Birthdays A-Z

The Parents magazine May issue has a wonderful “A-Z Birthday” article about all things birthday.  Ideas like themed parties, party favors even how to save money on a party!

So with my little one’s birthday party coming up in early June, we decided to use some of these May ideas along with the June issue’s birthday fundraiser idea, especially since I turned his baby shower into a fundraiser (Bun in the Oven Benefit).  More details to come about the party in June but for now look at all the wonderful ideas that the May Parents magazine ”A-Z Birthday” article inspired us with!

So which ideas do you think we will use for our party?

My Angel is a Cover Model

One of the things that Parents magazine has been known for is their “Kids Cover Model Contest” and this year, with my Parents Tested Mommy Approved challenge… I decided to enter my youngest son into the contest and see if My Angel is a Cover Model!

As it happens… we own a LOT of cameras in this household and we are usually snapping photos of something with our kids, family, friends… ANYTHING really.  So earlier this month at our school’s Grandparents day one of us (we are both claiming the photographer prize on this shot) took this image of our son’s BIG, BROWN EYES.  A very distinctly beautiful feature that stands out for everybody that meets him.

It’s always about his BIG, BROWN EYES as you can see below!

So please cast your vote for our little guy HERE and help make this Angel a Cover Model!

*I entered the contest through a Facebook app (application) which is a new and easy way to upload images and enter as you can see here…

You can also get to the Facebook Application HERE.

Thrill of the Hunt!

This week we went on a (truck) scavenger hunt inspired by Parents magazine!

The theme came from my youngest son’s “Truck Day” at his school last week (thanks Lara!) and to help celebrate all things truck I decided to hide toy trucks, truck pictures, truck puzzle pieces and even put truck images on the computers for him to find…

Both Truck Day at his school and the Truck-scavenger-hunt turned out great!  My little one didn’t care for the real truck horns blowing loud but saying “Beep-Beep!” was a great alternative for little ears.

We lined up all our trucks we found…

And even the computer screens had trucks to find on them!

I also hid little trucks (like Matchbox) in the kitchen on shelves and in the bathtub.

Don’t leave home without

This month Parents magazine posted some Twitter “tweets” from parents on the subject of “My child won’t leave home without”.

There was such a vast difference in items my two boys take with them that I thought I’d share our “Tweet” answers below…

What do you not leave home without???

MOMMY Mad Libs

This Mother’s Day is a casual affair, with a morning to myself and then some time with my little one in the afternoon.  So with this time to myself I decided to rekindle the games of my junior-high self by finishing this Parents magazine Mother’s Day “Mad Lib”.  Ah, reminds me of another 6th grade favorite… the choose your ending stories.  Those were the days!

So as suggested in the magazine, I went onto Parents.com and tried to downloaded the form HERE to fill out my Mother’s Day Mad Lib story for you.  But our printer was missing ink so I just took the pages from the magazine and started filling them in.

I have to say that the innocence of our 6th grade Mad Libs made this Mother’s Day version look like porn.  It started off with some dream sequence that made it look like mother’s only dream about screwing Brad Pitt?  I just crossed it off and started with how my youngest one delivered pancakes in bed with peanut butter all over them.  You can see I crossed a lot of other things off… honestly, most of this Mad Lib was negative towards husbands (partners) and children saying how they don’t clean things up like you want, how your kids will try to poison you and on and on… I am pretty dissapointed with your viewpoint on mommy’s and their families here Parents!

But, I wanted to finish this story with how I see my wonderful family life… so I answered on.

Again, I was crossing off more than I was writing but my story is basically a beautiful breakfast in bed that I am super grateful for.

This Parents magazine Mad Lib definitely did NOT work for mommy.

But when I changed it, my story is all that mattered in the end and that worked for me.

Arg, MAY-ties!

Today is the start of May… otherwise known as “May Day” and last night we picked up a package of Pirate’s Booty as our first Parents magazine May advertisers product to try.

As you can see they have a whole Spongebob Treasure sweepstakes right now encouraging you to take pictures with their special Spongebob bag (which our grocery store didn’t have, just the traditional bags) to win a vacation.  It’s all over their Facebook page HERE.

Usually we opt for the Gluten-free variety that does NOT have dairy in it, but as soon as we walked down the grocery store eisle and saw a big display of the regular cheesy-kind I knew we were going to be testing this product out.

The reality is that the company that makes these delicious snacks, Pirates Brand, is one of our family’s favorite snacks (well, the -mostly- dairy & gluten free “Veggie Booty” snack that is) and we regularly purchase it.

So I guess you can say, “No matter the (May) day… It’s the Booty for us any day!”

Firm it up Momma!

I’ve been waiting to find an article in Parents magazine where I could ask some of my expert friends their opinion and the April 2012 issue has supplied me with a PERFECT one… 15 minute Firm Up techniques!  I asked a friend who is a personal trainer, Heather Balajadia, to weigh in on Parents magazine‘s suggestions.

As you can see, Parents magazine’s writer, Meghann Foye, put together some ideas for the busy mommy to be able to firm up in 15 minutes with the help of Fred Hahn, “creator of the Slow Burn fitness routine and owner of SeriousStrength.com”.

The article states “the secret is to perform fewer repetitions of your usual strength-training moves at a slow-motion pace (five seconds up and five seconds down, minimum ) until you feel like you can’t possibly do one more rep.  This steady, controlled motion better engages all of your muscle biers to tone and strengthen in a shorter amount of time says Hahn”.

So I sent the article over to Heather to have her weigh in on these techniques.  Heather is a certified yoga instructor, Personal Trainer and Whole Foods Nurtitionist.  She has been in the industry for 14 years and loves helping her clients be successful and feels blessed to do something she loves everyday.  Heather is also a mommy to two young children, so I felt that she is a great person to comment on these mommy firming moves.  Heather said “in my opinion all of those exercises are great and target some good areas but if you’ve only got 15 minutes to workout and only 2 times per week I would say you need to be doing more full body movements; and for that short span of time go HARD and get out of your comfort zone.  Using full body movements incorporates more muscles (upper, core, lower) and gets the entire body more metabolically active to burn more calories in a short amount of time.”

Here is what Heather recommends to get firmed up in two 15 minute sessions a week…

#1  Burpees: fold forward reaching to the floor; hop (feet together) back to a plank; push up; jump feet forward; and then jump up!  *To modify step the feet back/forth rather than hopping and push up on knees.

#2  Plank twist: drive knee toward opposite elbow; alternating sides

#3  Squat press: down then up with weight

#4  Side step/Chest press: push arms forward as you take a full step out/bring weight to chest as you take a HALF step in.  Keep tension on the band always; travel 10+ steps in one direction and then back until time is up.

#5  Renegade row: hold plank position; alternating arms, pull weight up, squeezing shoulder blade toward the spine.

The intensity of continuous movement for 45sec each exercise with 15 sec to get set for the next exercise is essential for making this an effective 15 min exercise routine.

Heather’s workout moves have an added suggestion of “do as many reps as you can get done in 45 seconds (with 15 sec to get set for the next exercise) repeat the group of 5 exercises 3 times”…. and she ends with a simple saying of “breath, sweat, push, DONE!”

She also goes on to add that “to make a real change in the body – especially under these circumstances – the diet needs to be addressed.”

So there you go readers… Parents magazine contributors challenged by one of us, Heather Balajadia, a Yoga instructor/Personal Trainer/Nutritionist and mother of two!  You can find out more about Heather HERE.

This article didn’t work for mommy by itself, but with a little research and some help by my professional parent network… it ended up working for me, hopefully Heathers ideas will help you get FIRM in 15 Minutes too!

Thanks to Fitness Forward for the use of their gym for our photo shoot!  Check out all their wonderful trainers and teachers if you live in the Seattle area!