September 21, 2016
Family Movie Night Bingo #StreamTeam
It’s no lie that we love our family movie nights. We create a camp out in front of the living room television with blankets and pillows, make some popcorn and turn on Netflix for some family fun films or series.
Sometimes this can get boring for our kids so we have to switch it up and add some flair to our movie nights. Netflix came up with the best solution for family movie nights by including movie bingo – sounds fun right? If you aren’t sure about the movie bingo concept, you have your bingo card and as the words (like dancing, swimming, etc..) happen in the movie, you cross/stamp/sticker that box off. You choose before if you want a line, the full card, a square, two lines to be the winner.
Here is how we set up our Family Movie Night Bingo:
First print out these awesome bingo printables courtesy of Netflix. You can add some designs or stickers to them or even have your child decorate their card the night before to make it more personal. Let them get creative – it gets them excited and looking forward to movie night with their family.
It’s important to choose your family movie before movie night arrives. Save yourself the headache of the arguments and tears and have a system in place of who gets to choose the next movie and the type of movies that are allowed. There are some great films on Netflix right now such as: Maleficent, Tangled, Zootopia and The Princess and The Frog.
Now that your family movie night is here, prepare your family’s favourite movie snacks whether it be popcorn or licorice and lay out your drinks on a side table if yow allow snacks in the family room or in the kitchen if you have a no snack rule out of the kitchen. Have your bingo cards ready along with markers for stampers or stickers to take the place of stamps.
All that is left is for you to get your movie started and see who wins the bingo game! Maybe even make the winner the one who chooses the next family movie night?! That ups the competition level up a notch. And once the kids go to bed – save some cards for you and your spouse! We had so much fun battling it out to be the Netflix Movie Night Champ!
How do you add variety to your family movie nights?
Disclosure: I am a #StreamTeam member and receive perks with this affiliation. All opinions expressed are my own.
September 20, 2016
Bun 2 Babe Review and Giveaway
The joys of being pregnant – endless choices, suggestions and worries! Bun 2 Babe: Routines and Strategies for Nurturing Your Baby through Age Two: A Personal and Informative Guide From a Mother of Four gives you all the information you will ever need!
About Bun 2 Babe: Routines and Strategies for Nurturing Your Baby Through Age Two: A Personal and Informative Guide From a Mother of Four
You’re expecting! Congratulations…and welcome to a seemingly endless string of choices: Doctor or midwife? Home or hospital birth? All natural or epidural? Cloth or disposable diapers? Breast-feeding or formula?
Now take a deep breath. Modern motherhood is full of possibilities and Bun 2 Babe is here to help you navigate your options. While there are numerous parenting books available, not many present firsthand accounts of multiple methods in a uncompetitive way. After having four children herself, author Charlotte Ryan, B.Sc. Hon., B.Ed., MA, knows from experience that what is right for one mother or child is not necessarily best for another.
Personal, practical, and at times downright hilarious, Bun 2 Babe guides you from pregnancy through raising a toddler with helpful advice and strategies pertinent to each stage. Discover what’s available, from birth choices to child-care options, so you can make an informed decision that fits your baby and your situation. Your baby is lucky to have you—you’re going to be a great mom!
My Thoughts
Finally a pregnancy and parenting book that you will LOVE! Charlotte writes in an amazingly personal manner with humour and love for her children and being a Mother. You can easily connect with both her and her parenting style. She is honest and real, she doesn’t give you the story or product advice that you want but that you need.
What I had to love the most was that Bun 2 Babe is not only great for first time parents but great for second, third and fourth time parents. Each pregnancy, delivery and first two years is different for every child. For my first son, I had a vacuum assisted delivery and it was quick and painless. My second son had to be induced and labour was long and painful. While my first son had difficulties with breastfeeding, my second son didn’t. Charlotte exposes you to every option out there from prenatal/antenatal care, to labour and delivery and raising your baby. When you have had four children, you have done and see it all! Her wisdom and experience truly shines out in this book. My favourite part was her own advice on how to remove those pesky boogers from your baby’s nose. I hated those nasal aspirators – they never worked. The only thing that truly works? Giving slight pressure on your baby’s nose by sucking on the end to pull it out. Yup – you have truly done it all when it comes to your kids! Talk about true love.
Another favourite part of mine was the section on breastfeeding. While she does encourage you do breastfeed (she also gives you sections on bottle feeding so don’t be afraid!), the best part was her explanation of the emotional connection. Too often we hear all about the health benefits but breastfeeding is truly beautiful. You feel so utterly connected (and not that I didn’t with my first son so please don’t take it the wrong way!) and time just freezes in that moment. I was reading this section while I was waiting for blood work and I actually started to cry in the lab’s waiting room.
Bun 2 Babe is honest, real, full of love, humour and advice. Charlotte has a wealth of wisdom but speaks to you as another Mother who gets it. We just want to enjoy pregnancy and parenthood. We want the best for our baby but we also want to keep some sanity (say no to back zippers and buttons for infants!). This book is truly special and deserves to be on every baby shower must buy list.
You can purchase a copy of Bun 2 Babe on Amazon.
Rating: 5/5
About the Author
Charlotte Ryan is a busy mom of four fantastic kids and is a special education teacher. She received her master’s degree in education from the University of Toronto, and she continues to learn every day. Charlotte enjoys yoga, vegetarian cooking, skiing, horseback riding, painting, and exploring the outdoors. She lives outside Toronto, Ontario, with her handsome husband, cute children and big dog. You can connect with her on her site Bun 2 Babe.
The Giveaway!
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.
September 19, 2016
Printable Colouring Book Fun with KidloLand and WMJ
A little over two months ago, I shared with you the educational nursery rhyme app, KidloLand on my blog (you can find all the information here). I have once again partnered with them to bring you a twelve page printable colouring book for your little ones.
My boys love to colour and I am constantly online printing out new cartoons, new animals and cars for them to colour. It keeps them physically and mentally busy all while having fun! It also let’s you as the parent get some much needed time to get other things done, like maybe cooking dinner – I know it has always helped us out in the past.
Make sure you download and print off the exciting new colouring book and share your child’s colourings with me online! I would love to see their work. Enjoy!
Disclosure: I received no compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.
September 19, 2016
A Drop of Water Book Spotlight
In A Drop of Water, Yvonne reflects upon her past experiences, grief, and losses to find her way back to her spirituality and strength.
About A Drop of Water
In this extraordinary book, Yvonne reflects upon her past experiences, grief, and losses to find her way back to her spirituality and strength. She bares her soul, yet is able to use water as a lighthearted, uninhibited, and fun way to express how we are all connected. It is a spiritually inspired book about healing, grief, and personal growth.
It becomes a beautiful poetic journey as she discovers her love of water as part of what led her towards her spiritual path. Through her writing she expresses how she found her way through several tremendous losses, including the loss of her husband. In her ability to endure, she found a strength she never knew she had.
This book is for anyone that has ever struggled with depression, grief, or loss of any kind. It is for anyone interested in personal growth and healing. By sharing her personal story she is able to remind us that we are never truly alone. Water connects us all.
You can buy this book on Amazon.
About the Author
Yvonne Williams Casaus is a Mom, Wife, Author, Counselor, and Play Therapist. She is an independently licensed Clinical Mental Health Counselor (LPCC), a Registered Play Therapist (RPT), and is certified in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy. She specializes in Depression, Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She has a private practice in New Mexico and has been helping adults, children, adolescents, and families for over eleven years.
Yvonne’s areas of expertise include Depression, Anxiety, Divorce, Panic Attacks,(Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder), Sexual Abuse, Rape, Physical Abuse, Grief, ADHD and other issues. She also specializes in treating traumatized children with issues such as PTSD, Sexual abuse, Physical Abuse, Neglect, Adoption, and Reactive Attachment Disorder.
You can connect with her on website, facebook, twitter.
The Giveaway
Disclosure: This is a spotlight tour, I did not receive compensation for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.
September 15, 2016
Day Tripping to Darien Lake New York: Tips and Tricks
Our family just recently received our passports (way over due) and we have made quite a few exciting trips to the USA. We live within an hour from the border but it never really crossed our mind to visit the local shopping and attractions. In my mind, I always thought it was just too far and too much of a hassle. So you can imagine my shock when I was talking to my co-workers and realized that Darien Lake is actually closer to us then our Canadian amusement park! We of course had to put this to the test and decided to do a day trip to Darien Lake to check it out for ourselves. Here are top tips for our fellow Canadians making the day trip down to Darien Lake (which was actually quite feasible and the park is amazing).
Leave Early! You want to enjoy yourselves and bypass some of the line ups at the border, so leave as early as you can. Being thirty minutes away from the border, we left at 8 and arrived at Darien Lake around 9:30. The park opened up at 10:30 but we were allowed inside the gates at 10 and made use of this time by planning our way through the park with their helpful site maps. My son also was quite impressed with the Pokestops and Pokémon that were there at the park (as you can see below as he made sure I capture of the Pokemon site!).
Pack light – we only brought one bag that held our bathing suits and towels. A lot of the patrons wore their bathing suits with shorts on top, which was a great idea. There is a lot of walking and you don’t want to be weighed down by heavy bags. You can always leave the park (with a stamped hand) and come back but it does take away from enjoying the park and just living in the moment. We chose not to bring lunches and instead wanted to enjoy one of the many restaurants located throughout the park. We ended up at the Boardwalk (but really wanted to try the Italian restaurant near the water park!). The food was delicious and reasonably priced for an amusement park, for four people the meal cost us $50 US. Which is actually probably cheaper than many other places and the fries were to die for! They also had large bottles for pop/water/juice that once you bought the bottle you could refill the bottle for a much cheaper price.
Plan out the rides you really want to go on so that you know where to start first, this is something we didn’t do well enough and we ended up wasting time walking around quite a bit as we searched for the right rides. We were able to hit all of the rides we wanted to go except for the Ride of Steel (and this was more due to grumpy children then the line ups). In the early morning, there were very few line ups for rides and even by mid-day the wait for a ride was pretty short. This left us with two happy kids (and even happier parents!!). Make sure you save time for the water park, it is definitely a must go to for families. We loved the wave pool and the Rip Curl Racer – I have not had fun like that since I was a young girl.
Bring lots of small change. When you exchange your Canadian currency for American, make sure to ask for at least twenty dollars in ones. This is quite helpful for the toll booths along the highway (we encountered two on the way and two on the way back) and the first toll booth I only had a twenty dollar bill which she didn’t look too happy about – lesson learned for us! The park also has many games for children to play (it reminded me so much of a fair and I loved it), so having smaller change available was perfect.
You can purchase and carry alcohol around the park. This was the biggest difference to me and felt odd at first, as we watched others carry alcohol (I saw only beer) around the park. My husband purchased his own mug to happily carry around and I must admit it did make us feel like children being bad but it was also quite fun. I was really impressed that even though individuals were allowed to carry around alcohol, we never encountered any one who had too much to drink or anyone who was misbehaving.
Our family was super impressed with the proximity, rides and water park located inside the park and the quality of the food and entertainment. It was almost hard to believe that we had travelled such a short distance, crossed the border and there was this incredible amusement park. We can not wait to visit again, this time ensuring we hit all of the must do rides.
Make sure to follow Darien Lake on Twitter and Facebook to keep up to date with news and events.
Disclosure: I received admission into the park in order to facilitate this review. All opinions expressed are my own.