Too commercial of Great Idea?

I just discovered a new initiative: a service that allows you to customize and create postals stamps using your very own pictures. No, for real. It's not a gimmick. You simple pick some pictures, upload them in this tool, place your order and within a few days, you received the stamps featuring your pictures, and you can use them as real stamps. That just about beats anything that I've seen recently in terms of pure commercialism, but at the same time, as a marketer, I'm loving it.

What a great idea. As the market is more and more impersonal, this is a little gem that will allow us to customize our mail in a way that can truely put a smile on people's faces. Could you imagine if, for your friend's 40 birthday, you send birthday invitations to the group with his picture and 'he's 40' as a slogan?
Or how about a birth announcement with the picture of the actual baby on the envelop? Of course, you could be a true narcisist and put your own picture on all your mail.
And for companies, what a fun way to add a little brand building to their stationary.

I bet that this will cause, at least initially, a little spike in the number of hardcopy letters and cards that will be sent, as people eagerly try out the service. Hats of to the inventors and the postal service for combining creativity with technology in nice harmony.

Proud Type i

I attended an interactive lunch seminar today at McKinney Silver, a local ad agency. During the presentation, I was introduced to a new term: "Type i".

Type i was new to me. I'm familiar with a Type A person: your typical assertive, aggressive, dominating, gotta-have-it-by-yesterday personality that seems to overindex in senior managment at many companies.

Type i however is defined by being:
- Intelligent: making smart choices
- Independent: listening to others, but using own judgement
- Innovative: progressing, welcoming change
- Interactive: web-savvy and using integrated communication tools to stay connected

I love it. Maybe a bit arrogant, but if anyone asks in the future what type of a person I am, my answer's going to be 'a proud Type i'.

Pretend Phase

Kevin's in his pretend phase. It's too funny.

I made real lemonade (i.e. from lemons) with him a couple of days ago and now he's constantly making pretend lemonade. He'll pretend to take a knife, pretend to take a lemon, pretend to cut the lemon, pretend to juice the lemon, pretend to pour the juice in a glass, pretend to add sugar, pretend to add water, pretend to stir it and then he'll come to me and offer me some pretend lemonade.

He also is making pretend medecine. Earlier he cut his lip and got antibiotics twice a day. It turned out he really like the liquid medecine, so now he wants to have it all the time. don't worry, we don't give it to him. So he's resorting to making his own pretend medicine and dispensing it to everyone...the bear, the doll, mommy, .....

With all this good pretend nutrition, who could lack for anything?

Irony

Yesterday was a very physical day: I actually managed to install a sump pump in the crawlspace under the house with my husband, and then mowed the whole lawn (early father's day gift). The irony is that I'm sore all over now but last week, after doing the 5 k Race for Cure, pushing Kevin all the way in the stroller, I didn't ache a bit. Just not fair.

Still, I feel good about us having successfully installed that pump. For those blessed without the knowledge of what a sump pump is: it's a special submerged pump used to drain basements and crawlspaces of water. It's only used in bad drainage areas, like our neighborhood. After hurricane Alberto came through town last week, our crawlspace resembled a little swimming pool, so we had to take action.

Fast forward several hours of digging, drilling, glueing PVC-pipes and such, we now have a sump pump installed. It seems to work. I hope so. Moisture in crawlspaces can lead to mold, which can be dangerous to health when it spreads in walls.



On to more fun things, today was father's day in the USA. I still don't quite understand why father's day is different in different countries. I'm sure the greeting card industry has something to do with it. Kevin gave his dad the perfect gift: he was the perfect toddler today: no tantrums, no crying, no yelling...he just played happily, helping to wrap dad's gift, played by himself without wanting attention, helped to make real lemonade, played at the swimming pool contently for 2 hours, took his nap without problems, etc. He was even the perfect gentlemen in the restaurant, happily waiting the 20 minutes it took to get seated, and then eating his meal without making a huge mess.....amazing. Must bribe him with cake more often :-)

An Entertaining Oldie

Kevin's ABC

I'm still working on Kevin's Flemish ABC equivalent, but in the meantime, you can enjoy his English ABC recital here captured by John. Given Kevin's only 2 years and 2 months, I'm quite proud of the little guy.

OK. Admitted. He doesn't look that thrilled at performing on cue here. Usually he loves to show off. I blame it on the subject matter. Who wants to do educational ABC songs anyway? I'll try to capture him doing his rendition of 'k zag twee beren..' in the near future. He usually has a blast with that.

grote jongen's bed

We zijn weer een grote stap aan het zetten met Kevin. Of eigenlijk is het Kevin die weer een grote stap aan het zetten is: de overgang van een babybed met spijlen naar een gewoon, laag kinderbed. Het was tijd. Kevin was zodanig gegroeid dat hij met gemak uit het babybed zou kunnen klimmen en vallen (gelukkig heeft hij dat echter nog niet gedaan). En ook zijn we van plan om in Augustus terug op vakantie te komen naar Belgie, en dan zal het ook makkelijker zijn als hij in een gewoon bed slaapt.

Het lijkt zo evident, zo alledaags, in een bed gaan liggen en erin blijven slapen, maar eigenlijk is het dat niet. Als je er even bij stilstaat: meestal ben je 's avonds niet echt heel moe, meestal kom je er dan pas goed door, ben je weer wakker. Ik toch in elk geval, en Kevin heeft blijkbaar ook dat trekje mee. En om dan gewoon stil te blijven liggen in een bed, als je net zo goed uit je bed kunt stappen en in de speelkamer gaan spelen...

Maar voorlopig het lukt ons wel. Ik moet wel toegeven dat we hem een beetje manipuleren. We hebben beide bedjes in zijn kamer staan en geven hem de keuze: "will je slapen in het babybedje, of in het bed voor grote jongens? En als in het bed voor grote jongens slaapt, dan gaan vava en tante Joke en nonkel Yves allemaal heel trots zijn. Dan is Kevin heel flink!" Misschien niet heel fair, maar het lukt meestal wel.... Ok, een paar keer is hij uit zijn kamer gekomen en kwam hij met een grote grijns op zijn gezicht de bureau inwandelen, alsof hij een grote stoot uitgehaald heeft.... ik moet dan altijd mijn best doen om niet in proesten uit te barsten.. tja, vroeg geleerd is oud gedaan?

flooring

't is the season of houseproject it appears. We went along with the typical stereotype. You know how it goes: you buy a house, you move in, do the necessary painting, arranging, decorating and then plan to do a lot more....which you don't get to till much, much later. We're at the much later stage.

Now 2 years into the new house, we're just at the point where some things just needed to get done...like the floor in the living room. When we bought the house, it had a wall-to-wall carpeting. The other downstairs rooms (kitchen, library & dining room) fortunately all had hardwood floors. I don't like carpets particularly. They're not hygienic, don't look very nice or modern and are impossible to keep clean. I still don't get the prevalence of carpets in so many houses here and in the UK. Don't understand what the attraction is. Still, it wasn't a big priority to get it changed immediately (nor worth the extra investment).

But having a having a toddler living in a house for 2 years and using the carpet as his main playing area will change those priorities, so it was time to get the nasty carpet replaced. Several estimates and trips to the DIY store later, we now have a new floor. Hardwood, not carpet. We couldn't get a match with the hardwoods of the kitchen area, so decided to go for total contrast: modern, beech wood with almost no grain in the living room vs. the caramel colored, grainy, oaky hardwood in the kitchen. I think it came out well, albeit a little ecclectic. I'm sure many locals would have a heart attack if they saw the non-traditional combo, especially against our terra-cotta walls...oh well, too bad. welcome to the 21st century.