"Goldie" Our Newest Family Member!

We have a new family member. Goldie! Yes, that right. A red, purple and blue male Beta Fish named Goldie. Kids are so funny. The fish stared off named "Cuckoo" (one of my favorite books mind you) and then by the end of the night ended up as "Goldie."

My hubby had a present waiting for Lily today when she came to his office! She was over the moon. Ran around his desk "Oh My Gosh! Thank you Daddy and I have a present for you too! A dinosaur hug! "

I thought oh great one more thing I have to take care of but this little guy's water only has to be changed once a month and he eats the plants roots, so no need for food. Hola!

"Sunny Summer Days" Contest

Calling all crafters/clothing makers/creative people! LLBB is going to have contest and the winner gets to sell their item on Lily's Laundry Boutique and gets a "Basket Full of Summer!"

The theme is "Sunny Summer Days!" 

So use you imagination to create an item that will be sold on LLB if you are voted for and win.

The only restrictions for the item is it needs to have a summer theme and needs to relate to children. Other then that the world is your oyster.

Anyone can enter! 

Think Outside of the "Beach".... Kids Jewelry, Hair Accessories, Home Decor, Clothing, Swim, Gift Basket, Paintings, Stationary...

What ever your Sunny Heart Desires!

If you win your item will be listed for sale on LLB until September 30th and you will receive a gift basket full of summer stuff.

The Business Stuff
(i.e. The Rules)

Your submission must be in by June 2nd.

You will need to email me 2 high resolution pictures.

A description of your item and what inspired you.

What price you would sell your item for?

Your contact information.

Item will be voted on by LLBB readers.

Contest will run from June 9th-16th.

If you win you will drop ship item. 

You must be able to produce and ship out product within two weeks.

You will get 55% of selling price plus $5 for shipping. You will invoice me via pay pal.

I think that's it. Please email me with any questions.

Info@LilysLaundryBoutique.com

Thanks for playing!

XOXO, Laura

Alice in Wonderland

This weekend Lily was in Alice in Wonderland as a Posie. Her little ballet class did such a cute job. They worked so hard all week.  The video isn't the best but it's still cute. Have a good Sunday!

This is soooo cool!

I was looking at this blog last night and it had a Facebook Like Button on it and I was like "WHAT IS THIS!?!?"

So I did a little research and sure enough Facebook has created a widget that you can add to your blog/website that allows people to click on it and it automatically posts they "Like" your blog post and it posts this on their Facebook page.

This is so awesome because it will just drive traffic back to your blog/website. It took me hours to figure it out and I had to find the right code (I tried like 5 different ones) but it is now working on Lily's Laundry and wanted to share it.

The code that worked for me is found here.

Here are the best directions.

BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING BACK UP YOUR BLOG!!!

The code is kind of hard to find.  It is right in the middle of all the code on your expanded widget.
 I tried to show you on here but would let me put the html code in....

I hope everyone likes this and that is works for you. I sure do!  Hope your having a good weekend!

The Ultimate Consumer...

I can't help it. Its who I am. I love trying new things. I am an ultimate consumer.  When I find things that I love I like to share them with everyone...

I was home the other day giving the Baby Girl a bottle and this infomercial came on for WEN. It caught my attention because I love the show Flipping Out and Jeff remodeled Chaz Dean's (the stylist who invented the product) salon.... any who I have long, very processed, I mean naturally blond hair and it needs all the moisture it can get so before I could say the word "bleach" I had been suckered into purchasing this product monthly (but I can cancel whenever wink* wink*)

 I got it and it is awesome.  Makes my hair feel so super soft.  The leave-in conditioner it comes with is even better.  I slept with it in one night and in the morning after I washed it is was so silky. So I thought I would share.

Another hair product  that everyone is talking about from my sis to all my good girlfriends is this Moroccan Oil.  So I just HAD to have it and it lives up to all the hype.  I even use it in Lily's hair and I can tell a total difference.  Her hair stays smooth all day long.  Love it.  It is a must have for summer.

Two Sweet Friends....

Two sweet friends got to play today and they both had on their Kate Mack so I just HAD to take some pics!

Kate Mack is on Sale 30% OFF!

Have you noticed...

That I haven't had any pics in my blog posts in the last couple of weeks. I have lost one battery to one camera and the charger to the other camera...how annoying. So I am down to only my iphone (thank goodness it takes cute pics)

I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day. We did it was very relaxing. Lily had a birthday party to go to and she wore the cutest Misha Lulu Dress. She is now into posing like a model.  It is too cute!

Misha Lulu Swimmer Dress starting at $46

Daily Blog Tips

On a side note before the blogging tips. I am thinking about doing a contest for all the creative crafters in the land of blogging. I am processing all the details/rules right now but my beginning thoughts are it would be a contest for people to create an item it will be voted on and then will be sold on Lily's Laundry.  It could be anything from a hair accessory to  something in the home decor arena to an outfit...or whatever your creative juices leads you to...

What does everyone think?  Any suggestions...Would love to hear your comments. 

I love to look at all the crafters stuff.  It's all such eye candy!  I wish I could sew and make cool things but I can't.  I have good ideas but horrible execution. So stayed tuned for the details. Now for my tips...

Adding a Custom Signature

I have added a signature couple of times and it never really looked right until I got Photoshop and made a more professional looking image. I made my image. Uploaded and saved it in Photobucket and then followed this tutorial for how to upload. The only thing is when I went to  write in my blog post it was all up in the top would so I hit the compose tab (right corner next to preview) and have been writing in there every time.  Seems to work much better ;)

Picasa for Slide Shows
I use Picasa because I have from the beginning and it is owned by google so all my stuff is in one place. It is really easy to use for your slide shows. Go to www.picasaweb.google.com and set up an account. Hit upload. It says add to new file or create new one (make sure to write down exactly what your file folder is called, you will need it again.) Upload everything that you want and make sure that this file is UNLOCKED. Log into your blogger account. Go to your Dashboard, Layouts, add a new Gadget, add slide show. Within Gadget drop down Picasa. Make sure and type in the exact name of your file (if you don't someone else's stuff will be streamed into your blog) and BING! Your done!

Vote for 2GiggleBoxes in Full Bloom

This shirt is so stinking cute. I think I am going to have Sarah over at 2GiggleBoxes make me one...but in the mean time please go to www.MadeByRae.Blogspot.com and vote for her. She is a dear friend and sorority sister of mine (PI Love, that's what us ADPi's say ;) and I wanted to give her a little shot out to get her some votes!  She is in Full Bloom!

 P.S. Contest is only up for 24 Hours

Daily Blog Tip: Eat my Dust, Burn my Feed

Writing your blog post is only 1/2 the battle the other half is getting people to read your blog.  People are busy and like the saying says "Out of sight Out of Mind."  So the  best way I believe to remind your readers about your blog is having it directly emailed to them.

I use FeedBurner to do this.  It is actually quite easy.  Go to www.FeedBurner.com and type in  your blogs URL.  Once you have done this, Feedburner will give you tons of options. FB will analyze the traffic to your blog,  you can create banners to drive more traffic to your sight, you can configure ads and much more. You will have to have to play around inside Feedburner to see what suits your blog.

Make sure you get the HTML code that the offer and add it to your "Gadgets" on your blogger layouts!  Thats how people can add their email addresses.

Here are some more resources on using Feeburner.

1. Feeds Basics 101
2. Google Help for Feeds