Coast 2 Coast Mom

Milk Mustache Breakfast In Bed GIVEAWAY #GotMilk #MilkToastToMom

I’ve been working over Mother’s Day weekend with The National Milk Mustache “got milk?” Campaign to promote their milk with breakfast initiative, and the launch of the new Katie Couric Breakfast Project ad campaign. They’ve sponsored this giveaway and given me an inside look at the making of the ads with Katie Couric and her daughters.

Mother’s Day morning can feel a lot like Christmas morning: filled with anticipation, whispers, and when little kids are involved, proud li’l helpers. After an hour and a half of laying in bed listening to the Kiddo and my husband in the kitchen, I was antsy and attempted to creep downstairs to start the day when the Kiddo ran up to block my descent yelling, “We’re almost done! Go back to bed! We’re bringing you breakfast in bed!” So back I went, to complete another Sodoku puzzle or two.

When they did come up bringing breakfast on a tray, it was beautiful and de-lish! :-D Here’s what my first ever Mother’s Day breakfast in bed looked like:

GIVEAWAY: You can win your own items to toast yourself or someone you love with breakfast in bed, thanks to the Milk Mustache campaign. The breakfast in bed giveaway set includes everything you see here:

That's 1 breakfast in bed tray, 1 decorative plate, 1 cereal bowl, 1 milk jar, 1 mug, 1 spoon, and a fun fresian aerolatte moooo milk frother - a pretty set to make anyone feel special!

ENTER TO WIN: Just leave a comment below by Monday, May 20, 2013 at Noon EST. I'll pick the winner using random.org, and contact the winner that afternoon to get his/her shipping address. The breakfast in bed gift basket will be shipped directly to the winner from the Milk Mustache campaign.

Good luck!

 

 

 

Katie Couric Milk Mustache Mother's Day Ad Campaign

I’ve been working over Mother’s Day weekend with The National Milk Mustache “got milk?” Campaign to promote their milk with breakfast initiative, and the launch of the new Katie Couric Breakfast Project ad campaign. They’ve sponsored my efforts and given me an inside look at the making of the ads with Katie Couric and her daughters, and I’m excited to share with you all. :-D

Here’s a few behind-the-scenes pics from the ad campaign photo shoot of Katie with her daughters, Ellie and Carrie. I appreciate how Katie has made an effort to model healthy habits (like drinking milk) for her girls. They’re beautiful and the three of them look so cute together!

 

TA-DA! Here's the final ad:

IKEA Paramus to Host Life Improvement Seminar with Stephen Saint-Onge

IKEA and Family Circle are teaming up this weekend to offer up free Life Improvement Store Seminars and there's two here in the local New Jersey area. Celebrity designer Stephen Saint-Onge will be on hand to share creative tips and techniques on how to refresh and update your kitchen and personally I can't wait to check it out. The spurts of warm sunny weather recently have had us spring cleaning and me dreamily pinning and surfing home makeovers and redesigns. :-)

The first IKEA event with Stephen Saint-Onge is this Saturday (April 20th) at the IKEA Paramus, and then again Sunday (April 21st) at the IKEA store in Elizabeth. No advance sign up is required and both events are free and open to the public. There will be some gift giveaways at each store location, added incentive to check out the event!

Here's some exclusive design tips from Stephen himself to whet your appetite before the live event this weekend....

 

HEXBUG Toys in McDonald's Happy Meals

Starting today, HEXBUG micro robots will be featured in McDonald's Happy Meals across North America. Created by Innovation First International, the HEXBUG toys are sure to lure kids - and many boys - to the Golden Arches for the next four weeks.

While we don't have a McDonald's along our day-to-day routes about town, we usually reserve eating there as a treat for road trips or long days running errands. I have no doubt, however, that we'll be making a beeline to pick up a Happy Meal with these micro robots for the Kiddo. :-)

The HEXBUG Happy Meal program will run from today through March 21, 2013 while supplies last. I got to see the lineup of toys while at Toy Fair earlier this month. Participating McDonald’s restaurants across the United States and Canada will offer customers one of six collectible HEXBUG Micro Robotic Creatures with the purchase of a Happy Meal:

• Fast crawling HEXBUG Speed Beetle™ in Green and Red
• Slow crawling HEXBUG Beetle™ in Black and Orange
• Bump and go HEXBUG Nano® Pullback Blue and Black

 

Which one's your favorite?

 

Sprint 4G LTE Tri-Fi Hotspot from Sierra Wireless

As a travelling family, Sprint offered us the opportunity to try out the 4G LTE Tri-Fi Hotspot while on the go these past few months. Whether it’s been in airports, on trains, buses - even on a 12-hour family road trip from NYC to Chicago - having an internet connection to stay in touch with work throughout our travels was vital to our careers. 

If you’re not already familiar with the tri-fi hotspot, it's a small  wireless device that you can throw in your bag and depending on your location, the hotspot will kick in to either a 3G or 4G mode automatically. What makes Sprint’s 4G LTE Tri-Fi Hotspot different is that it’s a “first-ever device” that gives you access to Sprint’s 3G, 4G WiMAX and 4G LTE network for internet connectivity. So depending on where you are, you could have speedy connection speeds while on the go.

One big negative to just using your smartphone's Wi-Fi hotspot feature is that it just sucks the life out of the battery. So when we started using the Tri-Fi Hotspot, we were blown away. By putting it in auto power save mode when the Tri-Fi isn’t connected, you can get hours of connection time before you need to plug it back in - we made it through two days of press conferences during the grand opening of Fantasyland at Walt Disney World! Terrific for long and busy travel days.

The only downside we found was that the Tri-Fi Hotspot is too bulky to slip into your jeans pocket, at about 2-3x the thickness of a current mobile phone. Which didn't bother me, as I just slipped it into my purse or camera bag. 

In major metro areas like New York City the service was blazingly fast. However, while commuting in between less populated areas, at major airports (JFK, McCarran and Orlando Int’l), and driving the more rural areas between New York and Chicago, the fastest we were able to muster was 3G service.

We could take this with us everywhere we went, and there was solid coverage. In most cases when the Tri-Fi Hotspot had spotty reception, so did our Verizon and AT&T devices. (I mean really remote areas, like driving along I-80 through the Wilds of Pennsylvania. ;-) ) While the 3G service delivered good performance, the 4G service coverage wasn’t nearly as frequent as we were hoping, but as Sprint expands its 4G service area, this should only improve as time goes on. Not a deal breaker.


Using the Sprint Tri-Fi Hotspot on Disney's Magical Express Bus to WDW

If you're interested in buying a mobile hotspot, you can purchase the 4G LTE Tri-Fi Hotspot on Sprint.com for $99.99 or from Amazon Wireless for $0.01 both require a two-year contract, and you’ll get 3G/4G/4G LTE service, 6 menus of information within the built-in screen (like data consumption, battery life, days left in your billing cycle, and active network status), and built in GPS services so you can use it for location-based navigation when it’s plugged into your laptop.

Or you can purchase the newly released Overdrive Pro 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot for $49.99 with a two-year service plan, but this device doesn’t have 4G LTE or GPS capabilities – if you don’t live in a 4G LTE network area, and GPS isn’t important to you, this could be an alternative option.

Data plans range from $34.99 for a 3GB per month plan (which should be sufficient for most people) all the way up to $79.99 for a 12GB plan,

Overall, this was an incredibly useful device to have handy, and despite not having a consistent 4G connection, the speed was strong enough to do what we needed from the road.

Hilton Times Square Family Holiday Getaway

Without a doubt, there’s more energy and action in and around Times Square than any other part of New York City, so when we had the opportunity to stay at the Hilton Times Square in the heart of Midtown Manhattan, we immediately planned a fun family weekend in NYC.

We’ve stayed at the Hilton Times Square before, so we already knew it was a great location, within walking distance of a lot of great things to do, places to shop, and restaurants to eat. It was a particularly perfect place to stay around the holidays, as we’ve developed an annual family tradition to see the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade - both of which are short 5-10 minute walks from the hotel.  Even the famed windows on 5th Avenue aren’t much of a hike if you’re up for a brisk walk in December.

But outside of holiday activities, we recently saw the Lion King on Broadway and checked out the Harry Potter Exhibit at Discovery Times Square. The Discovery Times Square museum is one of our favorite places as there’s always great exhibits to see, like the Spy Exhibit also currently showing (which we also highly recommend).

The rooms at the Hilton Times Square are clean and accommodating, and competitively priced for a hotel in the heart of New York City.  Depending on which direction your room faces, there's generally some great views. The last time we stayed here, we had a prime view for people-watching down on 42nd Street. This time, we were on the 42nd floor on the Executive Level.



Which gave us some amazing views....

The view from our room - The Empire State Building, Hudson River and Freedom Tower

While still relatively new having only been built in 2000, starting in January 2013 the Hilton Times Square began a “guestroom only revitalization project” which should make the hotel even more appealing. 



We loved the amenities in the bathroom....


And what's a hotel stay without chocolate on the nightstand...



The hotel lobby and all public areas are open and up to date, and include a bar area on the second floor along with a restaurant area that offers sit down meals as well as a breakfast buffet.


The second floor lobby area and Front Desk


The restaurant and bar area off the main lobby of the Hilton Times Square

The result of our efforts from the Hilton Times Square breakfast buffet

Posted in the main lobby was a woman representing Hilton who was offering guests the opportunity to receive a significantly discounted future stay if we booked right then while staying at the hotel. Knowing how much we enjoy getaways and staycations in the city, and given what prices could run you in New York we took advantage of it, and will plan to spend another holiday in a hotel later on this year.

Thank you to the Hilton Honors card from American Express for allowing us to stay in NYC at the Hilton Times Square to #hotelfortheholidays and establish some memorable family holiday traditions.

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Harry Potter: The Exhibition at Discovery Times Square

Harry Potter: The Exhibition at Discovery Times Square

The world of Harry Potter continues to live on, and whether you’re a diehard fan looking to relive the adventure or you’re an average muggle searching for some enchanting fun, you can satisfy your need for both at the Harry Potter: The Exhibition at Discovery Times Square here in New York.

After travelling internationally for most of 2012, the Harry Potter exhibit is back at Discovery Time Square in NYC. While we missed it the first go around when it was here in 2011, we were glad to have another opportunity to check it out -- particularly since the kiddo is older and could better appreciate the exhibit having since visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Orlando.    

There was a lot we loved about the exhibit, and here are some of our favorite kid-friendly highlights and suggestions from our recent visit:

The Sorting Hat
After a brief video montage, the experience begins as you're escorted into a room with the Sorting Hat (as seen in the first Harry Potter film), during our visit three kids were picked to be "sorted" into their appropriate house at Hogwarts. If you have kids with you, make sure they’re standing in front of the group so they can be more easily noticed. The Sorting Hat even talks, and it’s a fabulous way to set the mood and experience for the rest of the exhibit.

Herbology
Here is one of a couple of interactive sections of the exhibit which features a growing garden of Mandrake which you can lift up out of their potted home and hear them scream. This is amusing to watch as an adult, but clearly younger kids are even more entertained.

Quiddich
As you work your way through Hagrid’s Hut, you’ll come to a whole section dedicated to the Game of Quidditch, including the actual clothes, equipment and instructions on how to play the game. Here you can have your own fun by throwing a Quaffle through three different hoops to score a goal. The Kiddo had fun (successfully) throwing the Quaffle through each of the hoops.

Dark Forces
By far the scariest section of the exhibit, there’s a full range of the evilest of creatures from movie, set looming in the dark room on both the ground and above. If you have kids on the younger side, it’s easy to bypass this section if you fear that your child will wake up in a cold sweat thinking a Dementor is chasing after them. The Kiddo's in first grade and weathered it unphased.

The Great Hall
While this is the last section of the exhibit, there's still quite a bit to see, including many more of the costumes and knickknacks from the movie including all of the candy made famous from that that first train ride that Harry and Ron took to Hogwarts. Dobie is hiding in the back and you’ll see him if you look carefully as you’re seamlessly dropped off into an artfully constructed gift shop, a mini version of the retail store at Universal Studios.

Here you can buy everything from wands to Gryffindor merchandise to photos of yourself set against a number of backgrounds (your pic is snapped against a green screen before you even enter the exhibit). You’ll be so consumed with the magical world of Hogwarts that I dare you to resist leaving without having bought at least one Chocolate Frog. ;-)



The breadth of clothes, wands, spell books and knick knacks from the seven movies is impressive, and if you have the time, you can spend a good part of your day reading all of the descriptions of the items on display.

Tickets are $27 for adults, and $19.50 for kids 4-12 years old. If you’re a true Potter-phile, there’s an audio tour for an additional $7 that goes into even further in depth behind the history and significance of each item. If you’re an American Express holder, you can get the audio tour for free.

Harry Potter: The Exhibition will be at Discovery Times Square through April 7, 2013.

 

 

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Momofuku Milk Bar Treats - Icing on Cake

While basking in the after glow of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, we walked up Fifth Ave to check out the holiday lights and decorations. Even though it was starting to rain, it was a beautiful night and end to our holiday dinner, annual Rockettes show and stay in NYC. The icing on the cake - literally - was walking into Momofuku Milk Bar for some late night sweet treats. :-)

We stopped into the Milk Bar at the Chambers Hotel on 56th and picked up some treats to enjoy back at the Hilton Times Square.

We tasted the candy bar pie . . .

We tried the cinnamon bun pie . . .

 . . .and loved the birthday cake truffles!

I'm taking the Kiddo to a cookie-making experience with Christina Tosi from Momofuku later this week, and we can't wait! You can now order from the Milk Bar online at http://www.shopmilkbar.com/shipping/

Thanks to American Express and the Hilton Honors card for inviting us to #hotelfortheholidays and start new family traditions exploring NYC over the holidays.

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Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade Viewing Party

This year we were fortunate to be invited to a private viewing party along the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade route in NYC. We had primo seats for the parade balloons and a fabulous view on 6th Ave, across the street from Radio City Music Hall.

Our jaws dropped when we arrived at the location at the Time Life Building - it was truly perfect for parade viewing. Here's the pre-parade view looking up 6th Ave toward Central Park . . .

And the view looking down 6th Ave before the parade began . . .

Amazing, right??

We had brunch and the Kiddo and his friend colored, decorated cookies, and drank hot chocolate while waiting for the parade to get to us, which took about 25 minutes.

The beginning of the parade!

First balloons in sight . . .

Our view watching marching bands pass by . . .

Charlie Brown balloon and kung Fu Panda Po in the background

The Peanuts float . . .

 

Diary of a Wimpy Kid balloon!

 

Jimmy Fallon with The Roots . . .

Spider-Man balloon making its way down 6th Ave . . .

Pikachu . . .

Papa Smurf . . .

Near the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade . . .

The Elf on the Shelf passing by the Hilton New York . . .

Santa's coming!

Santa . . .

The end of the parade . . .

Look at those crowds!

Thank you to Time, Inc. for hosting us, and to the Hilton Honors card from American Express for allowing us to stay in NYC at the Hilton Times Square to #hotelfortheholidays and establish some memorable family holiday traditions.

 

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Flu Shots at CVS MinuteClinic Locations Near You

Flu season 2012 is off to an early start across the south, and medical experts are reporting that it could be a worse year than usual for the flu. Beginning a month early is an ominous sign for what's to come and makes it more important than ever to make sure that you and your kids have proper protection against the illness.

How to prevent the flu:

1) Wash your hands frequently. It may seem obvious to wash your hands after using the restroom, and after eating, but remember to do so after being in public places, after blowing your nose or touching toys and kids' objects.

2) Cough into your bent elbow - NOT YOUR HAND. I still have to get after @c2cDad on this one. Coughing into your elbow better contains any particles from your cough, and keeps germs off of your hands where they're more easily spread.

3) Get a flu shot. The Kiddo got his flu shot at the pediatrician's office at the beginning of the school year, and we went to a local CVS MinuteClinic to get ours. You don't have to schedule an appointment, just show up during your local CVS MinuteClinic hours.

 

There was a line waiting when we arrived, and we filled out a quick computer registration survey to get in the queu, and the whole process from arrival to walking back to our car took less than 20 minutes.

Waiting to get called . . . say flu shot!

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