Trident Smiles Across America

Did you know that when you buy any pack of Trident gum from September 19 – 25, five cents per pack will be donated to Oral Health America’s Smiles Across America program which supports vital school-based and school-linked oral health services for children and families across the U.S?

clip_image001Well, now you do!

Everyone loves to see children smile. But untreated tooth decay can keep children from smiling and doing well in school. In fact, dental related issues cause more than 51 million lost school hours in the U.S. each year.

Smiles Across America® and Trident® know dental disease can be prevented with proper treatment and instruction. That’s why they’ve teamed up to give underprivileged kids the care and education they need.

Their partnership has helped give dental care to over 250,000 kids annually, but they need your help. Join them and help keep kids’ smiles healthy and bright. Like Trident on Facebook to learn more

This giveaway has ended. Congratulations to the winner, Jackie.

All rules can be found under giveaway rules.

Craftsman’s SCREW*D Reality Show: Help Alan

After my visit to the Craftsman Experience earlier this year I realized just how much fun using some tools can be and how much I LOVE Craftsman. Craftsman prides itself on having the right tools for any job. Whether or not you know how to use them, is another story. But anyone can learn right? That’s what we’re going to find out. The brand launched an online reality series, SCREW*D: Where Survival Comes Down to the Right Tools.  The series is following one unhandyman’s journey to learn tool skills in anticipation of a series of extreme, high-risk tool and survival challenges.  His only resources for these challenges – Craftsman tools and the brand’s online community. That means us!

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The tool clueless hero, Alan Weischedel, has absolutely no tool experience or skills, but is striving to become the ultimate handyman. Alan’s home base is the Craftsman Experience in Chicago, and episodes of the series air each Sunday on www.craftsmanscrewd.com. He survived the Bayou a few weeks ago and will be dropped someone new next week. Find out where he’s going to be dropped and what he needs help with to get out of his next challenge.

This giveaway has ended. Congratulations to the winner, Cathy W.

All rules can be found under giveaway rules.

Have a Pirate Party on Talk Like A Pirate Day with Jake and The Never Land Pirates

Talk Like a Pirate Day is just around the corner this Monday, September 19 and we hope you are ready to celebrate "Jake and the Never Land Pirates" style!  We are!

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Here are ways you can have your own party experience:

- Arrrrrgh!! Make a "Jake"-inspired costume for your kids with items found around the house. The instructional video walks you through the process step-by-step.

- Full steam ahead! These yummy pirate snacks will make your wee ones smile!

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Ingredients:
Red Bell Pepper
Egg Salad
Thin Pretzel Stick
Cheese Slice
Red Pepper Flag

Directions:

Cut a red pepper in half lengthwise, be sure to remove the seeds

Fill each pepper egg salad. Sink a thin pretzel stick mast into the center of the boat, then add two triangular pieces of cheese for sails.

Use a dab of cream cheese to fix a small red pepper flag to the top of the mast.

- Entertain your little scallywags with the game of "Captain’s Calling!"

- Crackers! Help your favorite pirates make their very own Skully!

- Thar she blows! This pirate ship cake or pirate hat cake are easy to make and will leave your kids shouting "Ahoy!" 

pirate ship cake

pirate-ship-cake-recipeIngredients: 

2 baked 9" or 10" round cakes
3 to 4 cups chocolate icing
Chocolate wafer sticks (such as Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Cookies)
Milk chocolate wafer rolls (Waffeletten cookies)
Several pieces of white or off-white paper
3 10" wooden skewers
Malted milk balls
Rolo candies
Root beer barrels
Plastic pirate figures (we used Playmobil), washed thoroughly

Directions:

Cut the cakes in half and layer them, rounded sides all facing the same direction, adding a thin coat of chocolate icing between the layers.

Step 2 Trim the bottom curves of the cakes slightly to help them sit flat, then turn the cakes upright, as shown. (Tip: If necessary, wrap the cakes in plastic and chill in the freezer to make them firmer. Also, two drinking straws stuck through the four layers of cake will help keep them together.)

Cover with the chocolate icing, then create planking lines along the hull with a butter knife. Chill at least one hour to firm the icing.

Use dabs of icing to anchor wafer stick gunwales along the edge of the deck.

Press the wafer rolls into both sides of the ship for cannons.

Cut sails from the paper, then slip them onto the skewers and set the masts in place.

Add malted milk ball cannonballs, plenty of Rolo gold booty, and root beer barrels, then station a few pirates to keep watch.

For safety, place the candles in the cookie cannons, far from the paper sails. Also, make sure that the surface on which the cake rests is impervious to wax, as the burning candles will drip.

Feel Free to download your own Jake and the Never Land Pirates party kit with Jake and the Never Land Pirates invitations, recipes, games and activities.

Here is our party experience:

We received a Jake and The Never Land Pirates party pack in anticipation of Talk like a pirate day and the release of "Jake and the Never Land Pirates:Yo Ho, Mateys Away!" DVD featuring seven episodes from the series on September 27. We put the DVD in this morning and are having an at home sick party. Yes the Bishop family has our annual back to school cold. Seems like school and kids are a germ infestation and even I’m sick today. YUCK.

So we’re cheering ourselves up with back to back episodes of Jake and the Never Land Pirates:Yo Ho, Mateys Away. Jake and the Never Land Pirates is cable’s #1 series among Boys 2-5 and is on track to be Disney Channel’s #1 preschool series ever.  It is the most co-viewed series among all Disney Junior and Nickelodeon series, with 47% of Moms watching with their preschooler.  A music-filled interactive treasure hunt, the series introduces a crew of kid pirates – leader Jake and pals Izzy and Cubby – and follows their Never Land adventures as they work to outwit two infamous characters, the one and only Captain Hook and Smee, from Disney’s classic "Peter Pan."  Every episode features the animated Sharky and Bones characters as they pop up throughout to perform original pirate ditties, and each episode concludes with a live action music video featuring The Never Land Pirate Band.

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We are having chocolate coins the size of cookies. Our friends are going to all be getting copies of Jake and the Never Land Pirates later today. We were supposed to have a play date today but I canceled it yesterday just knowing something was amiss. I know that even though Miles isn’t feeling well, he cheered right up and starting saying ARRGH, and Ahoy Matey when he saw the box of party supplies. They LOVE Jake and the Never Land Pirates.

 

We received party supplies, photos, and materials from Disney and from a PR company representing Disney to have a Jake and the Never Lands Pirate party. Even though having a cold messed up our party plans our spirit couldn’t not be squashed.

Halloween Recipe: Pumpkin Spookamole

I LOVE Avocados, just love them any time of day, breakfast lunch and dinner. Avocados From Mexico have worked with me in the past and I just adore them. So when they asked me to share some Spooky recipes with you, I thought, it is getting awfully close to Halloween Season and I love both Halloween and Avocados. So here is the first of the two recipes I’m going to share with you.

PUMPKIN SPOOKAMOLE

Pumpkin Spookamole Recipe

Pumpkin Spookamole Recipe
Recipe Type: Appetiser
Ingredients
  • 2 avocados from Mexico, halved, pitted and peeled
  • 1/4 cup minced onion, divided
  • 1 tablespoon chopped jalapeno
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro, divided
  • 3/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 cup finely chopped plum tomato
  • 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
Instructions
  1. In a medium bowl, place 2 tablespoons of the chopped onion, the chiles, 1 tablespoon of the cilantro and the salt.
  2. With the back of a wooden spoon, mash until the mixture becomes a juicy paste.
  3. Add avocados; with a fork, coarsely mash avocados; stir to combine with the paste.
  4. Fold in the tomatoes, lime juice and remaining onion and cilantro.
  5. Serve with tortilla chips, if desired.

Organizing Receipts, Tax Documents, Children’s Art, Business Cards with NeatDesk.

After going to blogher, I have more business cards than I know what to do with. Now that the kids are in school, I’m getting all kinds of paperwork and artwork and it’s starting to stack up already. With back to school season our budget is going to need some more fine tuning and keeping track of receipts is just a plastic sandwich bag that’s almost full.

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This fall, The Neat® Company is going to help us stay organized with the NeatDesk® ( They also make NeatReceipts®) two user-friendly scanning solutions. By scanning and saving within Neat’s software, NeatWorks®, I can create my own digital filing cabinet. And I’m so impressed with all the options and how easy it is to you. With Neat, I will no longer search through backpacks, binders, plastic bags, table tops and folders for all my paperwork. I will find everything I need on my desktop, you know my computer, which is where I spend all my spare time anyways. .

So I had to try it out.

First, I installed the software, which was a breeze.

Then, I had to plug in the NeatDesk® to my computer over USB. (My husband wishes it was a wireless device, but I’m not going to complain)

Then I had to update the software before it would work properly. It didn’t recognize that I had Outlook installed or automatically transfer documents to my computer until I updated. Now it works properly.

First I scanned some business cards, blogger business cards are really difficult for the neatworks software to pick information from because they don’t follow a “business card” standard. Information is all over the place and it doesn’t recognize Facebook and Twitter contact information. Which is fine, for most that’s not information you need, you just want, name, phone number and address. Then you can sync all that valuable information with Outlook. LOVE having all these contacts in my outlook. LOVE this feature.

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Next I had to try out the receipts feature.

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Scanning is easy and organizing your receipts is easier than I thought it would be too. It’s just nice having everything in the same place. Seems like they thought of everything too. It’s quite simple to come up with a new folder on the fly, and I love how it recognizes company name and all of the categories, tax, total, I’m pretty impressed with the receipt scanning.

NeatDesk features an award-winning ADF (Automatic Document Feeder) scanner. The patented paper input tray lets you scan different kinds of paper – from the smallest receipt to 2-sided legal documents – all in a single pass. You can even insert up to 50 pages at once for lightning-fast batch scanning. NeatWorks (the software I mentioned above) uses patented "Intelligent Text Recognition" technology to identify and capture key information from scanned documents, then populates that data automatically in the robust digital filing system. Create exports for tax time and year-round financial management, or export data to applications like QuickBooks®,TurboTax®, and Outlook®. All scanned documents are completely keyword searchable, so you’ll find your files in just a few seconds instead of searching your endless mounds of paperwork, like my house!

Because it scans and saves so much information at one time, I’m really excited to start getting everything organized.

Summary:

Here are a few ways that parents can use Neat:

- Save children’s tests, art work, hand-outs, and papers in one accessible, safe location
- Save shopping receipts to track grocery and all house hold expenses by category
- Back-up medical records so they can be emailed to the school nurse
- sync all of your contact information for easy access with your e-mail accounts
- Scan and organize all of your tax materials

We received samples in exchange for this review, all opinions and experiences are our own.

Giveaway Jingle Link Your Giveaways up Here

You’ve got a giveaway, I want to know about it! Oh, and if you list your giveaway on Mom Start Facebook page then I will try to remember to tweet it out to all of my twitter followers. If you could link directly to the giveaway you want me to tweet that would be very helpful. At 10,800 followers and growing all the time! Cool? I hope so!

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I’ve got a few giveaways you might want to check out too!

The Lion King Collectables and watch #LionKing3D in Theaters September 16

You won’t want to miss the re-release of The Lion King now in 3D at your local movie theater. This limited 2 week engagement, which starts September 16leads up to the re-release of The Lion King from the Disney vault into DVD on October 4.

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I’ve told you how much I LOVED the re-release of The Lion King 3D here on MomStart in my posts about meeting the people involved in The Lion King and how The Lion King became 3D. I can’t encourage you enough to go see it on the big screen with your children. Parent’s, you’ll fall in love with it all over again, I promise; your children will simply fall in love with the magic of The Lion King in only the ways a theater can. There is just something about a movie in the theaters, right?

clip_image004Well, the next best thing to seeing The Lion King 3D in the theater is taking the movie home. Until you can take purchase your own 3D or BluRay on October 4, think about these little magical movie treats from the Disney Store:

Green your routine with a young Simba and young Nala shopping tote for only $2.50. If you’re at the Disney Store load it with your other favorite Lion King must haves, then reuse it over and over again for grocery shopping, wrapping a birthday present, storing your child’s toys, a quick grab-and-go playground bag

 

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Get your 3-inch collectable Vinylmation Lion King tradeables for only $9.95. You’ll fall in love with these Mickey Mouse shaped figures. You don’t know what you have until you’ve made the purchase, so complete your set by trading your duplicated. I wonder who the mystery character is; my guess is either Ed or Mufasa. clip_image008My 4YO has the Rafiki; he loves it, though the staff is removable and he tends to misplace it.

Find your child’s favorite Lion King characters for them to snuggle with at night. You can choose from different price ranges, from $8.50 to $59.50. My 2YO loves to snuggle his young Simba “mini bean bag” plush, which is $8.50, however you can purchase two for $15 OR you can get the mini plush series of young Simba, young Nala, hula Timon, and luau-pig Pumbaa for only $30!

 

 

clip_image010Bring home the Best of the Lion King on CD for only $9.00 and it’s eligible for FREE super saver shipping if you aren’t subscribed to Amazon Prime. Best of the Lion King includes your favorite songs from The Lion King, The Lion King 1½, The Lion King 2 Simba’s Pride, Rhythm of the Pride Lands, and The Lion King on Broadway. I like having this new CD in our library for some new kid-tunes! Best of all, with Amazon, you can go green and purchase the MP3 of each song for only 99₵ which is $11.88 for the whole CD!

Get out and see The Lion King 3D in a movie theater near you. Check local listings! Then head to the Disney Store or online and get your own movie swag!

Don’t forget to follow The Lion King on their official Facebook page. You can also get in with Disney on Twitter @DisneyAnimation, @DisneyPictures, and chat with others about the release of The Lion King in 3D on Twitter using the hashtag #LionKing3D.

 

Disclaimer: A special thank you to Disney and Click Communications for The Lion King swag bags containing all of the items photo-featured for the facilitation of this review.

Loving The New Balance 688 Cute & Supportive Shoe Review

Miles looks so grown up in his new shoes from New Balance. He put them on himself notice they are not quite tied and on the wrong feet but he gets an a for effort. I wish they were Velcro, but I guess it’s never too soon to start teaching your child to tie their own shoes.

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He Loves them too which is most important. He wants to wear them all the time. He’s so hard on shoes at play time though that I told him he can’t wear them when he rids his motorcycle. No shoe was meant to be break pads going down a large steep hill.

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Now we know Miles likes them, let’s talk about why I like them. I like them because they look like he’s comfortable. He also wants to wear them which is huge for a parent. They are quite flexible, even though my kids are so far past learning how to walk, I still like them to be in shoes that I can fold in half because they are so flexible and these I can. So I’m really happy with these shoes and I would buy New Balance for my kids to wear in the future.

More About the New Balance 688:

New Balance 688 – Perfect for the active kid on the go, the New Balance 688 offers the support, comfort and cushioning Moms and Dads look for, in a bright, fun package that kids will love. The 688 is a technical running shoe featuring ABZORB cushioning and a fashionable upper design in a variety of pop colors. Available in lace or alternative closures for July 2011. MSRP: $44.95 Youth, $34.95 Infant.

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This giveaway has ended. Congratulations to the winner, nickie.

All rules can be found under giveaway rules.

Truly Organic Baking’s Bakers Basics Banana Bread Mix Recipe

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It doesn’t have to be 100% homemade to be good for you. My personal recipes each week are homemade; I love to make things “from the scratch store” as my 4YO would say. However, even if you also like to make homemade goods sometimes you need to make something but don’t have the time to invest. Just because something is semi-homemade or you use a box doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your food values. Using Truly Organic Baking’s Bakers Basics is one option.

 

 

Truly Organic Baking’s Bakers Basics Banana Bread Mix Recipe

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INGREDIENTS

1 box Truly Organic Baking’s Banana Bread Mix (get your own on Amazon [http://www.amazon.com/Truly-Organic-Baking-Bakers-15-7-Ounce/dp/B00351Z52E])
2 large organic eggs
3 ripe organic bananas
¼ cup organic butter, melted

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350oF. Grease mini-muffin pan’s cups.

2. Combine all ingredients until dough forms.

3. For mini-muffins bake for 10 minutes, or until golden brown and inserted toothpick comes out clean.

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I’m a fan of making mini-muffins but you can make regular muffins, king muffins, or loaves with this recipe. You can do more too if you feel comfortable altering baking instructions and possible ingredients.

clip_image008You can learn more about Truly Organic Baking on their website, at Truly Organic Baking on Facebook, and Twitter @TOBLLC.

About Summer:

Summer is very active in our Local MOMS Club chapter, she is the mother of two adorable active boys, and is always thinking of ways to help others. She is a friend, a wife, and always busy as all mommies are. She is very active on Facebook, addicted to Geocaching and very interested in organic and green living while cooking up a storm.

Step2 Lifestyle Legacy Play Kitchen Set Review

We’ve been a fan of Step2 for many many years. I sold their products when I was in high school, an unmentionable amount of years ago and LOVED them then and still love them now when I purchased one of their kitchens when Zoe was only 1 year old. For her first birthday before she could even stand we bought her a kitchen (we knew her brother was on the way and that they could share it) I watched her grow and develop, pull herself up in her kitchen and now she’s learning about which foods are healthy for her. It’s been an amazing go and the kitchen has stood up to the test of time. She’s now almost five years old and we’ve had many play dates with the kitchen even been climbed on, which I don’t recommend.

Step2 sent us the Lifestyle Legacy Kitchen to review and test out and again it’s QUALITY. It’s smaller than the one we purchased which is perfect if you want to get a kitchen for your kids that doesn’t take up too much room. It was quite easy to put together everything can be screwed in by hand. It only took me a few hours because the kids were wanting to help and I always get distracted when I’m working on something and I’m constantly interrupted by the kids. If you sat down and just put the kitchen together I bet you could get it together in 30 minutes, including all the stickers.

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The Step2 Lifestyle Legacy Kitchen Set features:

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  • Fun, tasteful colors and surface decals
  • Kitchen features multi-level counter tops with sink & swivel faucet, two stove burners with clicking knobs and a fun cutting board decal
  • Accessory set includes 2 full place settings, 5-piece serving set, salt & pepper shakers, 3 bins for storage, coffee pot, phone, pot holder and a pot & pan with lids
  • 2 electronic features include stove and phone
  • 2 "Woven" storage baskets and 1 recycle basket fit underneath
  • Bake a treat in the oven or make a quick snack in the microwave
  • Realistic refrigerator features "water" dispenser
  • Loads of built-in storage makes clean up a breeze
    One of our favorite features with the Step2 kitchens is that they come with food or pots and pans for your kitchen and stimulate hours and hours of playtime in your children. It saves my life at dinner time when I need to cook, they can go and make their own meals while I work on getting dinner ready.