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Be Intentional With BLM Messaging

I love that these brands are featuring black creators like Etsy (above) and Blogher (below).

Here is more things that you can do:

I also excerpt Sophia Clarke’s opinion piece for BlogHere here where she implores all those out there taking actions to be more intentional especially after the whole Black Square campaign launched a couple of weeks ago.

On the individual level, the Black Square does nothing.

It does not absolve you of your ignorance, inaction, or the racism within. It does not forgive the time you yelled the N-word as you sang a song, or fetishized a Black person, or called the cops because you saw someone “suspicious.” It doesn’t elevate Black voices, brands, or the Black Lives Matter movement. It’s a poor attempt to show that you’re “not racist” while doing the bare-minimum. It’s not really for anyone but your followers – it’s entirely performative. An empty, thoughtless, post. It’s the digital equivalent to a shoulder shrug – a half-hearted yes. It is like the presence of someone at a party who doesn’t want to be…

..The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t a trend. It is not a peplum top or a fun new bar or food in foam form. For Black lives to continue to matter, for Black life, joy, and prosperity to be centered, the movement must continue. Social media is powerful. So is whiteness. And to not use these forces to do something actionable within your network – anything – is peak privilege in action.

The Black Square posts do not show solidarity, but rather just a thinly veiled performance. An attempt at activism. A toe dipped into a churning sea of constant movement. Performative activism stems from not wanting to be called out for silence, but why resign oneself to this possibility when there are so simple ways to do actually do something? It can be simple as having a conversation with yourself as to why you’re afraid to declare yourself an anti-racist. That’s a great place to start.

Mainstream news has done a poor job at accurately portraying what’s happening on the ground.

Protests have been largely peaceful, and social media has been essential for disseminating the latest facts, actions to take, and updates. It’s been an incredible tool for fostering collective action. But beyond the facts, there has been a reckoning for white people online and how to understand the privilege that whiteness holds.

Doing your part, and using this privilege isn’t just cool this week – it’s essential always. It’s a commitment to justice, and there’s so much work to do. Jump in – the water is fine and history will remember you well.

At the time of publication, no arrests have been made for the murder of Breonna Taylor in her own home.

[June th] would have been her 27th birthday.

Here’s a petition to sign to ensure justice and share your action on social media using the hashtag #SayHerName. Measurable actions have worked, and will continue to work, as long as we keep speaking up, sharing the facts, and holding each-other accountable on, and offline.

We deserve better. Let’s quit the B.S.

Agreed!

 

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SAY HER NAME. ? In honor of Breonna Taylor’s 27th birthday, these influencers, including #BlogHer Alum @colormecourtney, @tyalexander, and @gabifresh, are calling for justice to be served. ⁣ ⁣ Demand #JusticeForBreonnaTaylor. #BlackLivesMatter includes Black women and Black LGBTQ+ lives, too. ⁣ ⁣ Swipe for ways you can request action, put together by @shemedia partner @xonecole.⁣ ⁣ Influencers in Slide One:⁣ @essiegolden @curvenvy @glamazondiaries @amarachiukachu @tyalexander @colormecourtney @chardlinechanel @addieohh @stylishcurves @ontheqtrain @kurvykatie @lexiwiththecurls @iambeauticurve @simplygailg @styleandpoise @dressupwithjess⁣ Influencers in Slide Two:⁣ @gabifresh @kellyaugustineb @chanteburkett @alana_reina @simplycurvee @opalbyopal @audreypatriciaw @stylenbeautydoc @monroesteele @blairimani @fromheadtocurve @enigivensunday

A post shared by BlogHer (@blogher) on

 

 

 

10 Unique Easter Egg Hunt Ideas You Might Not Have Thought Of

Easter is around the corner. If you are in the hunt for new or different ways to have fun with the kids on Easter weekend, here are 10 unique and innovative ideas compliments of SheKnows:

1. Easter bunny tracks

A full-blown Easter egg hunt guided by the Easter Bunny himself? Surely there could be nothing more adorable. The kids will love waking up on Easter morning to find that the Easter Bunny has left them a personalized note and a few bunny tracks pointing them in the direction of the hidden eggs. These cute printables make setting up the bunny track hunt a breeze.

2. Easter egg garden

For very young children, this is as cute as it comes. If they’re too little to hunt well in the yard, you can make your own Easter egg garden that “grows” plastic eggs instead. Placing candy-filled Easter egg flowers in the grass or sand will make it easy for even the littlest ones to find their treats.

3. Indoor egg hunt

If you live in a part of the country where spring hasn’t sprung yet, all hope is not lost. You can turn a cold or rainy Easter day into an adventure when you tell your kids that they’re going to hunt for all their eggs and Easter trinkets inside the house. To make the indoor egg hunt even more unique, try hiding the eggs in a trail or with clues leading to one giant Easter basket.

4. Golden egg hunt

Little mateys at that pirate-loving age will get a kick out of this specialized Easter egg hunt. When kids know there is “buried treasure” involved — like a one-of-a-kind golden egg left behind by the Easter Bunny — they’re likely to take the hunt a little more seriously. Bonus points for putting some booty (read: money) inside or attached to the golden egg.

5. Letter hunt

Learning can be fun, right? For younger kids who are just learning to spell and read, they’ll enjoy hunting for Easter eggs that each contain a letter to spell out a hidden message. Kids can work together to find the letter-filled eggs and put together the Easter message (“Some bunny loves you,” for example) to earn their Easter prize.

6. Easter egg decoder

This is a great one for a larger group, since kids will need to be broken up into teams. Teams of three or four can hunt to find as many mismatched eggs as they can (where the wrong-colored halves of plastic eggs have been put together). Once the eggs have been found, teams can take apart and reassemble the right-colored halves of the eggs. The first team to “unscramble” their mismatched eggs gets a big, ol’ Easter basket filled with candy.

7. Kid-guided hunt

For any kid who loves to pull a fast one on their parents, they’ll be thrilled to be put in charge of the Easter egg hunt for the day. Ask your kids to hide a basket of candy-filled eggs around the yard and watch as you try your best to find them. Any eggs that aren’t found within a certain time limit — say, 10 minutes — the kids get to keep and eat.

8. Scavenger list

This one’s for elementary school and older kids who are looking for a little challenge: Make over your traditional Easter egg hunt using a scavenger hunt checklist. You can task kids with finding a variety of different objects hidden around the yard (like four blue eggs, six yellow eggs, two chocolate eggs and a chocolate Easter bunny) before time is up.

9. Exercise scavenger hunt

Kids have a lot of energy to burn — we know this much is true. So, if your kiddos have been begging for Easter candy all day long, why not make them work for it? Hide sports-themed Easter eggs that contain an exercise instruction along with a candy treat. Kids will have to do 10 jumping jacks, run a lap around the yard or jog in place before they can move on to the candy in the next egg.

10. Glow-in-the-dark hunt

This one might require a little patience, but it is so worth the wait. If you can get your kids to hold off on their Easter candy extravaganza for most of the day, then the reward will be even sweeter — an Easter egg hunt to find glow-in-the-dark eggs is perfect for older kids looking for a thrill.

11. Easter egg piñata

Or how about you forgo the logistics of an egg hunt altogether and just hit some stuff with a stick? Buying an adorable Easter egg piñata — or making your own — is ideal for smaller kids who may not understand how to hunt for eggs yet, as well as older kids who just want to do something different this year. To make things even more interesting, try your hand at mini piñatas so you can make a special candy-filled creation for each kid (to destroy).

 

Back to School: Dad Creates Awesome Product for Homesick First Year College Coeds

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Continuing in our trend of highlighting parent inventors and creators, we’re showcasing another innovator :

James Oliver, Jr, the dad Blogger from trepLifeDad,  spends some of his times balancing family life with his wife and brand new twins and catapulting a StartUp venture to the next level.

The Brooklyn native’s company WeMontage is the homesickness cure for your first year college kid who needs vibrant reminders of home and family to keep spirits lifted during long spans of time away from the comforts of home and close family.

Oliver put his accounting degree from Morehouse College and MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill to good use after becoming inspired by a HGTV episode that featured an interior designer decorating a wall with photos using a DIY method.

He graduated from a prestigious tech accelerator program, gener8tor, and from there raised capital to launch and fund the company.

Currently, WeMontage is the only website that allows users to upload their favorite photos, create a custom photo collage, and print them out onto large, removable wallpaper with adhesive backing.

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And considering that universities and landlords usually do not allow college dorm rooms  or rental apartment units to have too many holes in the walls, WeMontage’s removable adhesives are perfect!

Besides curing ills of that homesick Freshmen, the decorative walls are also a very unique way to decorate one wall of your new baby’s nursery or even an older child’s play room.

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Recreate nostalgic memories from your wedding, graduation or other precious life moment in an office den, man cave or other work or play room; or in a campus locker room, gym or other area.

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wemontage bellyitchblog.com

And there are various options to cover smaller areas as well. Very cool.

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To create beautiful wall montages, all you need is a straight edge. Oliver recommends having a friend help with installation for larger spaces, but guarantees that the entire process would take under 15 minutes.

Simply, determine what space you want the enlarged images to go, while taking into consideration other colors and decorative elements of the room. The final product is delivered to your door on a canvas-like paper with a matte finish can be attached and removed from flat walls and textured surfaces without causing damage.

And there is social consciousness to Oliver’s company as well. WeMontage recently donated 100 photo montages to college freshmen to fight homesickness.

Nice!

Oliver is working on raising more awareness of his fabulous product and utilizes a team of two part time developers and a publicist to help him get the word out. He was recently featured as Dad of the Week on The Mom’s radio show on Sirius/XM and is about to launch a project with BlogHer and SheKnows following his very moving reading of his Voices of the Year article about his son during this year’s BlogHer conference.

Good stuff.

If you’d like to give it a try for free, head on over to WeMontage and sign up and if you eventually purchase, you get 30% off the product thru next Thursday, August 13th if you use our code “bellyitch30”!

Please send us a photo to see your project once up to contact (at)bellyitchblog.com! Thanks!

 

photos: courtesy WeMontage

 

 

 

 

Celebrities and Pregorexia: All about super skinny pregnant celebrities

Celebrities like Selma Blair, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Richie, Victoria Beckham, Miranda Kerr & Bethenny Frankel who managed to remain thin while pregnant may unwillingly contribute to rising cases of pregorexia among average women.
Sheknows.com spoke with a eating disorder therapist who broke down the rising problem of pregorexia, a condition where a mom-to-be refuses to eat enough for herself and developing baby over fears of weight gain. It even delves into the media and celebrities’ role in contributing to the increase in pregorexia cases nationwide.

In the piece, Sharon Zimbler, a marriage and family therapist posits about the woman who is suffering from this clinical disorder:
The woman may have had an eating disorder before she became pregnant that may or may not have been diagnosed. Oftentimes, women who have “disordered eating” or serious body-image issues may find themselves overwhelmed with the weight gain associated with pregnancy. These women may start developing an eating disorder during their pregnancies.
Media and societal influences affect our ideas of what pregnancy should look like. Unfortunately, we are inundated with images of very thin women barely gaining weight during pregnancy, only to find these same women losing their baby weight soon after the birth of their children. Many women find themselves worried about losing their baby weight before they even have their babies.
Women with established eating disorders suffer from cognitive distortions, which affect their ability to perceive themselves accurately. A woman may think she is eating a certain amount, but may actually be eating less than she realizes, or a woman may think she is not overexercising but actually is.
A woman with an eating disorder lacks perspective on her behaviors. Women with eating disorders have a strong need to control things in their lives. They do this by controlling what they eat or don’t eat. They also control whether they keep the food down. Women with pregorexia feel they have lost control over their bodies.
Continue reading the entire piece in SheKnows.

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Mom Blogger: The “I’m Pregnant” April Fools’ Day prank is insensitive

Did you pull the “I’m pregnant” prank today on your Facebook or social media friends? If so, a mom who has dealt with miscarriage loss in the past wants you to know to stop doing that. 
We spotted the story in SheKnows.com about Becky Thompson of  the blog “Scissors Talk” who explained in a post last Friday, March 28, why she thinks those who pretend to be pregnant as an April Fools’ Day joke are really rubbing salt into the wounds of those who are seriously struggling with getting pregnant, who have had still born babies, or have been subject to bed rest to make sure they can carry a baby to term.
Of her plea to leave “false pregnancies” out of the joking, she wrote, “It is hurtful. It is cruel. And it is insensitive to the nearly 7 million women in America alone who struggle with infertility daily.”
Head on over to her blog to read the rest of the short post which has gone quasi viral and sparked lots of discussion and dialogue online. 
What are your thoughts? Is she being too over-sensitive or are those who pretend to be preggers the insensitive ones?
Heck how about blogs like this one which made two celeb couples the butt of a faux pregnancy prank earlier today? Douche moment for us or just harmless fun?

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