The Tools of the Trade. Oh Yeah, and a Giveaway

So, pretend that you're a cook and you have a food blog. Now imagine that you get a note from a prestigious office supply company asking if you'd like to review something and do a giveaway on it.

Once you stopped giggling, let's say that you read through the e-mail and see that the item to be reviewed is sticky notes. If you're me, your eyes immediately go to this:

These are all over my desk. No, I take that back. They're all over my house. Sticky notes are a tool of my trade. I use them with abandon. There's a good chance that each magazine I go through has 20-25 little pieces of paper peeking out the top. Many times the pieces of paper will have little notes on them letting me know if it's a dessert, something that's a must-make during the month, etc.

Since you're now seriously considering a review of an office product on your food blog, think a little bit more.  You know that you throw any of your magazines away, right? I don't. Not even after I finish a whole month with them. Most still have a few sticky notes in them and all of them have annotations with the recipes I've already made.

My sister told me that she had thrown away all her food magazines because they were just taking up space on the shelves and that after so long all the recipes seem to just be small adaptations of each other (not her exact words, but the gist is there).

I've only been doing this for a year and a half, but I'm still making brand new discoveries every time I open pages, whether in new or years old magazines. In fact, come November I'll be matching up the October/November 2011 Fine Cooking issue with the November 2008 Gourmet magazine.

Because of that, I don't want my magazines to look like this anymore.

And that one's not bad (I just wanted to make sure that the magazine showed page 37. Yeah, that's me.

You see, Avery® has a line of sticky notes. Someone that works there recently had an "aha" moment and came up with the idea of making the sticky notes transparent. Aha! Great idea.

I'm constantly moving the sticky tabs out of the way because they're covering up text. I would definitely use a transparent note on a page instead of marking all over it.

Do you see that blue stripe up there? That was made with this:

It's the only highlighter that I use. It's one of my quirks. No one's allowed to touch this highlighter. The cap only comes off after I've chosen a recipe, put the tab there, made the dish, photographed it, eaten it, thought for a long time, written and posted a review and am ready to mark the whole process of that recipe as finished. But it means that now I have a blue line through my magazine recipe. I'm getting tired of that. It's time to come up with a new system.

So, I've been using these Avery® See-Through Sticky Notes and I have to tell you that I like them. A lot. That highlighter; it doesn't smudge or run. Pen doesn't either. Pencil sticks. As does my Uniball (another quirk).  They're thinner than regular paper. They don't curl up or fall off. Have I mentioned that I'm liking these notes a lot.

You know what I like even more? The fact that Avery is running a sweepstakes on their facebook page that will donate 100,000 Box Tops for Education points to a K-8 school. Dudette goes to school. I want my school to get those points.

So, I'm supporing Avery® in this. And, I'd like you to as well, if you don't mind. If you don't have kids, let me know and I'll send you Dudette's school information. You can send the points to her place. I'm sure you know someone who has kids who go to school somewhere.

Avery® is also providing three packets of See-Through Sticky Notes to two winners. If you have a need for these and would like to give them a try, all you have to do is leave a comment and let me know how you'd use them. Ok, you can have a second entry if you like me enough to "like" me on facebook and then come back and tell me. Ok, fine, you want a third way? So demanding. Just tweet the giveaway and let me know you've done that and you'll get entered a third time.

You have until Saturday, October 8, noon EDT to enter. I'll select the two winners using random.org. Unfortunately, this is only open to U.S. residents.

No matter what you do though, please enter the sweepstakes and let's get some points to help schools out, ok?