Category Archives: Giveaways

TGIF and Giveaway winner

People who work in "regular" jobs are always excited about Fridays.  I enjoy them too, because occasionally I’ll have a weekend free.  I like Mondays too though, because that’s a really light work day.  But I do work tomorrow, as well as later today, so it’s a little less exciting. 

First off:  the winner of a free copy of Running of the Bride from my giveaway: 

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Comment #7 was Mandy!  Mandy, please email me your address (hannahviolin at gmail.com) as you didn’t leave an email with your comment.  Everybody else, thanks for entering.  I would recommend reading the book anyway :)  And there will be more free books and other stuff in the future!

I’m hungry and sweaty right now.  I ran about 4 miles this morning and it was amazing!  The weather was perfect, somehow, just around 70 degrees.  I don’t know if we are in a time warp and it’s actually November, but I’m happy with it.  If only the weather would stay this way…anyway, after my run I had to do some errands and now I’m blogging, and I realized that I smell and should really take a shower.  I’ll get right on that.

My mom posted this picture on facebook:  Chris and I on moving day. 

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She is the master of taking pictures at the greatest, most attractive times!  Then again, I’m posting it here, aren’t I.  Maybe I should reexamine my life?

Last but not least.  Did you guys see this?  It’s been floating around facebook.

What are your plans for the weekend?  I’m looking forward to dinner at the Shaved Duck and a nice long run.  You?

Running of the Bride

I promised you all another book giveaway, and I’m about to deliver.  Happy Monday! (And congrats to Melissa for winning my last giveaway—I used a random number generator and it came up with comment #4. I’ll be using a similar technique this time.)

I was sent a copy of “Running of the Bride: My Frenzied Quest to Tie the Knot, Tear Up the Dance Floor and Figure Out Why My 15 Minutes of Fame Included Commercial Breaks” by Rachel Eddey.  Yes, that’s a very long title, but really it’s just titled Running of the Bride with the rest in subtitle, if that helps.

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As a recent bride, you can bet I was excited to dive into this book.  It’s based on the author’s actual experience, but reads like a light, humorous, chick lit book.  I really enjoyed reading it (actually read it twice), and I think you will too…  I don’t want to spoil the book for you, so I’ll just summarize—in a nutshell, Rachel got engaged to her boyfriend, and then they only had four months to plan her wedding.  If you recall, Chris and I got engaged in February, started wedding planning in May for a January wedding, and a lot of people freaked out over our timeline.  So you can imagine how ridiculous it was for Rachel, and she lives in New York City.

The other fun part of reading the book was that I had a few email exchanges with Rachel, the ACTUAL AUTHOR OF A BOOK.  Which is SO cool…I’d love to be a published author (that means I’d have to write a book, which seems like a lot of work, and so even MORE props to her and to all authors.)  Anyway, she seems like somebody that I would totally be friends with, plus after reading my blog entry about knee “injuries”, she sent me a picture of HER knee, which she bruised in a 5k mud race.  (Speaking of, who wants to run one of those with me? I think it’s time.)

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Rachel told me I could use the picture if it gave her street cred.  I think it totally does, right?  Don’t you want to read her book even more now? (Honestly I really liked her book, knee bruise not withstanding.)

Oh, and here’s the blurb from the website/book jacket:

When Rachel’s handsome studio exec boyfriend proposes to her on the Sex and the City movie set, she can’t fathom the dizzying adventure about to begin. Accepting a once-in-a-lifetime venue deal helps their budget, but it puts them on a crash course to get married in just four months — and time isn’t their only challenge. They battle a wacky assortment of vendors, including a hair stylist who fakes a car accident and a makeup artist channeling Marilyn Manson, all while testing their love amid tastings and tulle.

Using her nervous energy productively, Rachel enters every contest she can find, winning diamond earrings, a honeymoon, a photographer, and two wedding gowns, and her pop culture obsession lands the entire wedding party on two hit reality TV shows. There’s just one problem as the clock ticks down: Her staunch perfectionism and fear of dancing threaten to derail everything. She has to redefine perfect and embrace the mistakes—or risk losing it all.

So who wants to win a free copy of Running of the Bride?  (giveaway now closed!)

Three ways to enter (separate comment for each, if you do more than one!)

1. Leave a comment.  About anything, but about a knee injury would be most awesome.  I reserve the right to award an extra entry for any particularly awesome pictures.

2. Tweet “I want to win a copy of Running of the Bride from hannahviolin.me @hannahviolin” and leave a comment saying you did so.

3. Like the Running of the Bride Facebook page here, and leave a comment saying you did so.

Woo-hoo, let’s get this contest going!!  You have until this Friday, August 10, at noon CDT to enter.  And if you don’t win, you can always buy the book the regular way.

Mission Possible (book giveaway!)

I was recently given a paid opportunity to read and report on the book Mission Possible by Eva Moskowitz and Arin Lavinia.  We’ll take a break from our regularly scheduled "Hannah"-centric, (completely narcissistic and wonderful) reading and further our minds!  One lucky reader will win a copy of the book.

(Contest is closed, winner was comment #4 using a random number generator, congrats to melissa, and thanks to all for entering!)

The following is a sponsored post: I was compensated for this post.  All opinions expressed are my own, however.

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First a brief (well, sort of brief) synopsis of the book I was asked to read:

Mission Possible, by Eva Moskowitz and Arin Lavinia, tells the reader how the Success Academies work.  It starts with the background and history of the schools, and then goes into great detail about the philosophies, priorities, and principles that the schools use to create success.

Chapter One is titled: What’s wrong with American Schools?  Most people agree that the American public school system is broken but what people don’t agree on is how to fix it.  The book argues that the main problem is that the bar is set very low for everybody involved:  Students, Teachers, and Parents.  In order to succeed, the bar must be set high and the competition should be fierce. 

Chapter Two talks about how school should be a magical place, somewhere students WANT to be.  How does this happen?  By involving everybody, by staying very busy, learning all kinds of different things every day, being very hands on with projects, lots of field trips, going above and beyond.  It’s the little things, like keeping the facilities clean and welcoming, and it’s the big things, like just assuming all of the children will go to college and teaching with that assumption, and by always making the lessons challenging and interesting.  The parents are required to be involved with their children’s learning, from helping to their homework, to observing classes, to staying in close touch with the teachers and the principals.

Chapter Three tells us that it is all about the adults.  The teachers, the principals, the parents are all important to success.  The schools provide hundreds of hours of training to the teachers every year.  The teachers are also given plenty of time during the school day for planning and lesson preparation.  The better prepared they are to teach the better they will teach. (does this mean the teachers don’t have to take much work home? I presume this would create a much better sense of job satisfaction…)

Chapter Four is about speed.  Rather than teaching slow enough that all the children can get it, and boring half of the students, the academies encourage the teachers to teach as quickly as possible, setting the bar very high and encouraging the students to meet the high standards and learn quickly.  In fact everything at the school happens in a speedy manner.  When the principal observes a teacher, the teacher doesn’t have to wait several weeks for the results but instead he or she learns immediately what they can improve upon. 

Chapter Five goes into more detail about raising the bar and teaching with joyous rigor.  (Side note: So far this has been the biggest point that resonated with me:  I personally love to teach with high standards, both for myself and for my students, and I always learn best when the bar is set high as well.  I love the idea that the students will meet your expectations, so set them VERY high!) The chapter talks about how sometimes if the bar is set too high, the teacher might have to teach something again another day, but that is it better to try it at a very high level first and fail than bore many of the kids and lose that magic.  Most important is that you never talk down to the students.  They are short, not stupid!

Chapter Six is about the importance of reading, and really getting the students to understand what they are reading.  It goes into great detail about how the teachers prepare for class ahead of time so that they can really help the students.  Chapter Seven does the same thing but with writing. 

Chapter Eight sums it all up.  I suppose really one could just read Chapter Eight!

As part of the post, I was asked to think about and answer the following writing prompt:

Stagnation, being unable to accomplish one’s job at a high level, is one of the greatest sources of low teacher morale.  Why do you think this country treats teaching so differently than it does other professions?

The adage "those who can’t, teach" has been a great disservice.  People seem to feel that those teaching children do so because they love children, seen as a weakness, or because they aren’t good at anything else.  After all, how hard could it be to teach something "easy" to children?  Since people think it is easy, they also think teachers shouldn’t be paid much, because it’s easy to teach children, and also, isn’t teaching children a silly job, just a step above babysitting? 

The problem is of course that it is exceedingly difficult to be a great teacher.  Especially when you are fighting against the existing stereotypes in our culture that teaching is both easy and unimportant.  Yet the teachers are the ones being blamed for our children not learning…and everybody is fighting about it rather than working together to make things better.

How many times have we heard the expression, those who can’t, teach?  As a teacher myself, I know this is simply not true.  If I couldn’t do something, how on earth could I teach it?  But conversely, even if I can do something, how do I teach someone else how to do it?  That is one of the things that many teachers have to learn on their own, but in the Success Academies the teachers are taught how to teach better, and this learning continues through their careers.  The teachers are constantly being challenged to do better and are actually given the time and tools to improve.  I believe that this must create very high morale.  They don’t just come out of college or graduate school, start teaching, and then occasionally take a class.  They are constantly being taught new and better ways to teach, and being helped and encouraged along the way.  To me it sounds demanding but exciting, and that’s a great place to be.

Okay, now for the fun. One lucky reader will receive his or her OWN copy of Mission Possible! I can only ship to addresses in the US, so I apologize to any other readers.  If you would like a copy, please comment below.  For an additional entry, please tweet "I want to win a copy of Mission Possible from hannahviolin.me @hannahviolin #readmissionpossible" and leave another comment telling me you did so.  Good luck!  I will randomly choose a winner on Monday, August 6.  (Open to US and Canadian readers only.)

CONTEST IS CLOSED!