Rally for Recess DANNON Danimals Getting Kids Active

I’m willing to bet that after my kids start school tomorrow that everyone is just about in school and one goal I have is to get my kids exercising more. They don’t play very much outside at their preschool so I feel that I need to make sure they are getting the activity they need. Turns out they aren’t alone!

Schools nationwide are cutting recess time due to limited resources, which can impede children’s physical development.  In the past twenty years, children have lost an average of 8 hours of recess a week and some schools no longer provide play time for students. According to the American Academy of Pediatricians, the lack of playtime is a national crisis leading to a growing epidemic; childhood obesity.

Government and public health agencies recommend children engage in at 60 minutes of mild to strenuous activity each day. To help rally moms and kids around this cause, Dannon® Danimals®, the delicious and nutritious kids snacks that include on-the go smoothies and low fat yogurts with calcium, is launching a national initiative called “Rally for Recess”.

“Rally for Recess” is designed to create healthy competition, pitting school against school!  Five schools have the opportunity to win new playground equipment and an all-day recess celebration.  Danimals is committed to childhood health and wellness, which starts with good nutrition and an active lifestyle.  Through February 8, 2012 purchasers can find codes on Danimals packaging (or free by mail) to enter and register their school online.  The top school in each of five categories with the most codes registered wins!

For more information visit: RallyforRecess.com

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

All rules can be found under giveaway rules.

Posting this gives me the chance to win a Jungle Gym of my own. Which I will have to donate because we have no backyard. Winking smile

Win Learn & Donate Playing AXA Equitable Pass It On!

I’m asked to review websites and on-line games all the time. Most of the time, I turn it down, reviewing a game or website takes a lot of time and I don’t usually find any value from it. However, when I was asked to review AXA Equitable Pass It On on-line game, I said yes for a few reasons.

One, my readers, you guys, are quite interested in winning giveaways. with AXA Equitable Pass It On you have the chance to win $25,000 or $15,000 cash prize.

Two, I have a huge interest in supporting my community and charitable organizations whenever I have the opportunity. By participating in the game you will be helping others as AXA Equitable and the AXA Foundation have selected the American Red Cross, CARE, and Scholarship America to receive a grant based on the total number of votes received by Pass it On! players during the campaign period. The more you and I play the more votes the charities earn.  

While you have the opportunity to win and give you will also be learning a think or two about insurance plans and ways to protect your family along the way. Pass it On! is described as being a game between Monopoly and Risk which are two games that I Love to play. After playing  Pass it On! myself, I felt it reminded me of the Game of Life too.

Playing Pass it On! is simple you choose which type of family you want to be.

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As a family of four myself I’ve chosen the white picket fence family. The first time I played, I made the right choices and then the daddy died. Because I chose the gold Permanent Life insurance my family was protected and provided for after his death, but the rest of my family didn’t have any insurance. So the game started the next level with the mom making all the decisions. Since I knew that the gold Permanent Life Insurance was what I was supposed to buy, I decided to buy the silver term insurance. Term insurance ran out after three turns and after I ran out of insurance, I quickly ran out of money.

Moving around the board is quite easy. Everything can be done with the mouse.

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As you take the challenge and lead generations across the country from New York City to St. Louis to New Orleans to Mount Rushmore and finally, San Francisco and complete a level then you have the opportunity to make a charitable vote. And as I mentioned above each vote increases the amount of the grand that your charity choice will receive. You will learn about life choices, finances and the rewards you can reap by planning ahead. I don’t know that much about insurance personally. My husband makes all of the insurance decisions so it was interesting to play and learn a few things. It’s very important if you have children or anyone in your life that you provide for that you have a plan. You need to make sure your insurance will cover your income/all of their daily needs in the event something happens to you. So do your research and get some insurance. Be prepared for any emergency!

Unmotivated

I’ve been so unmotivated to work. We’ve had family visit

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We had so much fun!

School is starting soon

We’re having so much fun!

Then we had more family visit

We had even more fun!

School is starting soon!

 

School is starting tomorrow. What do I do in a house without any kids. I guess I’m going to become quite the blogger in the next few weeks but for the past two weeks I’ve been so unmotivated to work because I’ve been really wanting to spend as much time with them as I can. Then at night when they go to bed I stare at my computer screen as I’m so very tired and I get nothing done. And what I have been writing hasn’t been very articulate. I apologize.

So Tomorrow I’ll start working with a vengeance as I’ll be kidless with nothing to do.

Recyclebank Challenge 2 Green Up The First Day Of School Tips

Miles and Zoe have their first day of School on Wednesday. Miles, it’s his official first day and I just don’t know what to do. Am I supposed to be happy about it, or sad. I’m both! I’m quite sad about him leaving, as he describes it, I won’t have anyone to play with, read to, sing with, or watch TV with. But I’ll have time to work uninterrupted which I hear is SO VALUABLE. Now thinking about it from a green point of view. What can I do to green the first day of school. I have a few days to prepare and I do still need to find back to school clothes.

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Recyclebank is here to help us figure out ways to green our school year. One way is to chose products with fabrics that are green. As part of the Green Your School Year Challenge going on they are offering tips in the form of a game where you can earn entry points to win really fun prizes. The first step was to download a guide that provided lots of information on choosing green fabrics. I found it so interested I wanted to share a few of the tips.

Choose Organic fabrics in clothing and backpacks:

Compared to conventional backpacks, fewer toxic chemicals are released into the environment when they’re being made
Eco-friendly backpacks aren’t made with petroleum, like vinyl backpacks
Backpacks made from recycled plastic bottles reduce landfill waste

Good Fabrics to Look Out For

Organic Cotton
Hemp
Recycled plastic bottles

Bad Materials to pass on

Vinyl
Conventional cotton

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The rest of the challenge for this week is more like the first challenge. You can take quizzes and find out how knowledgeable you are on being green. What are different ways throughout the day that you can become more green. Do you car pool? Do you use reusable packaging for sandwiches? We need to switch from plastic baggies to those cute reusable washable sandwich bags that my friend makes. She makes them in such cute patterns. Basically, you sandwich bag can be any material you can find in the store.

What are your tips to Green Up The First Day of School.

 

 

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Celebrate The Ten Year Anniversary of 9/11 With First Responders

This year marks the 10 year anniversary of 9/11 and every year since that day, I’ve often wondered why we celebrate a day that terrorists tried to ruin our lives. I’m not callous, I understand mourning the lives of so many people that lost their lives. Believe me, it breaks my heart and I remember that day very well. I think everyone knows exactly what they were doing that day. I was on the road driving to work when it happened. Someone called my husband that day and told him not to go to work because we were under attack. I was confused, terrified and we were all glued to the TV for months.

A church in our area is celebrating life this year and I LOVE the idea. I LOVE IT. Our First Responders deserve to be cherished, when everyone is running around in fear, panicking and lost, we turn to them for guidance and help. I’m not sure I know anyone that has never had to use 911 including something simple like being in a car accident. Who arrives first, our daily heroes.

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I’ve called 911 a few times in my life. A car accident here, my child swallowing an entire bottle of sunscreen, you know the usual.  The fireman have always been the first one on the scene, ambulances and police men they are all there to help us. Many of these first responders also lost their life in the 9/11 attacks and as we remember the ones that lost their lives this year why not celebrate the ones that are still working and responding to our calls.

How can you honor a first responder in your community?

Bake cookies and deliver them to a fire station or police station.

Find out when their birthdays are and bake them a cake and deliver it to their workplace.

Send them cards thanking them for the hard work they do day in and day out.

Bring them something to cheer up their day, pizza, notes, cookies, the sky is the limit. Just say thank you for everything they do!

The Cake That Broke My Camera

This is a picture of the cake that broke my camera.

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It’s so ugly it broke my camera. Yes I’m serious my camera is broken, but that’s now how it happened. It’s my husband’s birthday this week. So the family made a cake (it’s tradition to make a cake with the kids), and I’m quite excited to share the recipe and experience with you but first I have to break the bad news. My camera is a little bit broken. (The cake tastes really good just so you know)

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I’m a little bit sad, my camera is sick, ok, my camera flash is actually dead. It’s the external flash and any of you that have met me probably know my camera. It’s an extended addition to the being/blogger known as Momstart. In fact, I’ve often been recognized as the blogger with the big camera.

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I have some trips coming up and I HAVE to have a working camera, I was thinking about learning to use my camera without the flash but I just don’t’ think I could learn how to use it in all it’s glory without a flash in three weeks. So I ordered a new flash and a few new accessories to go with it.

This is on the way!

Canon Speedlite External Flash

Canon Speedlite 430EX II Flash for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

Canon Omni Bounce

Stofen OM-EW Omni Bounce For Canon 430EX White

 

Soft Box Flash Diffuser for Canon EOS

Opteka SB-1 Mini Universal Studio Soft Box Flash Diffuser for Canon EOS, Nikon, Olympus, Pentax, Sony, Sigma, & Other External Flash Units

 

Yes, I’m making my big camera even bigger. I’m a little excited about it, but sad at the same time. I hate spending money. And it’s all thanks to that silly cake. I forgot to tell you what happened. The camera was dropped in the process of taking the final photos of the cake. We think the flash sacrificed itself in order to save the camera. Thank God the camera didn’t break.

I Asked Zoe if she wanted to Meet Rapunzel in London? Disney Princess Royal Court Video Contest.

Disney is inviting fans to participate in the “My Princess Moment—The Story Begins With You” online video contest.  Contest entrants will submit a home video to compete to win the ultimate Grand Prize—a trip to Kensington Palace in London on Oct. 2 to welcome Rapunzel into the Disney Princess Royal Court (participants must enter by Sept. 12).

I had to ask Zoe what she thought about this contest:

She said of course she wants to meet Rapunzel she is her favorite princess after all. She loves Rapunzel because she wears purple and has long hair. I just had to share this video (this video is not actually an entrance into the contest, it’s way too long)

 

All you need to do is create a royal video inspired by their favorite Disney princesses.  Simply go to http://princessmoment.disney.go.com/, download a sound clip, make a 45 second video and spread the magic. Every fair maiden in the land age 12 and under (and with a parent’s permission) can enter.

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Whether it’s the kindness shown by Cinderella, determination of Tiana, or adventurous nature of Rapunzel, girls connect with Disney Princess characters in different ways to bring their own stories to life.  With the “Your Princess Moment – The Story Begins With You” video upload contest, fans age 12 and under can submit a 45-second video singing part of one of four songs from the upcoming Disney Princess Fairy Tale Songs compilation album – available Sept. 20 from Walt Disney Records. Alternatively, fans can submit a video recreating a favorite Disney Princess scene, dressing up or performing a dance. 

For full contest rules, prize information and details for how to enter, please visit Disney.com/PrincessMoment.

Vanilla, Chocolate and Plain Churro Cake Pops Recipe

A few weeks ago, Summer wrote a review of the 101 Gourmet Cake Bites book and tried out one of the recipes. I talked to her today about her experience and she agreed that making cake pops is difficult and time consuming. But they do taste so very good. Out of that book, I found an interesting recipe to try, you know I’m always looking for something that I have the ingredients to and this one I actually made do.

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After double checking to see if I had all the ingredients I decided that Zoe should get to help me. Step one, make the cake.

Churro Cake Pops Recipe

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix
3 eggs
3/4 milk
1/4 cup oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
Mix the cake mix, milk, oil, eggs and vanilla extract
Pour into a greased 9 x 13 baking pan and bake for 28-32 minutes
Remove from oven and cool completely.
Then crumble the cake

 

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Make some Cinnamon Vanilla Butter Cream Icing

Cinnamon Vanilla Butter Cream Icing Recipe

Ingredients:

8 Tablespoon ( 1 stick) butter at room temperature
3 3/4 cups powdered sugar
3 Tablespoons milk
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon cinnamon

Directions:

Beat the butter until it’s fluffy.
Add the powdered sugar, milk and vanilla and stir slowly.
Stir in the cinnamon and add more milk if the icing is too thick

Now comes the real fun you get to get your hands dirty. I had to make a few changes here. The directions in the book said to only use 1 cup of icing, well that wasn’t working for me so I put in more than 1 cup, probably closer to 2 but somewhere in between. Mix the icing with the cake pieces.

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After that you need to shape your mixture into little balls.

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You’ll end up with a tray like this

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Next you need to put them in the fridge for a few hours or in the freezer for 20 minutes. We just put ours in the fridge. After that, you’ll need to make some chocolate. You know I recommend ganache. But you can always just melt some chocolate chips with butter or just chocolate chips themselves. I used a small amount of butter and chocolate chips and creating this melting chocolate.

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We used straws as our cake pop sticks. I’m not a fan of white chocolate so I used the rest of the icing to dip some of the pops in, and the rest I left plain.

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How To Create a PDF

I’m going to be exposed to more technology and how to do different things with technology and software so I’ll try to share as much of that information with you as I can. You may not know this about me but my background is in computer science so technology is something I love. Now, not everyone has a really good pdf converter but more of you have the ability to print to pdf and create pdf documents than you may realize. Why would you want to create a pdf? I’ve had people tell me that they can’t open certain types of files and I used to be the Newsletter Editor for my MOMS Club and after creating it, with all the photos in it it was way to big to send over e-mail so I would often have to save it or convert it to a pdf. It really wasn’t difficult at all. However, if you want to convert a pdf to a word document you’re going to have to go check out adobe and their line of products.

From Word: How to convert a doc to a PDF

Go file, then to save and send

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Then go to Create a PDF/XPS Document

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Then you give it a name and hit publish.

 

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From Publisher: How to convert a .pub to a pdf

It’s basically the same thing. Except you might have to download the ability to do it. I can’t remember, I think Publisher actually comes with this ability now. If not all you have to do is a search on how to convert a publisher file to a pdf.

Go to File Save & Send

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Then go to Create a PDF/XPS Document

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Then you give it a name and hit publish.

 

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Roast Beef & Cheddar Rolls Recipe

Another simple recipe that was so easy it only took minutes to prepare. I LOVE Roast Beef, cheddar and tomatoes. It’s what I love to order at Subway, but I don’t want to spend that much money on something to prepare for the whole family. SO we went out and bought a Costco size bag of potato rolls and some Hillshire Farms Roast Beef and put together our own toasted sandwiches.

 

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Roast Beef & Cheddar Rolls Recipe:

Of course you could make your own rolls but I’m so not into that.

Ingredients:

Potato Bread Dinner Rolls
Roast Beef
Tomatoes
Cheddar Slices

Directions:

You have to toast the rolls in my opinion

Preheat the oven to 350
Heat the Rolls for 3 minutes
Add the cheese and the Roast Beef and heat for 3 more minutes
Cut up the tomatoes and put two slices on each roll
Add Mayo or whatever condiment you enjoy most

ENJOY!