"After" Book Giveaway

This item was provided during a promotional campaign.

Thoughts & opinions provided are mine, honest & true. 

In January I introduced you to Anna Todd's newly published book "After", the 1st in a 4-book series.  If you'll remember, she wrote this book entirely through the Wattpad app on her phone and has found huge success!  

Here is a brief synopsis of the story...

There was the time before Tessa met Hardin, and then there’s everything AFTER... Life will never be the same. #Hessa

Tessa is a good girl with a sweet, reliable boyfriend back home. She’s got direction, ambition, and a mother who’s intent on keeping her that way. 
But she’s barely moved into her freshman dorm when she runs into Hardin. With his tousled brown hair, cocky British accent, tattoos, and lip ring, Hardin is cute and different from what she’s used to. 
But he’s also rude—to the point of cruelty, even. For all his attitude, Tessa should hate Hardin. And she does—until she finds herself alone with him in his room. Something about his dark mood grabs her, and when they kiss it ignites within her a passion she’s never known before. 
He’ll call her beautiful, then insist he isn’t the one for her and disappear again and again. Despite the reckless way he treats her, Tessa is compelled to dig deeper and find the real Hardin beneath all his lies. He pushes her away again and again, yet every time she pushes back, he only pulls her in deeper. 
Tessa already has the perfect boyfriend. So why is she trying so hard to overcome her own hurt pride and Hardin’s prejudice about nice girls like her? 

Unless…could this be love? - See more at: http://books.simonandschuster.com/After/Anna-Todd/The-After-Series/9781476792484#sthash.wugZVSpt.dpuf

Sound like a book you'd love to read?  Today, we are offering a super simple giveaway of a copy of the book.  Please enter through the Rafflecopter widget below, and good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Math Needs To Be Fun Sometimes (Product Review)

This is a sponsored post via USFamilyGuide.

Freemples received product to review, 

but shares opinions & information honestly.

I'm a little delayed in sharing my review of the web-based computer program, Splash Math, with you. If you'll remember, we first introduced you to Splash Math right before Christmas and were looking forward to giving it a try. In this instance my procrastination is to your benefit as I can now say with for certain that the game has staying power...

I should start by telling you that our kids are math lovers.  This is bizarre for my husband and I-we both struggled in math all the way through college-but, hooray, go kids that don't know math isn't supposed to be super easy!  Loving math is not a prerequisite to loving Splash Math, though.  The only requirement for that is being a kid who loves a talking hippo...what kid wouldn't think was fun?

Math lovers or not, as a parent it's hard to tell a child his screen time is over when he's pleading with you, "No, Mom, just let me do 20 more problems!"  

But Splash Math is not just a game, and this is what I love about it.  During set-up, you select your child's grade level.  It was encouraging to find the scope and sequence follows very closely with what my 2nd grader knows how to do and/or is learning.  As homeschoolers, that's been great because I can let him play knowing it's not too easy or too hard.  But if your child is in the school system, it's also a great way to look at what they're learning at school and then give them extra practice on that math topic at home.  Once logged in, you can work from the beginning and go straight through, or pick and choose which problems you want to work on.  

This short video will give you a better look at how the program actually works...

As you could see in the video, there is a game aspect with each question answered correctly earning points that can then be used to purchase animals to play with in an aquarium or the jungle.  Honestly, that's the only part of the Splash Math program that underwhelms me.  My 7- and 4-yr-old love it and race through their 20 questions to get to play with the crabs and giraffes again.  But it's pretty elementary, and I can't imagine it stays entertaining forever.  I especially can't imagine that someone using the whole program, K-5, would care much at all about that part once they were in the upper grades.  Also, our introductory session on Splash Math had a 20-question limit per day.  While I love my kids being able to do as much math as they'd like each time they play, I have to pay more attention that they aren't hurrying through their questions, playing in the jungle, and then forgetting to go back and do more problems.

Overall, we LOVE Splash Math.  I'm certainly not going to be the ones to tell my kids that they're really do school work every time they play.  You should let your kids give it a try!

Try Splash Math on the Computer

Try Splash Math in an App.  

Product provided for honest review via USFamilyGuide

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Anna Todd and the #AfterSaga

This is a sponsored post offered by One2One Network.

All opinions are my own and truthful.

You have a story to tell.  I know you do.  And in this ever-changing world with social media continually at your fingertips, that story is only a type and a "post" away from anybody in the world who wants to hear in it.  That's exactly how 25-yr-old military wife, Anna Todd, came to share her first story with over 1 billion readers, and it's how you can share your story, too!

The swift success of Anna's first book, After, came as a complete surprise.  Looking for a way to occupy herself while waiting at appointments or out running errands, she started writing snippets of a story on her phone.  Snippets turned in to chapters, chapters turned into a world-wide following as readers had immediate access to her words, and an assuming past-time has turned into a 4-book series with publishing house Simon & Schuster and movie rights with Paramount Pictures.  

Want to know how she did it and you can share your story, too?

Story-telling app, Wattpad, is a worldwide community of stories being shared between writers and readers.  Using your phone, tablet, or computer you can share and access stories with any of it's 40 million users.  How does Wattpad make it possible to find the rapid success and notoriety that Anna Todd received?  It comes in the form of instant dialogue and feedback between author and reader.  You post your daily thought or weekly chapter or monthly novelette and anybody following can respond back immediately with their thoughts, their ideas, their adaptations.  From an idealogue's point of view, it's a unique opportunity to receive inspiration from other people's creativity.  And as with so many things we share here, it's absolutely free.

I believe you have a story.  And I believe people want to read it.  Anna Todd has shown the world that anyone can do it and that it's very, very easy.  Why not try your hand at sharing the story someone out there is waiting to read?  

Interested in reading the novel that brought Anna Todd and Wattpad into the mainstream? 

Find After at Barnes & Noble  or After on your E-reader

Want to share your thoughts with author Anna Todd?

Connect with her on Wattpad @Imaginator1D

     On Twitter @Imaginator1Dx

     On Instagram @Imaginator1D

Freemples participated in the After by Anna Todd blog program 

as a member of One 2One Network.  

This is a compensated campaign, but all opinions are my own. 

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