Babies

Thank GOODNESS Spring has finally arrived in the Midwest! We jumped from 40 degree rainy weather to 75 degree sunshine and the past week has been amazing. My kids LOVE being outside, it makes the days fly by, and we get lots of exercise. And you mamas know what that  means… NAPS! We recently received the Jeep Overland jogging stroller and Rebecca has been helping me try it out: Jeep Overland jogging stroller The first thing I noticed, of course, was the color. I love the bright and fun orange and the contrasting gray and black touches. Super cute! There are so many great perks and features to this stroller. We’ve been using it around our house, in residential areas, but also at the park (on gravel and grass) and the stroller holds up well and is easy to maneuver. The canopy is a pretty good size and also has a zipper along the back that extends the canopy, if needed. There’s a window on top that velcros open and closed so you can look down and see your little one. Rebecca likes to look up and poke at me Okay, the photo above shows my FAVORITE features of the Jeep Overland jogging stroller. On the left you can see the iBaby. It’s a speaker compartment that connects to your iPod or MP3 player so you (and your little one!) can listen to music while you run. There’s nothing better than that! You can also see a hand brake that’s a nice safety feature and something I hadn’t seen before on other strollers. The photo on the right hows the “Smart Handle.” It adjusts up and down to a height that’s perfect for you. Especially when you’re running, it’s important to be comfortable and have the handle of a jogging stroller in an ergonomic position. The adjustment on this Jeep Overland jogging stroller lets you do that! You just push in those big yellow buttons on both sides and move the handle up or down. You can also see the safety strap for use when jogging. For a jogging stroller, this thing has a huge basket! I love it! That makes this much more useful because even though it’s a “jogging” stroller, you may use it for long walks, hikes, etc. and I’m happy with the storage space with this basket. There are foot push brakes and 16-inch air filled tires–the front tire locks in place for safe jogging (to make a turn, push down on the handle to raise the front end slightly so you can swivel on the back wheels–like any other jogging stroller). Doesn’t she look cute? The seat reclines, she has a handy snack tray, and I also have two cup holders on top. WHAT ELSE?! Looove this — the Jeep Overland jogging stroller comes with a speed and distance odometer! We’re setting goals this summer. There’s an adjustable 5-point harness (Rebecca’s needs to be adjusted) and reflectors for safety. It’s a study stroller (aluminum/steel frame) and has a pretty average jogging stroller weight of 26.4 pounds. Another super amazing awesome thing about the Jeep Overland jogging stroller is that it stands upright when folded! AHHH! Do you know how easy that makes transport and traveling?! Until you’ve had a stroller that doesn’t stand on its own, you won’t truly appreciate this feature! You can buy the Jeep Overland jogging stroller for $219.99 and it’s available from a bunch of online retailers including Amazon, Babies R Us, and Target. SILENT AUCTION: All proceeds will go directly to KIDS (Kids in Distressed Situations). Kolcraft strongly believes in giving back to the community and this silent auction will not only benefit moms and children in disadvantaged situations, but will also give the winner a great product at a fraction of the retail cost! The winner will be the highest bidder and will receive their own Jeep Overland jogging stroller. Rules: Entrants must be 18 or older and located in the US only. Starting bid is $5 and each following bid must be in $5 increments. To bid, leave a comment* on this blog post with the amount of your bid and your email address. The auction will end on June 7, 2013 at 11:59PM CST. The highest bid at that time wins

I want to thank everyone for entering this giveaway. I appreciate all of our Design Dazzle followers. I hope you love what we share daily for you.  I’m also very appreciative of all the wonderful teachers who love and care for our children. This is why I decided to offer two machines to help those who serve our kids! I have a heavy heart because I would love to have all of you be winners. The winner of the TWO Cricut giveaway is…. ……………***********      Monica Mowry     ***********………………………. Winner will be notified by email at the email address provided in the Entry Information within 48 hours after the random drawing. Potential winner must accept a prize by email as directed by Sponsor within 48 hours of notification. If not, we will choose another winner. If you are on Twitter or Facebook, we have a $500 gift card giveaway starting today !! What would you purchase with a $500 gift card?? Enter here. The post WINNER of the Cricut Giveaway… appeared first on Design Dazzle.

Now that I have all kind of time to blog I can’t seem to stay focused on one thing. From my journal project, to reviews to tutorials… I hope you’re able to keep up. Forgive my randomness. Hopefully it’s just proving I’m a very random, well-rounded person. Speaking of random, digital scrapbooking is becoming a kind of new hobby for me. It’s strange but I look forward to creating these little doodads. How weird is that? What can I say, I’m a woman who likes to dabble. Erica has been doing a fantastic job turning my prompts into digital works of art. You can download the fourth week of digital prompts here. And without further adieu… Surprisingly I think about the hardest part of growing up a lot. Mostly because I don’t want my kids to have a “hardest part of growing up.” I think the most difficult part of growing up for me was the black hole I fell into sometime during high school. It’s like my brain got sucked into a time warp and I couldn’t see past the present. Everything I dealt with felt like such a HUGE deal. Little did I know there were so many more important things that would come into my life just a few years from then. Just being a teenager, combined with moving across the country my junior year—After I had just been voted class president—Not easy. Luckily, I made it through barely unscathed, and I didn’t lose focus too long, but it was a hard time. Because I remember how hard this was for me, I feel like I’m constantly thinking of ways to prepare to make that time easier for my children once they reach that age–even though it’s more than 14 years away. Side note: The most awesome time was college, but I’ll get to that later. This was Day 13 of the installment of 30 Things my kids should know about me. Follow the link to play along and link up. The post The sucky part of growing up appeared first on Baby Making Machine.

My kids love open ended toys that leave a lot to the imagination. As a parent I appreciate it too. I also love toys that enable them to play together, a little boy and his big sister. Toys that will keep their attention longer than five minutes on long New England winter days. We received the Plan Toys Chalet Dollhouse to review and the little ones have been playing with it for a month. There are so many things they love about it. To start, we love that it is two separate pieces and can be configured any way you wish. It can be a two family home. It can be a house in the city and a summer cottage in the country. It can be a train station and a hospital is they wish. Possibilities are endless! The awesome thing is that they can play with it not that they are 4.5 year old and 18 months, and they'll be playing with it for years - it's not something that will be outgrown any time soon. We will let the pictures do most of the talking in our review, it's gorgeous as you can see...Not only is the house itself open to rearrangement, there are also so many possibilities with the two sets of stairs and the furniture (shown in photos below). I still remember when I was about eight years old and I didn't have a dollhouse for my dolls, I made one out of the shelves on our gigantic, wall-size bookcase. My favorite thing was arranging furniture and reconfiguring the interior space. I wonder if my enthusiasm for that has anything to do with the fact that I got by Bachelor of Science in Interior Design many years later! I do think that it's great for their development to play with the interior space and pretend little people live there.Baby T seems to be too young to really appreciate the dollhouse, but Baby E is thrilled with it! It's really a little girl's dream. She loves the modern design of the house and the furniture. When Baby T isn't bothering her and pulling out all the furniture, she can be found lost in her imagination playing with this dollhouse, making up stories, and orchestrating the lives of little dolls down to fine details. The furniture for the dollhouse is wonderfully designed, there is only minimal assembly involved. You'll need a little wood glue for the beds to be put together, but you can do without it if you don't have an 18 month old that just takes things apart whenever he handles them. The rest of the furniture is really all one-piece items, no assembly required. When the furniture arrivedPeekaboo!The Plan Toys Chalet Dollhouse is easy to move around the house if the kids choose to play in different rooms, it is fairly light and can be grabbed by the top roof part without falling apart. It is something I would recommend putting together and never taking apart though, unless you absolutely have to for moving or something. It is easily accessible on all sides, so it's great when kids are playing alongside each other, there is no shortage of access space = less fighting, more sharing. I have to admit, assembling this dollhouse wasn't easy as it came without directions (probably lost somewhere because it was an open-box item, not an issue that you would face as a customer). Assembly took almost an hour, so Baby E and Baby T were getting a little impatient - and hubby a little frustrated. When my husband was finally done the kids were thrilled to start playing with it! Don't you just love those 'new toy' moments and watching the kids exploring something new? They were playing with it for a good hour.Plan Toys has an amazing selection of wooden toys, both classic and modern. You'll find everything from stackers, pull toys, and puzzles, to ride-on toys, musical toys, and kitchen toys. Out of all the dollhouse options, we think the Green Dollhouse is a pretty neat concept as well. These are the kind of toys that are worth splurging a little more on and will last for generations!Visit Plan ToysConnect with Plan Toys on Facebook and Twitter Follow on PinterestTop Mommy Blogs - Vote for us @ TopMommyBlogs.Com!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of The Home Depot. Cultivating my first salad garden this year was a fun experience, especially when I see the results of using my City Pickers Garden Kit from Home Depot. Those little struggling lettuce transplants from a few weeks ago? Now look like this: [...]You just finished reading My Home Improvements Bucket List- One Down! #DigIn #HeartOutdoors! 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 .

It’s kind of weird to realize what memories you have of your childhood. I mean, many of them are just so random… sure you remember falling off your bike and scraping up your knee or your trip to Disney… but I also have memories of playing “panda family” with the boy down the street, leaving May Day baskets on the neighbors’ front doors, and… acting out plays with my brother for the video camera. One of our favorites, at least in MY memory, was The Three Little Pigs. I know my mom has it on camera because I can recall watching it years ago. I remember acting it out in our living room (the “quiet room,” as our parents creatively named it) with my brother. He was the big, bad wolf that visited me, each of the three pigs, in their homes. We all know the story… he successfully blew down the first two and all 3 pigs lived happily ever after in the third home of brick. What fun we had in a world without computers and cell phones!!! Haha. I want to pass on those stories to our children. I want them to know the classics, sing the lullabies, and act out some awesome imaginative play. So when I saw the HABA wolf puppet and 3 little pigs (by Lilliputiens) I HAD TO HAVE IT. It’s SOOOO cute. There’s a wolf hand puppet and he’s all decked out in a furry vest and corduroy pants (and big, bad teeth!). Then there are 3 little pigs that are finger puppets and they each have a little tent of a house. In my photo above you can see the 3 pigs attached to the front of the wolf… that was how it came packaged, I hadn’t cut them free yet because my son was too excited about the wolf puppet, haha. I think it’s cute that each pig is dressed in the same material as their house so you know where they belong (straw, sticks, or bricks). First, I had to act out the whole thing by myself because Ryan didn’t quite know the story yet. I showed him how to use the puppets and how the pigs would hide in their house and the wolf would huff and puff and blow the house down! In the upper left photo, Ryan is blowing down the house! In the bottom left photo, Ryan said, “Oh no, mommy! The wolf blew ME down!” The suggested age is 0–2, but Ryan is 3.5 and adores it. He now actually uses the puppets and attempts to tell the story–or at least his super adorable version of it. I don’t know how much of that he would have done a year ago–he seems to have just entered the imaginative play stage recently. Rebecca is 1 and she loves the set, as well, but just to hug and carry around with her, haha. The GREAT part is that all the houses and pigs fit in the back of the wolf (where your hand goes), it velcros shut, and there’s even a little loop (that Ryan uses to carry it around like a purse). Lilliputiens has so much adorable stuff (distributed exclusively in the US by HABA). The colors are fantastic–bright and gender neutral–and everything really encourages imaginative play.There’s a farm house with animals that I like and I’d really like to get the kids one of the babies that comes with a bottle, clothes, a bed, and stuffed animal. I think both Ryan and Rebecca would love it! You can get your own wolf puppet set for $64.99 and make sure you find HABA on their social media channels–they’re fantastic: facebook, twitter, pinterest, google+, and youtube. ~I received the wolf puppet set from HABA to facilitate this review, but was not compensated in any way and all opinions are my own! The post Ryan will huff and puff and blow your house down! appeared first on Baby Dickey | Chicago, IL Mom Blogger.

Just Jared posted some photos from Hale Berry's family trip to Bel Bambini on May. The actress stopped by the West Hollywood baby boutique with her daughter, Nahla, who pushed a cart around and picked out items for the baby.

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NEW! Baby Girl Nursery themes, pictures, bedding and room decorating ideas and designs. Stylish baby girl room themes and decorating ideas. Baby girl bedding.Baby girl nursery bedding and decor.

We celebrated Arlo’s birthday last weekend with a dinosaur themed party and it was a blast! For months, I’d been squirreling away dinosaur themed party decorations as I came across them. We never know quite how it will all look when we put all the ideas together, so it’s fun to stand back before the guests arrive and take a look at the final result. (And a big thank you to my mom this year for helping!) To save money, I kept the colors similar to his party last year, so that we could reuse as much as possible. I wanted some sort of dinosaur landscape as a backdrop, so I took a sheet and used colored duct tape to make a linear, palm tree and volcano background. The table skirt was a couple of cheap grass skirts that I picked up at the dollar store and I found a great deal on Meri Meri party supplies on Zulily - so I purchased the big stegasaurus on the table, a few banners, and party bags.  I’ve ordered both of the kids a personalized birthday banner this year that I plan to re-use every year going forward. I really like this chalkboard inspired one from Minted.com. I’m not much of a baker, but I like making my own cakes for the kid’s parties. For Arlo’s birthday I used a simple boxed chocolate cake and then added fresh strawberries and homemade buttercream. As a topper, I ordered a wooden T-Rex skeleton puzzle off Amazon (full disclosure: it was a pain to put together!) and made a little party hat for it to wear. It was simple - but the results brought lots of smiles! His party was at 3pm, so we kept the food simple. Mini sandwiches, fruit, veggies and dip, cheese and crackers and munchies like pretzels, chips, goldfish, nuts and dried fruit. I snagged a bunch of Arlo’s toy dinosaurs out of his room to decorate the platters. The dollar store and the party section of Target our my favorite places to find inexpensive goodie bag toys. Arlo’s friends took home mini tambourines, dinosaur stickers, bubbles, finger skateboards, and a sweet treat. The forecast was calling for thunderstorms mid afternoon, so we were hesitant to set up much in the yard. Instead, I moved the kid craft table to the porch. We had two activities - little wooden dinosaur cutouts I found at the dollar store that the kids could color with markers and I carved potatoes into dinosaur feet stamps so that the children could put them in washable paint and stamp paper with “dinosaur tracks”.  We blew up a couple of inflatable dinosaurs to welcome our guests and attached balloons. The kids at the party loved playing with them. A “live” velociraptor made a brief appearance at the party, but I worried about Bailey overheating, so she didn’t wear it long. It was definitely good for a laugh! The storms held off all afternoon and our yard and home was filled with family and friends.  Having a fenced in front yard makes for a great kid-safe area to play - so we put out tricycles, scooters and yard toys. We also had out Arlo’s new sandbox with lots of digging toys and buried dinosaurs. Singing happy birthday to our big two year old! Arlo’s personality is a bit more reserved and he is much more shy than his big sister, because of this, he doesn’t always command the spotlight.  It was really sweet to see his face light up as he realized that every part of this day was all about HIM! He was so happy when we all sang happy birthday and blew out his candles on the first try! A favorite shot from the day - complete with a cake mustache and a new hat he got for his birthday. (Arlo is on his way to having the coolest hat collection ever.) I’ve talked about this before - but we always encourage our guests to bring a donation instead of a gift to our children’s parties. (Our kids have so much already.) It’s a great way to teach Everly and Arlo about giving to others and help out a great cause. For Arlo’s birthday this year, we chose to collec