Kim Vallée’s at home with the Star today

I was thrilled for my friend Kim, of At Home with Kim Vallée when I received a direct message on Twitter from her out of the blue this morning asking me to let people know she was going to be interviewed live on thestar.com at noon. Readers would be able to send in their questions and if chosen, have them answered in real time.

Not only do I think Kim has an incredible sense of style and wonderful insights and advice about home entertaining but I know she’s a very bright woman who works non-stop. So, when I learned she was being featured in today’s Toronto Star, I was overjoyed for her.

If like me you were tied up at noon, have no fear. thestar.com archived the discussion. Unfortunately, I can’t share the article Kim had published in the print version of the paper because it’s not available online.

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Win a copy of Katie Brown Celebrates: Simple and Spectacular Parties All Year Round

My friend Kim Vallée of the wonderful blog At Home with Kim Vallée, is giving away 5 copies of Katie Brown Celebrates: Simple and Spectacular Parties All Year Round due in stores November 8.

According to Kim, “Katie will inspire you to host a party every month of the year. The premise of the book is excellent.”

If you entertain, Katie Brown Celebrates should provide lots of inspiration. If you don’t entertain but know someone who does, it will make a wonderful gift this holiday season.

The contest is open to all Canadian and U.S. residents excluding Quebec. To enter, first you’ll need to register at Places on Kim’s blog and “Praize” 3 places:

1. your favorite place to eat (i.e., restaurant, caterer, fine grocery shop, market, etc.)
2. your favorite shop for clothes, and
3. your favorite place to sleep (i.e., hotel, bed and breakfast, etc.)

Second you’ll need to leave a comment on Kim’s blog. The winners will be randomly selected. Check out the blog for instructions.

The contest closes on Oct. 22 at 11:59 p.m. There aren’t a lot of entries yet so the odds of winning are pretty high.

Good luck!

Sharing from PodCamp Montreal

I attended PodCamp Montreal – a free unconference – where people from all over gathered to meet, learn and share information about podcasting and other forms of social media.

One of the rules of PodCamp is presentations are shared online. Many of the sessions were streamed live on Ustream.tv.

Check out the slide show from the session Connie Crosby and I gave about our new podcast…

Creating a Podcast: Community Divas Live!

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: podcasts podcasting)

I was also part of a panel discussion with Kim Vallée, Michelle Sullivan, Rayanne Langdon and Isolde Legare, called “Managing the PR Beast: Building Relationships with PR Practitioners While Maintaining Credibility with Your Audience”. Simon Roy created an audio archive of our panel. He archived 10 presentations in all.

Enjoy!

Tamsin joins me for the NutriSystem Challenge

One week, nine entries, two posts and three judges later, we have a winner...

Congratulations to Tamsin who will be joining me in Bargainista’s NutriSystem Challenge.

Here’s Tamsin’s winning entry:

Happy new year Eden
I’d love the chance to give NutriSystem a try. In 10 minutes, I face my 37th birthday and, while I feel blessed and pretty good about my life, I know that I weigh more than I ever have and hate the way my clothes (don’t) fit. Like you, I’ve lost and gained -- back and forth -- over the past 5-8 years. I’m sick of maintaining 3-sized wardrobes! I feel I know my natural “happy” weight and this 145lbs isn’t it!

As for my physical activity, I began taking pole dancing fitness classes a couple of years ago and trained to become a part-time instructor last year. The pole dancing (2 classes a week) keeps me fairly fit, but natural aging has changed my body (I don’t have children). I *know* that I need to eat more healthily to trim my extra pounds -- I’d love to see myself 15-20 pounds lighter. (Portion control is another challenge for me, especially as my husband is the cook in our family.) I have never tried formal dieting before; I’m curious about NutriSystem.

I would love to share updates with your readers.

Tamsin

Tamsin has agreed to write guest posts so expect both of us to provide you with regular updates.

Thank you to everyone who entered the NutriSystem challenge. I hope you’ll follow our trials and tribulations over the next 12 weeks or so and share your weight loss experiences in the comment section.

In total, I received nine compelling entries from across Canada. The judges had their work cut out for them but in the end, Tamsin was clearly the winner.

Judges scored each entry individually. In order to stay objective, my role was simply to determine judging criteria and add up the scores. Judges were asked to score entries based on three criteria around the theme of building community.

A big shout out also goes to the judges:
• Kate Trgovac (Vancouver), publisher of One Degree – “a marketer's secret weapon” and author of My Name is Kate, one of Canada’s leading blogs on marketing and technology;

• Kim Vallée (Montréal), writer of At Home with Kim Vallee – inspiration for stylish living and entertaining; and,

• Sameer Vasta (Toronto), storyteller and new media junkie who likes to laugh a lot. You can find him at blogTO and Eloquation.

Tip of the Week - Green shopping

Mish invited me for coffee the other day. She said she had something to show me and proceeded to pull a small green nylon pouch from her purse. It was about the size of a large cell phone or small digital camera but it was something else altogether different.

For a mere $5, she purchased a Reisenthel mini-maxi nylon shopping bag at Solutions that folds up into it’s own little carrying case. It weighs next to nothing and is small enough to fit into a small purse. Best of all, when Mish goes shopping she can open it up and fit lots of stuff inside. Boy, do I need one of these. ; )

I did a little research and learned award-winning design firm, Reisenthel has a whole line of shopping bags. I even found a post Kim Vallée had written about some of their other bags last spring. You can also find Reinsenthel bags at goneshopping.ca, but I didn’t see the one sported by Mish on their site.

Green bags come in many colours and aren’t just for groceries anymore!

Do you carry a “green” bag when you go shopping or do you keep one in your purse just in case? If you don’t, do you think this post has convinced you to reconsider?