Spring is in the air, and I’m alive. It must mean I have a mother somewhere and it’s time to say thank you!

Happy Mother’s Day to all of the mommies out there in the SmartCanucks community. I hope your day is full of breakfasts in bed, cards made from macaroni, and lots of hugs and love.

While I can’t be nearly as nice to my wife today as I’d like to be (due to my erratic work schedule) I’d just like to give her an extra special thank you. We have two great kids, and you’ve been an amazing mom for nearly five years now. I might not be able to make breakfast in bed happen today, but hopefully this public thank you for all you’ve done can help make up for it.

Pictured above are my wife and our second daughter, Emily, taken shortly after her birth. I love my kids. I love my wife. And I’m very thankful for both. Happy Mother’s Day, Hailea.

If my Facebook is to be believed (and I think it is!) today is the birthday of our fearless leader and good friend Boo Radley.

Happy Birthday Boo! It’s been a great few years working with you sir, and I hope all of your birthday wishes come true!

I won’t give away the gentleman’s age, lest I ruin the mystique. Instead I’ll share the above photo with you, one of the rare brief sightings of a Boo Radley in the wild. No one really knows what he looks like. Catching a glimpse is about as rare as the Sasquatch..

Boo – are you the Sasquatch? 😉

Lots of new changes around here lately thanks to the beautiful new overhaul Boo has given the site. I’d like to talk to you about one of those changes right now, since I know questions about it are bound to pop up about it sooner or later: avatars.

As you may have seen, a few folks (myself included) now have their picture beside their name when commenting on a post. This is done not through SmartCanucks, but through a website called Gravatar. Gravatar is something of a universal avatar system. While it won’t work for every website you visit, you’ll find that many of the blogs you comment on have gravatars active.

Once you’ve set up your gravatar account any site that has a connection to gravatars should automatically begin to show your photo next to the comments. Neat, huh?

If you want to start showing off that pretty face of yours, click here and set up a Gravatar account!

I’ve made a few enhancements to SmartCanucks’ blog design and also got a proper logo designed for the website at last. I hope you like the new design changes and the new logo 😀

If you have any feedback, suggestions or ideas please let me know! I will take your feedback very seriously and try making the blog as pleasant as possible to all SmartCanucks.ca readers!

To celebrate the new design and logo we’ll be having a contest this Wednesday on the SmartCanucks blog and the contest will go on for over a month with someone winning a $10 gift card daily! Check out the blog on Wednesday for the official contest launch and more details!

I’d like to welcome koala the lucky bear to our Blog Team 🙂

Many of you know koala through the forum. She has years and years of experience entering contests and knows all the secrets to winning as many contests as possible. Last year alone (2008) she won $6000 worth of contest prizes 😯

Koala has volunteered to share her tips and tricks and winning secrets with us. She’ll also post the hottest contests each week on the blog and will be blogging on the Canadian Contests Blog with RoseofBlack.

Never won a contest before? Think you’re an unlucky person? This may now change! The more you learn about contests and the more contests you enter the more you’ll win. In no time contesting will become a skill. As Thomas Jefferson once said “I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

Thank you Koala for sharing your invaluable information with us and I’m looking forward to your blog posts!

I should’ve probably blogged about this earlier but I was extremely busy this holiday season. On SmartCanucks we’re having a Cute Pet Contest where you can submit a picture of your pet for a chance to win one of 30 prizes that include a Zune, a $75 Zellers Gift Card and an iPod.

The deadline for submitting a picture was supposed to be today but I’m extending it for 3 more days to give my blog readers a chance to submit a picture too. So the new deadline to submitting a picture is 11:00pm on  January 3rd, 2009.

Click here for more details on this Cute Pet Contest

Not so much a deal per se, but I’ve stumbled across a free online version of the original F Scott Fitzgerald short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Considering the film is such a hot topic amongst movie goers right now, I thought some of you might enjoy giving this one a quick read. I haven’t seen the film yet, but the story is wonderful. It definitely has me booking a date to get out to the movie theater.

The online text is part of a full online reprint of Tales of the Jazz Age, the collection in which Benjamin Button first appeared. If you liked the story, why not check out the others? You can find the Table of Contents for Tales of the Jazz Age here.

If you work at a certain store and have advanced access to Boxing Day Flyers please scan the flyer or list the deal in the Boxing Day Flyers forum section and you will get a free Gift Card from President’s Choice, Shoppers, Subway, Tim Hortons or Zellers.

Click here for details on posting Boxing Day Flyers & getting free gift cards

Canadian Blog Awards 2008 is currently underway and Smart Canucks made it to the top 5 finalists in the Best Blog of the year category. If you read the blog and enjoy it please vote for Smart Canucks:

Click here to vote for Smart Canucks in Best Blog category

Before you vote I’d also like to point you to one of the top 5 finalists who I think has an awesome blog and in my opinion deserves this award. Attack of the Redneck Mommy is one of the most enjoyable blogs out there. Redneck Mommy’s posts always touch my heart and leave tears in my eyes.

I’d like to apologize for any inconvenience I’ve caused by posting the Maple Leaf coupons yesterday. Here’s what happened: Many people were saying these coupons were fake so I decided to look into it. I naturally assumed some people were assuming they are fake because they are hosted on imageshack and not on Maple Leaf Foods website. So I spent some time digging until I found the official Maple Leaf Foods Revenue Report and the report was certainly legitimate and hosted on Thomas Reuters which is a reputable company. Inside the report were the coupons so I automatically thought this means the coupons are legitimate. I was all excited and blogged about this on SmartCanucks.ca without reading the fine print. Had I done so, I would’ve found out that the coupons cannot be printed and the original copy of the report was necessary to redeem the coupons.

I have removed the coupon links from the blog and I am sorry for any inconvenience I have caused any of you. I’ll make sure to read the fine print before getting all excited about a coupon from now on.

Bumping this since it’s still valid and hasn’t been blogged for over a year 😀

A lot of members on the forum have received these Mario Badescu skin care samples and they seem to love them 🙂

Here is the link to this awesome freebie:

mariobadescu.com/questionnaire.aspx

Jerry has volunteered to help revive the Canadian Tech Deals Blog. Thank you Jerry! He has a wealth of experience in technology, computing and can spot a hot electronics deal. Jerry also has a personal blog which you can check out here

Thank you Jerry and welcome to SC’s Editorial team 😀

I’m also still looking for help in the Tech Blog Section since I’m hoping it can become a major source of info for all good electronics deals. If you’re interested I can be reached at smartcanucks |at| gmail dot com

Hi everyone

We’re looking for blog editors who have good experience with computer and electronics deals and can post good ones on a daily basis in the Tech Deals Blog. For more details please email us at:

smartcanucks {at} gmail d.ot com

We have an awesome Canadian blogging community out there with many creative bloggers. I’ve been enjoying reading some of these blogs on a daily basis for a few years now. Unfortunately, not everyone knows about these blogs. To help support the Canadian blogging community, which SmartCanucks.ca is also a part of, I’ll feature a Canadian blog on here every now and then. I’ll give priority to personal blogs.

If you’d like to have your blog featured on Smart Canucks please email me at smartcanucks att gmail dot com.

I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it! So I had to write a blog post to let everyone know! Overstock.com now ships to Canada! It’s been in the works for a while, but while I was searching for sheets last week I came across that they started shipping to Canada very recently.

I had avoided the site for some time because It was such a tease, cheap prices and great deals but no shipping here.   I hope to find some great deals,  that  I’ve previously browsed being ”teased.”  Hopefully more retailers follow suit and will ship here!

I know some like to buy Canadian only, but me I just like getting great deals!

Click here to check out Overstock.com!