And we thought that black chalkboard paint was cool. Imagine being able to make a wipe-off-able rainbow… Hudson Paint has just released its fab chalkboard paint in 24 new colors. Paint the kids snack table, create a child-height border around their bedroom, or finally get organized by making a flow chart on a wall in the mudroom. You could also paint the inside of kitchen cupboard doors, or make a wipe-able calendar on your office wall. Resolution to get organized? Done.
Another Pina Colada, pool boy… oh darn. Confused again. This gorgeous belly cream is not only helping rid us of stretch marks and excess skin as we trim down, but the coconut scent has us convinced that we are a good deal south of Canada. Palmer’s Firming Butter was voted one of our reader’s top belly products, so we had to try it. And we love a bargain. (Shhh). It is available at drug stores, and is so inexpensive it might just be the extra excuse you need to stick with your diet. www.palmers.com
One of our resolutions this year is to proudly announce to the grocery store clerk… ‘no thank you. I don’t need bags. I have brought my own.’ Little did we know that few cloth bags are created equal. First there are those with skinny handles that cut into your hands or shoulder, then the crappy ones that develop holes, and finally, there is the ‘useless’ group – too small for any real groceries and good for only 2 wine bottles (what use is that?). UrbanMommies tried the stunning organic GreenOne Bag and we were thrilled beyond belief.
The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 classics you need to read in your lifetime. How do your reading habits stack up? Note… when you’re travelling is a great time to crack open one of these tomes and start ticking off these 100 classics. Feel free to comment on this article and add some of your own selections.
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Graham
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo
Spend. Save. Share. Wouldn’t it have been nice if all of the world’s fighters had been given a Moonjar when they were little? A special piggybank, the Moonjar helps to teach children financial concepts, and encourages them to learn how to handle money. We need to save. We need to support charity, and spending a bit is never a bad thing either. The three pieces of the Moonjar fit together, and it cannot be a unit without the other pieces. Pretty clever. I bet the kids who grew up with these are never late on their Visa payments. www.moonjar.ca
A Baby Flip a FaceBy SAMi
A blue hat becomes a red hat and yellow hair becomes red hair in this soft, foam-filled book that will stimulate the minds and imaginations of babies and encourage them to grab on and flip the pages!
Sometimes you just need the perfect gift. A first birthday, a baby gift for a respected business colleague, or maybe for the homecoming of the baby who has just been released from the NICU. It happens – and these occasions should not be allowed to slip by. You might not be able to grab it from Winners a hour before the event, but it will most certainly be perfect. Custom Made for Kids prints individual, bound storybooks about the life of a child.
Once upon a time, somewhere in post-war Eastern Europe, there was a great famine in which people jealously hoarded whatever food they could find, hiding it even from their friends and neighbors. One day a wandering soldier came into a village and began asking questions as if he planned to stay for the night. “There’s not a bite to eat in the whole province,” he was told. “Better keep moving on.”
A little while ago, we had a cool contest where you told us your favourite baby products. (Congrats to Anne Uebbing who won the big prize!) We have a bunch of great ideas, and love it when our readers give us great input. Don’t forget to read the last one. It made us feel pretty good.
And the winners (sorted by category for Pregnancy, Feeding, Diapering, Bathing, Gear, Toys, Clothing) are….
It’s time for back-to-school scrambling which usually includes shopping for brand new school supplies. But which school supplies are safe for your kids? Last year, a report was released by Environmental Defense and the US-Based Center for Health, Environment and Justice outlining guidelines for purchasing safe back-to-school products. Polyvinyl Chloride or PVC is found in many common school supplies and other children’s products and is of key concern in the report.