Online Shopping

I had been tagged by Perceptions of an Ambivert to do a viral linking post, which I haven’t done in a long time. There are advantages to participating in viral linking, including:

-One of the fastest ways to see your technorati authority explode!
-Increase your google pagerank fast
-Attract large volume of new traffic to your site

I prefer not to tag people, so please feel free to grab this list and post it yourself, don’t forgot to add your blog to the end of the list!

1.The Strategist Note Book
2.The Classy Life
3. Agenc Was Here
4.When Life Becomes a Book
5.The Haven
6.The FireWalker
7.crystrad
8.nadnuts
9.ThomasWelcome
10.Maitri
11.Dhanosh
12.Marketing Myself
13.Brawny Hunk
14.Motorparasi
15.Ash
16.Annette
17.Super Hero Extraordinare
18.Everyday should be Christmas
19.The Gadget Guru tech
20.Available Light
21.Dad’s Dish
22.What Goes Under the Sun
23.One Quart Low
24.Stephan Miller
25.Mental Poo
26.Search for Blogging
27.Renatodoxaguia
28.Angel Baby
29.The Sleeping Turtle Art Gallery
30.Hanna
31.JollyJo
32.Olga the traveling bra
33.Concept is addict
34.Postarelibero
35.Nokhathai
36.My Internet Marketing adventure
37.Conceptis Addict
38.MomReviews
39.In to the Rabbit Hole
40. Smile!Tomorrow could be a lot worse!
41.Wicked Whispers
42.Anand’s blog
43.I Don’t Want To Retire
44.MomCooks
45.Getting My Blog On

Happy linking!

The traditional way to dress a salad is to make the salad first, then top it with a dressing. New Wish-Bone Bountifuls Salad Dressings want you to rethink that by choosing your dressing first, then designing a salad around it. There are four flavors to choose from:

- Tuscan Romano Basil — a delectable Mediterranean vinaigrette made with
aged Romano cheese, tomatoes and basil
- Hearty Italian — a luscious Italian vinaigrette filled with pieces of
sweet onions, red and green bell peppers and carrots
- Berry Delight — a sweet and tangy vinaigrette made with bits of
blueberries, raspberries and strawberries, perfect for a vegetable or
fruit salad
- Simply Santa Fe — a subtly spicy southwestern-inspired vinaigrette
brimming with corn, red peppers, tomatoes and cilantro

I received a full-size bottle of each dressing for this review, and I really wasn’t prepared for just how flavorful they are. The Wish-Bone website has recipes for each of the dressings, and I surprised to see that they recommend mixing the Berry Delight with fruit, yogurt and granola! For the Tuscan Romano Basil, the website has six delicious recipes for salads that use different meats and vegetables. It would be delicious over pasta salad. Hearty Italian Dressing is great to use to marinate or season veggies or brush on fish before broiling. The Simply Santa Fe Dressing is an ingredient in a Four-Cheese Enchilada Bake that looks really good.

As part of their “Go Greens! Eat Salad” Campaign, Wish-Bone has created a website that features a Digital Garden. Register for the site and try for some daily instant win prizes like a reusable Greenshopper Grocery Bag. See what people just like you are eating with Salad Connections. Store your favorite recipes in your own personalized Recipe Box.

Wish-Bone wants you to have a FREE bottle of new Wish-Bone Bountifuls salad dressings from May 30 to June 1. Purchase a bottle and download a rebate form on the site to send in with your receipt.

I want one lucky reader to win a set of all four Wish-Bone Bountifuls dressings in this giveaway! For one entry, leave a comment on this post with your name and valid email address.

For two entries, do one of the following: subscribe to my feed in a reader or by email, the links are in the middle column near the top. Or, add this blog to your Technorati Favorites by going to http://technorati.com/blogs/momreviews.net, signing in to your Technorati account and clicking Fave.

For three entries, write a post on your blog or site about this giveaway. The deadline to enter is Friday, May 30th at 9:00 Am EST. Good luck everybody!

What are Think-ets? I didn’t know either until I received a bag of them for this review. Think-ets is an educational and fun-filled game using adorable tiny treasures from around the world that inspire creativity and test memory. Think-ets is an at-home game, a travel game, a party game, a storytelling game, a camping game—perfect for children and their families.Think-ets are bags of little toys that can be used to play fun, imaginative games. You buy them by the pouch and get a random assortment, ours looked like this and contained 14 items:

Each pouch comes with a suggested list of games you can play with Think-ets, like “What’s Missing?”, where you have your child close their eyes, take away a few items, and then ask you to tell them what’s missing. We took our pouch with us to Fazoli’s for lunch one afternoon and just sorting and playing with them kept Kaitlyn in her highchair for much longer than usual. She kept picking up the tiny pig and saying “oh, piggy, so cute!” We counted how many items we had and sorted them into two piles, too.

Think-ets come in a simple mesh bag, no excess packaging to throw away, and while the price of $12.99 might seem high, here’s why it’s not. Edited to add: my apologies to Think-A-Lot Toys, the price is $9.99! From the website:

1) We Strive for Quality
All of our “tiny treasures” have been painstakingly sourced to avoid cheap plastic items that exist the world over—and that contribute to our world’s trash heap. We don’t believe in games that are bought one day and tossed the next.
2) We Buy Hand-Crafted Miniatures
Take for example our pieces from Mexico (the valuable copper ladles, pitchers, chalices, cups, glazed ceramic mugs, wire “batidors” [beaters], wire potato mashers, colored-fiber pot scrubbers, cheese graters, straw hats, breads and pastries.) All of them are hand-made by artisans working in villages throughout Mexico. They work under humane conditions and get paid enough to make a living in their country. We think this is important to caring customers! We buy hand-turned wooden chalices, green bottles and mugs made in postwar Germany by a crafters guild. We buy beautifully hand-painted phthalate-free (that’s a good thing) polyresin animals from a conscientious company that provides
their workers with a healthy work environment and a living wage. And, we buy little metal tools (tested for lead safety) that actually work! Kids marvel over and become engaged in our “tiny treasures.”
3) Our Colored Treasure Stones are Actually Semi-Precious Gems
Ever wondered where these beautiful stones come from? They are from South Africa and are a reminder of the beauty of our natural world. Other “tiny treasures” are equally special—our miniature books have real pages and some even have titles.

Even my boys wanted to play with the tiny treasures in the Think-ets bag! I’m naming Think-ets a MomReviews Fabulous Find, and I thank Lisa from Kidstuff P.R. for sending me the product for the review!

I received a License Key to try KidsSave, a savings and money management software program designed for kids ages 6 and up. KidsSave shows kids how to save money towards a goal, how to keep track of their allowance, even how to earn monetary rewards like extra money or “interest”. Parents act as the Banker in setting up the initial account and monitoring transactions.

There are two features of the program that I particularly like, the first is the “What If?” feature. Kids can set a savings goal and then see at their current deposit rate, how long it will take them to reach that goal. Or, they can see how much they will have in 3 months, 6 months, a year, etc. It’s a great way to teach how to make adjustments to savings to reach a financial goal.

I also like the Money Counter, which teaches kids how to add and subtract coins and bills to their account. It’s available in U.S., Canadian, and Australian currency. Now, as the Banker/Parent, your responsibility will be to actually keep your kids’ money in an account somewhere. If they decide to make a withdrawal, you’ll need to be able to come up with their cash!

I give my boys their age in dollars for allowance every two weeks, and I do not tell them what to do with it. If Nathan wants to blow the whole nine dollars on a new lego set, that’s up to him, but then if a week later he sees something else, he has to wait until his next payday. KidsSave is a great visual tool to explain the benefits of not spending the entire allowance all at once.

You can download a free trial of KidsSave on the Kidnexions website, or purchase it for $29.95. You might find yourself creating an account and setting up your own savings goals like I did!

The Emilee Grace Company was founded by Mom Diana Miller in 2007 as a way to provide products that Moms need combined with the flair of modern fashion. Emilee Grace sells Cute Baby shoes, Hottie Tottie Designs Ribbon Totes Diaper Bags (cute enough to be a purse!), Organic Cotton bibs, burp cloths and bath sets, Binkie Bungee Pacifier Clips, and the adorable and quite fashionable BabyLegs.

What are BabyLegs? Think a combination of tights and legwarmers to keep baby’s legs covered and warm while looking stylish, too. BabyLegs are made out of 80% cotton, 15% polyester and 5% spandex and they come in a variety of colors and patterns for either boys or girls. They come in one size that fits newborns up to age ten!

For Boys, this style is called Jolly Jack:

For Girls, I like this style called Pink Polka Dot:

Diana has generously agreed to give a pair of BabyLegs to a lucky winner who can choose any style on the site. To enter to win, leave a comment on this post. Use your real name or blog alias, no keywords please, and make sure your email address is valid. I’ll choose a winner in two weeks, on Wednesday May 28th at 9:00 AM EST. Retail value: $12.00.

If you want to buy a pair now, use code MOMREV to get a 10% discount on your purchase between May 12 and June 15. You can also get a pair of BabyLegs free with the purchase of select Diaper Bags, see the homepage for details.

Not required for the giveaway but always appreciated-blogging about the contest on your site, adding MomReviews to your favorites at Technorati, or subscribing to my feed either by reader or email. Good luck!

My mailbox has been filling up with Summer Camp brochures in the last few weeks, my boys could spend the summer doing science experiments, learning five new sports, studying cooking or photography or calligraphy. Whew! What ever happened to spending the summer riding your bike and playing Kick-The-Can with the neighborhood kids?

We all want the best for our kids and for them to be successful, but it’s also important to remember that they are just KIDS, and that childhood goes by oh-so-quickly. I know mine sure did! To help parents and kids embrace childhood, the Kellogg’s® Rice Krispies® brand team created the “Childhood Is Calling™: Celebrating Kids Just Being Kids” report. The report offers expert and real-mom insight on the importance of savoring childhood and advice for families to find simple moments of joy and connection. As part of Operation Spark, Childhood is Calling is an educational initiative devoted to providing parents with ways to create meaningful memories with their children.

The Childhood is Calling website has information on Playing for Keeps, “a national not-for-profit organization founded in 1999 that exists to help bridge the gap between what researchers have learned about play and what parents and professionals who impact kids’ lives on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour need to know to help nurture our precious children to their full potential.”

In addition to that, the Rice Krispies “Childhood is Calling” website is also just plain fun. It has links to a music video by Ralph of Ralph’s World, fun games, recipes for Rice Krispie Treats, and “The Tale”, which tells more about the history of Rice Krispies including a dropdown menu with all of the cereal box covers. Show your kids what the Rice Krispies box looked like the year you were born!

For participating in this blog tour, Mom Central and Kellogg’s will be sending me a box of Rice Krispies and two vintage cereal bowls, which I am very excited about because the five of us eat a TON of cereal. I’m also scoping out the Recipe Exchange section of the Childhood is Calling site-people make some really interesting recipes with Rice Krispies! Please check out the Childhood is Calling site when you have a few minutes, both you and your kids are sure to like it.

The introduction to Christie Mellor’s Were You Raised By Wolves? Clues to the Mysteries of Adulthood is titled “Hello, Brand New Grown-up!”, but her advice is so practical, even not-brand-new grown-ups can benefit from it. Her goal is to demystify the brave new world of moving the heck OUT of your parents’ house already by dispensing practical wisdom on everything from basic cooking and cleaning tips to how to dress both in the workplace and just how to dress so that you don’t, you know, embarrass yourself.

Mellor begins with the absolute basics-what the new grown-up needs to know to live on their own. How to make a bed, for example, with a drawing showing exactly how to tuck in the corners. How to clean a toilet, 20 amazing uses for baking soda (seriously, it’s unbelievable how many uses there are for baking soda and yet it’s still so cheap to buy), how to really deep clean before company comes. Useful kitchen tips include how to make coffee that is drinkable, how to hard-boil eggs, make basic soup and salad dressing, even how to make homemade mayonnaise. I turned down the corner on the page for how to poach chicken, because it never occurred to me to add bay leaf and peppercorns to the liquid!

Her chapter title “You, in the World. Not Being an Embarassment” has advice on how to tip, how to be a good party guest, how to be an even better houseguest, and how to handle situations involving alcohol. She even has a detailed drawing on how to build a cool little outdoor bar for your patio. But my favorite chapter title has to be “Put on Those Big Boy Pants!”, with advice on how to act like a real grown-up by throwing a dinner party, arranging flowers, and making a hostess gift.

I’m telling you, if someone you know is graduating from college this year, or moving out of their parents’ house and getting their first apartment, be a good friend and get them this book. It’s not just a boring list of “things you should know”. It’s written in a casual, friendly, well-meaning style and it is chock full of really useful information. I could have used a book like this when I first lived on my own!

The book is available on Amazon.com. Buy a copy, put it in a gift box along with some dishtowels and potholders, and you’ve got the perfect “congratulations on getting your first place” gift! To read what other reviewers thought, stop by the Parent Bloggers Network blog to get links to other reviews. Thanks again, PBN!