2013 - Page 5 of 16 - Rave & Review

Who doesn’t want an Honestly Good meal in just minutes?

This post is part of a social shopper marketing insight campaign with Pollinate Media Group™ and Lean Cuisine, but all my opinions are my own. #pmedia #HonestlyGood #ad http://cmp.ly/3/8vNxcO.

Back when I had a corporate job, I brought lunch almost every single day. Some days lunch was just what I grabbed as I was running out the door, and some days it was leftovers and lovingly made lunches.

But, the days I really looked forward to were my Lean Cuisine hot lunches, which always felt like a special treat. I would find myself craving Lean Cuisine meals and would even *gasp* opt out of restaurant meals in favor of my favorite meal: Lean Cuisine Pizza.

In addition to being delicious, these Lean Cuisine lunches taught me a lot about portion control and the idea of "not hungry" vs. "stuffed". They ended up being a great tool for me back then and even on the days I ended up eating out or we ordered in, I had trained myself to stop eating when I hit the point I wasn't hungry anymore instead of eating everything I was served.

But, while my days of corporate office life are behind me now, and these days I work from home right next to a fully stocked kitchen, I feel like I need Lean Cuisine meals more than ever. Sitting next to kitchen with a full refrigerator and pantry tricks you into thinking that you will prepare gourmet lunches every afternoon and that you will be able to eat better than ever before, but that hasn’t been the case for me. Instead, I find I’m more rushed than ever with two kids, a job, and a website to run, so lunches for me almost always take a back seat.

This typically means that I skip breakfast most days, graze throughout lunch, and then am starving when dinner rolls around. Even though I’ve made an effort to make healthy choices, I haven’t eaten foods that fill me up enough or feel like a meal. This means I tend to snack in the afternoon and eat more at dinner, which takes a toll after a working at home for 5 years now.

When I heard about the Lean Cuisine Honestly Good meals debuting this year, I decided I needed to make Lean Cuisine part of my weekly meal plan again. With gourmet choices such as Plum Ginger Grain-Crusted Fish and Pomegranate Chicken, I knew I had found a great solution for enjoying a hot lunch in my busy day.

DIY: transform your wagon into an awesome fire truck

My little guy can’t wait to grow up and fight fires and drive fire trucks. On his 3rd birthday he came running in as soon as he woke up and asked if he was old enough to be a firefighter yet, clearly thinking that 3 just had to be grown up enough to fight fires.

Although I can’t do anything about the fact that he’s still got a decade and a half before we can pursue his dream of firefighting, I can encourage him to imagine himself as a firefighting hero every day of his childhood. With the Get Real Gear Jr Fire Fighter costume from Aeromax paired with what is quite possibly the coolest kid’s ride ever, we are well on our way to helping the kids play hero whenever they want.

Hello, Step2 “Fire Wagon”!

Introducing the new VTech InnoTab 3S Wi-Fi Learning Tablet

With the start of school a few weeks ago, my daughter has been thirsting for knowledge. She’s always been a curious kid and very interested in how things work, but this newfound love of learning is unlike anything I ever imagined.

She literally bounds out of bed each day excited to learn, she has trouble falling asleep at night because she’s so excited about what she will learn the next day, and she is constantly looking for things to challenge her new skills. All of this is awesome – really awesome – but it’s also exhausting. Sometimes I want to just “do”, not “teach” as I do, but I hate to discourage someone who is clearly craving lessons.

For this reason, I love that I can give her 30 minutes of tech time with her new VTech InnoTab 3S that arrived last week and it gives me a half hour of alone time to get things done. Instead of interrupting me every few seconds with “how do you spell ___?” or “what sound does ____ make?”, I love that when her VTech time is done she comes running back telling me something new she learned – all on her own.

Aeromax Get Real Gear for Halloween and beyond

Imaginations take flight with Aeromax
In our house, we take our dress up very seriously. We don’t merely have dress up time; all play time these days is done in costume. On any given day you will find the kids dressed as princesses, cowboys, knights, dragons, fairies, and doctors to go along with whatever they are playing with.

Our love of dress up lead us to fall in love with a company called Aeromax that makes the most realistic dress up gear anywhere. The kids have never been drawn to the fake costumes with plastic and overdone jewels – they want stuff that they can put on and be able to truly imagine themselves as a scientist in a lab, a police officer keeping the neighborhood safe, or a pilot flying a cargo plane full of toys.

With Aeromax Toys, pretend play has never been more realistic because even though their gear is designed for kids, this stuff is anything but child’s play. Seriously, just look at these costumes from their Get Real Gear line!

We’re talking flashing sirens, metal buckles, sewn-on patches, real buttons and snaps, and reinforced fabrics and details that look like miniature versions of the real deal stuff. For over 15 years Aeromax has been sparking imaginations with dress up clothing and gear from baby on up to adult and has received every top toy industry award.

With Halloween on the horizon, now more than ever we are thinking about costumes. But, with how much my kids love dress up year-round, I never consider shopping for Halloween at stores that carry traditional costumes. You know the kind, the ones that are made of those awful polyester fabrics and are designed to self-destruct before you even make it around the block trick or treating and with accessories so flimsy they end up being held together by tape before the big day even rolls around.

No, that won’t do at all. Our dress up gear needs to last throughout dozens of playtimes, so we need high quality stuff that’s built to be played in. Thank goodness Aeromax knows that dress up isn’t just for October 31st and has plenty of high quality gear that is made to be loved. And, trust me when I say that the gear that just arrived from Aeromax is very, very loved.

We received the Jr. Fire Fighter costume in tan, the Jr. Astronaut costume in white and then helmets for both costumes, and to say they were well received would be a vast understatement. Since my daughter is obsessed with space travel and my son is convinced he is almost old enough to fight fires, these costumes really couldn’t have been any better suited to my kids.

Do you have your wagon ready for Halloween?

When you think Halloween, do you think wagons? We sure do! Wagons are the ride of choice here in Washington, and even better if that wagon has a canopy with our usual 90% chance of rain just in time for Trick or Treating. My kids will be riding in their spooky chariot, AKA Step2 All … Read more

Corolle dolls, at home and on the go

My kids are absolutely crazy into dolls. This means that we do a lot of pretend play here at home. But, where most people think of dolls as an indoor toy that consists mostly of snuggling, rocking, and feeding, we treat our dolls like we do our real babies, and we take them everywhere with us.

This started when my son was under a year old and refused to sleep without his special Corolle Calin baby doll. We couldn’t very well let one child bring a doll and not the other, so we’ve now embraced the fact that wherever we go, we will need a suitcase for our dolls, too. And, our Corolle dolls have been all over the world with us.

I love that they adore their babies enough to take them out into the world with us as it shows the love that they have for their dolls is stronger than just a mere toy. And I also love that it opens up ways to make playing with babies active and makes even more ways for realistic pretend play.

Here are some tips to make traveling with littles easier with dolls:

Disney’s The Little Mermaid: Diamond Edition Blu-ray + DVD Combo Pack available now {$7 off coupon}

Have you heard the news? The Little Mermaid, one of the most celebrated animated films of all
time, is available for first time ever on Blu-ray! Wooohooo!

Looking back, I can clearly remember the time I first saw The Little Mermaid. It marks a point in my life in which I became obsessed with merfolk, deep sea creatures, and singing about wanting legs. So, of course, I was dying to watch it with my own children.

With unforgettable characters that shaped my own childhood, adventures at every turn, awesome Academy Award-winning music {1989: Best Music, Original Score, and Best Music, Original Song, Under The Sea}, The Little Mermaid is one of those classic films that every child should enjoy.

The Magic School Bus Weather Lab from Young Scientists Club {review & giveway}

Anyone who knows my daughter knows that science is a verb in our house. A few months ago, my daughter decided that she definitely wanted to be a scientist when she grew up…. or a ballerina. We ran with the scientist thing.

I never turn down an opportunity to spark my kids’ love of learning, and science with kids can be a fascinating thing that can carry them all through school. So, now we “science” all sorts of stuff each day, anything from basic weather phenomenon, things we find in nature, or concepts that can be hard to explain to kids without hands-on experiments.

Thank goodness there are kits designed specifically for teaching kids early science lessons, because I would be lost on how to start teaching science otherwise. I recently found the Magic School Bus line of science kits from Young Scientists Club and it was as if I had found the coolest toys on earth, according to my daughter.

I loved the books growing up, and we just found the Magic School Bus show after searching for science shows for kids, so as soon as I saw that there were Magic School Bus kits specifically for doing science at home, I was sold. And, then when I saw this kit, I fell in love:

Magic School Bus Weather Lab
Ms. Frizzle and her students help Young Scientists learn about the weather by spinning a pinwheel, making a tornado in a bottle, swirling a paper snake, recreating the water cycle, creating a rain cloud, using a sun dial, constructing a barometer, catching a rainbow, and learning about the greenhouse effect. With a weather chart is for tracking weather with colorful stickers, 28 colorful experiment cards, weather station, weather chart, stickers, and data notebook to record observations, your child will have everything they need to become a little meterologist.

Step2 LifeStyle Custom Kitchen

I
am a Step2 Test Drive Blogger. I received a product in exchange for my
review and opinion. No other compensation was provided and all opinions
are 100% ours.

I spend a good deal of my time at home in the kitchen. Whether I’m making dinner, washing dishes, packing lunches, or prepping snacks, the kitchen is where you will find me. My kids have seen me in the kitchen their whole lives and love to watch me cook and prep, so it’s really no surprise how interested they are in how things work in the kitchen.

This is why they are in love with their new play kitchen from Step2 that sits right alongside my real kitchen. They play with it every single day without fail and it’s become one of the biggest draws of our whole house that the kids flock to during playtime.

I love that they adore it so much, because I love to see them figure out everyday problems like how to make stew when all you have in the fridge is a few random vegetables because someone {ahem, the little one} took everything else for his picnic in the living room.

I love watching them work out math problems by dividing foods and subtracting, and I love seeing them problem solve amongst themselves as they figure out how many foods should be allocated to picnics and how many are for the stew.

Udi’s gluten free foods for morning, noon, and night {review}

Udis selection
Chances
are you know someone who has gone gluten free, whether it is celiac disease or simply because they feel better without gluten in their diet. My mom and aunt went gluten free back in 2010 and since that time I have met more people than I can count who also made the switch.

For this reason, I always try and keep some gluten free foods on hand when I know I might be entertaining guests with dietary concerns and I always choose Udi's Bakery. With so many gluten free selections ranging from breads and rolls to pizza and tortillas as well as desserts and cookies, Udi's really does have most of the foods I normally serve as well as some decadent treats that we all love.

For instance, this jelly toast, which was supposed to be gluten free peanut butter and jelly toast until someone omitted the PB. Hello, dessert.