A confession

My kids love oranges - but I'm an apple kinda girl.

A lot of people I know love the color blue. But It's just not my thing.

And, my dear friends - I'm the lady who puts up her Christmas tree before Thanksgiving although a lot of people think it's a sin!

Except that it usually looks more like this....

And I have bravely, brazenly, bold faced-ly (is that a word) changed my blogging template to a Christmas theme in mid-November.

Can we still be friends? =)

Secret Santa - Blogger Style!

I received a lot of responses in favor of a Christmas Gift Exchange. So here we go!!

**DEADLINE TO SIGN UP IS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 - 6:00 PM (mst)**

1) Send me an email with your name and mailing address to redhoodoos at gmail.com

2) In the email, share your favorite color, music, snack/treat, type of music, books - and anything else you think your Secret Santa may want to know about you (decorating colors and style, etc).

3) Everyone who signs up will get to be a Secret Santa to someone. You will also be the recipient of a Secret Santa.

**I WILL SEND AN EMAIL TO YOU WITH THE NAME OF THE PERSON YOU ARE 'GIVING TO' BY TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18**

1) Please keep your gifts under $25 if possible.

2) Once you receive the name of the person you are giving to - have fun! Familiarize yourself with her blog and personality and make this a fun event for her. Send her secret cards or anonymous comments before sending the gift if you'd like.

3) Try and keep your identity a secret until the end!

**FINALLY - MAIL YOUR GIFT DURING THE WEEK OF DECEMBER 8**

**Note - I will be extremely careful about who participates. Only bloggers that have existing blogs can join in the fun. I will post the blog names of everyone participating.

These bloggers have signed up to play Santa!

http://lindanjake.blogspot.com/

http://gravelroadsanddaiquirisinthedirt.blogspot.com/

http://kitchenditcher.blogspot.com/

http://coloradomcewens.blogspot.com/

http://dabergsblog.blogspot.com/

http://amayzing-family.blogspot.com/

http://tink65.blogspot.com/

http://lisalouwho.blogspot.com/

http://shljanderson.blogspot.com/

http://thegregbeefamily.blogspot.com/

http://djshelley.blogspot.com/

Calling off the Wesley Berry Anger Post!

The refund was in my account yesterday - as they promised.

I wasn't defrauded (like I feared) but it was a whole lot of inconvenient and the customer service was AWFUL.

Sooo.....buyer beware. For me - I'll be using a mom and pop's floral shop from now on!

Christmas Gift Exchange

Come back Tuesday for more information about the Christmas gift exchange. (I'll try to put it up tomorrow but it's going to be a crazy busy day). This will be fun!

Christmas Love

I would love to send all of my blogging friends a Christmas card next month.

If you are interested in receiving a card from moi - please send me an email with your address to redhoodoos at gmail dot com.

I hereby promise not to stalk, send bombs, give your address to anyone else, or tape cat fur to the card (sorry Janell - sometimes my cat obsession just eeks out in odd places).

Also - I think it would be fun to do a Christmas gift exchange with each other. Let me know if you're interested and I'll post something early this week.

If you are interested in a gift exchange - let me know the following:
1) Would you want your identity to be a secret until the time your person receives the gift from you? Or would you like it to be known from the start?
2) Should there be a gift $ limit? If so, what amount do you think it should be?

YAY - I'm finally starting to feel the Christmas spirit!!

Beware of Wesley Berry Flowers!

I'm sending an email and posting about an experience I had - to warn you of a horrible company that I think defrauded me.

The company is WESLEY BERRY FLOWERS. Don't go there!! Whatever you do - stay away from this company.

Here is my experience...

A few weeks ago I googled florists and found this company. Their website is very professional and looked pretty legitimate. It's at http://www.wesleyberryflowers.com/

Have any of you ever heard of them?

I called customer service and ordered flowers and a dozen cookies. I wanted them sent to someone in a hospital out of state. I gave them my credit card. The money was taken out of my account the same day.

The next day I received an email from this company saying that they didn't have my item in stock and it wasn't delivered. Huh? An email? A day later?

I called them and asked what they were going to do. "I will request a refund for you. You will receive a refund in your account in 10-15 business days."

What?!! Why did they even take the money out of my account if they didn't have the item in stock? Couldn't they have found this out sooner so the recipient could still get her flowers before she checked out of the hospital?

So I've been silently fuming the last few weeks. Each day I check my account. Each day the refund is not there.

I decided to call them today. Clearly, I was not happy. I was ready to tell them of their poor customer service.

As a side note - it really takes a lot to get me mad. I am a pretty easy-going person.

I called a few minutes ago and spoke with a woman in their customer service department.

Me: Poor you. You had to take this phone call. I'm not happy at all.
Her: Sigh. Were you just speaking to someone? (I thought this was fairly 'telling')
Me: No.
Her: Sigh. What's the matter?

I explained the situation. Told her I was unhappy that they debited the money out of my account if the item wasn't even available. blah blah blah.

Her: Just a minute. Click - she put me on hold. I wait. MAAM - Your money will be taken out within 24 hours.
Me: You mean it will be put back 'into' my account, right?
Her: Oh yes, that's what I meant. Thanks for calling. BYE.
Me: Wait!
Her: Click.

She hung up on me.

I was sooo not done with that conversation. I didn't hear one "sorry for the inconvenience". Not even a simple "sorry". Nothing but rudeness. I was calm throughout the entire conversation. Never once was I rude to her.

I called her back because now I was as mad as a hornet. I wasn't going to be calm anymore!! Someone picked up the phone and hung it up again.

!

I am just astounded. I got online and found that I'm clearly not the only one who has had problems with this company. There were pages and pages of complaints.

I will be calling a manager on Tuesday morning if there is not a refund in my account.

It's not the money that upsets me. It's the way I've been treated. They took my money. Didn't send the flowers and then told me it would be 2-3 weeks before I would get my money back.

I don't understand why some people/companies can't be honest and forthright.

So beware of this company. Tell your friends to beware. It is a nationwide online florist. I hope I see my money on Monday - but I'm not counting on it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a happy note - have a great Sunday!

Making lemonade out of lemons..

It happens every year. Whether we like it or not - we can all expect to get older. Unfortunately, it's that time of year for me. If I'm still blogging next year you will get to hear (er, read) my whining, kicking, and screaming because it will be the year of the big 40! Holy cow - 40! (But I don't want to talk about that.)

At the risk of sounding doom and gloom - it seems like something bad happens every November. Seriously, every year in November there is an incident of some sort.

One year I hit a dog. Another year it was the Driver's Ed incident (which was really the last week of October, but I'm counting it). One year I was called to work the shift for a girl who was murdered the night before (this was a horrific experience for me). Last year was the mother load of multiple bad incidents. Go here to be truly entertained! (It was technically my first blog post).

It is seriously uncanny.

So every year I usually brace myself and just wait for the events to unfold. I tend to get pretty discouraged during the month of November. But this year I'm going to try to have a positive mindset through it all. Of course I can't control everything that happens, but I can control my responses to the events. I can be grateful.

So far this month, there have been a couple of incidents. Nothing major, and I really hope this is it! I can handle this.

Yesterday at 6:00 am I received a phone call from my husband and son, who were stranded in our season's first big snow storm. They couldn't make it up the hill that goes up our mountain. Cops were patrolling the hill and we were worried that they would close it to all traffic (as they often do in the winter). But hey - positive mindset, right? I drove down in a sturdier vehicle, picked them up, and brought them home! No roads were closed. It all turned out okay! They made it home safe and sound.

I was hoping that was going to be my only "November Incident" this year. But alas - I had another one this morning.

This morning, I was driving to pick up Connor from swim practice. I took a freeway exit and headed for the left turn lane when I heard a pop and a hissssss. 30 seconds later my back tire was completely flat. Fortunately, I made it through the light and I pulled into a parking lot, and just sat there trying to figure out what to do.

I really tried to find the good in this incident.

The Good News - I have a husband who can fix anything!
The Bad News - he left his cell phone at home.

So, I called his desk. No answer. I had him paged - Victory Was MINE! He would leave work to rescue his wife who was in distress.

While I waited, and while looking for the positive in this little issue - guess what I found?



My camera!! I soooo launched into blogging mode.

This is how I felt about having a flat tire:



Luckily, my dear husband came to my rescue. (Except that he wasn't too thrilled about me taking his picture doing manly things...) And luckily my son found another ride to school.




Todd messed around with the tire for a while before telling me the bad news - we didn't have the tool that he needed to get the spare.

But he had a great idea! Let's take the tire off of the car and drive it to Big O. They can patch the tire and then we can drive back and throw the tire on the vehicle.

Except that the tire had a gaping hole in the side and couldn't be 'patched'.

But as luck would have it - I had 4 snow tires in the back of the car.


I was actually going to have them installed on Saturday - but hey - there's no time like the present! So off we drove to Big O on this beautiful Thursday morning.

And here I am again - a happy camper!

I'm sooo hoping that this post is the end of my infamous bad November luck for 2008. But if not, I'm sure blog land will be the first to know!