Babies

Looking for ideas to create a fun & modern room for your little girl to grow into? Andrika King created this beautiful girls bedroom with bright colors and pretty patterns. The focal points of the room include the beautiful Pine Cone Hill bedding and the painted cherry blossom tree mural. A custom build-in desk and bookshelves were added to a corner of the room and will get lots of use over the years. The pink tufted headboard is fabulous! For more of Andrika’s beautiful designs, visit her blog, Nursery Notations. The post Bright and Beautiful Girls Bedroom appeared first on Design Dazzle.

I have a sickness. It's May 22, I have 12 days that I still have to come to work before summer. And I'm already shopping & planning for the girls' first full year of elementary school. First off, we had to have backpacks. And since Pottery Barn Kids was having a sale (I got one of the backpacks for $19!), and free shipping - I hopped on it. Audrey picked the Chocolate Geo pattern & Natalie picked the Chocolate Floral. But of course I couldn't just stop there. I've been searching for lunch ideas, other than lunchables. I'd love to do bento boxes, but ain't nobody got time for stuff like these super cute ones....at least not in my house! I'm also pretty sure the girls would FLIP if they found Yoda staring back at them in their lunch box. Not to mention, after carpool, sitting in a classroom for a few hours, and being carried by almost 5 year olds to the cafeteria, all my hard work would look more like a Pollock. But I found some supplies on Amazon, and they are rather cheap (like $3-4), that I think might make them more eager to eat their PBJ and fruit. Or possibly use to trade for square pizzas and cookies, who knows? silicone muffin cups / face punching templates / 4 pack bento boxes / stacking bento box / egg mold / food picks I think I could probably pull off lunches like this. Maybe not every day, but some days. They look pretty basic, and it's just the little things (picks, silicone cups, shaped sammies) that make it look nice. What do you pack for your kids for lunch? I'm in need of some ideas, because the girls have never had to have lunch outside of our house - and I certainly get in ruts with what we eat.

We’re celebrating our gratitude on GreatGreenBaby.com by throwing a big holiday raffle! We’ve asked the best online organic baby websites to donate their wares and we’re happy to report that we have lots of organic onesies to give away! How to Enter: This week’s prize is from Nina and Tom 1. Leave a comment below OR 2. Sign up for our newsletter OR 3. Quadruple your chances of winning by linking to GreatGreenBaby.com from your blog or website and email me and tell me about it. Your name will be put in the hat four times. Winners can only win once throughout the entire contest. Each week an organic onesie will be given away from one of the following: Booby Dooby www.boobydooby.com Go Goose Go! www.gogoosego.com My Conservation Baby www.myconservationbaby.com ferdinand www.ferdinandhomestore.com District Cotton www.districtcotton.com/ Nina and Tom www.ninaandtom.com/ – This week’s give-away! Bamboosa www.bamboosa.com Baby Bam www.babybamcollection.com Green Apple Baby www.greenapplebaby.net WonderToast www.wondertoast.com *The fine print: If you enter the contest by signing up for the newsletter, you can unsubscribe anytime you like…just stay signed up through the end of the contests and I pick a winner. If you enter the contest by linking to GreatGreenBaby.com, links from Splogs won’t count. You must have a way for me to contact you on your site so that I can get in touch if you win. Winner has been chosen! — Congrats to Holly from Chelsea, MA !!

I’m going to be frank here – I don’t enjoy cooking the way I think most people do. One of my best friends is a foodie & spends hours in her kitchen, making pastry from scratch & trying new recipes that include ingredients I’ve never heard of. For me, dinner is a chore at the end of a long day when I’m tired & we’re all hangry. hangry = so hungry that you turn angry. For my friend & others, preparing food is a love affair & way to show affection, which is why I have one of her fantastic chicken pot pies in my fridge & another on back-up in the freezer. For me, it’s standing in the grocery aisle trying to figure out what to make because I hate meal planning & we never end up sticking to a meal plan even when I try. Then I get angry because that feels like a waste of time. I adore people that prioritize cooking & dinner because that’s the backbone of Pinterest, but I prefer to read a book or walk to the neighborhood park or plant in our flower beds. Different strokes for different folks. While I strive to create nutritional meals, I’m also watching the clock. Which means that fast family staples, like baked spaghetti & chili & chicken on the grill, tend to be our regular rotation. You know, the messy meals. The ones that spill over into your oven & create that weird crust you need a razor to scrape off when they overflow onto the stove. One of our favorites on really busy nights when I’m exhausted are those little chicken cordon bleus, which created a mess in our oven at the old house until I figured out to cook them in a pan with sides. (You like my technical bake dish terms?)I’m talking cheese coated on the floor of my oven & sadly, it stayed that way until I got down on my hands & knees to scrub when we sold the house. I’m assuming the sides help keep the heat coming in from all angles, therefore keeping the cheese inside the chicken. So yummy. Even Harrison adores it & despite it being frozen & fast, the ingredients won’t send you running for the hills. (We use the “fit” ones with less cheese & ham & multigrain breading.)Since we eat far less meat than we used to – maybe once or twice per week – all three of us split these two small chicken bundles. & of course, my favorite green beans that are roasted with olive oil & parmesan. But be careful you don’t spill the olive oil because that sucks just as bad as cheese. Take it from me. It’s not gourmet. But it’s fast, easy, & the boys gobble it up. The truth is that as busy moms, most of us barely have time to make dinner, much less clean the remains of dinner out of the oven. Especially when there’s a pile of dinner dishes waiting & crumbs to be swept & babes to be bathed at the end of the day. We don’t have time to scrub the insides of the oven weekly & surely don’t have the energy or ability to smell the self-clean mode on the oven. YUCK. LG makes an EasyClean Double Oven Rangethat works in three simple steps. Spray the oven interior with water, press the EasyClean button, then in just 20 minutes, wipe away any spills or crusted spaghetti sauce. No chemicals, high heat, or intensive back labor needed. Which means your oven smells like dinner, not charred bits, & you’re back to that glass of wine or round of Matchbox cars faster. Fast dinners & easy clean-up = Supermom, ACTIVATE. To learn more about LG EasyClean click here. Now it’s your turn to tell me – what is YOUR favorite recipe that leaves your oven messy? Let me know in the comments for your chance to win your own LG EasyClean™ Double Oven Range! Sweepstakes Rules: No duplicate comments. You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods: Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post Tweet (public message) about this promotion; including exactly the following unique term in your tweet message: “#SweepstakesEn

Diapers.com is offering one lucky winner the registry of their dreams! In partnership with Pregnancy & Newborn Magazine, the online store is giving away one registrant's entire baby registry up to $2500. All you have to do is go to Diapers.com, make a baby registry and you are automatically entered to win. Ends 6/12.

We are giving away TWO Cricut Expression 2 Machines. One for you and one for a teacher (or influential person in your life). I’ve always been so appreciative of my children’s teachers and all they do for my kids. Wouldn’t it be great to give a year-end gift such as a Cricut Expression 2 machine to a teacher or school?  The giveaway ends tomorrow. Make sure to enter here. Thanks to Provo Craft for this giveaway. The post We Are Giving Away TWO Cricut Expression 2 Machines! appeared first on Design Dazzle.

I didn’t turn on the news last night and mostly stayed away from social media, so it wasn’t until this morning that I learned of the devastation that occurred in Moore, Oklahoma yesterday afternoon.  I watched this video this morning on my phone while the children sat at my feet watching cartoons. Quiet tears ran down my face as I watched parents break down in relief as they were reunited with their children. My heart seized for those calling out their children’s names in the chaos - searching for their faces in the battered crowd. In times of tragedy, so often I find it hard to even comprehend what that experience must be like for those going through it. That overwhelming fear. The desperate prayers, hoping that your loved ones are unharmed. I often consume the experiences of others by relating it to what I know - but even attempting to imagine the terror of trying to find my children in that sort of nightmare scenario is more than my mind will allow. Everly saw me fighting tears and asked me why I was crying. I always struggle with how or if I should talk to my children about tragedies. They are so young and I don’t want to scare them or cause them to worry.  One of the great beauties of childhood is that for most, there is still that naive comfort in not yet understanding or experiencing heartbreak, disaster, or cruelty. So, I chose my words carefully and told her that some people were hurt because of a big storm and I was feeling sad for them. I don’t know where I am going with this. I just wanted to write something out loud…to join the choir of millions of Americans and those around the world who are heartbroken for the families who lost everything, some including their lives, to this storm. If you would like to do something to help, please consider making a donation to the Red Cross or text the words “red cross” to 90999. If you are not financially able to contribute, please consider making an appointment at your local Red Cross Blood Center to give blood. Sending all the love and prayers I have today, as far and as wide as they can go. Love, M

{OBoy walking home from the park with our across-the-street neighbor.} We’ve been outside a lot lately. I have taken a solemn oath with myself to never once complain about the heat or humidity this summer, given the winter we endured. Nothing makes you appreciate muggy weather like snow storms in late April. I’ve seen clearly that the boys do so much better when they’ve been outside for extended periods of time. They nap better, they play better, they eat better, their hygiene is better (because Mommy can’t stomach the thought of those feet rubbing around in their sheets all night), life just goes better. We spend our mornings and sometimes our evenings (thunderstorms permitting) wandering the block playing with friends. Apparently there is something in the water here in our neighborhood because there are 13 children in Kindergarten or younger on our block. JUST our block. OBoy and OBrother will bike/run/scoot/wagon-ride down to friends’ houses and play in their yard for a bit, then they will head back this way as a pack and check out our front yard toys. It makes time fly and often leads to hours spent chatting with other mamas. We have spontaneously done dinner together with other families twice now, simply because it flowed naturally from our afternoon. I think this is what communal living is supposed to be like. One afternoon in early May when we realized we would pretty much be sharing children all summer, a few of us parents had a conversation to the effect of “Feel free to send my kids home whenever you need to, or to tell them not to do something if they are making bad choices”. And so we do. We borrow kids and hang out, we remind everyone to share (whether you’re our child or our neighbor), we bring out cold Diet Cokes for other moms, we tell entire groups of rowdy boys not to throw sand, and sometimes we end up eating burgers together and playing until bedtime. Even when we head down to the park a few blocks away, we tell the other families and a few join us. This. This is what I was missing all winter. Human interaction. Friends for my boys. Grilling. Barefoot toddlers. Daily kid showers where the drain water runs brown from dirt. Coffee on the front steps while kids squeal and bike up and down the sidewalk. Glory.

Your wedding was a storybook affair. Hair piled high and dressed in whitest white, your groom was handsome, the cake to die for, and your vows romantic. Fast forward three years and the dress is sealed in a box, the cake seems to have settled on your midriff, and your husband, while still handsome, has [...]You just finished reading Marriage Isn't Perfect {Guest Post}! Consider leaving a comment!This post is written by Penelope Guzman from Penelope's Oasis. If you are not currently reading this via e-mail or an RSS feed directly from Penelope's Oasis, then this post has been stolen or scraped. Stolen content can be reported here .

Cute modern nursery decorating ideas. Modern baby nursery decorating ideas. Modern baby nursery decorating ideas for baby boys and girls. Ideas for decorating contemporary nursery design.