CityMama™

Zojirushi Rice Cooker Giveaway (two of 'em!) over on CityMama's Stuff People Send Me

Zojirushi is a brand that I literally have grown up with and I'm delighted to work with them to give away TWO amazing rice cookers.

Head on over to CityMama's Stuff People Send Me (my review site) to enter to win! My disclosure is there as well.

People send me free stuff and sometimes I write about it

Check out the latest links to Free Stuff People Send Me.

New reviews up on CityMama's Stuff People Send Me

I know your time is valuable and so is mine. Here are four bite-sized reviews of some great free stuff people sent me recently.

And I promise I will get to my backlog of recipes (and actually publish them) this week.

It's finally come to this.

CityMama's™ Stuff People Send Me.

I have resisted creating a review blog for a long time (years) because, frankly, I think they are lame and distracting from the real content and purpose of a blog. Plus, does anyone really care what I think about books or detergent? PR companies seem to think so otherwise I wouldn't get an average of 30-50 PR pitches in my in box a day. This morning, while sipping my hot caffeinated beverage, I deleted 12 pitches right off the bat.

I've come to realize that there are good reasons why it makes sense to put reviews on a separate blog. Sometimes I get opportunities to review products worth more than what my ad contract stipulates I can accept, and I've decided that rather than declining these opportunities—if the products enhance my life, my family's life or have the potential to enhance the lives of CityMama readers—I want to be able to talk about them without turning CityMama into a giant advertisement. I have talked about stuff I like on CityMama since its inception, but it's mostly been stuff I like that I buy with my own hard-earned cheddar. Now I have a place to talk about the stuff I don't buy.  (Like I have the time.)

I have vowed to do my reviews in my own honest, no-nonsense, "CityMama style." My posts will be short and to the point. I am not here to do a company's marketing writing for them, hence the pointed posts, but if something worth talking about (the good, the bad, and the ugly) crosses my path, I will share it. And the reviews will be woven into the fabric of the interwebs forever. Being clear about why I am talking about a particular item is the name of the game, which is why I am making no bones about what I doing starting with the title of the blog.

So will anyone care? I guess we'll find out. Please let me know what you think!