Homemade clumpable sand

This is sand is totally awesome and you can really build a castle with it!

I am in the midst of planning T’s 2^nd birthday party, and I love planning parties even more than going to one. T is obsessed with the Raffi song Baby Beluga so this year’s theme is “under the sea.”  I always like to have a kid activity so this year I was going to make a sand table for the kids to play with, it was going to include cute shovels and sea creatures. It was going to be very entertaining and it was going to be very cute and it was going to take place on a giant plastic table cloth so I could just toss the mess. Was is the key word, the following project is a BLAST but I will never ever be trying it indoors again. I suggest you pin this and save it for the warm weather when you can mix up a batch of sand and bring it to the park, and then after hours of fun you get to leave the mess behind. That is what I am going to do this spring. In the mean time I will be coming up with a much cleaner b-day project!

You can make as much sand as you would like. Last night I only made 2 cups of sand and that tiny amount kept T busy for a long time!

--1/4 cup baby oil for every 2 cups of whole wheat flour--
You can use canola, but it won’t smell as good and you can use regular flour, but I won't look like sand.

Mix the oil into the flour slowly while you mix/ crumple with your hands until you are satisfied with the consistency. You want it to clump but still fall apart...  and then vvvwaala, instant clumpable sand!  

Glitter is optional- it will look pretty awesome, but is just more mess for later.

At first T played beautifully with the sand and kept it nice and contained on the table cloth. At this point I was thinking- the kids at the party are going to LOVE this!

Once the foot action started up I got slightly concerned and got T undressed so her clothing wouldn't get gross.

I left the room for 1 minute, I swear, just 1!

T loved how the sand felt so decided to style her hair with it, I was literally washing clumps of dough from her hair in the tub! 

Tried and Tested - Free Stuff Online

I like a good sale but free stuff is even better. I am not one to turn down a coupon, hand-me-downs for T or even hand-me-downs for me! There are a lot of sites online now that will send you free stuff; here is a breakdown of the ones I've tested.

Houseparty.com

Houseparty is by far the coolest site I've come across for free trials online. You can sign up for the opportunity to host a party featuring a product. If you are chosen to host you have to invite at least 10 friends to join you at your party to test the product. The only other requirements are to fill out a pre party survey, a post party survey and to take a photo of you and all your guests to prove you had the party and how many people came.  

A few weeks before your houseparty you will receive a box full of goodies. So far we hosted few parties. Our first was a fisher-price play date party and we received over $200 worth of Fisher-Price products. They also sent coupons and coloring books for all of the party guests. The other two parties we hosted were Hasbro Game nights- and you can check out my previous blog about how awesome the last one was. My sister in law recently won a Duplo lego party, and they have tons of cool parties to apply for all year round. 

See that giant contraption in the middle, it is a ballapalooza and we live in a very little apartment! It is currently residing at the foot of my marital bed. Sexy! 

Your party acts as an advertisement for the company and your friends are not obligated to do anything but attend and have a good time. To increase your chances of being chosen to host you can use social media to promote your party and make sure guests come. I have only used facebook to show that I’ve applied to host various parties and to let friends know when I have one coming up. I also tend to upload more photos to the houseparty website after the event to showcase our party. Houseparty also asks that you share a post party survey with your friends after the event. I always send it out but don’t harass friends to make sure they fill it out.

How does this works for brands? If the product you introduce is really great your friends will buy it! Almost all of T’s friends have the Fisher-Price Laugh and Learn Stride-to-Ride Puppy because of our party.

Here is T and the dog walker

There is really no negative I can think of, this is an awesome brand party opportunity! But I guess if you don’t like parties or people this is not for you.

Bzzagent.com

Bzzagent is a social marketing company. They work with brands to send you free products and coupons based on your lifestyle and needs. The products we received from this site are pretty decent. We got a nice Schick razor, Quaker products, Garnier Fructis hair products and some free yogurts. The company also sends coupons for you to give out to friends and co-workers.

Once you receive and test the product you have over a month to write reviews and tell your friends about your product experience. You do not need to be a social media whore to fulfill your product promotional responsibilities. I have uploaded product photos and reviews directly to the bzzagent website and facebook and I share the coupons with friend and co-workers. The coupons are usually pretty great, so people want them! I do not feel obligated to open a twitter account or blog about each product. Bzzagent gives you Bzzscore, it rates you in terms of the amount of surveys you fill out and product awareness you raise. It is supposed to determine how many bzzagent product mailings you are chosen for, but Im at a strong 8.2/10 and have not received a product invite in a LONG time. Here is to hoping I get one soon!!

When I first signed up for bzzagent they made me fill out a million surveys about myself, and in order to keep your profile up to date they expect you to fill more surveys each week. If you do not have time for surveys this site is not for you!!  

Influenster.com

Influenster is also a social marketing company. Once you sign up you fill out a few surveys based on categories that fit you and your needs the most. Then you wait to get your first VoxBox invitation! I just got my first voxbox and it is like a miniature birthday present filled with great surprises. It is like getting 3 bzzagent kits at one time.

My first voxbox was called the JollyVoxbox and it was packed with goodies. I received…

An entire box of skinny cow chocolates – Yum!

A Rimmel London lip lacquer- not my color, but I could see it being a hit in a pink/red

NYC New York Color HD Color Trio Eye Shadow – totally my colors and I wear it to work every day now

Duck Tape mini roll, it is a cute roll of strong duck tape that has a fun print and that T thinks is big roll of stickers, super fun and crafty

A pack of puffs tissues that went right into my diaper bag and have been super helpful with all this crazy cold weather!

There is a catch; after you get it they want you inundate all of your friends with product reviews. It is not good enough to post one review of the box, each and every product has its own requirement to keep your score high and to get more awesome boxes. They want you to instagram the products, tweet them, facebook them, video review them, create pintrest boards and blog away. Now, you may not have noticed how tricky I am, but I just gave a quick review of all my products on this blog, so influenster is going to be very happy with me!! And to all of my friends, I am sorry about all of my social media product promoting but I really like these boxes, you should try it too.

swaggable.com

More social marketing! Swaggables is like the last 2 sites, you get invited to try out new products based on a few surveys you took and you have to review the products.

This site doesn’t require you to fill out so many surveys and only requires that you review the products on the swaggable website, with the option of a facebook or twitter share, which I totally love. I only recently signed up for this site and already received two products in the mail, my issue is that the products are a little sub par. It was nice to have the opportunity to try them for free, but I will not be buying/recommending them anytime soon. I feel like swaggable needs to get some better product partners, or it is just not worth sticking around.

Bath crayons - an awesome and super messy invention

T loves to be silly

There are a ton of products on the market for bath time fun. We have used, abused, and recently trashed some ABC foam letters that got a little too mildewy for my taste, and T does love her rubber duckies, who by the looks of it will soon join their ABC friends. However, I would like to share with you T’s favorite bath toy – bath crayons! Now, please be warned, these are beloved by my daughter and loathed by whomever is tasked to clean the bathtub… but T is totally obsessed.

We got the crayons from a friend of mine for T’s 1^st birthday and we are down to the crayon nubs at this point. We love to color in general, but to color on walls is especially thrilling to T. She stays in the bath until her fingers and toes look like raisins and the water is cold. So… if your little on doesn’t really like the bath I suggest getting these to keep them entertained. Of course, T has always loved bath time and we still need these crayons, bubbles and some crazy frog that sprouts water from its mouth, but that’s what being a toddler in 2013 is all about. 

Still being silly... and yes, we color too!

Now, please don't forget that these "washable" crayons need some scrubbing to remove the mess and the little duck eraser is a bad joke, but we still love them. My favorite part is trying to find images in what T draws. What do you see in this photo? My husband and I see a man riding a camel, and that is pretty darn impressive for a 1 year old! 

What do you see? 

Here is where you can get the crayons - http://www.amazon.com/ALEX%C2%AE-Toys-Bathtime-Fun-Draw/dp/B00004U3FX/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1384983149&sr=8-2&keywords=alex+bath+crayons

but they are cheaper at target and toys r us if you time to make it outside... hahaha. 

Tilapia Even a Toddler Will Eat

I have a strangely picky eater on my hands; T loves to eat crazy strong flavors but has some issues with textures. She will keep meat or chicken in her mouth for a while and then gift me a lovely pile of mush; if I’m lucky it will end up in my hands and not on the floor! I think it’s rather odd that my kid will pound Indian food but won’t eat a chicken cutlet. However, I have discovered that she will eat my tilapia – yup, she will chew it and swallow it! The added bonus is that my husband and I love this quick meal as well.

mustard and mayo / prepared crumb topping

1lb of tilapia fillet

2 tbsp French’s honey mustard

2 tbsp mayo

1 cup French’s fried onions (I highly suggest you buy the gigantic bag of these at Costco- so delish)

1 cup of corn flake crumbs

Onion powder, garlic powder and salt to taste

The prep for this is super easy… 

Mix together the mustard and mayo and coat the fillets

In a separate bowl crush up the French’s fried onions and mix with the corn flake crumbs

Now you can hand coat each piece of fish with the fried onion and crumb topping -or take the lazy way out like me… I spray my baking pan with oil and then coat the bottom of my pan with the crumb mixture. I then layer the fish and put the rest of the crumb mixture on top! So much easier and just as crunchy!! I then sprinkle the fish with onion powder, garlic powder, a tad of salt, and a spritz of oil.

Layering crumbs: the much more efficient way to bread anything!

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Viola, fish my kid will eat! I think that is worth celebrating!

See, you can't even tell I breaded the fish the lazy way!

** I have made this exact same recipe on chicken cutlets too, it is a hit (just not with T) 

Party On!

Our Hasbro Birthday House Party

This past Saturday night we celebrated my husband’s birthday with an awesome Hasbro Game Night Birthday House Party. People asked, what exactly does that mean? What is a House Party? Was it actually sponsored by Hasbro? Why, yes it was just that – we hosted a HouseParty sponsored by Hasbro!

About a year and a half ago I joined this wonderful website called HouseParty.com. The idea of the website is to promote products through parties. This is not a Tupperware party style where you receive free products and guilt your friends into coming to your home to dish out money to get their own.  House Parties are advertisements for the company, the host gets free products and is obligated to show off the brand at a house party while friends just need to come and have a good time. Sometimes friends even get a free giveaway too- and they always leave with coupons!

I apply to host tons of parties and am selected infrequently, about 1 party every 6 months. I just checked my stats; I have applied to host a total of 24 parties and was chosen for 3! Not too Shabby, especially considering how awesome these parties are. Applying to host a party takes minimal effort, you fill out a quick questionnaire, post about how excite you are and share your applications with friends on Facebook and/or Twitter. You can also do extra stuff to increase your chances of being chosen as a host, like upload photos, videos or conversations. I am pretty sure that you are chosen based on luck and demographic, rather than the extras but why not, just in case!

Back to our most recent house party - My husband Dave’s birthday is at the beginning of November and he had a Golden Weekend (both Sat and Sun off). Dave is a General Surgery Residency Intern and this means that he practically never has off, so we really lucked out with this party. This was actually the second Hasbro Game Night we were chosen for and we LOVE games so we were psyched. We invited guest and then once we found out Dave was going to be off we morphed our Game Night into Dave’s Bday Bash as well.

House Party then sent us our party pack that came with four awesome Hasbro games – Catchphrase, Taboo, Funny or Die, and Draw Something. They also sent a box of Cheetos new product –a kosher cheddar puffed corn snack, some winner crowns, Hsabro cups, and coupons.   Now between the amazing party pack and all of the snacks, candy, beer, spiked punch and bean dip I made for the party, I am sure you are thinking I wish I went to that party… but it gets even better. The PR department for Hasbro reached out to me and arranged to send their Hasbro PARTY BUS to our already rocking party! Yes, I already thought hosting these parties was super cool and this just blew me away! All of our guests had a truly memorable night, and my husband is going to have a tough time topping this when my birthday rolls around in January!

Playing Catch Phrase on the party bus

Soooo cool! 

I love HouseParty.com and if you sign up and are chosen to host we want an invitation! My sister in law is hosting her very first House Party in less than two weeks and we can’t wait to see her Duplo Lego Party Pack and play at her party. 

I even made this cute Sponsorship sign for our door 

Free Toddler Activities on the Upper East Side

Here is a list of FREE things to do with your children if you live on the Upper East Side… so if you don’t have enough money to have a nanny, and also pay for preschool (which is only from 9-2 so you need your nanny anyway), join the kid gyms, art annexes, and indoor farms, this is the list for you! I must give credit to my wonderful nanny who totally understands that I am not a human ATM and on her own she discovered tons of things to do with Toddler T to keep them both busy, active and entertained.

On Mondays and Wednesdays the 96^th Street Public Library has kid friendly activities. Monday is picture book time for kids at 4PM. This program is for 18 months+ so T fits right in. If your kids are 3+ then check out the Preschool Stories and Films at 10:30AM and 11:15AM. The full calendar of events can be found on their website. http://www.nypl.org/locations/tid/5/calendar

(Located on 96^th street between park and lex)

Nolen Library

T and our nanny regularly head to the MET – Metropolitan Museum of Art -for Toddler Story time in Nolen Library. They usually have this program Monday-Friday, so check out what works for you! The program is from 10:30AM-11AM and you do not need to pay to get into the Museum. Bring a print out of the schedule saying this, because the people manning the admissions desks turned our nanny away once because they were ignorant and a little entitled. Don't worry, it only happened once! Also, for now the MET is actually suggested donation, so if you want to explore the museum with your kiddo, pay a dollar, or a quarter – but beware,  I recently read some horrifying news that this might change.

The schedule can be found here http://www.metmuseum.org/events/programs/family-programs/storytime-in-nolen-library/toddler-storytime?eid=R042_%7b3152F630-79B5-4653-8BD3-11A1771E91DC%7d_20131030103000&rpp=10&pg=2

The MET is located on 5^th Ave and 82^nd

B&N story time

On Wednesdays, and I mean every single Wednesday because this is the greatest story time of them all, head over to Barnes and Nobles on 86^th street for 10AM story time. It is always a packed house and T always spends a few hours there playing with the toys and all of her story time friends! The story time is fun, interactive and many times they use a large projector so all of the kids can see the books. There is also story time on Sunday at 11AM but we haven't been yet. For some reason I can’t find mention of the Wed. story time on the website but here it is anyway.

http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/store/2278 (11.7 update: I now know why there is no mention of Wed. story time on the website - It has been put on hold until Jan 2014.) 

Located on 86^th between Lex and 3^rd

If you live or are hanging out a little further down near FAO Schwarz. They also have story time which takes place at 11AM and 3PM Monday- Friday and 11AM, 1PM and 3PM on Saturday and Sunday. http://www.fao.com/shop/index.jsp?categoryId=10829617

Located on 5th Avenue and 58th St.

Ok, I know all of the above write-ups are about story time! What can you do, it seems like it is the one kids friendly activity everyone is willing to do for free. But story time is always different, educational, social and indoors -and boy is it starting to get cold out- so hip hip hooray for story time! We LOVE listening to books being read and then we come home and read some more!

For non-story time free options- go to one of the zillion cute NYC parks or your local PETCO which we like to call our “free zoo”.  We live close to a Petco so when it is too cold or we don’t have enough time to go to the real zoo, we head to the little zoo to see aminals (as T would say). T loves fishes and our Petco has a lot of them, and birdies, and mice, and bunnies and chinchillas so it is perfect for a quick aminal fix! Find out where your local “zoo” is and I know your kid will love it! Go to http://www.petco.com/ to check find a store near you.

FISHIES!

Our family actually has zoo member ship, and I’ll blog soon about why it is by far one of the most worthwhile things to get if you have young kids and live nearby!  There are a few other gems I'm willing to pay for and I'll let you know about those too. 

The Best Baked Ziti

I don't really understand how people all over the web post such pretty pictures of the food they cook and rave about how delicious it is at the same time. If it were actually as good as you say, wouldn't you forget you had to take a photo and enjoy some of your dish first? I mean, come on people!! 

Toddler T and I both love noodles, pasta, pure carbohydrates- call them what you will. T actually calls them NuNus and even has a doll named NuNu because that’s how we roll. So we cook a lot of NuNus and this recipe is one of our all time favorites, and easy too! I also love this ziti because I am not a huge ricotta fan so the cottage cheese in this recipe is much better, and you can pretend it makes the dish so much healthier and have another bowl.

Cook up a box of your favorite pasta

Then add

16oz of cottage cheese (I like to use 1-2% milk fat, when I make it for other people I sometimes use 4%, because it’s a little creamier that way)

6oz + of your favorite cheese

1 jar of your favorite marinara sauce (I love the smooth sauces like Rinaldi – it is also cheap!)

Mix together and put it in a pan, or mix in the pan and have less dishes to wash

Add more cheese to coat the top of the ziti

Bake for 25-30 minutes on 350

T loves to help me cook, so I let her mix the cottage cheese and the cheese together, it keeps her busy and happy while I'm prepping the pasta! 

Here are some add in options: 

Morning star meat crumbles and/or chopped spinach (defrosted and water free)

**I have even added both to the same Ziti and it was wonderful and a good way to add more protein and veggies to your dinner.