Maintaining friendships when you are a mama can be a tricky business. Often already juggling a hectic home life, work and children, while also trying to carve out a bit of time with Daddy-o, can leave little room for your girlfriends.

The way I see it, there are a few friendship fizzling high risk situations:

1) You become a mama: Many report that their friendships with single/childless girlfriends suffer. Mama feels they don’t understand why she doesn’t want to ditch the kid to go dancing every weekend. This has not actually been my experience. My single friends have shown extreme interest and understanding when it comes to my kids. And I am equally keen to hear their Sex in the City lifestyle stories.

2) You have a child with a disability: Hate to say it, but mamas of kids with disabilities get ditched. I’ll explain why it happens in the autism world: you have a friend who brings her 3-year-old over for weekly playdates. Her kid can’t talk, has meltdowns for “no reason”, maybe he’s a bit aggressive, doesn’t relate to the other kids there and his behaviour is disruptive. The mama host thinks “Hmmm…this playdate would go much more smoothly if that kid with the problems doesn’t come”. The playdate invitations stop.

3) You constantly bail on plans: When you regularly drop out of social plans at the last minute, eventually your friends will stop inviting you. I generally don’t accept invitations in the first place because of my bailing stats. But, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate receiving a low pressure “turn up if you can swing it” invitation. It makes me feel that I have not been forgotten, and also that there is some understanding about my situation.

4) You become a Mama of Many: Right around the birth of your fourth child, families you normally socialize with suddenly stop inviting you over. Who can blame them – your family takes up their whole house.

How have your friendships survived? What are the biggest friendship hurdles you’ve encountered in your mama life? Are you still close with the friends you had pre-kids, or did you shake it up socially when you hit the mama scene?

This Back-To-School season Mabel’s Labels has teamed up with Ziploc® brand with a fabulous offer, when you buy Ziploc® brand Sandwich 100 Bags you will get $5.00 off Mabel’s Labels!

We want to know if you’ve seen our promotion with Ziploc® brand in your city – and we’ve made it interesting! If you see Mabel’s Labels at your local store take a picture, email it to fan@mabel.ca and you can win!

For every picture & description you send, you’ll be entered into a draw to win 1 of 3 Mabel’s Labels Colourful Essentials Combos just in time for Back to School. We will be posting all the pictures that are submitted to our Facebook Fan Album “Mabel’s Labels & Ziploc® brand!” so be sure to become a fan today!

For more information on our $5 off coupon visit www.ziploc.mabel.ca

Contest is open from August 27th until September 3rd, 2010 to residents of Canada only (excluding Quebec). We will be drawing the 3 lucky winners on September 7th.

Full Rules and Regulations Here.

The back-to-school season is one of the most exciting times of the year, but it can also be quite stressful. VolunteerSpot teamed up with Mabel’s Labels to create a downloadable “Getting Organized Checklist” to help you remember the season’s to-dos!

Just download, print and place on the refrigerator to feel more organized today.

What’s Volunteer Spot? It’s an online community that enables ANYONE to quickly mobilize and coordinate volunteers in their community through FREE online sign-up forms and volunteer scheduling. Feel free to explore their site while you’re there!

Melissa Blais outside of the conference hotel; The Hilton

@EverythingMom, @Mumby @littlemissmocha

The 3 Julie's! Cole, Kenney & Ellis

Scott Stratten a.k.a @unmarketing

Community Keynote: BlogHer Voices of the Year

This past weekend Julie Cole, Tricia Mumby, Julie Ellis, Melissa Blais and Caitlin Madden from Mabel’s Labels traveled from Hamilton, Ontario to New York City for the BlogHer’10 Conference. Our fabulous BlogHer’10 Contest judges Kathy Buckworth, Erica Ehm and Scott Stratten joined us and our Contest winners Stacey, Kim & Laura for the event.

We loved meeting old friends that have known Mabel for years and reminiscing. We loved creating relationships with new friends while making plans for the future. Hugs were given out liberally and the overwhelming feeling of love for Mabel’s Labels was incredible.

Thank you all for welcoming Mabel’s Labels with open arms, open hearts and open minds at BlogHer’10. We are lucky to be apart of such an incredible community.

We have some BlogHer’10 swag leftover and would love to send it out to you to enjoy. Drop Caitlin a line at Caitlin (at) mabel (dot) ca and we will hook you up with some Mabel goodies!