Blogmas: Gift Ideas for Readers

Hello!

For this year, I will be discussing for the reader(s) in your life, because we can be somewhat tricky to buy for on Christmas. I hope to give you some ideas below and this week on Got Meghan’s Blog is full of festive vibes, so I also hope you enjoy what I have for you because I had a lot of fun creating them!

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post discussing interesting topics for my fellow disabled and chronic illness bloggers out there. I thought it would be a great idea to create one of my own and there was awesome feedback from people with and without disabilities! Anyways, I still adore the way I set up that post and wanted to do it again to hopefully give you some ideas into what a reader would REALLY love under their Christmas tree or stocking this year!

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Before we get too into this, I need to make a point and say, if you decide to do any of the ideas below, you should know the person treasures the most. Despite the fact I included Harry Potter, it doesn’t mean EVERYONE enjoys that series! There are thousands of fandoms and products out there so hopefully you’ll be able to find something they love, but also be honest with yourself as well. If you can’t get something because you can’t afford it at this moment, find something else and hopefully they will understand your struggle and move on from it.

Speaking of money, I arranged everything below into their own category as far as price goes, so we have a somewhat cheaper collection of items that don’t go over $25. The middle will have a selection that could change depending on the various qualities and websites; I’d say they might start at $30 and stop around $60 and then the final box is everything I feel can go into the $100+ and those would be things that you would expect in that range too.

Easy on the Budget

Bookmarks
Stickers
Candles
Fairy lights
Coffee Mugs
Teabags/Instant Coffee Cups
Cat Inspired Gifts (or any other animal!)
Earbuds/Headphones

The Prices Can Change

Book Ends
Throw Blankets
Journals
Calendars
Bluetooth Speakers
Harry Potter Items
E-Readers (like NOOK, Kindle, and Audible)

Get Your Checkbooks Out

Book Subscription Boxes (like Book Of The Month, OwlCrate, etc.)
Limited Edition Books
Boxed Sets
Childhood Favorites
Bookshelves

Last summer, I was able to work with a company that specialty is making unique bookmarks and holders, and they are TILIMSA and I really love their products. They are reasonably priced since all of the items are handmade. I’m still so happy they were nice enough to work with someone like me who doesn’t exactly hold a book in the way everybody else does, so they customized their regular items to fit my needs, however, I’m not sure if everyone will be able to get the same treatment. If you are trying to find something for someone with a disability who loves to read, you could try to get into contact with them but again, I’m not sure if it will happen, so please keep this possibility in mind beforehand.

Are there any other ‘bookish’ products I should add to this post? Comment below with your suggestions, plus which money category I need to list it too!

No Pay For Me!

Hello!

Recently, my lovely sister Emily aka Blondie, has been starting her own writing path. She’s been writing personal and thought-provoking articles on The Odyssey. I wouldn’t consider her a “newbie” as she’s written quite a few of blog posts on here. She’s also had a Tumblr in the past, so she’s published certain things on there too, but she’s never done anything like what she’s been putting up lately!

I have always wondered if she’d ever get on the writing train one day. I just figured she’d create a blog, but this was brought to her instead. I’m pretty proud of her for doing this, because she’s like me, she tends to hide away her thoughts and feelings, and if she doesn’t find a way to talk about them, she explodes! So I’m glad she has this outlet to share those things, like she can spread her message about finding love after a bad relationship, and whatever else she decides to share with the readers of the Odyssey community and everybody around the world!

Her first post was about Brandon, her fiance, some of you might know him as “Batman” as in the beginning that’s what I intended to call him on here. The article was called, To The One Who Saved Me. The next week she published one about spreading awareness and helping families, friends, and the victims of domestic abuse. It’s titled What You See Through The Eyes Of A Victim. If you’d like to read any other posts, just click her name on the top of the posts I’ve included and it’ll redirect you to the main menu of her articles.

Being a writer isn’t all that’s cracked up to be though! We do have our own critics – some more than others! We always over analyze if we should discuss this topic or not. And of course, she is also getting her own haters too! Thank god, she already has a thick layer of skin and she can deal with the trolls. I’m not saying, they won’t bother her at all, I mean, she still has feelings, but she doesn’t let other people’s words control her as they would for me.

One thing that is different between the two of us, she explained that Odyssey does in fact pay their writers, if they get to a certain point of popularity. Whereas I am not getting paid for any of mine. Now she didn’t exactly say she’s been getting money from the site, but she might one day if her popularity grows in the future!

I’ve had a lot of different people tell me in the last three years that I needed to get paid for my articles, but I just don’t want to. Which is interesting considering I’m the first person to defend a blogger that wants to monetize from the content they put on their site. I don’t have a problem with it, I just feel like I’m not ready for all that yet.

I think one of the biggest reasons why I don’t want to get paid is because of the dreaded word, “deadlines” every once in a while I do get a deadline for Disability Horizons and I had one every month for Bloggernation Magazine, but with those I didn’t get hammered if I didn’t have something done. All I had to do was ask for more time and usually I got that, I had maybe another full week to get things finished.

So no pay for me at this time.

I think maybe down the line I might change my mind, but right now? Nope. I know everybody means well, but I have to be ready for that next step. The whole thing is about having the experience and what my nana has explained to me is that it’s getting me out there and people will start to pay attention after a while. I’m also afraid that I’ll lost what is fun about blogging once I get to a certain stage. That’s why I am fine with doing more opportunities with other bloggers and/or digital magazines, I have made a whole section about that underneath my “About” called Press Pack if you want to check that out. It’s basically my blogging resume! It has all of my previous work on there and I’ve added some categories that I am comfortable writing about if you already an idea for a subject! If you’d like for me to write something for you, send me an email and let’s work something out that we both like!

Thanks for hearing me out!

What do you think about bloggers getting paid for different pieces?

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Learning How To Count Money… Again!

Hello peeps!

Today, I am going to talk about something that I feel I should discuss. One of the things that folks seem to think is that people with disabilities can’t do a lot of things that they need to do for when they’re older and honestly I would slightly agree with that statement. There are a lot of people and kids, who will never be able to comprehend certain things that they were taught in school.

Everybody calls me an inspiration for the fact that I can do things with my feet. Here I am, out of school altogether, going to welcome the age of 25 soon and I still don’t know how to do either one. I take pride in never backing down of different challenges. However, there were still two subjects that I was never able to understand: money and the measure systems. There’s nothing to feel ashamed about, it just means that I’m not perfect like everybody seems to think I am.

My teachers and aides gave me a lot of flack about it because it’s something that everybody should know how to do, but I didn’t. I remember everytime an aide or my mom would show me something, it just wouldn’t register in my head.

So one day, I had my mom count up all of my change that I’ve been saving in my little purse. I sat on my bed while she whispered to herself and counted each coin. I felt bad for having her do that. The next day I went over to my nana’s and I finally asked her something that I desperately needed to learn. I asked if she could teach me how to count money. She teaches me different things, she’s basically the reason why I’ve become this cleaning genie! I want to do everything that a normal housewife would do. I’d be the perfect domestic goddess one day I swear!

And she figured it would be better to draw it out. Luckily, she had a small cardboard, it was as big as a piece of paper and she started tracing around the quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies into rows and wrote out how much they would be at the end. Like, four quarters equals a dollar and ten pennies equals 10 cents. I decided to write out what each coin had on the back of them so I could (hopefully) remember them, so that’s what the bottom of this picture means!

After she got done with that, she started to show me some examples. Do you remember those long, written out math problems you had to answer on a practice sheet or test? She used one of those questions and I thought my head was going to explode! This one here was pretty simple, I put my original answer next to it, but as I was thinking about it more, I realized that there was another way too!

How much change would you need for 28 cents? A quarter and eight pennies or a quarter, one nickel with three pennies!

I dreaded ever having to count my own change that’s why I just preferred to have dollars, but that’s what we get to deal with the next time I come over. God help me!  

I was pretty proud of myself, because while I clean for her I take the extra change I find and I collected 14 cents, so as my mom was putting me into my room after we left, I started to think how much money I had now and I only had to check with my mom once after I confused myself again. Honestly, I think I have over analyzed the whole counting money thing. If I can just stop multiplying when I need to add, things might be a whole lot easier for me!

Is there something that you’ve never been able to learn that was taught in school? 

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Perfect Stocking Stuffers Under $20 From Wal-Mart

I’ve been looking on other blog sites to try to draw inspiration with their Christmas or “Blogmas” posts. I decided to opt out of writing every day in December since in the colder months, I find myself slowly getting into the whole Christmas spirit. Anyways, while drawing some inspiration, I’ve had it between writing my favorite Christmas sweaters or what were the perfect stocking stuffers this year. I decided on the stuffers as I thought would be fairly fun thinking of others and what would be cheap. So I found all these items shown above from Wal-Mart and they’re all under $20! I also decided to draw some inspiration from my friends what would be perfect stocking stuffers too! I even went to as far to asking my dad what his favorite gift he got in his stocking as a kid was, he didn’t remember. He wasn’t much fun.My mom said she used to get apples and oranges, now at first I thought this was a term of a game, but nope, they were actual apples, oranges and grapefruits inside their stockings! My grandparents did this once or twice when we were younger too! I had a lot of answers my Facebook and that helped out a lot too!

Everybody has a few common answers: candy, lotions and socks! Not very many people said gift cards. I think my favorite answers were candles, scratch off tickets, and my Uncle David always has to be included in some fashion. His answer was pizza. Unless somebody has put pizza rolls inside his stocking then I could see it being done but I know he was just kidding around! Anyways, I remember in my stockings growing up, especially teenagers years til now. CDs, movies, and candy were the biggest hits with us! You could always tell my dad got something for me because he knows what kind of candy we each like the most. He used to get me the bubblicious brand of gum. He knows how much I love the good stuff to blow those giant bubbles. He always agreed with me when it came to that stuff being the best and I’d get a couple of packets every year at Christmas time.

Now back to the items above! It was kind of difficult to find something for every age and both genders. At one point I had started off looking for something small enough to fit inside a fairly medium size stocking, but by the third thing I found I realized that the next one wouldn’t fit into a stocking even if you shoved it as far back as possible, it just wasn’t going to fit. This item was a Olaf toy that sang “In Summer” if you squeezed his nose or something. Realistically, this would not fit inside a normal stocking. So out that one went and I got back on track, but I still think it was a terrific gift and it was also under $20 too! I selected items that were both a want and need in everyday life. So the watch and clutch/wallet would be on the “need” and the rest is on the “want” as what a normal child or teenager would want to get for Christmas. Of course, if it came in what your child likes the most, you should get it in what they like and not what I like. I selected in familiar brands that I like and what I think is “popular” since I don’t know all the trends very well, I went with my gut on parts. All items above I’m including links if you wanted to order online or not. Just to make things easier on you! Click each item to bring up the link!

1. The Vampire Diaries – Season One ($12.96)
2. Leopard Cellphone Pouch ($3.00)
3. Disney’s Frozen Movie Soundtrack ($10.00)
4. Hershey’s Kiss Sliver Necklace ($20.00 and this was the cheapest one!!)
5. Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles Lip Balm ($4.88)
6. My Little Pony Body Shimmer Gift Set ($5.00)
7. Men’s Digital Watch ($14.99)
8. Peppermint Holiday Candy Canes ($2.48)

Money Doesn’t Last, But Memories Do

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How many of you have always wished to have a million dollars and then started listing off different things you would do with that amount of money you’d receive after the government takes out the taxes of it. Some would say give it to charity, others say move into a bigger house and have cooler cars. Everybody’s got their own wishes. My Papaw is always playing the lottery every week. He never misses it. Every Wednesday and Saturday, we know that sometime he’ll be calling in the mornings wanting for somebody to get his tickets and figure out if it’s the lucky ticket or not. In my family, we all have different things we want. I asked a two-part question on both my Facebook and Twitter and I got some responses, I know my Papaw wants to go back to Hawaii. My nana wants to go to San Diego and see the beach. My mom also wants to go to Hawaii too. Out of all of the responses I got from my Facebook and Twitter, nobody could have topped my Uncle David’s reply. He said he wanted to go anywhere that has a Pizza Hut. Technically I shouldn’t had wanted anything better than this kind of response because it defines my Uncle as he nicknamed the “Pizzaman” in our family. My blogger friends Aftab and Ella said they wanted to go to Bora Bora and New Zealand.

My nana and I were actually discussing about this, about what we would do if it ever happened. Honestly, I don’t want to win the lottery, because to me, it doesn’t matter how many things you get or go with the money, I don’t think you’ll ever be happy. Money doesn’t last forever, one way or another you’ll run out whether if you’re greedy and spending it all or being generous and giving it away. We were discussing about the one thing that we’d go to do it with the money and I indulged in the wish for a moment. Where would I go? I know I’ve done a bunch of posts about the travels on my bucket list, but if I could just go to one place, where would I go? It’s honestly a tough choice to make when everybody wants to travel the whole world, but when you think about distance and a place were you’d truly love and be able to enjoy yourself. I kind of had to separate this out a bit from being in the US and internationally. So to start off, I’d always wanted to be  food tourist. I’ve watched too many shows and read too many blog posts to ignore myself from wanting to go to a place and just tour the different restaurants and bakeries. The first place I’d go to in the US is Portland, OR. I’ve just heard so many things about how the chefs there being really unique with their dishes but being able to stand out amongst the rest is difficult, that I’d like to just enjoy the different eats and then of course blog about it afterwards. Now internationally, my heart wants to go to Poland. Mostly to see my friend Ania but I want to learn all I can about her country too. If I couldn’t go there, I’d go to Ireland as my second best.

As I’ve mentioned, there was a second part we discussed. My nana and I are in wheelchairs. She has told me about this fan of Adam Lambert, basically paying out the wazoo for him to play a small concert for her and family and friends. So she’s always told me that if they ever won the lottery that she’d want somebody to do that for her and get Adam Lambert to play for her, but without all of the people in front of her and the screams of the crowd. So that leads into my next part. If you had a million dollars, and you could have a concert all to yourself or a normal gig with a big crowd, who would you chose? It can be alive or dead too. My friends Ania chose Queen but with only Freddie Mercury. Mandy had said she wants Stone Temple Pilots but only with Scott Weiland back as lead vocalist. I really liked my mom’s response as I figured she’d choose Prince, but she wants old Prince. Whether that means Prince & The Revolution? I have no idea. Honestly, if she ever got that I’d probably go with her. When my nana asked for my answer I actually took some time to think about it, because I love a lot of international bands. A lot of them never come close to me. So of course, I was thinking of distance. It wasn’t about which group was the furthest, but which one I love the most and who would put on a breath-taking show. My answer was clear, it would be Within Temptation. I’ve seen their live shows on YouTube and I get so memorized by the whole performance. The flames of pyro and the love you feel between the audience and members of the band. It just seems like a great choice!

So now it’s your turn, if you could choice any place and if you had the money to pay for it – where would you go? Plus, if you could see anybody live (alive or dead) who would you chose?