Author: Becky

As we prepare for our new website launch, we have decided to separate the blogs into two. This will allow our wedding and portrait clients to easily and quickly find the information that means the most to them.

Father’s Day is just around the corner!

Mom, surprise him this Father’s Day with a

Daddy & Me portrait session at Appleby Photography.

Let us chronicle the joy of fatherhood and create memories

Dad will love to look back on.

Father’s Day is June 20th, 2010!

Call 608-280-8845 TODAY to schedule a session.

Ecomom has just launched their new and improved website. EcoMom’s goal is to making eco-conscious living easy, affordable, and fun! We have a review, a special discount and FREE giveaway!

We were delighted when we were asked to taste-test a new line of organic food that Ecomom just added to their website. I think organic food is a wonderful aspiration for the whole family, and it’s mandatory in our house for our babies, as well as into toddlerhood. My thoughts are that feeding babies artificial ingredients, preservatives and chemicals has to have a bigger, and worse, impact on them because they are so little- ounce for ounce, they would be getting more of the “yucky stuff”.

We received samples from the Plum Organics Baby and Tots lines, and also from the Revolution Foods line, which is also organic and geared to older kids with products that would work well for the school lunchbox.

The kids were excited when I gathered them for a little tasting party, so I will share our thoughts and reactions.

• The first thing we tried was the Revolution Foods Mashups in Berry and the Plum Organics Tots Peach Mish Mash. Both of these are real fruit puree that come in a foil pouch. I had started the kids out with spoons, but they all preferred to drink the purees right from the packages (I’m sure that was half the fun). These both were a big hit! I was shocked that my picky 10 year old LOVED the peach- she won’t even eat real peaches! She said it was like a yummy applesauce and that we have to buy more for her lunches. My 4 year old liked drinking from the package so much that she ran off to refill them with water and declared that they were her water bottles.
• I was surprised that the Jammy Sammy bars didn’t go ever as well. These are little snack sized sandwich bars that come in kid-friendly flavors like PB&J, which is a staple at our house. Both my 10 and 2 year old thought they were “not so good” while my 4 year old thought they were great and wanted more, though every bite was polished off, so they weren’t that bad! I was told they were like Nutri-Grain bars, but with not enough jelly.
• The Plum Organics Baby foods also come in the foil pouches. They were a generous portion so I could pour out what I needed and reseal the package with the cap for another meal. They come in fun flavors like Pear & Mango! Yum!
• Overall, I think both food lines are great. The options for organic meals and snacks make it easy to have something quick and to travel with healthy food. The combination of flavors was a refreshing variety that kids don’t always get exposed to with “regular” snack foods.

Try It!

Check out Ecomom for yourself! They are offering you, our readers, 15% off your first order! The discount code is SBBL298 and will be good through May 31, 2010. You can use it on anything (but the Ecopass), including a cute little toy recycling truck! The Ecopass is a $99 annual membership which gives you a 15% discount on every order, free shipping and other club “perks”. You can find them on twitter and facebook, as well as sign up for their newsletter.

Win It!

Now for the good stuff: A Giveaway! Ecomom will give away a little gift to one of our readers- $20 worth of Plum and/or Revolution Foods so you can try them out yourself! Your chance to enter ends May 22nd, 2010. The winner will be chosen at random.

How to enter (you can do one, or as many as you like):

• sign up for our newsletter, if you do not already receive it
• “like” on us facebook
• leave a comment on facebook
• leave a comment on this blog
• refer a friend
• share our post on another blog/forum/group/facebook

Comment here or on facebook to let us know what you did to enter (see, that gives you one entry right there!).

Disclosure: I received complimentary food for this review. I did not receive any payment. This is my honest opinion.

We are posting this to urge you to volunteer 90 minutes of your time and $25 for a high-impact large-scale event in Madison taking place on April 8-10. More than 500,000 meals will be packaged and sent to Haiti to support the continuing relief efforts there. This is a family-friendly event, and children as young as 5 years old can participate. As of right now, there is still a need for volunteers on Friday evening and Saturday.

As a direct response to recent events in Haiti, on April 8, 9, & 10 the Madison Relief Organization (MRO) will sponsor a volunteer event to prepare half a million meals for Haitians in need. We are asking that volunteers donate $25 and 90 minutes. In just 90 minutes each volunteer will prepare over 200 meals. At just 12¢ per meal this is an extremely cost-effective strategy to provide direct aid to Haitians in need.

Their goal is to package 500,000 meals during the 3-day event. During the event volunteers will assemble the food in a supervised, sanitary setting in assembly line fashion during 90-minute shifts. For registration and information, see www.mealsforhaiti.org.

WHO:

Any person able to sit or stand for up to 90 minutes can prepare meals.

LOCATION:

Airport Road Industrial Park (by Keva)

8233 Forsythia Street

Middleton, WI 53562

WHEN:

Thursday, April 8 from 6 – 9 PM

Friday, April 9 from 6 – 9 PM

Saturday, April 10 from 9 AM – 3 PM

REGISTRATION: On-line at www.mealsforhaiti.org. Please register to reserve your place. Please join Madison Meals for Haiti on Facebook.

DONATIONS: If you are unable to attend, please consider sponsoring the event, by contributing on-line at www.mealsforhaiti.org, or make checks payable to: Madison Relief Organization, send to: Treasurer, Madison Relief Organization/1341 Jenifer St/ Madison, WI 53703

To facilitate the event MRO partnered with Feeding Children International and Kids Against Hunger. These groups have developed a nutritionally balanced, dried-food meal that to date has been distributed to over 40,000,000 children and people in need across the U.S. and around the world. Each package of food contains 6 servings of 4 ingredients (rice, soy protein, dried vegetables and vitamins).

Relief International will ensure that our meals reach Haitians in need. Relief International’s emergency response teams in Haiti will provide these life-saving meals to children and families in hospitals and makeshift living camps.

What is the first thing you want to do when you hear great news, when you get engaged, when your child does something amazing, or you just won the lottery?

You share the news with the people that are important to you.

Life’s experiences means so much more when you get to relive them by telling your family and friends.

Sharing photographs are the same way. Whether they are your vacation photographs or wedding photographs. Whether they are of your children or your dog. Being able to let other people into our lives by showing them our photographs has been a way to communicate for over 100 years.

Recently, however, photographs have been stuck on computers, left and forgotten. Digital cameras are a wonderful way to get instant gratification with seeing your images. And the computer is great at keeping them all organized. Facebook is even nice to let others see what you are doing. But, computers crash, facebook shrinks your images and technology changes.

If you are not getting your photographs off your computer, you are missing the chance to enjoy them again as you share them with others. You are missing the chance to pass them down to future generations and preserve a bit of history.

Make a scrapbook of your vacation, a photo baby book or create a family album. Put your photographs in a digital frame, group some small photographs together in frames to put on a shelf or enlarge them and hang them on the wall.

And make sure to preserve them for your children to enjoy years from now.

I’m happy to share that Satara carries the Flip cloth diaper system! These are not on their website- they really have a LOT more baby stuff in their store!