Gold Rings Necklace — the Quintet by Lemonade Handmade

I’ve mentioned this necklace before, we gave one to each of the attendees to symbolize the five Life List goals they hoped to accomplish in the coming year. (Nicole did a lovely write up about it.) I love the necklace for its simplicity, and I like the idea of five golden rings being little commitments to yourself. I’ve been wearing mine every day since the Summit. Lovely.

Every year, we have an artist make limited edition prints to commemorate the weekend. This year Alma and Mike Loveland of Ollibird.com did block prints of the vintage blankets we lug onsite to keep everyone warm.

Alma, whose yellow sweater you may remember from a previous post, did the illustrations.

Mike hand painted the blankets for a little pop of color.

Mike and Alma teach all kinds of art and computer classes and they live in the Salt Lake City area. In fact, they’re hosting an art weekend in Salt Lake at this very moment, so head over if you’re in town.

The finished prints each featured a different color, but yours will be plum.

To enter, please tell us about your proudest accomplishment in comments. And the drawings are still open for our the Mighty Summit Giftbag and the Summit Necklace and Brooch giveaway, so throw your hat in there too.

Fine print: Please only leave one comment for each giveaway, because it’s the nice thing to do, and also because multiple entries will be disqualified. I’ll use random.org to select the winner, and I’ll announce who won at the top of this post and in a separate post next Thursday.

Textured Drop Necklace By Feisty Elle

Every time I wear this piece by Leslie Yang, I get compliments. I’ve actually had people stop me in the street to ask where I got it. It’s made of bamboo, so it’s surprisingly lightweight. I don’t even notice I have it on, and I love how effortlessly it elevates an outfit.

Can You Hear Me Now Brooch by Mama’s Little Babies

Mama’s Little Baby brooches are so witty. This guy is my favorite, but I also feel affectionate toward the artichoke and Gunther, the World Famous Lion Tamer.

Cute, right? I know!

To enter, please leave a piece of advice for your younger self. And don’t forget to check back this week for more contests.

Fine print: Please only leave one comment, because it’s the nice thing to do, and also because multiple entries will be disqualified. I’ll use random.org to select the winner, and I’ll announce who won at the top of this post and in a separate post next Wednesday.

Tieks by Gavrieli

I bought a pair of these perfect ultimate travel shoes a while back, and they’re one of my new favorite things. Tieks fold in half so you can stuff them in your purse, but the quality is amazing. They come in all sorts of candy colors and metallics — plus they pack flat and slip off easily when you’re heading through airport security. The winner gets to choose any pair for $135 and under. I recommend orange.

Photojojo’s Tokyo Dreamer Strap

I can’t believe how long it took me to replace my ugly, logoed camera strap. Photojojo’s Tokyo Dreamer strap really dresses up your camera, and even has a little pocket for extra memory cards or a lens cloth.

Lola Epiphanie Camera Bag by Maile Wilson

Maile was an attendee at this year’s Summit, and she brought along her bright Epiphanie camera bags. I use mine as my everyday purse and have finally stopped busting expensive lenses and gadgets by wrapping them in hand towels and shoving them into an un-padded purse. Now I can have my SLR, my flip, and my phone(s) with me without anything banging together and cracking or getting scratched by my keys.

And that’s it for today. Pretty good, huh? To enter to win, please leave a comment about something on your Life List.

Now for the fine print: Please only leave one comment, because it’s the nice thing to do, and also because multiple entries will be disqualified. I’ll use random.org to select the winner, and I’ll announce who won at the top of this post and in a separate post next Tuesday.

Photojojo’s Fuji Instax Minis

Did you win? You did if your name is Amber and you’re commenter number 202! Please report to the front desk, Amber. You have clearly done some very nice things for people, in this or other lifetimes.

As for the rest of you, holy holy there were a lot of you. Thank you for entering and for reading. And stay tuned for another big giveaway soon. The Mighty Summit is in a few weeks, and we’ll be setting aside one of those gift bags as well.

Hello. Would you like a free Palm Pre Plus, and $300 worth of Verizon Wireless service? Yeah you would. Let’s discuss that further.

As you know, I’ve been partnering with Verizon this month to knock a few things off my Mighty List, and as part of the campaign, I’ve been using a Palm Pre Plus.

The idea was to see if the phone would be useful to me, and to find out whether Verizon would be better than my iPhone service provider. Of course, my iPhone service doesn’t work at my desk and garbles half my phone calls, so I’m a little angry about that. Angry in a “hurl my phone against the wall” kinda way. But I can be demanding when I’m paying through the nose for something that doesn’t work. We’ll discuss that more later.

For now, let’s talk about that giveaway. Verizon is offering a $600 Palm Pre Plus for free. It looks like this:

The winner will also get $300 of free service from Verizon, which looks like this:

Well, technically cellular service is invisible. It’s more something you sense in your soul when you don’t feel like hucking your phone out the window during a conference call. So in that way, Verizon is sort of like inner peace, but with less yoga involved.

I’m not required to review the Palm, and frankly I didn’t plan to, but a few of you said you were pondering new phone purchases and asked me what I thought. So here’s the stuff I liked:

Making calls. Primarily, I enjoy using my Palm as a telephone that will call people when I dial their numbers — people with whom I can have complete conversations until we mutually decide it is time to hang up. I carried both my iPhone and Palm with me while friends got used to my new number, and I can’t tell you how many times I called friends on the iPhone so they’d recognize my number, and then had to immediately call back on the Palm so they could hear what I was saying.

Dropping it in soup. So. Right after I activated my Palm, I kind of dropped it in soup. I was freaking out, thinking I’d have to admit I’m a terrible phone parent and ask for another phone. But then I just dried it off with my napkin and it kept on working. I did have to scrape some dried soup out of the charger port with a safety pin, but otherwise it didn’t even cough. Nice.

Taking photos. The phone takes killer photos, you guys. Here’s what a snapshot looks like straight out of the phone with no Photoshop intervention:

See what I mean? (Bryan took that, by the way. Thanks, B!)

Also, it has a flash! On the phone! Which means you can use it just like a regular point and shoot without having to lug around another gadget.

Making videos. You can record video on your phone. Do you hear me? We are living in the future, y’all:

Typing. I know not everyone agrees, but I like the tactile feedback of buttons when I’m typing. Some people find the buttons too small, but I didn’t have that problem. In fact, I actually used my phone to send email for the first time in my life because the email is so well integrated and it’s so easy to type.

Applying lipstick. Yeah. The phone has a compact on the back:

(Photo from the Palm Info Center, which has a detailed review if you’re looking for one.)

When I first saw it, I was irritated. Like, “Oh, I’m a girl! I want a girl phone that helps with my lipgloss.” Then I used that stupid mirror three times before I even activated the phone. My makeup has been flawless for the last month. Curse you, user testers and your uncanny insight into my demographically predictable needs!

Downsides? Because I use the camera and video constantly, I run the battery down pretty fast, which can be frustrating. So you might want some sort of battery backup if you’re not religious about charging your phone every night. Also, I tend to be an early adopter of mobile applications, and betas aren’t always available on the Palm. I realize that may not be a problem for… most of the world, but there it is.

All in all, this is a good phone on a great service. I actually think it’s a smart choice for bloggers because the camera and video are superior and it’s much easier to type, so you can do mobile updates easily.

The Giveaway

If you’d like a Palm Pre Plus for yourself, not to mention a lot of free service from Verizon Wireless, please leave a comment below promising that you will not use your new phone to text while driving, and that you will not drop it in soup within 24 hours of receipt.

Now for the fine print: You must be 18 or over to enter and live in the U.S. Multiple entries will be disqualified. Comments will be open until Wednesday morning March 31, 2009 at 11 a.m. PST. I’ll choose winners randomly using Random.org, and will announce later that day. Good luck! My fingers are crossed for you.

Nichole, who was commenter 184, and
Lisa Bickmore, who was commenter 450

Congratulations, Nichole and Lisa! Once you’ve been verified by ePrize, you’ll get the goods in the mail. Hooray for you!

I’m partnering with Xbox to do a giveaway around the theme of “staycations.” The idea is that we should stop waiting for some distant day when we have the time and money to “get away,” and start having fun now, right where we are. By playing video games, for example. Up for grabs is two packages for two winners. It’s $500 worth of good stuff: