I have been having a goofy creative spell. What possesses me to do what I do I have know idea. The last few weeks I put together three sites that stemmed from an idea or a brainstorm through goofy conversations with co-workers. The three sites were built with a ‘viral market’ in mind but the main purpose is to sell some t-shirts.

First came twiturder.com. Twiturder (twit-turd-er) is a device that attaches to your toilet and ‘tweets’ whatever happens while you are on it. Yes, it can most certainly be gross. I tried to create a 1/2 serious and 1/2 silliness look and feel for the site hoping to have people guessing whether the twiturder device was real or not. The t-shirt for this product is a simple “got turd?” design. I also have a Twitter account @twiturder where I occasionally update what goes on at the plant including any new products that come along.

The next product to come out of the maelstrom is ThongDrive.com. During a conversation I was having with a co-worker I swear they said something about a thong drive. While he probably didn’t say anything close to that it sounded like a great idea to mix usb flash storage and a thong. Don’t you think? The site is complete with a little Flash application at the top where you can choose your skin color and preferred thong color. The t-shirt for this idea is a simple “ThongDrive” logo with the phrase “thong + storage = genius”. Usually people get a charge out of this product. I’m still working on a way to convince my wife to actually create one but it does not seem like she’s interested at the moment.

The newest product idea was easy to come up with due to the current scare of swine flu. The Swine B Gone.com product is supposed to be an aerosol spray that you can douse yourself with and remove all effect of the swine flu (H1N1). I had a couple t-shirt ideas for this one but stuck with the “Swine B Gone” logo and the words “swine flu protected” below it.

With each site I tried to make them have a similar theme but be fairly unique in content. Obviously the t-shirt element is in all three but the information about each product has it’s own unique flavor and humor. There are some key elements you should include in your site(s) when you build, develop and/or design.

Key Element 1
One of the key elements you need to include is an easy way to spread the word about your site via social mediums. There are a few ways you can cover Twitter, email, Facebook, Digg and a whole slew of others. I use the Add this menu which lists a number of popular social media methods in nice little package. The idea is to make it extremely easy for your viewers to spread the gospel about whatever page they are on.

Key Element 2
Another key element is keyword rich content. If you build a goofy site about a current event you should try to include the keywords in your content about that event. This goes for any site you build. Keyword rich content is extremely important for readability and SEO. Make sure you are conscious of grammar and spelling. People can be turned off by sentences that are difficult to read or include spelling errors.

Key Element 3
An important key element to add is data collection. At a minimum you should have a form on your site to collect emails and names so you can develop an email list. Once your list starts to grow you will be able to use it to spread the word of your newest ventures quickly. If you use Facebook or Twitter more frequently then request their Facebook or Twitter name.

Key Element 4
A key element I try to incorporate is some form of interaction. Generally, this can include a small Flash application that peeks someones interest, a game for people to play, a daily or weekly poll where people can vote on some subject or a comments section where viewers can interact with each other and you. The idea for this is to create a small element that could bring people back because they are curious about the results of a poll or the replies to their previous comments.

Key Element 5
Another key element you can easily include are affiliate marketing links. Obviously people have started putting on their blinders when it comes to banner ads and such but that does not mean they are completely ineffective. Try to think of a creative way to make them look more appealing in your design. There are so many cookie cutter looking sites that just slap them into a column and hope for the best. Try to add a new twist to your affiliate area that might peek more interest. Experiment. Experiment. Experiment.

Just because a venture is not as successful as you hoped does not mean it was a complete failure. Chances are you learned something from the experience and you will be able to put what you learned into use on your next venture. If you sense failure, reassess your position and either make modifications or move to your next venture. If you are just starting out, do not be afraid to fail. Usually in failure we learn enough to make the next attempt successful. Put some thought and creativity into each project you do.

This Peanut Butter Fingers recipe was kept in the family for ages. We made a few tweaks to make it gluten free and it is just as yummy as the non gluten free version. We also made these with Soynut butter and they tasted equally amazing.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Cup Butter or Margerine
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1/3 Cup of Peanut Butter or Soynut Butter
• 1 Cup of Gluten Free All Purpose Baking Flour Blend
• 1 Cup of Rolled Oats
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/4 tsp Salt
• 1/8 tsp Authentic Foods Gluten-Free Vanilla Powder (1/4 tsp of liquid vanilla)
• Enjoy Life Foods Gluten-Free Chocolate Chips

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Cream together butter, sugar and brown sugar.
3. Mix in eggs and peanut butter (or soynut butter)
4. Continue mixing in flour, oats, baking soda, salt and vanilla
5. Grease 9×13 pan and place mixture into pan and bake for 20-25 minutes
6. Pull from oven and sprinkle chocolate chips over top
7. Place back in oven for 2-4 minutes or until chocolate chips have melted.
8. Remove from oven, allow to cool and cut into desired pieces.

One of the challenges we run into when going out to eat is finding gluten free options. Usually you will have to be satisfied with a salad, steak or chicken. This is not necessarily a bad thing but there seems to be only a tiny handful of restaurants that actually go the extra mile to make dining a pleasure when on a gluten free diet. Uno’s Chicago Grill is one of those places. Before making the move to gluten free we would frequent Uno’s because the food and atmosphere were great. Now with their gluten free menu we are continually impressed with their offerings and from our research they have the biggest gluten free menu of any chain restaurant in our area.

Uno’s offers numerous gluten free steak and chicken recipes, vegetable, rice and potato sides, and the normal salads. Uno’s then goes a couple steps further in offering gluten free pizzas (3 of them), frozen drinks and Redbridge a gluten free beer.

It is so refreshing to see restaurants accommodating dietary requirements. It is even more refreshing to see the restaurants embrace the gluten free community and cater to our needs. Ryan’s comments after eating the gluten free pepperoni pizza from Uno’s, “Mommy, I really like this pizza. I like it better than yours!”

Track down your closest Uno’s and give the gluten free menu a try. Store Locater

This recipe came out crisp and tasty. You can eat the Apple and Oatmeal Crisp plain, with ice cream or warmed with ice cream.

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Mix
• 1 Cup of Rolled Oats
• 1 Cup of Brown Sugar
• 3 Cups of Apples (peeled and large dice)
• 1/2 Cup Butter (melted)
• 1/2 Cup of Sugar
• 2 tsp Cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. Grease or non stick spray a 9 inch square baking dish.
3. Mix floar, oats, brown sugar and butter until mixture forms crumb topping
4. Place a layer of crumb topping on bottom of baking dish (approximately half).
5. In a bowl combine sugar, cinnamon and apples together and place on top of crumb layer.
6. Cover the apples with remaining crumb topping and bake approximately 40 minutes. Top should be golden brown.

This Stuffed Shell recipe came out tasting amazing. Combine it with some gluten free garlic bread and you will have a very tasty meal.

Recommended Shells
1 pkg. Brown Rice Grand Shells by Tinkyada

Shell Stuffing

• 1 bunch fresh chopped spinach, cooked
• 1 lb. ricotta cheese
• 2 eggs, slightly beaten
• Salt & ground black pepper
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese, Romano optional
• 1/2 c. shredded mozzarella cheese

Sauce

• ¼ cup butter
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 tbs. cornstarch
• 1/2 tsp. garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp. parsley
• 1 cup Parmesan cheese

Heat the oven to 375 degrees. Rub the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch baking dish with olive oil.

In boiling water cook the shells, drain and transfer to cold water. Follow the directions on the package for cooking.

For the sauce, melt ¼ cup butter over medium heat. Mix 1 cup of heavy cream with 1 tbs. of cornstarch, add, and simmer for 5 minutes. Add ½ tsp. of garlic powder, ½ tsp. of parsley, and 1 cup of Parmesan cheese.

In a bowl, combine ricotta, eggs, salt and pepper, spinach, parmesan, and spice. After filling each shell with filling, gently set them in the baking dish, cut sides up. Spread sauce over all and sprinkle mozzarella cheese over top. Cover with foil and bake for 40-50 minutes. Serves 6-8.

Keeping up with your favorite topics on the web has never been easier. The variety of methods continues to grow with blogs, twitter search, various RSS aggregators and much more. One of my favorite ways to keep up on Gluten Free articles, recipes and foods is to set up a Google Alert. If you are not familiar with Google Alerts let me give a quick overview.

The idea behind Google Alert is to keep you up-to-date on new happenings around the web that involve a topic you are interested in. As Google indexes articles, blogs and other writings it stores the information so it can be searched easily. With Google Alerts, you set up a keyword or phrase for the topic you are interested in and Google compiles the information on that topic when it is made available.

As an example, I have a Google Alert for “gluten free”. As new information is indexed by Google about things gluten free I receive an email with a list of links and a short snippet of each article. So instead of scouring the web looking for gluten free information, I have that information coming to me.

There are a few settings you can choose to make the information available to you. You can choose to have it appear in an email within your Gmail account or you can have it pass to a feed reader such as Google Reader.

For topics that are getting written about frequently I would recommend using the feed reader to aggregate the information into a nicely formatted list. For topics that receive less frequent updates or topics that are very important to you you might want to have the aggregated links sent to your Gmail. Another nifty setting for Google Alerts is the frequency you gather the updates. By changing the “How often” setting it is possible to receive updates as-it-happens, once-a-day or once-a-week. Lets face it, we are inundated with information daily and sometimes we do not need to know everything right away about a particular subject.

I am sure there are “Alert Power Users” out there that can offer other benefits or techniques in using Google Alerts. If you don’t already have a Gmail account get one and utilize the wonderous Alerts system.

Sue dug up this crepe recipe from a blog called kill.the.gluten. The two women bloggers deal with Celiac disease each in their own way and they have devised a number of great gluten free recipes.

Being huge fans of “breakfast for dinner” we jumped right into the recipe pouring crepe after crepe and wrapping sliced bananas inside. We whipped up some whipped cream and put a dollop on each crepe. Needless to say we and both our boys devoured all the crepes in no time. I kind of wished we cooked up some bacon or sausage which would have made the meal complete.

Great Rice Flour for many of your baking recipes: Authentic Foods Bette’s Featherlite Gluten-Free Rice Flour Blend

One thing I am a sucker for is dessert. There are meals where I just want to get the main course finished so I can jump into dessert. The credit for this dessert goes to two great companies that produce gluten free products with amazing flavor and quality.

Brownie: The Gluten-Free Pantry Chocolate Truffle Brownie Mix

The brownies came out amazing and you would not know they were gluten free. I’m actually eating my second helping as I write this. The batch we made is chewy and rich in chocolate flavor.

Ice Cream: Edy’s Slow Churned Vanilla Ice Cream

Not only is the vanilla ice cream gluten-free but it is also nut-free (another of my son’s allergies). When we made the move to gluten free we did a little research testing ice creams. In my opinion, Edy’s is one of the top brands on the market. Other Slow Churned flavors that are gluten-free and nut-free include: Chocolate, Caramel Delight, Coffee, Mint Chocolate Chip and Strawberry. Always check the label before making your decision because product ingredients sometimes change. The ice cream is made in equipment that is also used to process peanut products.

There were some highs and lows today. The lows were when Tom and I went to the “1st Annual Chris Doherty Ping Pong Tournament”. Naturally we expected some level of disorganization and we were not disappointed. They announced that 150 participants had signed up for the tournament and obviously they were a little shocked by the turn out. The tournament began and there were games being played by each age bracket including the “Open”. We signed up in the Open bracket and after watching other players in the bracket we realized with went in a bit over our heads. Those players were very good. Anyway, we sat and waited to play while our bracket was slowly being neglected so we left before either of us got to play…three hours later. Other players were upset with the organization of the event but hopefully it will be better planned next time. Ok, enough of that rant…

Supper club was at the Rootes house this month and it was the high of the day. Sue attempted to make rice in the crock pot but for whatever reason it was not done by the time we had to leave. I dropped Sue and the boys off at the Rootes and ran to the nearest Chinese food joint to get some rice…3 quarts of rice. Bobby Jo put together a great meal of tacos, southwestern chicken soup and margaritas. Annette brought chips, salsa and taco fixings. Elisa made some cupcakes decorated with icing in the Mexican flag colors. Sue made up a sour cream dip for chips and some ice cream cupcakes for dessert.

Following the meal we went for a walk down an extra secret path from the Rootes home that led to the area high school’s outdoor basketball court. After almost being run down by a rogue 4-wheeler we played games of four square, P.I.G and some Tip-in game I was not familiar with. Oddly enough we never broke into our customary rounds of Knock-out. Everyone seemed to be gearing down for the evening so we headed back to the house for a little dessert and discussion. Nathaniel and Bobby Jo were great hosts and Supper Club was another success.

Kids playing in the sandbox. Hannah not keen on the paparazzi.

Tom averting his eyes as he plates up.

Elisa and Chuck conducting a soccer clinic.

A little chaos at the high school hoops. Tom, are you playing defense in a game of P.I.G.?

Sometimes we need a mortality check. Just a wake up call so we know there are things bigger than us and we are not going to be here forever. A few years ago my sister-in-law Pauline was diagnosed with cancer. Pauline is thirty five years old…the same age as me. Her recent prognosis is that she only has a handful of months left with us. You can read her story at our store Beads and Quilts – Pauline’s Story.

We all like to think that we are in difficult situations each day but I can not imagine being in the same situation as Pauline. Since she was diagnosed I sometimes vicariously put myself in her position and it almost brings me to tears thinking about all the things I might miss. Things like my boys growing up, growing old with my wife and enjoying some of my ‘golden’ years. When you are young it is difficult to digest such a situation.

With Pauline’s guidance we developed a bracelet that shows the continued “Hope” Pauline and our family members have that she will overcome the cancer. All profits and donations from the bracelet will go directly to the Pauline Benefit Fund that will be used by the family for medical expenses and other needs. See Pauline’s “Hope” Bracelet at our store. The bracelet would make a great Mother’s Day gift.

We thank you for your prayers and any contributions you can make.