This is a part of Formula Fed and Flexible Parenting. It contains a write-up of products and services
that I review, mostly but not entirely related to parenting, families, and children.
On Saturday we surprised the boys by telling them we would take them to see Disney on Ice. My older son was definitely excited and remembered seeing a Disney on Ice show when he was four. My younger son, being only a year at the time, had no recollection of the show but was excited simply because his brother was excited. They wanted to know which characters would be there.
When we arrived, I was a little nervous because even just from the street it seemed crowded. However, the parking went smoothly. We parked at the MBTA garage that is underneath TD Garden . It was $15 which was cheaper than some of the other parking garages and obviously very convenient. All we had to do was take the elevator up to the main floor.
Our tickets were at will call. We picked them up and went to sit in the premiere seating. I have to say that I highly recommend the premiere seating with young potty trained age kids. It was fantastic having our own bathroom!
Right from the beginning the kids were captivated. The classic Disney characters started the show followed by other characters like Aladin and the Disney Princesses. Toy Story was also featured in a cute number with the toy soldiers. My younger son particulary liked that since he likes Toy Story a lot.
My personal favorite number was Mulan. I've always liked the movie, but I have to admit that I was surprised it was in the show as it doesn't seem to be as popular as some other Disney movies. They did a brief reenactment of the story. I know the other parents in the same section as us commented on how much they like it. Here's the feminist in me coming out, but after seeing the frilliness of the Disney Princesses it was nice to see a number where the hero is a female who cuts off her hair, dresses as a man and saves her country. I suspect that quite a few parents went home with plans to rent Mulan.
So what didn't I like? Well, like I said, I was surprised to see Mulan. I was particularly surprised because Sleeping Beauty wasn't in the show! It had been advertised that the classic Disney Princesses were in the show. All of the other princesses were there, but not Sleeping Beauty which was puzzling.
There was also a couple stumbles, but hey it's ice; it's slippery! I don't think the kids noticed.
The length was good for my kids. Not too long but not too short either. They liked the variety of the characters and the numbers including characters that they weren't familiar with like The Incredibles.
Another plus for the premiere seating was that none of the vendors came through it so I didn't have my kids clammouring for different snacks. We did get some during the intermession but my husband was able to just slip out and buy a couple items without the kids and I.
Definitely a fun enjoyable experience!
“I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Disney. Mom Central sent me show tickets and a program to thank me for taking the time to participate.”
A couple years ago, a co-worker of my husband's had extra tickets to Disney on Ice. At the time my kids were 4 and 1. We knew our 4 year old would like it, but were concerned about our 1 year old. Fortunately in the case of our younger one, we were wrong.
The kids loved the show. We were surprised because they didn't know most the characters. It didn't matter to them. The costumes and the skating made it worth it to them. The few characters they did know were extra exciting to them.
This year Disney is celebrating 100 years with its show 100 Years of Magic. As such there's a wide range of characters included in this show: the original characters of Mickey Mouse and Goofy, to all of the Disney Princesses, Lion King, Toy Story, Nemo, Mulan and many more.
What could be better during this holiday season than seeing this magical show? How about a discount? Purchase a 4 pack of tickets for only $44 for weekday shows or receive $4 off weekend tickets by going to www.ticketmaster.com and entering the code MOM*.
The show dates are as follows: Saturday, December 26: 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM, 7:00PM Sunday, December 27: 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM Monday, December 28: 11:00AM, 3:00PM Tuesday, December 29:12:00 PM,4:00 PM
*Minimum purchase of 4 tickets required; additional tickets above 4 can be purchased at $11 each. Not valid on VIP Gold, VIP, and Circus Celebrity seats or combinable with other offers. Service charges and handling fees will apply.
“I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Disney. Mom Central sent me show tickets to thank me for taking the time to participate.”
How is it already December?! With the warm weather we are having here in MA it's hard to believe that the holiday parties are about to begin happening. Even if you aren't throwing any holiday parties this year, it can still be fun to make some festive dishes.
Of course this leads to the question "What should I make?" followed by "Do I even have time to make anything?" The last thing I want to do when I'm busy is feel like I needed to be cooking for hours on end.
Heinz and Ocean Spray teamed up to create an easy appetizer that you can use for the holidays. Honestly I served it as dinner and my family enjoyed. It consists of three ingredients:
2 lb bag of frozen pre-cooked cocktail meatballs
12 oz jar of Heinz Chili Sauce
A 14 oz can of Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce
The directions are incredibly simple.
Combine sauces in sauce pan and cook over medium-low heat stirring until smooth
Add meatballs and cooked covered for 15 minutes
That's it. I actually choose to use regular frozen pre-cooked turkey meatballs since we were having it for dinner and it it worked well. I think though the kids would have liked the cocktail sized meatballs better plus I ended up having to cut the large meatballs in half for them. Another idea would be to serve these in a crockpot to keep them warm. The kids did like the meal and liked that it was something different.
“I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Heinz and Ocean Spray and received the ingredients necessary to facilitate my review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.”
One of the challenges that I found myself facing as the mother of a child in full day kindergarten is lunch. Yes, yes I know everyone says to make it the night before so that I'm not rushing around in the morning. That's a nice idea in theory or perhaps I should say if you have a relatively empty refrigerator so that you can fit a lunch box in it or if your child doesn't change his mind about what he will and won't eat a bunch of times.
Sure, I could put everything else in the box and just leave the sandwich in the fridge and throw it and the ice pack in the box the next morning, but a lot of times that's easier said than done particularly with soccer, Tae Kwon Do and homework. Personally, I sometimes don't like sandwiches that are made the night before because the jelly leaves soggy spots in the bread.
Smuckers has tried to solve this dilemma by coming up with Uncrustables. Actually they've been around for a while. I remember seeing them on a morning showa couple years ago. Basically they took the things that kids like best about PB&J and put it together. White bread, strawberry or grape jelly, peanut butter and of course no crusts! The sandwich is pinched closed all around the edges. They also come frozen.
Running late? Just grab one out of the freezer and toss it in the bag. You don't have to worry about grabbing an ice pack either since it's frozen and can double as one. They'll be defrosted by the time you're ready to eat them and there's no soggy spots either.
My kids really liked them. I'll confess that I may have eaten one too and also enjoyed it. It tastes just like a good PB&J should. Nice thick peanut butter. They now have a whole wheat version too.
Right now Smuckers is giving away packages of their Uncrustables. That's right they are giving away free sandwiches as part of the 80,000 sandwich giveaway. Go to their website to receive a 4 pack.
“I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Smucker’s Uncrustables and received a sample to facilitate my candid review. In addition, Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.”
Just a couple months ago I met with a high risk breast cancer specialist. With both breast cancer and ovarian cancer running in my family, I wanted to find out my risks and what steps I should be taking.
Electrolux and Kelly Rippa have teamed up to raise money for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund (OCRF) using a texting. That's right texting. Simply texting the word "KELLY" to 85944 will raise $5. Be aware that regular texting fees do apply. Want to participate but don't want to text? There's another option. You can go to the website www.kelly-confidential.com. Each time you visit the website you will be entered to win a free Electrolux front loader washer and dryer in Turquoise Sky for Ovarian Awareness Month. Mom Central will also be giving away an Electrolux front loader washer and dryer in Turquoise Sky. Visit their website for more information.
As long as you're on the website why not send a friend a virtual t-shirt and have a dollar per shirt donated to OCRF? In addition 100% of the proceeds from the sale of the limited edition shirts designed by Kelly Rippa will go to OCRF.
"I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Electrolux and received a gift certificate to thank me for taking the time to participate."
I'm officially the mother of a school age child. That's right, this week my older son (OS) started full day kindergarten. Along with the playing, learning, gym and music classes comes lunch. He is after all in full day. I have to admit that the thought of coming up with a packed lunch for him every day stresses me out. When Mom Central announced that they were looking for bloggers to review a new site called Brain Fuel, I quickly volunteered.
BrainFuel is a site that combines all the different elements that your brain needs to function. It is broken down into different categories. Brain Food is the first and that's where there's info on different meals. There are links to lots of different articles about being and eating healthy. That itself is broken into breakfast, lunch, herbs and vitamins. This section also has recipes in it. For instance if you go into "breakfast" and look at the bottom you'll see a link for "Try this recipe" as well as a link for "What to serve for a brainy breakfast".
There are also categories for "Brain Health" which not suprisingly includes categories like walking, math and music. The next is "Brain Games," containing a link to a site called Lumosity which has various games. Like Facebook games? You'll probably like these games as well. My recommendation is for Birdwatching. It's a game where you have to remember where the bird appeared while also looking to see what letter appeared in the trees.
Finally there's a "Brain Forum" site where you can dicuss topics with other parents as well as ask a registered dietician a question. This site's purpose is to help parents understand health and nutrition for their children whether it's trying to come up with meals that have the right balance of proteins and carbs or learning how to read a nutrition label.
I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of BrainFuel and received an insulated lunch bag from California Innovations to thank me for taking the time to participate.
My husband is an IT guy, but not a techie. He has years of experience managing IT operations, and he currently manages project managers and systems analysts. He thus has a really good handle on what needs to be done to keep the computers in our house secure, but, as he will be the first person to admit, he doesn't always have the technical skill to do what needs to be done. He often quotes one of his Carnegie Mellon professors who said, "My fourteen year-old daughter believes I keep track of everything she does on the computer. She believes this with good reason, because I can...and I do." Unfortunately, neither of our boys have as good a reason to believe the same thing about us. We haven't worried too much about it yet, as our older son hasn't turned six yet, and we have yet to allow them any unsupervised time on a real computer. However, we have begun talking about how to protect them as they get older. I was pretty excited to participate when www.mcafee.com/familyprotection McAfee Family Protection launched a blog tour with Mom Central.
I am very impressed by the functionality and ease of configuration of McAfee Family Protection. The installation process required only a few clicks, and no difficult decisions. I strongly recommend that anyone who buys the tool immediately review all of the defaults. I had assumed that the software would start unconfigured and require me to set everything up, but that was not the case at all. The moment the software came on, it had already established several settings. This does make sense, since anyone who wants the status quo is probably not installing this software, but if you don't know it is coming, it can be a surprise.
I initially experimented with the web blocking functionality. I thus attempted my inaugural visit to the website of a well known pornographic magazine. No luck, or perhaps I should say good luck. The software blocked me. I also appreciated the flexibility of the categories. With a couple of mouse clicks, I could change what types of websites were banned, for example preventing and then allowing eBay by blocking and then permitting access to auction sites. It was also interesting to read the way McAfee described each category, because it alerted me to the possibility of certain types of sites that I might not have otherwise considered. The software also allows you to block individual websites. I went to my husband's college website, then blocked it, and McAfee kept me away until I reauthorized it.
I did find two challenges with web blocking. The first was that I sometimes found that I had not saved changes to the configuration, even though I thought I had. I imagine this would get better as I got more used to the product. The second was that some of the categories included sites that I did not expect to be blocked. For example, I was unable to experiment with the way McAfee tracks Facebook behavior until I enabled access to Facebook.com. The good news is that McAfee was more thorough than my own judgment, but implementing it has unexpected side effects.
McAfee has two ways of limiting the amount of time that children spend on-line. You can either limit the total amount of time or ban specific amounts of time, for example the middle of the night. McAfee gave me ample warning that I was approaching a time without internet access, but when I hit the specified time, it shut me down.
Email blocking was equally effective. It not only required me to specify what email accounts I would allow but I then needed to specify from which email addresses I could receive email. This does provide extra security. It also means an awful lot of data entry to add the email address of every friend of one of your kids. On the other hand, I can't think of a reason why I would want to limit one of my children to a particular email address and yet not want to control their contacts.
One of my husband's biggest nightmare scenarios is the way children can give out dozens of individual pieces of information that a predator can put together to build a complete picture. I was thus pleased with the Social Networking features that report if any of a number of designated pieces of personal information are posted to Facebook or another social networking site. It doesn't actually block the posting, but if you configure the software to keep a record, you will have no trouble finding out what happened and tracking it down quickly.
While I was impressed by the thoroughness of the Usage Reporting, it does require you to check on the computer to see what your little one did...or tried to do on-line. There is an Instant Alerts capability that sets McAfee to email or text you or anyone else you designate when a child tries to perform a prohibited act. Although it seemed easy to configure, I did not successfully get this to work. When my kids are older, I will need some product support to keep me informed of bad events in real time.
As a final note, I was impressed by the security model. I expected a user account on McAfee to align with a user account on the computer, but in fact the McAfee user accounts are setup so that multiple people can share the same computer account, and each can have a different level of access based on how he or she is configured. While my husband may snicker that sharing the same computer account isn't good practice, it makes me more comfortable to know that McAfee will indulge any laziness on my part. This product impressed me a great deal in a short period of time. I expect to spend a lot of time with it when my kids are older
I wrote this review while participating in a blog tour campaign by Mom Central on behalf of McAfee and received a sample to facilitate my candid review. In addition, McAfee sent me a blanket and care package to thank me for taking the time to participate.
Motherhood brings a lot of feelings. There is the joy that you're a mother and the feeling of pure love. No matter what though, it doesn't change Mother Nature. Whether it's a little leak when you laugh, or just that regular time of the month, a pantiliner could be in order. Carefree just launched their new Ultra Protection Pantyliner. They have also come out with the new Ultra Pantiliner Protection. I had the opportunity to review these pantiliners on behalf of Mom Central. These pantiliners offer ten times the protection of a regular pantyliner. They also have my personal favorite: wings. Unlike bulky pads, they are very thin and flexible.
In addition to making great pantiliners, Carefree is pairing up with First30Days.com to help women make fresh starts in their life. My own fresh start was a couple of years ago, when I decided to get back into shape. I had just had my second son, and I needed to lose the weight from that pregnancy...and from my first pregnancy as well. I had already been a member of the Y. However, my regular workouts just weren't cutting it. After talking with some friends who had recently lost their baby weight, I decided to take their advice and get a personal trainer. I needed to learn how to come up with workouts for my current body not my teenage or pre-kid body.
It was a lot of hard work. I'll be honest and say that if I hadn't bought the training sessions in a package, I might not have come back for the second session. It was also expensive even with the package deals. I felt like it took one session to see an exercises, a second session to tweak it, and a third session to try something new.
Eventually I decided to train for a triathlon. It started as a joke between a trainer, a friend of mine, and me, but we then realized that it was actually quite doable. Of course this involved getting more exercise clothes and equipment. The cost quickly added up particularly when I bought a bike. I didn't own one and I certainly needed one for the biking portion of the triathlon. The triathlon was well worth the cost and effort that went into it. The equipment, trainer, and bike were a great investment.
I know that I am not alone in planning or making a fresh start. Many women also change their paths. That is why Carefree is giving advice and financial support to women on how to make changes in their lives. Women simply need to go to the Carefree site and describe their fresh start goal, state how they will achieve this goal, and explain why winning money will help them. A panel of judges, including Ariane de Bonvoisin, will then pick ten finalists. The public will then vote for their favorite. The top three winners will receive $3,000, $5,000 and $10, 000 as part of their FreshSstart Fund as well as personal tips from Ariane and a trip to New York City where they will be honored at a Carefree event in partnership with Step Up Women's Network. All other finalists will receive $1,000.
Make sure to check the site out! The deadline is July 10, 2009.
Father's Day is almost here. The question is what do get our fathers and husbands, who are after all the father of our children, for their big day. Personally my husband and I have found that since parenthood we have put many of our personal purchases on hold and instead use the money for swim lessons, museum admissions and taking our kids out for other treats. Holidays, like Father's Day, are when we are able to get a "me" gift. However, it's a "me" gift still on a budget. Who isn't these days?
How then do you decide particularly when you are spending your extra taking your kids to the above mentioned swimming lessons and other activities? Mom Central has put together a Father's Day Gift Guide to take the work out of chosing a gift. They have gifts categorized into four catergories: Under$25, Under $50, Under $100 and Over $100. The gifts run the gamet from t-shirts to grill books, to a camera and a tent. There are different gifts for different personalities and different prizes.
Mom Central is also doing a daily give away. That's right, tents, BBQ accessories, CDs etc. They have a whole list of items that they are giving away. Perhaps you can win that perfect Father's Day gift. All you have to do is just login and click on the daily giveaway. Be sure to check it out!
I remember being a young kid and declaring that I would never cook. I would be one of those grownups who just didn't care for it and would get take-out every night. My mother would always say that one day when I had a family, I would care because I would want them to eat healthy. Not surprisingly, she was right. In addition to eating healthy, it also saves a lot of money to cook.
As much as my husband and I love the idea of cooking for our family, it can be hard to fit it into our busy schedules. On top of it, our oldest is now doing soccer and Tae Kwon Do which in combination occupy three evenings a week. The question is how to make it work. Ideally, it's also how to make it work so that we can have family dinners at least a couple nights a week.
Mom Central has teamed up with Making Life Better to tell you about how to make cooking dinner a little easier. Unlike just looking up recipes on the internet, which I frequently do by the way, you can actually watch demo videos. Basically it's the idea of a cooking show, but for meals you've already selected. You can also watch the videos at your own convenience. Put your laptop in your kitchen and it's like having your own personal cooking show! Jennifer Bushman, author of the Kitchen Coach cookbooks, has demo videos up there. She has a step by step video for upside down chicken pie on the YouTube Channel for Making Life Better.
The recipes are simple and use ingredients that are easy to find and stock in your kitchen like Knorr's products, Lipton, Breyers, Country Crock, Hellman and Ragu. There's a terrific recipe for a pizza meat loaf that uses Lipton's Dry Onion Soup mix and Ragu pasta sauce. The recipes are broken down at the end by approximate cost per meal as well as cost per serving. You can also choose to have recipes emailed, saved, printed on paper or even printed on a recipe card!
Another nice feature is that you can look what you have stocked in your cabinets or fridge and do a search based those ingredients. For example I selected eggs and selected stove top as my preferred cooking method. I could have also chosen which meal I was making. It gave me 43 recipes using eggs and my stove top. There are also budget recipes and recipe tips right on the recipe home page of Making Life Better.
Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 6 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
