Top 10 Affordable & Lovable Mothers’ Day Picks

Here are Ownza’s top ten Mother’s Day picks, compiled by our urban, tech friendly mommy.

1) Nine West Laptop Sleeve. Moms need to protect their gear, while being stylish.

Nine West Laptop Sleeve

2) Christopher Elbow Mother’s Day Collection Chocolates. Seriously. Skip the blasé mall chocolates and get her something unique and beautiful!

Christopher Elbow Mother’s Day Collection Chocolates

3) Skullcandy disturbing-the-peace, blue pipe speaker. Let’s get real. Sometimes Mom needs to get her rock on away from the kids. Compatible with all your apple gear.

4) New York Times Wine Sampler. A subscription to wines from around the world? I would LOVE this.

The New York Times Wine Club

5) monbento: Lunch Boxes for Grown-Ups. Moms are crazy busy. Help her keep healthy with easy lunches!

monbento: Lunch Boxes for Grown-Ups

6) The Pomegranate Vintage Necklace is for evening or daywear. Beautiful on any skin tone.

Pop of Pomegranate Vintage Necklace

7) If you see Mom napping, do not wake her. This Whiteboard Eye Mask is a handy reminder.

Whiteboard Eye Mask

8) When settling down with the iPad, Mom should not have to mess with the wifi. This easy-on-the-eyes Whole Home Router kills dead wifi zones.

Whole Home Router

9) New styles always please. Try a breezy, chic summer tote from Kate Spade.

Kate Spade Fabric Purses

10) It’s true. Moms need permission to relax. Give it to her in the form of the L’Occitane Almond Ritual.

L’Occitane Almond Ritual

Ownza does Earth Day

In honor of this little green (and blue) planet of ours, we thought we’d share some top picks for Earth Day.

1. Nothing says Earth Day like a living, breathing tree. We recommend you go Bonsai like Mr. Miyagi, and what could be easier than ordering one on Amazon!

2. When you’re done getting your hands dirty trimming your little tree, wash up with some Nature’s Gate organic hand soap:

3. Don’t let things get unruly on Earth Day–go mow your lawn! But make sure your trimmer is electric, like this great mower from Greenworks:

4. We love flowers! But they die. And on Earth day, we celebrate life! (and the world naked bike ride). So go get yourself the flower that keeps giving! Until you kill it. For the orchid is a fickle beast:

5. We don’t love the Earth this much, but some of you Ownz’ers apparently do: make your own backyard compost heap, with the help of these creepy crawlers. According to Amazon (what don’t they sell!?), these worms are just like Mikey: “They’ll eat almost anything organic:”

ShopSquad is getting a new name!

At its heart, ShopSquad is all about connecting with your friends around the stuff you own and want. We’ve come up with a new name to reflect that. Say hello to Ownza!

The name will change very soon. But all the great things you love about ShopSquad will be the same.  Same community. Same platform. And of course killer discounts from the same top brands.

Check out our new logo, and let us know what you think!

Game On!

Ever wonder just how on-point your trendsetting skills are? On ShopSquad, you score points when others own or want stuff you added first. For every 10 points you earn, you bump yourself up 1 level.

We redid our leaderboard, so now you can see exactly where you stand compared to the cool kids. You can (obsessively) monitor your own ranking, jump to the top 10, or filter by friends.

Get on it, and flex your awesome-spotting skills here. Is your stuff looking a little lonely? Loop in your friends here.

Social Archaeology: the stuff we own

Every day, ShopSquad users add the quirky/educational/essential products that make their lives easier. We crawled through the thousands of owns posted, and we summarized our findings in this nifty infographic below. Some of our discoveries might surprise you:

Curious?  Join the party at ShopSquad here.

Putting the “nom” in Monday: David’s Cookies giveaway

Cookies are truly the most versatile dessert; more agile than cakes and pies, less fussy than cupcakes, less melty than ice cream. For our latest giveaway, we’re dropping incredible gooey gourmet goodness on you, courtesy of David’s Cookies.

feel your resolve crumbling, like so many delicious, buttery... crumbs.

Every time you ShopTag David’s Cookies this week and share the links via Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, you’ll be entered to win a 1-lb tin of chewy, fresh-baked delights. Flavors include chocolate chunk, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, macadamia white chip, cherry white chip, and double chocolate chunk. Fifteen lucky ShopSquad advisors will be snacking sweet in September, and the five winners with the most ShopTag clicks get a special surprise!

Contest runs Monday, Aug. 29 through Friday, Sept. 2, noon PST.

Step 1. Visit David’s Cookies. Ogle their selection. Delicately wipe drool from keyboard.

Step 2. ShopTag your favorite dessert on the site.

Step 3. Share your ShopTag via Twitter, Facebook, your blog, etc., proclaiming your love of sugary delights. Don’t know what to write? No problem! Here are some prompts off the top of our heads:

If I could only have one cookie flavor the rest of my life…

The absolute best drink to pair with cookies is…

If I had to choose between a raft made of cookies and a sweater made of cookies…

Rinse and repeat as often as you’d like. Happy cookie-spotting! And as a bonus, here’s a video mashup of Cookie Monster singing Tom Waits:

 

 

ShopSquid: 5 cuddly curiosities in homage to the dancing squid video

If you haven’t seen the dancing squid video that has recently gripped the digestive organs of diners everywhere, we’ll summarize: there’s squid, freshly prepared, in a bowl. The person behind the camera pours soy sauce on the animal, which proceeds to twitch and flap its tentacles about post-mortem, dancing like a translucent emissary of Satan.

We’ll leave the debate on whether this constitutes animal cruelty to other Internet provocateurs, since the ShopSquad team consists of 50% vegetarians and 90% tetchy buttholes who laugh at misery. Instead, we’ve rounded up the most gut-bustingly awesome squid-related accessories around, whether you prefer your swimmy seabeasts dead and deep-fried or releasing the Kraken at a beach near you.

ModCloth Squid Pro Quo earrings: deck out your earlobes in inky, adorable terror.

CafePress Travel Mug: Cocktails, Casablanca, and cephalopods? Consider us thoroughly romanced.

Busted Tees Free Hugs Shirt – Chilly rage or adorable misunderstanding? The squid’s black grimace yields no easy answers.

ThinkGeek Cuttlefish Babydoll Tee – Random fact: when we were little, we thought these creatures were named cuddlefish, conjuring images of furry, aquatic embraces. Picture our disappointment when we were confronted by the broad, bumpy, mollusc-y, distinctly uncuddle-able reality. We haven’t been this disappointed by misleading names since The Banger Sisters.

BONUS: Octopus Round!

ShanaLogic Octo Plushie Pink – your mouth says, “I protest the twee anthropomorphism of the Octopoda order,” but your heart says, “yessssssssss.”

As always, you can get ace shopping advice, underwater or landlubbing, at ShopSquad.

Rage inside the machine: 5 items to soothe (or encourage) you when you’re pissed off

We at ShopSquad cater to every living, purchasing being on the face of the earth, which puts us in a bit of a pickle when it comes to these product guides. However, at least one common experience unites us across lines of gender, age, nationality, and class: anger. Or, to be more specific, fleeting moments of of white-knuckled, red-faced, purple-spandex-shorts-stretching incandescent rage, whether you’ve discovered that your parents have cut you out of the will again, or that you forgot to TiVo the latest episode of Community.

"That's the one in which Annie and Britta almost make out! Nooooo!"

In recognition of occasional fiascos and freakouts everywhere, here are some tried & true items to soothe the pure fury chunneling through your internal organs.

Personalizable bottle opener – While you’re drowning your sorrows like a burlap sack of kittens in the river, let this handy item be a reminder that life goes on. We recommend engraving something uplifting, like a quote from Tuesdays with Morrie, or Scarface.

"Where you get the beauty scar, tough guy? Eating pineapple?"

The Gashlycrumb Tinies — This macabre Gorey classic depicting the alphabetical deaths of hapless Victorian children should take the edge off even the Heathcliff-iest mood.

Easier than reading Camus, and just as droll.

Mr. Axe — Want something more tactile? This sheepish-looking plushie lets you playfully go Lizzie Borden on your loved ones, and you’ll be supporting independent designers while chopping through your rage issues.

Headphones — Several generations of lovelorn teenagers can’t be wrong; slap on a huge, heavy pair of headphones to let the world that you hate everyone forever/always. Ear-buds are a no-go in this case, as you want the largest headphones possible to broadcast your excess ire.

So no one can hear you playing Dashboard Confessional.

Duffel bag — Sometimes, even the illusion of escape is enough to calm one down. The cool grey-and-tan color scheme of this dashing Herschel Supply Co. bag from Karmaloop is casual enough for the gym, but elegant enough for a weekend extramarital jaunt. We recommend packing this baby with sneakers, a just-in-case shirt, a towel, and a waterproof notebook, so you can remember where you hid the body.

Stylish and ready for mayhem.

As always, you can get product advice at ShopSquad, even when you’re not pissed.

3 Minimalist, No-Bullshit Essentials for Work-to-After-Hours

While our personal style icon is Paz de la Huerta in anything ever, we can understand the need to look polished for evening events, and not like we’ve spent the last 72 hours marinating in whiskey and back sweat.

She is our heroin. As in, we inject her and shiver deliciously in the corner, dreaming of babies crawling on the ceiling

However, we at ShopSquad like minimizing the time we spend transitioning from the office to the bar, so here are three gender-neutral grooming essentials that every working stiff / aspiring debauchee should keep at his or her desk and/or laptop bag:

Deodorant — “Clean” and “smells nice” are pretty much the baseline for pleasing personal impressions, much like “not dead” and “can read” are commonly accepted standards for romantic relationships (then again, we’ve dated Bukowski fans before, so… yeah, not so much on the standards). Swipe on some industrial-strength deodorant in the morning and refresh at 5 p.m.; you’ll avoid the potential awkwardness of coworkers walking in on you giving yourself sponge baths in the company kitchenette.

Face wipes — Half physical, half psychological. Slough off the detritus of modern-day commuting and work-induced agony. Sure, your boss may have humiliated you in front of all of Accounting three hours ago, but that fetching bartender at Trivia Night doesn’t have to know. It’s like a new you!

Lotion – You know that tight feeling you get in your face right after you wash it? It’s a sign that your skin is thirsty and vulnerable, like Keira Knightley in A Dangerous Method. So before you step out the door, rub a drop of unscented lotion on your face to minimize dryness/flakiness. And if you worry about your forehead getting shiny, well, that’s what toilet seat covers are for.

moisturizing: kind of Freudian

As always, you can get expert advice on purchases, grooming or otherwise, at ShopSquad.

Giveaway: $50 iTunes gift card

Our first ShopSquad giveaway is here… win a drawing for a $50 iTunes card! To enter the drawing, you need to:

(1) Like us on Facebook

(2) Tweet about us using Option 3 on the “Invite Friends” twitter tool. Plus, you still get the $5 bonus for each of your friends who sign up and sell $50 through ShopSquad.

Ends Friday, 7/1/11 at 12pmPDT. Tweet away!

Swarovski DJ headphones not included.