Cost Plus World Market is Coming to New Jersey

Posted by Sarah on Jul 4, 2014 in Your Home | 0 comments

I am always so happy when I get to participate in exciting news for New Jersey! And I have to be honest, one of my favorite things to do in my copious spare time (ha ha ha) is decorate my house! No kidding. People tell me I should make home decore advice my next business. Yep, I truly love it that much. So, when I was approached to get the word out about Cost Plus World Market coming to New Jersey I jumped at the change to participate! And as always, you should know that I am getting compensated for this post. Without further ado, here are the important details you should know! The Grand Opening is Thursday July 10, 2014, in Livingston NJ, and there are some amazing daily events taking place: Thursday, July 10 9:00am – Special ribbon cutting Ceremony. Store opening immediately following ceremony First 100 customers in the door will receive a $10 World Market gift card! Thursday, July 10 – Sunday, July 13 Free tasting and live entertainment each day 4-7pm Thursday & Friday 1-4pm Saturday & Sunday Free Cost Plus World Market Tote Bag to the first 100 customers in the door each day! Saturday, July 12 (1pm – 3pm) Come Meet Celebrities, Jonathan & Drew Scott (um…yes, please.) First 200 customers to bring 5 non-perisable food items to donate to the Community Food Bank of New Jersey for a chance to meet Jonathan and Drew and get a signed autograph* *NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. An autographed photo of Jonathan & Drew Scott will be given to the first 200 customers with the minimum donation of 5 non-perishable, non-glass food items. One autograph per person. Event subject to change or cancellation. Stores open at 9 am. Line forms at 12 pm. Save an EXTRA 15% on your next in-store purchase and 10% on gourmet food and non-alcoholic beverages. So stay tuned as I’ll be attending a sneak peek Grand Opening and posting pictures and letting you in on all of the exclusive offers available as we welcome World Market to New Jersey! Can’t wait to see what I...

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The Journey to My Better Way Body

Posted by michelle on Jun 3, 2014 in Got balance? | 0 comments

By now, many have you have gotten to know me here at Better Way Moms. To all of you new readers, I’m Michelle, the Chief Technology Mom, and I’m here to start a personal journey to my better way body. This isn’t a contest, nor is it something I’m doing for good PR. In fact, much of my life has been spent dealing with the scale. I’m sure many of you can relate. You step up on the scale and once that number shows up, you’re either convinced you’re living on another planet with entirely different gravity or that your scale is broken. Once the reality sets in that the number is, in fact, true, you may feel inspired to change or you may just go about your day in a complete state of denial. I’m in the former category. The thing is, I’ve never been skinny. Sure, I’ve been at a healthy weight many times, but the fact of the matter is, I’ve never had the pleasure of seeing my stomach flat. Perhaps I can chalk it up to bad genetics, or that a life of consistently being up and down on the scale has done such a number on my body physically that I never once felt what it was like to have a flat stomach. I don’t mean the rock hard abs kind, either. I just mean one that wasn’t sloped in some way. I was an active kid, and I never really knew that I was “different” until about middle school when I had a friend over to swim in my pool. You see, she wore a two piece suit that showed off her flat stomach, and there I was, in a two piece, and I noticed that my stomach curved. My thighs were thicker. Everything about me was a bit more plump. It was that very moment that I become self-conscious about my body, and thus started a many years long battle of feeling completely uncomfortable in my own skin. Around high school, I took matters into my own hands and joined Weight Watchers with my mom and, after months of following the plan to the letter, I got down to a healthy weight and felt amazing. While my stomach still wasn’t “flat,” clothes fit better. I was somewhat confident, and I was happily wearing smaller, skinnier jeans and dresses that fit in all...

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Reboot. Retry.

Posted by michelle on Dec 13, 2013 in Life-Self Balance | 0 comments

I recently had to do some routine updates to my computer. Nothing major, just the occasional software update, file cleanup and all of that stuff. Since I was doing a better job cleaning up my machine than my actual house, I went ahead and updated some applications and programs that I had been ignoring, one of which is a major component to my business. Once all was said and done, I rebooted my machine, rearranged my desktop, changed the display photo and then proceeded to do some work. Except the one major component to my business decided to not work. At all. In fact, my machine didn’t recognize it anymore. I felt panic set in, as I started to Google why this would happen. I put out an SOS on Facebook, got some helpful feedback, but none of it worked. I was trying not to have a meltdown as my two year old was having his own in the background. My husband was trying to corral the kids as I was dying a bit inside, wondering how this was going to absolutely, 100% kill my productivity. The kids went off for their naps, the house was quiet and instead of my usual routine of working or cleaning, I decided to sit down and conquer my machine once and for all. I’m not at all technologically stupid, but this was a little beyond my scope of knowledge. With a little research, I found out what may have been the problem, but wasn’t exactly positive. So, I did something rather risky and started to delete the program bit by bit, receipt by receipt, file by file. I was wiping it from existence. I found the original disk and started to perform a program install, hoping that the older version would work with my more updated, more sophisticated operating system. Lo and behold, my machine made a chime. I proceeded with the install finish and, there it was, the program I needed. And it worked. I’m sure there are some software engineers and IT professionals reading this laughing at my rather simple problem, but to me, in that moment, it was pretty big and given the week I had just had, I was not in the mood to deal with another thing gone wrong. Rather than throw my hands up in the air and waving a white flag, I fixed it. And...

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Escape to Me

Posted by michelle on Oct 30, 2013 in Life-Self Balance, Where Did I Go? | 0 comments

The 9-month-old is cranky. The 2-year-old is upset that he can’t fit his puzzle pieces together. The work queue is piling up. There’s a stain on the floor and I’m not sure how old it is. I forgot to thaw something this morning so I could make dinner tonight. Why does my shirt smell so funny? Did I just miss my son’s flu shot appointment? I think I missed that writing deadline. Breathe. Tomorrow will be different. Nay, 5:30PM will be different. Dinner will be calm. There will be a bath, a story, lights out. The house will fall quiet. Breathe. Think of stillness. Placid. An escape. A vacation. If I could go anywhere, where would it be? Would I go across the pond to a different country? A small town in Italy, perhaps a hideaway in the countryside of Scotland. Maybe a coast somewhere, where the ocean is at the tips of my toes. Sea shells at the ready for collecting, the salt air tickling my nose. Maybe somewhere cold, a place where I can wrap myself in a thick sweater and drink real cocoa, prepared warm and perfect. No. My ideal vacation isn’t a place I can physically visit. I would escape to find myself in my own head. I want to visit the place where magic happened, where words were written. Poetry composed itself. I would vacation to the parts of my mind that held onto dreams, where bitterness didn’t exist, where postpartum depression wasn’t in the equation. That spot in my head that wasn’t afraid, that set goals and met them. The space in my crown where negative was canceled by positive. I want to go where stories still exist, where make-believe isn’t fantasy, where “I can” and I will” and “I did” are the only affirmations ever uttered. It exists somewhere in there, probably below the piles of “I’m too busy” and “I do too much” and “I am not enough.” The core of me, now branched into many different people. Mother. Wife. Writer. Homemaker. Me. I would venture on a journey to find me again, introduce her to myself and make her part of my life again. I can. I will. I shall. Author:...

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So, This Italy Thing….

Posted by Sarah on Oct 30, 2013 in Life-Self Balance | 0 comments

I’m sure you’ve all noticed our many posts about Italy lately, and many of you have asked, “What? Why? Who? Huh?” (I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea). So for those of you who’ve missed it, the amazing Lisa moved to Italy last year. Permanently as of a few weeks ago, but you can read about that here. Better Way Moms was created as a company, and a site, more than four years ago. It was born because I wanted to help other women find their own “Better Way”, much like I was trying to do. I wanted out of the normal paradigm. I wanted to stand up against the “system”, if you will, that dictates what’s possible for women. I felt that the paradigm we’d been handed wasn’t real, and we should stop acting like it was. I wrote about that on The Huffington Post, earlier this year. And it’s in that spirit that I am so proud to announce a new Better Way company. In fact, when I talk about it, I’ve found myself welling up with tears because I want to offer it to every woman I see, everywhere I go, all the time. I love it that much. A Better Way to Italy isn’t just about tours in Tuscany. And while, yes, who wouldn’t love to visit such a beautiful region, it’s so much more than that. Lisa and I have created our tours with the express purpose of offering joy, happiness and friendship to women. We’ve crafted classes, discussions and day-trips, all to inspire self-reflection and ignite passion. We’re fully aware that the collective atmosphere in our country today is full of fear, uncertainty and has an underlying feeling of angst. And it’s exactly for these reasons that we feel this trip is so important to offer. I know I have personally experienced these feelings, I think most of us have. But I believe that we’re more powerful than fearful thoughts, and it is up to us, as women, to provide a sense of abundance, safety and joy in our homes and businesses. Let’s come together, with gorgeous Tuscany as the backdrop, and figure out how. All we need is love, a friendly push, inspiration – and most of all – we need each other. So we’re offering this trip to you as a way to remind you of who you are. Of your...

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Hiding Behind the Curtain

Posted by michelle on Oct 10, 2013 in Where Did I Go? | 0 comments

I want to start a movement. I think it’s time we throw away our social networks and get real. Forget you, Facebook. I want to get on a site called RealBook – a place where we gather and tell each other how it’s really going. Not “vague-booking,” no perfect pictures showing off our fabulously cooked meals. No. I want to see your houses after a two year old has ripped through the living room in nothing but a diaper, wielding a broom that has knocked over all of your folded clean laundry. That’s right. Let’s stop hiding behind the Internet curtains and get real, people. Let’s pin a great margarita recipe on Pinterest and go right ahead and make it. I say this kind of tongue-in-cheek, but it just dawned on me that it’s really easy to hide behind ourselves out there on the Internet. It’s effortless to pick and choose how the world sees us. For me, people often ask me how I manage to work at home with two kids merely 18 months apart while writing articles all day, cooking that really awesome slow cooker chicken and biscuits I posted on Facebook 10 minutes ago. The reality is this: that’s just a picture of a dinner comprised of 4 ingredients. I threw it in my slow cooker, which took all of 5 minutes, all while my 8 month old daughter was scaling the sofa and my 2 year old son was throwing everything that was on my kitchen table onto the floor. Let’s not talk about the one paragraph I had been trying to write for two hours because every 10 minutes someone needed a diaper change. What you don’t see in that picture is the living room, also known as Disaster Central, where toys are scattered on the floor like land mines, the ten changes of clothes that were needed by my daughter, no thanks to several of her diaper blow outs, and about 20 dust bunnies, thanks to having two very large cats. You don’t see me, the person taking the picture, wearing last night’s pajamas, crying because I didn’t get enough sleep last night. You don’t hear the cacophonous screams of the 2-year-old chasing the cat into the other room, or the 8-month-old emitting her high pitched noise because she managed to stand herself up but can’t move another inch. Nope. All you see...

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