Time to get messy!!! I love my job. Tide Ultra Stain Release has challenged my family to a little game. They sent along a few white t-shirts (hope it doesn’t rain…) and Tide Ultra Stain Release with a special ‘Zap Cap’ that has texture for you to scrub nasty stains with. After each activity, I throw the shirts in the wash to see how great this detergent really is. Such Fun!!! Each video shows how I removed the stain using the Zap Cap. My first task is for the kids and I to see how well Tide Ultra Stain Release can remove soil, crayon and jam stains!
I am THAT girl. You know – the one who, at 9 years old, crafted potpourri, took a keen interest in sewing Little House on the Prairie dresses and staged elaborate dinner parties that should have been playdates. Better than almost any playground or TV show, though, was laundry day. Yes, I am fully serious. Bright white linen napkins hung on a clothesline or the smell of fresh, wet laundry out of a machine still give me excited palpitations. My boys love helping to fold warm laundry. (They still need instruction on keeping clothes off the floor, however).
Whether you went the entire nine months or delivered prematurely—or, God forbid, late—your body is likely feeling beaten up after birth. It doesn’t matter if you had a c-section or a “normal” birth, the transition from pregnancy to baby-in-arms is a tough one. You probably feel like a ragdoll some over-enthusiastic toddler played too hard with. Here are some suggestions for getting past the humps and feeling like your old self again.
If you want your children to be skilled and creative problem solvers, consider preparing outdoor play spaces for imaginative play! Fantasy play and imaginative role playing, in spaces like fairy gardens, are well established pre-cursers to divergent and original problem solving later in life; skills that are well recognized in highly effective students! Fairy Gardens are a great way to encourage imaginative play and they are perfect for taking advantage of the magical thinking young children bring to their everyday play.
How do you keep date night from becoming stale? Dinner and a show just aren’t cutting it anymore, and you’re wondering how to change the fizzle back to sizzle? Here are a few ideas to reignite your relationship and reinvent date night:
Cabin Girl and Mr. Monkey have birthdays 4 days apart. Awesome planning on my end. We decided that this year, to make things simpler (HA!), we would do a combined birthday party for them. But, how to combine a birthday for a 7 year old girly-girl and a 2 year old rough and tumble toddler boy?
The answer, my friends, is in Never Neverland.
The birds are chirping and the sun is warming your face. Green grass is peeking through. The smell of spring is in the air. You step back into your lovely home and suddenly notice all the winter dust and disorder peeking from multiple rooms around the house. As you walk from room to room there are house cleaning needs to be addressed in each room. You can no longer ignore what the winter clouds hid from your view.
You’ve always wanted to try but have shied away. You see the pictures of your friends and family holding race bibs and posting about their latest training run. Why does it seem so hard to just start running? Trust me, I’ve had this conversation in my head many times. Do I want it? Do I want to be a runner?
April Fools’ Day is quickly approaching and my family is plotting. Alliances are being formed (and broken), plans made, and supplies collected. In this family, we definitely like to pull April Fools’ Days pranks on one another. We fully support the children joking around as long as pranks are done in kindness, not at someone’s expense, and don’t leave complete destruction in the wake of the prank. And as always, I find the family friendly benefit to joking with each other.
Good nutrition is important for everyone, but especially our little ones’ growing bodies (even though we secretly wish they’d stay little forever). There is so much to think about, and so little time to avoid tantrums at the supermarket. Are you trying to avoid certain things, like saturated fats and too much salt or sugar? Are you trying to choose foods that are high in vitamins and minerals? It’s hard to find time in our busy lives to make every meal straight from scratch, so sometimes we must reach for packaged foods instead of making homemade pasta and canning our own tomatoes (sometimes…).
When you’re trying to make the best and healthiest choices for your family, the first place you should check is the packaging. Fortunately, in Canada, ingredients and the Nutrition Facts label, are found on almost every packaged food product you can find at the store.