A little over  year ago I asked readers for their opinions on when to have the changing body talk with my children.  When I began blogging nearly five years ago, my daughter was in pre-school, my son still in diapers.  My biggest parenting problem was my never-ending quest to get my son to sleep in…

Last night I watched the Golden Globes along with millions of other fans of movies and television.  Watching the actors and actresses, many of them from my childhood, reminded me of how special it was to have a night out at the movies when I was a kid.  The closest movie theater was a solid…

Last week I traveled to Las Vegas for the New Media Expo conference.  I was headed to spend a couple days with some of the most technologically savvy people in the country, possibly the world, and I had packed my favorite gadgets.  The problem?  I couldn’t take my Verizon FiOS with me.  There was WiFi…

Last week we chatted on Twitter about not only the nutritional benefits of delicious meals including Barilla pastas, but also the ease of pasta based meals, meeting the needs of busy families trying to deliver nutritious meals to the family quickly. As a fun follow-up, I want to introduce you to Barilla Microwaveable Meals.  These…

It always seems that just when we are getting ready to finally say goodbye to toys that have moved from old favorites to disregarded, my children are suddenly nostalgic and want to play with them again.  While I love taking a trip down memory lane with them, sometimes we find that the batteries we need…

Please join me for a very special hour on Twitter next week.  We’ll be tweeting with Compassion International about giving back this holiday season with a focus on how to support others without breaking the bank.  I’m happy to announce that @TheSamiCone, a Compassion blogger, will be joining us as a special guest as we…

I remember as a child on Halloween, carefully navigating jack-o-lantern’s lit with candles, holding tight to the edges of my incredibly flammable 1980’s made costumes. We walked house to house in total darkness on some streets, only sporadic streetlights to light our way. And in a small town with no sidewalks, we did our Trick-or-Treating…

Our parents all warned us. Moms of older kids nudged and told us. Trace Adkins even sang to us about it, and if you’re like me, you sighed and changed the station. And then earlier this week when everyone panicked that Facebook did didn’t may have released private messages from 2009 to our public Walls,…

I have a confession. While I have had the occasional good organization idea (I still love using bins to turn shelves into drawers), I continue to find myself overwhelmed by the papers that come home each day in my children’s backpacks. My kids’ backpacks are very organized with folders that contain a “keep home” and…

I have been reading Redbook since I was fifteen, and every month when my new issue comes, I turn immediately to the Whys Guy feature by Aaron Traister. I could say that I read his articles to decode male behavior and gain a better understanding of my husband, but the truth is that I just enjoy…

At the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration last April, Meg Crofton, President of Walt Disney World Resort, spoke on the opening day of the event about the importance of treasuring each moment we have with our children. I have had the honor of hearing her speak on more than one occasion, and I am always…

I very rarely have time to read anything that is not before me on the screen or in my child’s “Notes to Home” folder from school, but there are three magazines I read with regularity: Newsweek, The Atlantic, and Christianity Today. I was especially moved by an article in the September 2009 edition ofChristianity Today titled “Why the Care of…

Recently word got out in my hometown that I have a website that claims in it’s title that I am Resourceful. Conversations at a wedding turned to just how resourceful I really am, and luckily one friend brought up a tip I once gave her that she uses with her son now. So to prove…

Last week my dad handed me an interesting article he was reading about children and self-discipline. The basis of the article was new research showing that children can be taught self-discipline (is ‘taught self-discipline’ oxymoronic to anyone but me?). While I agree that parents can work with children to encourage patience and similar traits, the theory…

It’s that bittersweet time of year again . Summer is drawing to a close and it’s time to head back to school! While some of us are milking the last few moments of vacation, others have already hopped back on the bus for the school year. Whether you’re already in the swing of things or…

Last January was a little bit rough.  That last sentence was a little bit of an understatement. The final straw after a period of a few long, stressful weeks came when I found out that my husband needed to travel to a not-so-safe location for work for a few days right after the holidays.  A…

I always knew that I wanted to be a mom.  More specifically, I always knew that I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.  Somehow over the course of my four years of teaching, I managed to scrape together enough money in my savings account to stay home for five years once my husband and I…

A couple weeks ago my family and I had the honor of being included in an Adventures By Disney sample vacation along with other bloggers and members of the media.  I’ve been meaning to tell you about it ever since and have only been delayed by the fact that I have over 700 pictures to…

Over the last four years of blogging I have worked with companies ranging from financial services to children’s toys with everything in between.  Every relationship has had its benefits both to me and to my readers, but never have I been happier to work with a company than I was last weekend.  In fact,  Friday…

I was kind of a bad ass kid. This is a picture of me at two and a half, about to careen down an unsecured, hot metal slide with essentially no sides and the adult in charge of my safety standing fifteen feet away with a camera in his hands.  I grew up before the…

During my time in Tanzania with Compassion International, I will would like to share some of my favorite posts from the past. ~Originally posted 7/19/10~ As parents, we need to have an ever-changing bag of tricks to deal with the challenges of parenthood.  My nemesis is space.  I am constantly looking for new places to store…