Sitting here in my woollen winter coat once more, I thought that I’d put out a quick snapshot of party theme ideas for the upcoming chilly months. Best you sit down with a sweet cup of tea and take these in:

Beatnik Party

Only the best party idea I’ve had yet! This is seriously my favourite theme of the original hipsters of the 1950s. Throw on some warm jazz and a cosy sweater, pour some liquor and yank out your creative side. You might even create a masterpiece to hang on your wall, or hear some impressionable poetry (as did happen at my last party; that guy blew me away!)

Christmas in July

Kinda corny, I know, but us southerners don’t get Christmas holidays like they do up north. Why not give it a go? Those decorations only get out once a year, and you could even play Secret Santa to include the gift-giving sentiments. Plus, if you need any more convincing, there’s EGGNOG!

Positive Party

This is another I want to run sometime soon. Happy moods only! Play the happiest of tunes, have colourful food and dress code; encourage compliments, and even have a sort of “swear jar” for anyone caught gossiping to add a penalty coin – you could later donate the contents to a local mental health charity or hospital. This theme would be more ideal for the absolute coldest months, or near the end of August to pull everyone out of any lingering SAD moods.

London High Tea

Get all fancy, Brit! I’m a massive T2 fan (oh, my GOSH, I could spend hours drooling on that website!), although you can find all sorts of scrumptious tea varieties in other stores around the country. Snuggle up with your favourite teapot, some sugar cubes, teaspoons and mittens. Might want to leave the croquet for the springtime, but cards or other board games would be great.

Or, if you’d like to try the other form of UK class, hit up a working class gig and go all Shameless on your mates with a bonfire in the back yard if it suits. The original though, not that US remake junk!

How do these sound? Do you have any creative themes for the seasons? It could just be the climate here in Australia, but I find winter ideas a little more difficult to think of. Half the fun is going all “trial and error” on your guests though!

On the eve of International ‘Correct Every Spelling Mistake You See on Facebook’ Week I thought I’d take the time to share with you a few of my favourite online locales for the sarcastic and humourous correction of basic, written English.

Facebook Groups

Let’s get the Internet’s bumper stickers of the way straight up. I’m just going to nominate one that covers so many others out there: The correct usage of “You’re”, “Your”, “There”, “Their” and “They’re”. Surely you know a lot more and are part of a few!

The Oatmeal

Aside from kicking Justin Bieber’s arse, this site just knows the grammar. There’s comics on how to use an apostrophe, a semicolon;* ten words you need to start getting right (and an email response to it) and a quiz on your spelling on Twitter.

Hyperbole and a Half

This fantastic humour site gives you a few coping strategies for the spelling and grammar fails of others. Meet Alot; he is helpful in a number of ways:

So the next time you are reading along and you see some guy ranting about how he is “alot better at swimming than Michael Phelps,” instead of getting angry, you can be like “You’re right!  Alots are known for their superior swimming capabilities.”

d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com

In case you ever forget, this is the classic and original spelling snark.

Synonyms for “Said”

A while back I posted a massive list of 234 other words you can use instead of “said.” I don’t know where it originates from, but I like it anyway.

How to Write a Passive Aggressive Note

Slashspot.com has an infographic posted from Column Five Media which can help resolve your lame-o house mate problems.

And that’s it. Do you know any great resources that should have a mention here? I’d love to hear them!

*and I hope I got that right!

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Twitter for N00bs series. You can find the intro post here.

My fourth blog of the series is balancing out my previous on giving to the Twitter community, now I’m making a list of useful resources you can use to find interesting stuff on the network. Afterall, there’s no point in tweeting if you’re not  getting anything out of it!

• Search the Twittersphere! – Just check out what people are saying on Twitter. This is helpful for keeping track of conversations, events, people… anything! I was showing my father over my holidays how to look up industry activities on Twitter. He still hasn’t a Twitter account, but my mum was interested in how to look up “gardening tips” for sure!
  
• Hashtags – Mentioned in my last blog, these things are so useful! A bit tricky to get a grasp on at first, you’ll be using them in many, many tweets from now on. To quote from a recent reader, “If people are looking for tweets about the TV show ‘Lost’, they probably aren’t interested in someone talking about their lost cat (though they possibly should be). So people use #LOST to show the tweet is specifically about the show.” Excellent way of putting it!
• Twitter User Groups – A little self-promotion here, but I cannot stress enough the helpfulness of your local community. Find them, follow a few and ask away! Using the hashtag for your city (e.g. #Brisbane) is a good way of finding local information too. Another way to find local tweeps is by visiting Nearby Tweets. (thanks @jendudley for the reminder!)
• Wefollow – A category-based user directory. Put yourself up there by nominating three categories and ye shall be sought!
• Twellow – This one I feel is a bit outdated, but it’s still a good one for finding tweeps with common interests.

Bonus cleaning mentions

These are the two sites I tell tweeps about when they’re complaining of issues managing followers.

• FriendorFollow – Just as the name says, this one lists who is following you, who you’re following and who is a mutual friend. I use it when I’m jack of following uninteresting people
  
• Twitoria – Best. Ever. This one shows who the slack tweeps are you’re following. Someone hasn’t tweeted for a few months? Few weeks? Easy clean-up!

Well, I hope I’ve delivered on easy-to-use resources for finding interesting things on Twitter. And just for the marketing gurus who are looking for something a little specified: How to Use Twitter for Marketing & PR

(So, Paul… still think we’re lonely? Stupid?)