Coast 2 Coast Mom

GIVEAWAY: 4 Tickets to Walking with Dinosaurs at MSG

Oh! Oh!! As if US attending Walking with Dinosaurs - The Arena Spectacular at Madison Square Garden wasn't enough excitement for us this week, I'm hosting a one-day giveaway for one lucky family to attend too! A family four-pack of tickets is up for grabs today for the 3 p.m. matinee show on Wednesday, July 21, 2010.

That's right - your entire family can marvel at the heart-pounding roars, and life-like movements of the 17 life-size dinosaurs, based on the award-winning BBC television series. I know that Li'l Boo can't wait to see it himself.

Not that you'll need it, but just in case you're looking for a way to get the family excited about the show, try your hand at the dinosaur name generator, DINO-NAME-OSAURUS, to find out your own dinosaur name.

To ENTER: Just provide a comment below, and be sure to enter your email address into the required box so that I have a way to contact you if you win. The winner will be chosen randomly using Random.org. This contest will end at Midnight tonight, July 20, 2010 so that I have time to email the winner and they can make plans to get themselves to MSG to pick up their tickets at Will Call in time for the show. Winner must provide a valid photo ID to claim the tickets. Good luck!

Tegu Blocks: When Customer Interaction Lives Up To The Product

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting at my laptop, cappuccino in hand, skimming through my morning emails when one from Mamaista caught my attention. The email featured a modern take on children's wooden blocks, by a company called Tegu. The blocks are produced in Honduras in an effort to stimulate the local economy with a sustainable business that employs local people in a profitable trade, using abundant local resources, and reinvesting in the local community.

I checked out the site, admired the beautiful blonde (huesito wood?) and mahogany blocks with built-in magnets, and added my name to their waitlist to learn when the blocks would become available for purchasing again. That was around 10 a.m. Monday morning.

By close of business Monday, I received a personal email from Brandon, Tegu's Chief Customer Advocate, letting me know that they had sent an email out the previous week to their customer list announcing that the blocks would be in stock and available for purchase the next day, Tuesday. Since I joined the list after the email went out, he wanted me to know so I could take advantage of their availability.

Me, Jacques Pepin and the Man-O-Manischewitz Cook-Off

I recently attended my first cook-off and celebrity chef event at the 4th Annual Manischewitz Cook Off in Manhattan. Perfectly timed before the start of Passover, the cook-off celebrated recipes that featured Manischewitz All-Natural Broth. The recipes were all certified kosher, though not necessarily kosher for Passover. (Though Manischewitz did display their new kosher for passover products and I nearly went silly once I got home hunting down the new cotton candy for the kiddo to try.) It was the first cook-off I've attended and I may be hooked!

The day began with a private media tasting with the legendary Chef Jacques Pepin. While I was familiar with him from his series on PBS Jacques Pepin: Fast Food My Way (and More Fast Food My Way), I learned that he began his formal cooking apprenticeship at age 13 (easy when your parents run a restaurant), and quickly earned respect for his creations, even serving as personal chef to three French heads of state - including Charles de Gaulle in the late 1950s. He moved to the US in 1959 where he made further contributions to the culinary arts and recently earned France's highest civilian honor, the French Legion of Honor. 

GIVEAWAY: H&R Block At Home Deluxe Software

In case you're postponing doing your taxes, you may be interested in checking out tax software solutions that may take the hassle out of organizing and submitting them. I recently reviewed TurboTax and H&R Block At Home (formerly called TaxCut) for a Techlicious piece on how new tax software can help you to get your maximum refund  "Get Your Slice of the Stimulus Pie With Software from H&R Block and TurboTax."

Don't feel badly about how long it usually takes you to complete your taxes - according to H&R Block, people doing their own taxes at home spend an average of one to three hours on it, and according to TurboTax, people tend to break that time up into two or more sessions.

Feed Your Spring Fever With 2 Baseball Video Games

We've come down with fevers this week. Spring fever. Baseball fever.

With the sun shining these past two days and gimpses of blue sky, we're finding reasons to get outside - walking to school or the train yesterday. Egging our fevers on is the b-roll shown during the sports segments of the local news featuring the Yankee and Mets spring training camps down south. Sunshine? Baseball? We're wishing spring would get here already!

Which brings me to today's launch of Major League Baseball 2K10 (and a giveaway: scroll below).

Giveaway: Allergy, Valentine and SafetyTats for Kids

I'm giddy - GIDDY! - about an opportunity that came up last month to attend Disney's Social Media Mom's celebration conference at Walt Disney World! We thought we were blessed when we visited Disneyland last fall, and now this opportunity to head to Florida and explore DisneyWorld has exceeded my expectations for 2010 already. I'm looking forward to taking Li'l Boo to the different Disney parks, enjoying some sunny days (hopefully), and meeting other moms with new blogs to follow. So very exciting!

Then came a sponsorship opportunity with SafetyTat that I'm pleased as pie about. (Ahem. Did ya notice that square button to the left?) SafetyTats are clever little temporary tattoos designed to help keep children connected with their families while traveling or visiting theme parks, stadiums, malls, airports, museums - anywhere you may run into crowds and the potential for getting separated.

Enter to Win A Tassimo Suprema

The big gift I wanted for the holidays was the Tassimo single-cup beverage system, and I was fortunate to find it early on Black Friday. The sale price at Bed Bath and Beyond, the additional store 20% off, plus the Tassimo $50 rebate, meant I could splurge on the T65 Titanium version over the Suprema. Not because it's that much noticeably better, but just because the price was right. :-)

I had wanted a Tassimo for an entire year, ever since my friend Lauren received one for Christmas LAST year. What is a Tassimo? It's Kraft Foods' proprietary home brewing system manufactured by Bosch that allows you to make coffee, tea, hot chocolate, cappuccino, espresso, or lattes to your liking - one cup at a time (you insert what Tassimo calls a T Disc with a readable barcode specifying how to brew that particular drink into the machine ). Never having had our own coffee maker, I was so eager to try it for myself and share it with c2cDad that we decided to open it and begin using my Christmas present right away - a month early! He was just as impressed as I, and we've used it nearly everyday since. We use filtered water at our home, so we chose to forego using the included water filter in our Tassimo. My favorite drink is of course a Chai Tea Latte, and my hubby has been experimenting with cappuccinos and macchiatos. Here's a full list of the beverages available to purchase for the Tassimo system. Li'l Boo even likes the Tassimo with the Milka hot chocolate drinks - and he usually only likes hot chocolate made the old fashioned way on the stovetop!

You may imagine my surprise to receive a holiday gift of a Tassimo Suprema from the good folks on the Kraft Foods team at DKC Public Relations. As I already bought a Tassimo that I am happily using daily, what does this mean for you? Ah, YEAH! I'm giving this one away! Just leave me a comment below telling me what drink you'd most like to make with the Tassimo. I'll use Random.org to choose a winner on Friday January 8th at Noon EST. I'll ship the package to the winner via USPS to enjoy the following week. Only one comment per person, scroll down to the end to post a comment. Good luck!

What do I like best about my Tassimo?

• The speed and simplicity of making myself a coffee drink. Drinks are ready in about a minute, and there is often nothing to clean up, so I toss out the empty T Disc, grab my mug and go. I clean the machine about once a week, or whenever the clean message appears.

• The flexibility: you can make coffee drinks and adjust the amount of milk or creamer to your liking by holding down the button for more coffee or creamer at the end of the brew cycle. The other thing is that you can make a single 8-ounce drink, or fill a tall travel mug to go.

 

 

 

 

Win a Logitech HD Webcam Pro 9000!

Last week I was invited to attend a lunch and briefing at the Warwick Hotel in NYC on the Logitech Webcam 9000 with Logitech Vid and HD. I think that once you experience HD, you can never really go back. We have one HDTV in our home, and it's like night and day when I have to watch something on our older television. The same is true of the HD webcams. The first HD webcam I ever used was the Microsoft LifeCam Cinema - which I LOVED and there was really no going back. Maria Bailey of Mom Select led the briefing, where we installed the Logitech Vid one-click calling software onto our laptops, and installed the driver for the webcam to begin using it first hand during the briefing and lunch. Royee Leung from Logitech provided an overview of the webcam and answered some of our questions via Logtech Vid.

What I really like about the Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 was that it was easy to install,the Logitech Vid call software is FREE, and that it runs great on my Asus netbook (usually HD webcams tend to freeze the li'l netbooks as they just can't handle that much at once). I was surprised that the image was SO CLEAR yet didn't freeze up at all, and I've used it to make nearly a dozen calls now. You can vid chat with others regardless of what webcam their using, but they must download the free Logitech Vid software to chat with you.

Something to keep in mind, though: if you're using it with toddlers or preschoolers to video call family members, keep in mind that kids that age tend to move FAST so the HD video - even at 30 frames per second - can look like there's a "shadow" or "wake" following their rapid hand or head motions. This has the potential to be annoying for people on the other end, but we barely noticed it. You can't beat the clarity and sharpness of detail overall, and for teen or adult normal use, I have not encountered any movement issues.

So how can you get your hands on a free Logitech Webcam Pro 9000 of your own? Simple. I received a webcam at the event to giveaway , so just leave a comment below telling me who you're most excited to vid call should you win it (grandparents, sister/brother, son/daughter, spouse who travels?), OR let me know what webcam you currently have and would replace with this. I'll choose a winner on Friday November 20, 2009 at Noon EST via Random.org. You don't have to be a blogger to win, but you do have to leave a comment. Your email address will be kept private, and I need it to contact the winner to arrange for shipping. Use discount code logitech_moms_2009 to receive 20% off your own QuickCam Pro 9000 and FREE shipping on your Logitech webcam purchase.

 

Full Disclosure: I received a Logitech Webcam 9000 and a Logitech ClearChat Comfort USB headset for testing purposes.
 

Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs Giveaway & Sid's Safety Tips For A Happy Halloween

Li'l Boo cannot get enough of anything dinosaur related right now, so it's kind of a miracle that I held out from taking him to see Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs in theaters, waiting until it came out on DVD and Blu-Ray Disc instead. Don't get me wrong - if we weren't doing so much travel back then, we likely would have gone. So we're eager to see Manny and Sid take on a cranky T-Rex and the movie is on Li'l Boo's holiday wish list. Who's in it, you may ask? Well . . . Glee lovers will be happy to listen for Jane Lynch's voice, and you may recognize Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader ("Saturday Night Live"), Josh Peck ("Drake & Josh"), and Seann William Scott (upcoming "Planet 51"), and of course, Ray Romano, John Leguizamo, Denis Leary and Queen Latifah all lend their voices to this movie as well. Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs is being sold in a three-disc Blue-ray Disc/DVD/Digital Copy combo pack and the Ice Age: Dawn of The Dinosaurs "Scrat Pack" double DVD pack.

So, how do you WIN the third adventurous installment of Manny, Sid, Ellie and Diego? 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment sent me a copy of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs on DVD to giveaway to one lucky reader. Just scroll down and leave a comment telling me who is your favorite character from the Ice Age trilogy, and you'll be entered to win. You don't have to be a blogger, but you do have to leave a comment (skip the URL/Website box). Your email address is kept private, and I need it to coordinate mailing the DVD to the winner. I'll choose a winner via Random.org at Noon EST on Tuesday, Nov 3rd, 2009. Good luck!

Just for fun: Sid's Safety Tips For A Happy Halloween*

1. It's best to travel in a herd, preferably one that includes an adult human-type.
2. Stick to familiar neighborhoods and never enter a stranger's house, car or cave.
3. Carry a flashlight or glow stick to scare off dinosaurs and make yourself more visible at night.
4. Bring a cell phone for quick communication in case you are separated from your group.
5. Secure emergency information discreetly within your costume or on a bracelet to wear on your paw.
6. Consider adding reflective tape or striping to your costumes for greater visibility - it can get dark even in the snow!
7. Walk - don't run or fly - and be extra careful crossing streets.
8. Have an adult human-type check for unwrapped or fossilized candy before you eat your treats.

*via 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs

 

Blog the Olympics! Enter To Win a Trip to Vancouver #blogathlete

One cool opportunity I learned about from the Office team at the Microsoft Open House in NYC earlier this month, is that they're running a blogger contest "Office Winter Games," where one female blogger and one blogging college student will win a trip to Vancouver, BC to cover the 2010 Winter Olympic Games (Feb 11-17 or Feb 23-March 1st) as a credentialed member of the press. Woo-hoo! As if that's not cool enough, the winner will ALSO win a trip to Las Vegas

to attend and cover the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show! (Jan 7-10th; Ahem, I'll be there!) Think this prize can't get any better? It DOES! They're giving both winners an Acer Aspire 4810 laptop with Office software. (Which I'm sure will work well with the LifeCam Cinema HD video webcam I'm testing out and absolutely LOVE!) Do I have you practicing your crowd chanting skills already? (USA! USA!)

All you have to do to enter is fill out an online form and post up to 250 words explaining why you deserve the opportunity to attend the 2010 Winter Games as a blogger. Oh, and did I mention that five-time Olympic Gold medalist Bonnie Blair is one of the judges? I'll have to work on an entry myself as I'd love to have my CES trip paid for, and I'd LOVE to attend the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver! But I promise I won't be bitter - I'll still read the posts of whomever wins. Maybe ;-)

For more information, and to enter: https://www.officewintergames.com