Bee's Wrap - A Natural Alternative to Conserving Leftovers

My friend Josina sent me a email a while back and asked me to check out Bee's Wrap. Bee's Wrap is a natural alternative to conserving leftovers rather than using things like aluminum foil.

Bee's Wrap is fabric combined magically with beeswax, jojoba oil and tree resin and voila! There you have it, a natural way to keep your food fresh!

 Check out how it worked covering my leftover bowl of brown rice spaghetti!

Bee's Wrap is awesome at covering leftover pasta, wrapping cheese, veggies, bread, snacks or even half an avocado!

I love using Bee's Wrap with my leftovers. It feels great in my hands. It's fun to manipulate it, and it smells great!

Do you want to win three sizes of Bee's Wrap? Enter below!



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Cold Hands Warm Heart

We were in line at Dunkin Donuts. An elderly lady stood behind me in line. She clutched my arm. Her hands were cold.

"Oh you're so warm!" She said. "I'm always cold."

"You know what they say? Cold hands, warm heart." I said with a smile.

I instinctively rubbed her hand to warm it.

"That feels so nice." She said smiling back. "I can't stand for so long." She said.

"You can go ahead of me in line." I told her.

"Do you have grandkids?" I asked.

"Oh sure. They're all almost through college." She replied.

"Nice." I replied "Any great grandkids?"

"Not yet. Soon!" She said with a laugh. I laughed too.

"Are those yours?" She said pointing to Ari and Samara who were looking at the juice cooler.

"Yes. They are."

"Beautiful," she said. I was still rubbing her cold hand. "Here, buy something for the kids." With that she handed me three dollars. I bought donuts.

There is good in the world.

KneeBouncers- Great Play with Purpose

A few years back, I found an awesome site for kids called Kneebouncers. It allowed Ari (who was two at the time) to use my computer without breaking it and learn letters, numbers, shapes, and colors! When I heard that Kneebouncers had released an IPad app called Great Play with Purpose, I was excited for Samara to get in on the action. So I wrote to the guys over at Kneebouncers and asked if we could give it a try. They graciously agreed!

Samara had a great time on the Kneebouncers app learning colors through popping balloons:

She learned number and letters:

And she moved on to some shapes! She had the help of Freddy the bear :)

She also got to play with a train:

Samara highly recommends the Kneebouncers Great Play With Purpose app. If you want to check it out for your kid, go to the app store and look up "KneeBouncers Great Play with Purpose" or just click here!

Vegan À La Mode - A Cookbook Giveaway!

When I was at BlogHer13', I attended a writing seminar on how to transform a blog into a book. One of the panelists at that seminar was Hannah Kaminsky. I was impressed by how articulate she was when she revealed her path toward getting published. Hannah is a tenacious young woman. She's already a successful published author in her early twenties.

The unique part of her journey is that she was able to publish her vegan cookbooks without a literary agent. She pitched her proposal directly to publishers and she was picked up by a publishing house directly. I was impressed by her perseverance and her humility.

I was excited when Hannah agreed to let me giveaway Vegan À La Mode, her vegan ice cream cookbook!

First of all, all the ice cream looks delicious. Secondly the recipes have awesome titles like "Cookie Monster Ice Cream," which I'm dying to try. Other recipes include "Toasted Marshmallow Ice Cream" "Cheesecake Ice Cream" "Double Chocolate Fudge Chunk Ice Cream" and "Hint of Mint Chocolate Sorbet" Seriously, check this out:

I don't know about you, but that belongs in my belly. 

So check it out guys, Lauren from Skyhorse Publishing agreed to give away FIVE copies of Vegan À La Mode to five of my lucky readers. You can enter to win Hannah's yummy cookbook below.

Good luck and happy ice cream!

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The Circle Line Liberty Cruise!

This morning we were scheduled to attend the Circle Line Radio Disney Kids Cruise. As our luck would have it, on the way to our to the 10:00am cruise, we were in a taxi and got stuck in traffic on 42nd Street behind a giant tow truck. I kept willing the truck to move faster in my mind, but it didn't listen to me.

We got the dock of The Circle Line at 10:07am and found that the Kids Cruise had already left. I didn't want to let my kids down, so I went into the Circle Line office and asked if they would let us attend a different cruise instead. They graciously allowed us to hop on board the Liberty Cruise at 10:45am. The kids were psyched.**

The Liberty Cruise is 75 minutes long. I was nervous that the kids would melt down and it would be too long for them. It turned out it was the complete opposite. They were fascinated with all the scenery.

                                Ari took this picture!

 They especially loved looking out at the water.

There's something about being around water that is therapeutic to kids and adults.

Ari had fun exploring the ship.

As a native New Yorker, I still appreciate being a tourist in my own city. It's fun to check out historical landmarks like Ellis Island...

and of course the famous lady in green, The Statue of Liberty!

Samara was loving the boat and being outside in the cool air. She kept trying to say "liberty" but it sounded more like "liw-boo-tee."

Of course they got hungry half way through our journey. Ari was excited to eat his giant pretzel and Samara was happy to have her hotdog. 

Even the bathrooms were nice on this boat!

The staff was super friendly. I especially loved our tour guide, Dave. 

Dave has been with the Circle Line since 1993. He's worked with the company for 20 seasons. When giving the tour, he told us that he started with an initial script but his schtick has changed over the years based on the questions of passengers on board. I thought that was pretty cool. The patrons of the Circle Line had a role in the content of the tour. 

We had a great experience on The Liberty Cruise. If you're visiting New York, or even if you're a native, it's a fun way to spend the day either as a genuine tourist or a tourist in your own city.

The kids and I will be attending the Circle Line Kids Cruise on October 26th. We hope to see you there too!

For more information on The Circle Line click here. For information on the Circle Line Kids Cruises click here.

**This is a sponsored post for The Circle Line. All opinions expressed are my own.

Samara the Walker

Samara loves to walk. I've never seen a 2 year old walk as much as she does. I tested her walking ability out yesterday. We started out from our house and we walked 1/2 a mile down 4th Avenue toward the third street bridge. At any moment I was sure that she would stop and ask me to carry her, but she didn't. She walked on. 

It was a challenge for me, because my inclination as a native New Yorker is to walk fast. But with Samara holding my hand, I was forced to slow down my pace. We took turns pointing put trees to each other and different colored bicycles.

As we were crossing the third street bridge in the middle of the Gowanus Canal, Samara began to cry. She sat down so we could get a better view of the gray murky water.

"Samara! We have to go. We're going to be late. Ari's waiting for us at school."

I pleaded with her.

She reached her arms up and I knew she needed a break. So I carried her a few blocks over the bridge.

Then I challenged her again:

"Do you want to walk?" I asked her. "Let's go see Ari." 

Samara sighed "Okay. I wanna see Ari!"

With that she began to walk again. We made it just in time to pick up Ari from school. And the walk back to the train was easier because Samara had Ari by her side.

An Interview With Selfish Mom - Amy Oztan

Over the years I've met some really awesome people on Twitter. One of them is Amy Oztan AKA Selfish Mom. We both live in Brooklyn, and I can remember bonding when the Brooklyn tornado happened a couple of years ago.

Amy is awesome. I wrote her an email and asked if I could interview her for OS/NS Mom. She invited me over to her place in Clinton Hill so I could find out more about her and how she got into blogging.

I told her I'd love to come over and I even brought her a pumpkin banana chocolate chip muffin from Blue Sky Bakery! 

After hanging out and talking with Amy, I think she should change her name to "Honest Mom." She's a genuine human being. We bonded over the fact that we're both Libras who come from performing arts backgrounds. 

Check out what she's has to say about how she started Selfish Mom, how her daughter's name wasn't inspired by the movie Shrek, and how her last name is not a random city in Texas.

Amy is a real down-to-earth person. Her best piece of blogging advice to those of you starting out: be yourself!