Monthly Archives: August 2010

Hurry, the Add Up the Savings Event at Kroger Family of Stores ends August 21st!

Contests, Food and Drink, New posts, ,

As summer winds down, it’s time to start picking up new supplies for the upcoming school year.

Both of my kids had school supply lists this year that included things like tissues, hand sanitizer, copy paper, notebooks, etc.. and as I’m sure you are aware, all of those items add up.   That’s why I was thrilled to learn about Kroger’s Add Up The Savings Event going on through August 21st.

While you’re out and about, be sure to stop at your local Kroger Family of Stores (which includes Kroger, Ralph’s, King Soopers, City Market, Dillons, Smith’s, Fry’s, QFC, Baker’s, Owen’s, Jay C Food Stores, Hilander, Gerbes, Food4Less, Pay Less Super Markets and Scott’s Food & Pharmacy) to take advantage of their “Add Up the Savings” Event and stock up on your favorite General Mills & Kimberly Clark brands.

From August 8 through August 21, when you buy 8 participating items from any Kroger store, you’ll receive $4 off of your purchase. Some of the great participating brands include: Cheerios, Yoplait Yogurt, Pillsbury Cookies & Biscuits, Kleenex, Huggies, Betty Crocker Brownies, Cottonelle, and Lucky Charms.

You’d better believe that I stocked up on Kleenex, Cottonelle, and Lucky Charms in the last couple of weeks.. and I even ate Lucky Charms this morning.. gasp!

In addition to these great savings, be sure to take advantage of the special Bonus Box Tops Offers and get a jumpstart on helping the participating school of your choice this year.  I have to divide our Box Tops up into two piles so both kids have some to take to their schools.

All you have to do, if you haven’t already, is register at www.RewardYourSchool.com. Once you register, you will automatically receive 5 Bonus Box Tops just for signing up! You will also receive custom offers for Bonus Box Tops for purchasing participating products.

These great offers are:

  • Buy any 4 Box Tops products and get 10 Bonus Box Tops
  • Buy any 8 Box Tops products and get 25 Bonus Box Tops

The offers you select will then load onto your Kroger Shopper Card to be redeemed once you purchase the items – you don’t have to do anything but buy participating products. It’s extra easy because there’s no clipping and cutting Box Tops! Just remember to scan your Kroger Shopper Card and the Bonus Box Tops will automatically go straight the participating school of your choice.

$25 Kroger Family of Stores GIFT CARD GIVEAWAY

To enter to win, do any number of the following:
1) Leave a comment below telling us 3 things on your child’s school supply list
AND/OR   2) Follow us on Twitter (@mommyinsider – link opens in a new window or tab) and Tweet about this giveaway and use this link: http://ow.ly/2qwsh
AND/OR   3) Subscribe (link opens in a new window or tab) to our newsletter or RSS feed – be sure to leave a comment using your subscribed email address telling us you subscribe!

Entries accepted through August 31st, 2010.

Disclosure: The Kroger Family of Stores gift card, information, and giveaway we received were all provided by The Kroger Family of Stores, General Mills, and Kimberly Clark through MyBlogSpark.  All opinions are my own.


The End of Lapchild? What are your thoughts on the Lapchild?

News, Travel, ,

Budget Travel Magazine recently reported on The National Transportation Safety Board’s recommendation that all passengers, including children under the age of two, have their own seats on planes. This means infants would no longer be allowed to sit in their parents laps, and they would no longer fly for free.
Here is an excerpt from the story:

The NTSB released its official recommendation to FAA earlier this week, listing numerous occasions when airplane passenger injuries and fatalities could have been minimized by the use of restraint devices (i.e. seatbelts). Oddly enough, many of the examples listed involve passengers over the age of 2, who would not qualify as lapchildren.

What do you think?

  • For the safety of everyone, should the lapchild be banned?  Yes or no?
  • Should parents be required to buy seats for infants and toddlers, and secure them either in car seats (which often don’t fit in a cramped plane), or in an over-the-shoulder CARES restraint device (which are designed for kids weighing 22 to 44 pounds)?
  • Should the airlines be forced to make some provisions for the safety of kids, perhaps even by offering special seatbelts for tiny travelers?

View more on this story here on Budget Travel Magazine.

My thoughts on the Lapchild

I prefer to have Madelyn in a car seat when flying.  I feel like she’s safer being strapped in via a 5-point harness than on my lap.  I’m not confident that I would be able to hold on to Madelyn and keep her from flying out of my arms, hitting her head, or falling, in the case that we hit severe turbulence.. or worse.  I’d rather save up and pay for an extra airplane ticket/seat than take the risk of Madelyn not being as safe as I think she could be during a flight.

Thank you to Lisa from Budget Travel Magazine for the heads up on this story.

How to host your own Fancy Nancy tea party

Age 3-5, Age 5-7, Books, , , ,

My 4 year old daughter loves Fancy Nancy books.  Her favorite Fancy Nancy book is Fancy Nancy and the Late, Late, LATE Night.  She likes it when Nancy says “that’s a  fancy word for..”.   She’s learned a lot of fancy words from Fancy Nancy books, that’s for sure.

Summer is slowly slipping away from us but while your kids are still out of school and looking for fun things to do, below are some fantastic (and easy!) tips on how to throw together a kid-friendly tea party…Fancy Nancy style!

HOST YOUR OWN FABULOUS FANCY NANCY SOIREE

Summer is here and what better time to celebrate and invite friends over for an elaborate tea party Fancy Nancy style!   Fancy Nancy has the most fabulous (that’s a fancy word for great) ideas on how to throw the most magnificent and fanciest tea party in the neighborhood.

Here are a few tips supplied by THQ to help you put on a great tea party!

1)      Select a spectacular theme.  Be as ornamental as you can be!

2)    Pick a charming location, and pique guests’ senses by taking them to different locales without leaving your own backyard. For example, Nancy loves speaking in French.  Host a French-style tea party, complete with French foods and desserts. Fancy up the menu and invites with French words.

3)    Prepare edible arrangements and delectable treats.  Surprise guests with petite hors d’oeuvres or squared cucumber sandwiches.

4)    Set the table with your most colorful and fanciest tea sets.

5)    Pin The Tiara on Fancy Nancy!  Purchase a poster of Nancy.  Blindfold your guests and have them tape a paper tiara on the poster. Whoever is the closest to Nancy’s head, wins a splendid prize!

6)    Have your guests create a fancy party hat and beautiful jewelry complete with all the glitter, jewels and ribbons one can find.  Ask guests to bring their favorite fancy dress-up item, such as a boa or a tutu.

7)    Don’t let anyone leave without a spectacular goodie bag filled with costume jewelry, delicious candy and a variety of tea samples!

THQ also invites you and your friends to an interactive tea party with Fancy Nancy Tea Party Time for Nintendo DSi™ and DS™! The popular children’s property Fancy Nancy™, published by HarperCollins Children’s Books, makes its video game debut on Nintendo DSi™ and DS™ systems this fall.   I don’t know how excited my son will be about the game but you can bet I’ll enjoy it!  In Fancy Nancy Tea Party Time!, girls of every age can play as Nancy and become the fanciest girl around.

* If you host a Fancy Nancy Tea Party, send us photographs.. we might feature them on The Mommy Insider!

Find and buy dozens of Fancy Nancy books at Amazon.com here.

Visit the Fancy Nancy website to view all of the Fancy Nancy books, play Fancy Nancy games, send eCards and more.

HTC Aria review and why it’s great for social moms

Electronics, Gadgets, New posts,

HTC has introduced another phone, the Aria that brings superb functionality, quality, productivity, and social networking features to moms and teens, without a huge price.  The phone casing has a ‘sure-grip’ texture which is great for busy moms as we as we don’t always have the best grip on things, right?  The 3.2-inch display makes viewing web pages, photographs, emails, and videos, a pleasure.   On the back side of the Aria is a 5-megapixel camera that doubles as a VGA video recorder and speaker. On top of the phone is the power button and a 3.5mm headphone jack and on the bottom is a microUSB jack.

With Android you get seven home screens which enables moms to have a different screen for each child.   For example, you can have a screen just for your toddler’s apps while your older child can have a screen of her own with apps she’ll enjoy.  Now if only you could clone the Aria when you’re at a restaurant and your kids are cranky and you want them both to be occupied. Maybe next time.

Social moms will appreciate the included FriendStream app, which is an app that aggregates your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr updates.  If that doesn’t sound exciting to you, just wait until you try it out.  Having all of your social networks mashed up in one place is a huge time saver.. and great when you’re in the carpool line.

HTC Aria - seven homescreens

Music and Multimedia Entertainment

  • Aria users can watch YouTube or MMS videos and have the option of subscribing to MobiTV and AT&T’s Mobile Video app giving users plenty of video entertainment choices.
  • The Aria includes an FM radio app and Android’s music playing app.  Plug in your headphones, play your favorite music, and go for a walk – or simply turn up the tunes and tune out the kids for a few minutes.
  • Check the weather, email, and see what your Facebook and Twitter friends are up to with the free and included apps.
  • Inside the Aria is a pre-installed 2GB microSD card that can be swapped out as needed.  Take lots of photographs & videos?  No worries.
The Mommy Insider website on the HTC Aria

Phone Functionality

  • Watch out moms.. even tiny toddler fingers can navigate the small icons on the Aria.
  • When you’re in the car you can use Aria’s speaker phone or bluetooth capabilities.

Camera & Video

  • The Aria takes great photos making it a good alternative to searching for your digital camera every time you want to take a quick snapshot.
  • The Aria has a VGA recorder instead of an HD recorder but that shouldn’t be a big deal to most users as the quality is still great and serves the purpose which is most likely shooting a 30 second video of your child singing a silly song or your kids running around the yard shooting Nerf guns.

Web

  • What else is there to do when you’re waiting in the carpool line at 1:00 but surf the Web?
    The Aria allows users to easily find websites and look up search terms such as “find a mommy’s helper now!” and you’ll get quick, easy to read, results.   Some image-rich web pages may take a few seconds to come up but mobile versions load fast.
The HTC Aria is slim

Battery Life

  • Despite the fact that the Aria is a small phone, the battery offers up to six hours of talk time. In actual full-day usage (phone calls, emails, Web surfing, social networking, taking photographs, etc), I usually had more than 35% of battery life left by bedtime whereas with my iPhone  I am down to about 20% by day’s end.

Other useful features

  • Calendar
  • Google maps
  • Voice guided GPS
  • Memory expandable up to 32GB
  • Contacts can including social network status, pictures, and auto-populate from social networks
  • Create music playlists
  • Talk on the phone and access data simultaneously

Conclusion

The HTC Aria is a great phone for busy, connected, social moms as well as for teens.   The Android platform offers users lots of productivity, social, and entertainment features.  The Aria’s compact design allows the phone to fit in any diaper bag pocket or your favorite clutch for those rate and muh needed date nights.   As tempted as you might be though, don’t text the babysitter 10 times during your dinner date!  Oh, and speaking of.. I found that I had less typos on the HTC Aria than I do on my iPhone.  I’m not sure if that’s due to the size of the letters or the way the phone reads the touches/taps but I appreciate not having to go back and correct tons of spelling errors.

You can buy the HTC Aria at the HTC website or at your local AT&T store.

Disclosure:  The Mommy Insider was provided with an HTC Aria from Waggener Edstrom Worldwide on behalf of HTC for review purposes.  The opinions in this review are my honest opinions and you may experience different results.

I’m obsessing over the Silverlake Bucket bag from The Sak but what’s up with the color? Your help please?

Handbags & Accessories, New posts, Personal, , ,

So for the last couple of days I’ve been totally (beyond totally) obsessed with finding a medium size handbag.
Here are my requirements.  It must be about 11-12″ wide, soft leather, black (or tan…), the handbag has to have an outside pocket that will hold my iPhone, not a fold over flap type closure (zipper or magnet preferably), a wide opening, and can be carried on my shoulder or crossbody.
After close to 96 hours of searching (more like 4 or so) I finally found a handbag that I like the style, design, color, and quality of but wouldn’t you know that I can’t figure out what darn color it is?  If I can’t figure this out by Monday, I’m going to move on to another bag.  I need to order something ASAP so it will arrive before my next trip in a couple of weeks.. and I don’t want to give up on the Silverlake Bucket bag.  🙁

Here is my delima

I LOVE the The SAK Silverlake Bucket Bag pictured below and I want the dark amber bag pictured below.. BUT the dark amber on The Sak website and the dark amber on Amazon.com look totally different and I don’t like the dark amber I see on The Sak website here but I love the dark amber shown here on Amazon.com.  So which product photograph most closely portrays the true color and which one should I order?

Help please!?
What do you think I should do?

Should I order the cheaper ($118) dark amber Silverlake Bucket bag from TheSak.com website in hopes that it turns out to be the dark amber I see on Amazon.com or should I order the dark amber Silverlake Bucket from Amazon.com which is more expensive ($155) but I like the color shown in the product photograph?  Please tell me in the comments below.