Mommy, I think my heart is changing to Miley shape.

For my birthday DZ gifted me with Seasons 1-4 of Alias.  I was thrilled to get Season 5 for Christmas.  I just finished watching the 4th and final disc.  It is silly how much I like that show.  I would have no trouble starting over with Season 1 right now.  I got an email from Lola today that pretty much sums up how much I like the show.  The title was, “You know you’ve watched way too much Alias when…”

Here are some of my favorites from the list…

• You watch other Lost, the other JJ Abrams show, and call the characters by their REAL names on ALIAS. Locke is Kendall, the pilot is Weiss, one of the “Others” in the Looking Glass station (the blonde chick) is really Elsa Caplan.
• You CRINGE in the middle of “Pop, goes the weasel” because you have visions of Emma blowing up in your head.
• You look for homeless men with earpieces when you’re jogging at the park.
• When you meet people who say they work at a bank, you say, “Riiiiight. Suuure you doooo.”
• You plan to take up hockey, secretly hoping to run into Vaughn.
• When someone throws a crumbled piece of paper in the trash can, you suspect a dead drop, and consider reaching in the trash can and grabbing it.
• Every time you hear the Nokia ringtone, you get excited even though there’s no way it could be Vaughn.
• You think having no first name is a perfectly acceptable thing.
• You have a codename that people actually call you by. (actually i don’t, but sometimes i wish i did)

BigZabba says,

She obeys
She potties
She barely bites.
Looks like we’re starting to get a super puppy!

To Mommy,

I love you.  You are nice.  I am glad that you are my mommy.  You are the most funnest mom ever.  I’m glad that you are in our house.  I don’t know how to say it but I love you so much.  It’s hard to explain such a happy feeling.  I really love you.  I love you as big as the earth.  You are really sweet and you are a fun mommy.  You are good at teaching me things like learning and math.  It’s so hard to say how much I love you.  I love you really a whole bunch.  How much do you love me?

Love,

BigZabba

Merry Christmas!

That is until we found HARO.  If you’ve never heard of it, help-a-reporter-out is the recent creation of Peter Shankman.  It’s a simple email list that connects reporters to potential sources for articles, for free.  We’ve been subscribed since there were only a couple of thousand readers, and now Peter’s got more than 35,000 readers and a ton of high profile reporters and bloggers use it to find sources.  We’ve benefited by getting some quality press through connections we’ve made on HARO.

Peter offers one short text sponsorship at the top of each of his emails.  We figured we’d give it a try since the price was reasonable and we’ve never had a chance to put AllyZabba in more than 35,000 people’s inbox.  It turns out, it was the best advertising choice we’ve ever made.

Let’s get specific.  We were having a decent month of December–especially considering the general state of the economy.  Here’s an excerpt from the ad that Peter ran for us on December 16th:

I love HARO sponsors because they send me the coolest (warmest, and softest, technically,) things. This HARO is thanks to AllyZabba, the worlds softest blankie…order today for guaranteed Christmas delivery for only 1 cent!. http://www.AllyZabba.com/

And you can see the response from this graph showing our site visitors:

And here is what happened to our sales that day. This graph shows the approximate gross income:

Even with our niche product of high-end, handmade baby blankets, the results were terrific.  It’s a little hard to tell from these charts how good the rest of our month actually was.  We always have a couple hundred visitors in our store and at least a few orders each day.  But, by comparison to “HARO day” the rest of the month looks like nothing.  The graphs also don’t tell the whole story because a lot of the discussions we have been exchanging with people all over are from the HARO connection. We anticipate good things from these new relationships.

In short, advertising that works. You should subscribe to the HARO list and see what you think. What a great way to end the AllyZabba year.

Baby D

Born: December 19, 2008, 1:29am

8 lbs. 3 oz., 21 3/4 inches long

Merry Christmas Lola!

We wanted to make today special for her, since today is her actual birthday.  LittleZabba is a huge fan of balloons, so last night while she was sleeping we filled 45 helium balloons and filled her room.  This morning she woke up and came in our room and said,

Daddy, my woom is full ov bawoons.

The fun activity tonight before going to bed?  Popping all the bawoons.

Happy Birthday Sweet LittleZabba.  Your smile can light up any room, brighten my gloomy days and bring joy to my heart.  You are a gem.  I love you!  Happy 3rd Birthday!

I think I was about 7 years old, maybe 8, and my Mom and I were at the home of one of my classmates, who happened to by my first “crush”.  Our Moms were friends, so they were chatting about something so Kent and I played in his room.  Hanging on his door was an advent calendar.  There was a little pocket for each day and in each pocket was one of those candies wrapped in the red and green paper to make it look like a strawberry…I can’t remember what those are called.  Well I wanted a candy so I asked Kent if I could take one.  I guess without thinking he said yes.  So I grabbed it and popped it in my mouth.  At that moment he realized that I had taken a candy from the calendar and he panicked.  He really started to freak out and I thought I was going to get in trouble.  I told him that we always had candy in the car so I would go get him one to replace the candy that I ate.  I went down to our Buick and started searching frantically for a butterscotch candy.  We seemed to have those in the car for some reason.  I couldn’t find one.  I remember he was crying now and he ran to tell his Mom.  I really thought I was going to get in a lot of trouble.  His Mom quickly calmed him down and showed him that she had more and she gave him one to replace the one that I ate.  I so vividly remember the panic I felt that she was going to be mad that I ate the Advent candy.  Everytime I see those strawberry candies I think of Kent and the advent calendar incident.