My wife and I recently saw the band CAKE in Lowell,MA.  It was my first time and they have been on my list to see for a while.  While we were waiting for the show to start, we mingled in the lobby to check out the standard concert swag; t-shirts, posters, cds,etc.  After purchasing a tee and getting a complimentary poster, we got to our seats.  They were setting up the stage with/ instruments and such and then they came out with a small tree in a planter, this left me puzzled.  After they rocked through a couple of songs they address the tree as a promotional giveaway, of course my ears perked up like a hounddog on the trail of an escaped prisoner.  They went around the audience trying to find a responsible adult that would go home and plant it and care for it, you also needed to know the name of the tree. After checking the cake website, they having been giving out trees for sometime.  I can only assume that it is a fun way for CAKE to help promote there love for the environment.  CAKE was definitely one of the best shows I have seen, even if i didn't win the tree.  The music was really great and the promotional tree give away was terrific.  If you would like to create your own environmental awareness promo try our herb garden or any of our other garden accesories.  Don't have a green thumb, let motivators do the dirty work.  Buy any of our eco friendly products and we will plant a tree for you.

Here at Motivators, birthdays don't go unnoticed. We pride ourselves on being a company that truly cares about their employees and celebrates them. Be it a birthday, a baby shower, an impromptu engagement party or something else, we all love an excuse to, as Steve Urkel would say "Get on down with our badselves." But that's the thing, these parties aren't so much parties as they are expected planned departmental gatherings of an awkward nature. As awkward, as Urkel himself. If its your birthday, you know you're getting something. You may have even walked past someone who is signing something in the obvious manilla folder with the red sharpie message of "Please Return to Keri When You Have Signed." It's the birthday card folder. There's also a Please Return to Sarah S. folder, but that's only for when it's Keri's birthday. Having her create and distribute her own b-day card is a bit much.

No matter how hard we try (and maybe I'm just speaking from the IT department standpoint) but there is no way to make these obvious planned gatherings less awkward. It's kind of like that Seinfeld episode where Elaine complains that there are too many office celebrations, and is then banned from all of them, but they are kinda strange. Take for example, IT birthdays. Firstly, we've all been here long enough to know that at approximately 3pm, its the b-day in the breakroom. So you sit at your desk and watch as your department slowly disappears one by one into the breakroom. Then you of course get summoned. Someone will try and make up an excuse, if your lucky. For example, I just heard "Uhh, the sink is leaking I need you to go mop it up." Why an IT programmer would need to go mop up a flood is beyond me, but A for effort, Boss! Of course, sometimes you try to be sarcastically funny about it: "Can you please come in the breakroom for something that has absolutely nothing to do with your birthday?" And then there's the slacker approach: you hand a card to the person at their desk without letting anyone in the department know and just say, "There's some cake in the break room. Enjoy."

Then of course, once you get in there, its awkward enough. Especially for IT since we're not singers. We don't sing. You'll hear a yay, or maybe woo hoo but we're certainly not as vocal as other departments. It's not that we don't like each other, in fact we're all pretty tight. It's just the forced planned awkwardness gets to us and we just all kinda have that deer in the headlights look. It's actually quite humorous to witness.

Speaking of witnesses, there's also the awkwardness if you're not in that department, yet you want to party as well. Like, what if you're the guy that happens to be walking by and sees the party. Said guy, lets just call him Shmadam, has a choice. Do you just go in, or do you wait until the usual email gets sent out alerting you to treats in the breakroom? Will you be persecuted for being in a "department only" type atmosphere? Will you be shunned? When is it safe to have cake?

All these things and more make up a typical Motivators birthday. And, you may be asking youself, Sarah what in tarnation does this have to do with promotional products? (Author's note: definitely don't use the term "tarnation" enough, must get on top of that)And the answer is nothing. This blog had absoluitely nothing to do with promotional products or our business in general. But hopefully it gave you a little insight into the inner workings of this company, or at least the IT department.

With that being said, HAPPY BIRTHDAY BILL!

This day in 1953 Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing were the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. The trip took seven weeks from start at the base camp to finish at the summit. When describing the sight he saw, Hillary said it was, "A symmetrical, beautiful snow cone summit." Since then 1,500 daring climbers have reached the top of the highest mountain on Earth. And it's all thanks to one handy promotional product. The carabiner.

At Motivators we've got a plethora of promotional carabiners. If you're planning on being the next to reach Mt. Everest's summit consider getting your hands on these custom imprinted carabiners. For those stressful times up there, fasten a fun key chain to a handy carabiner key chain. Be sure to include a lanyard, promotional miniflashlight, stress ball key chain all found in our custom imprinted key chain catergory.

You may get lonely and bored with all those fluffy whites and barely any oxygen, so bring along a custom imprinted carabiner pen. You can write your own obituary or perhaps a note to a friend.

And obviously you've got to get your hands on this once in a lifetime item, the promotional carabiner single golf ball holder. What a fun game of hide the golf ball in the snow you will have!

Please do not try to use any of these custom imprinted carabiners for climbing as they are not in any way made to withstand the craziness that will ensue when trying to climb Mount Everest. In the event that you disregard my advice and instead climb the mountain with the promotional carabiners, you're going to want to bring a few of our promotional first aid kits along for the trip.

Check out that hot red carabiner!

P.S. You have to be in tip top shape and pay a fee of $25,000 to climb Mount Everest, so start training and saving up now.

I have recently started watching baseball again. The only reason I bring this up is because I stopped watching it after the awful strike of 1994! I am once again a Yankee fan and trying to learn all of the new faces on the team. WOW have things changed! No more Donnie Baseball, Dave Winfield, Randy Velarde, Bobby Meacham, Melido Perez or the handsome Pascual Perez.

I do still have one yankee shirt left from the old days but i am going to have to figure out how to get some free baseball Promotional Products. I could sure use something like a baseball stress reliever. I would also like to get my hands on an old school mesh back price buster cap with the yankee logo embroidered on it. Even though I do not have all the materials to be a great fan I have still been watching almost all of the games and enjoying it again. Who knows maybe someday I will win the lottery and be able to afford a ticket to the new stadium!

Sometime last week while perusing the company blog I noticed the little number next to my name. It read: 149. That's right. Since the creation of this little blog where our little family posts their ferverent love of promotional products, I have written one hudred and forty nine blogs. And this marks triumphant number 150. I would have done a happy dance at the 100 mark, but I don't think our RSS feeds were counting back then. Still, 150 is fairly impressive.

And while reflecting on the fact that I've written 150 blogs for the company blog ALONE, I was forced to reflect that I've been the sole blogger on Alot More Than Just Promos for about two and a half years. After calculating some math over there, I figured out that I've written upwards of over 600 blogs for Motivators. And then I tried to remember what in heck I've written about.

Sure I've talked about promotional products. I've discussed everything from promotional water bottles to imprinted wall calendars. There's been debates about promotional keychains vs. promotional stress balls. I've discussed my obsessive love of promotional bags. And  here I sit, writing my 150th Blog post and I know what you're all sitting on the edge of your seats waiting to find out: what's she going to write about. I'm going to write about...a t-shirt.

A few weeks ago, CBS Records launched a contest in accordance with the new NCIS: The Music Official Soundtrack. Frequent readers of this blog (and fans of the Motivators TV blog) may know that I am quite the fan of NCIS. I love it. It makes Tuesday nights awesome, it makes me laugh, it makes me cry, it gives me the fuzzies, ect, ect ect.  The aforementioned contest was simple in nature: Change your profile picture on all your social media sites to a picture of yourself holding the NCIS Soundtrack. DONE. I facebook, I myspace, I tweet, I had this covered. 14 Daily winners would be chosen to receive an NCIS: The Music t-shirt. Of those 14...1 would be chosen to receive the grand prize: a visit to the set of NCIS. 

I turned to Keri, our art department supervisor extraordinaire (and fellow NCIS wackadoo) and said, this has to be good. A few photo shop edits later, I had an awesome little picture, changed all my social media profiles and went about my day. Keri changed hers as well to an AWESOME pic of her looking like Kate on the autopsy table, complete with the bullet hole through her forehead. NCIS fans get that reference, as for the rest of you I just ruined a season ender! :) 

Not two days later, I received the email saying that I had won a t-shirt and that I was in the running for the grand prize. Now on any other given day my love of promotional t-shirts would abound and I'd be thrilled to get free stuff. But it wasn't my love that took over, it was the prospect of possibly going to visit the set. The week went on, and no news. Finally, the day of the season finale arrived (around the time that they were to announce the grand prize winner) and I heard nothing. It was right around that time that I noticed the little 149 next to my name and decided to keep mum until I could allow my 150th blog post to be the announcement that I had won the set tour. How cool would that have been?

But alas...150 blogs and all I won was this stupid t-shirt. I'm sure I'll be happy when I get it, but it's not the same as meeting Sean Murray. It's not the same as getting to see Abby's lab. It's not the same as getting some awesome NCIS goodies. Plus, if CBS honestly wanted to get their name out there you can bet that I would have blogged, vlogged, facebooked and tweeted up a storm, but alas I shall not have the opportunity to. I'll just sit here and wallow in my own sadness. Never has a promotional t-shirt disappointed me so...

So you just purchased 200 pieces of our Aluminum Alpine Bottle, you received the order, and everything was perfect. Perfect timing, perfect imprint, perfect service. You have fallen in love and believe it or not it is with a promotional products company. Why not get to know the people that made it happen for you? Check out the minds and faces of all the people here at Motivators that work around the clock to make sure your orders are done right with our Company Profiles. To be even more specific, after you had that wonderful experience with Motivators you have two ways to let your promotional consultant know. The first is to head over to their Employee Profile and write them a testimonial on how great your experience was. The second way is to place an order with them directly through their employee profile! You can also read their Company Blog entries as well as recommend your Promotional Consultant to a friend and let them know how great they were. Check out all of the employee profiles to see the actual people who make your order happen. It's just another way Motivators is more than just promotional products.

Her hair is all sorts of tangled and is subject to feverish movement when the birds nesting in it want to spread their wings. Her face is hidden under a scarf, and her dress drapes over her shoulder. Her tablecloth cape drags an empty aluminum can behind her. And her feet are in mismatched sneakers. The Bag Lady.

She is relative to the infamous Can Man…the one going through your trash and singing, “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah!”But the Bag Lady has a sense of class that the Can Man can never acquire. While her three wheeled shopping cart is filled with the same scavenged cans as the Can Man’s; the Bag Lady has taken it a step farther. The Bag Lady has bagged her cans.

While the Can Man has actually found more cans than the Bag Lady, the semi-crushed ones have been falling between the shopping carts rusty cracks the entire time. Smart Bag Lady, realizing this, quickly whips out her promotional Straight Jacket Travel Golf Bag. Its handy wheels glide along side the shopping cart as she picks the fallen cans off of the ground and tosses them into the custom imprinted golf bag.  Once it is full she reached for her promotional shoe bag. With easy to unzip access into multiple compartments, the Bag Lady quickly fills the shoe bag and reaches for a few promotional Ipod holders and cases. She quickly realizes the can cannot fit cans inside such a small bag and reaches back again to pull out a custom imprinted tote bag.

The Can Man continues up the block still not realizing the escaping cans. As he hits a slight incline up, he starts into a roaring version of “When the Saints go Marching in,” and is deaf to the cans that begin falling out of the back of his shopping cart. This time the cans fall more rapidly and roll down the hill like Sonic the hedgehog. But Bag Lady is ready for them. She stretches open a promotional garment carrier and the cans roll into the long zippered bag as it dangles from the handle bars by it’s metal hook.

Only feet away from the supermarket, the Bag Lady begins to catch her breath just as the Can Man looks back into his shopping cart. Realizing that he has lost a significant amount of cans, he screams and rocks his cart back and forth. The cans bounce against each other and six empty Buds fling up into the sky. Without a moment to spare, the Bag Lady rips open her favorite custom imprinted eco-friendly tote bag and gawks as the cans drop inside of it.  

The Can Man stops hitting the shopping cart, continues singing, and returns his cans for $4.65. The Bag Lady takes her time emptying out her promotional bags and receives a receipt for $18.95. That could buy her a brand new pair of sneaks! Congratulations Bag Lady. You are my custom imprinted bag superstar.

Bag Lady has since bought a new pair of shoes and a hot new makeover. She's currently really into under $1 promotional bags. Nice and thrifty.

Although we had a very mixed May with a lot of showers, I feel like June is going to be a spectacular month. That being said over the Memorial day weekend, my friends and I had a BBQ at the beach. After setting things up, we had drinks and relaxed. After about 10 minutes or so I noticed my soda got really lukewarm, and I did not want to drink it anymore. I wish I had some custom Koozies. People were throwing out drinks that were barely touched because they were not cold anymore. It's so funny how our everyday experiences relates to promotional products.  Going to the beach, you would think people would bring sunblock. Oh boy was I was mistaken. Seems like the girls always bring it, but it was not enough for all of us. If all the guys just carried these custom sunblock packs in their cars we wouldn't have had this problem. Luckily I did not get sunburned.  

This weekend, I had a lot of parties and plans with friends and family. And of course, I brought along the digital camera. I love taking pictures and stuff, but I am usually very lazy in printing them out. My main concern is not having enough frames to put the pictures in, so I took a look under our promotional picture frames on Motivators.com and decided my favorite one is the photo album keychain. This way I do not have to worry about having a whole bunch of frames hanging all over the place, and I can always take my pictures with me where I go. It is a great gift idea for father's day and graduation gifts.

Last August, it was time for me to pack up and move to my college in Maine. Along with the typical school supplies and a winter wonderland wardrobe, I also brought my Motivators promotional umbrella. While my umbrella became a victim of abuse after I used it as an ice scraper, countless other promotional products made there way into my life...even 353 miles away from this lovely Motivators promotional products Empire.

I spent my days inside the classroom clickity-clinking borrowed pens. But they weren’t just any pens, they were promotional pens; the kind that leaked more than just ink. In fact, they ooooooozed company exposure.

There were nice days, where I’d sit on a big rock in the middle of campus and soak up the sun. With my eyes closed, I’d smell the sweet lake air and take my mind off of classes. Then of course custom imprinted Frisbee’s would swoop over me and wake me abruptly from day dreams. But with just one wrist flick, the promotional toy would sail through the sky and I’d be far away from any stress.

Nights were spent in moody-lit dorm rooms with friends sipping drinks from random promotional cups. Soon card games would turn into dance parties and the scent of alcohol and sweat would send us out and towards the lake. That’s when promotional water bottles would help us to abide by the closed container rule.

On walks down to the lake I’d try to solve any mystery I could. Animal footprints leading into the woods. Unidentified materials floating in the water. And even misplaced keys left by the stone fire ring. Aided with car-make keys and promotional key chains, I was able to solve the case and return the keys to their ditsy- but rightful owner. 

When the weather changed, or when Maine turned back into it’s cold desolate self, we’d make the most of the heavy snow. Ice fishing derbies on the lakes solid ice and star gazing in snowsuits were enjoyed. But those last few weeks of winter- winter in March- we’d create our own tropical paradises in our rooms and count down the days to a hotter sun on our promotional calendars.

The sun did start to roast away the snow and soon flowers were blooming and I was in a cap and gown. After reflecting on my last year in college I had ample reasons to attribute my successes to Motivators promotional products. The promotional pens filled notebooks with doodles. My promotional umbrella helped unbury many snow covered cars. And those custom imprinted bottle openers did opened many bottles. Where would I be without you Motivators?

Possibly, still living the college dream. Oh well, time for the real world. Good thing I’m armed with custom imprinted items.

Sayonara.