborhood, and that really pisses me off. Yet, through ClubMom and BlogHer I have access to virtual sisterhood of like minded souls who I hope to keep meeting and working with in the future. Maybe one of you will move to my neighborhood, too. (Yes, Genuine is only a mile away, but he’s a fella and his kids all have cooties. Mrs. Genuine’s cool though.)

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Since it’s been in the triple digits all week, I’ve had frozen treats on the brain. Yes, I could hit the Safeway and stock up on gallons of ice cream, but that would be too easy. After attending an ice cream social at Paul’s work - and tasting a most marvelous strawberry sorbet - I thought maybe I could make some up myself. After all, I have bowls of berries lying around waiting for me to do something with them.

Bowls of berries, huh? I obviously haven’t told you about Paul’s gardening. (He’s the gentleman farmer, not me.) Besides the hops taking over the deck (we use them for home brew) we have blackberries, blueberries and strawberries.

This year our raspberries are out of control. The four scrawny raspberry plants (more like sticks) we got via mail order six years ago took over the entire garden next to where they were planted. They’re also coming up through the middle of the side lawn. And they’ve grown under the fence into our neighbor’s yard, which they’re very happy about considering that on sale, 6 ounces of raspberries costs a dollar.

Every time Paul and the kids go out there, they fill up a medium sized mixing bowl with berries. It’s gotten to the point where I’m inviting people over to do some berry picking, an activity we used to pay to do a local organic farm. Paul has threatened to make jam, which I’m having no part of since I don’t feel like stocking up on mason jars, pectin, and learning how to can. So sorbets, sherbet, and ice cream may be the way to go.

First, Cooking with Whine posted some easy sherbet recipes last month that you can make without having to buy an ice cream maker. They’re so simple that the kids can help out. Becki also posted some wonderful ice cream recipes and recommends a Cuisinart ice cream maker. (I’m guessing it’s the Cuisinart 1 1/2 Quart Ice Cream Maker that goes for $47 at Amazon. The red model is $2 more.) Gosh, Becki, I’m really, really tempted….

Wondering about the seeds, maybe this recipe for a raspberry granita e-how.com would be better. Granita is an ice dessert similar to sorbet, but it has a more granular texture because you scrape it up yourself. This recipe makes about 2 cups.

Raspberry Granita

Ingredients:

1. 1/3 c. water
2. 1/2 c. sugar
3. 1 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
4. 1 1/2 c. fresh raspberries

Directions:

1. Heat the water and sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Avoid letting it come to a boil.
2. Remove from heat and add the lemon juice.
3. Puree the raspberries and strain them into the sugar mixture. If they’re very soft, you can simply place them in the strainer and force them through.
4. Stir the mixture together and place in a shallow container.
5. Place the container in the freezer and freeze for several hours.
6. Stir with a fork as the mixture freezes, every 20 minutes or so, breaking up any frozen surfaces and crushing any lumps. This creates granita’s texture.
7. Serve when the granita is almost completely frozen and can be scraped up into a ball.

If you need more ideas, try ice-cream-recipes.com, the ultimate guide to ice cream maker recipes.

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I love being an Usborne Book educational consultant. However, sometimes it’s a lot of work, especially this past weekend. Part of the problem is that I haven’t been treating my business very seriously.

Since attending the Usborne Convention, I’m very motivated to make my business more successful. So I spent the weekend creating a customer database, putting together a mass mailing, and am preparing for a home show using the techniques I learned in Tulsa - hostess checklists, doing the e-invites, mailing the invitations, and handling the RSVPs myself. (It takes pressure off the hostess and guarantees a better turnout.)

I’ve also created some terrific book packages for the homeshow, and plan to show my customers how to use the various types of books - beginning readers, activity books, cookbooks, and internet linked books - to connect to their kids and improve reading skills.

Needless to say after two solid days of working on this and my usual blogging activities, I’m pooped. Thank goodness it rained, my husband’s golf game was canceled, and he got to entertain the kids and cook dinner. (A delicious soup with oysters as big as poached eggs - yum.) So I thought I’d take it easy and share some bookie things happening on other blogs and in magazines.

First, the Library Lady has a terrific rant about J.K. Rowling threatening to kill off Harry Potter and Judith Warner’s reaction to the news.

Then fellow ClubMom Blogger, Denise, at Fast Times at Homeschool High, blogged some really intriguing book lists for middle and high schoolers. I’ve never heard of let alone read some of these books, but they sound so interesting that I’ll have to check ‘em out, especially the witchy faerie ones! (See Denise’s comments below.)

(I also liked her post about ClubMom founder Andrew Shue. I think I was watching Star Trek:The Next Generation when Melrose Place was popular. So I must be too much of a dork to understand what all the fuss is about. Ha!)

Hit the newstand for the August 2006 issue of Child magazine. On page 54 you’ll find an interview with literacy expert G. Reid Lyon, Ph.D., on "The New Thinking on Teaching Kids to Read." Per Dr. Lyon, "good readers typically have had parents who read to them from birth….these parents also play word games (rhyming) and sing songs like ‘Twinkle Twinkle.’"

Child also features an excellent article on Raising a Good Reader on their website. Among the advice:

1. Surround children with words
2. Make life a classroom
3. Nurture life long readers

Check out the July/August issue of Working Mother magazine. On page 70 there’s 10 tips on how kids 6 to 10 years can "Make Friends with Books":

1. Keep reading outloud
2. Go to the public library
3. Have a weekend group read
4. Create a book nook
5. Respect her book choices
6. Connect books to the wider world
7. Hone your choices
8. Downtime brings children to reading naturally

The July issue of Woman’s Day magazine has a terrific article on page 134 on the "Five Ways to Get Boys Reading":

1. Get real - boys love records books and almanacs
2. Think outside the book - if your son looks up the baseball stats in the paper, he’s reading
3. Seek out boy books - visit guysread.com for ideas
4. Know what’s of interest - give your son books on topics he loves
5. Just do it - make connections between the books your son read and his life

Both Child, Working Motherm and Woman’s Day give the same great advice - connect books with everyday situations in your child’s life. This is key advice for parents and educators.

So how are you helping your kids make the connection?

It’s Friday’s Feast thanks to Joy in the Morning. Pass the salt!

Appetizer
What is a word that you use that would not be considered common?
Avamacado…or avocado. It’s Nathan’s invented word. He also deemed tomatoes as mamos and soda as sosa, which is actually the Spanish word for soda.

Then there’s wauder, which is the way I pronounce water. Oops, my Joisey is showing.

Soup
What theme of calendar do you have on your wall this year?
The lastest calendar printout from Microsoft Outlook. My calendar changes so rapidly that I have to keep it on the computer and provide weekly updates which I print out and post on the refrigerator door. Everyone has their own color. This summer seems to be on the purple side (Nathan’s color).

Salad
Name 3 people you speak with by telephone a regular basis.
My sister in Switzerland - thank god for 10-10 telephone services. Then there’s my husband who I’m usually calling to remind him about something. Then Mr. Tony, my fellow board member at Carbon Valley Academy. He calls to give me more work to do or arrange a meeting. He’s a stay-at-home dad, so it’s usually lunch with all our kids and possibly a trip to the playground or movies.

Main Course
If you could buy a new outfit for someone you know, who would it be and what would you purchase for them?
The kids, of course. My husband does not need ANYTHING. He owns a zillion t-shirts and has a lovely collection of vintage clothing too. (So do I but nothing fits, unfortunately.) Nathan needs a new Ramones shirt and Lucie must have princess dress up clothes to go along her with her royal pain-in-the-butt diva behavior.

Dessert
What is the last beverage you drank?
Seltzer water. While we have good tasting water here in Colorado, life is more fun with bubbles.