Coast 2 Coast Mom

Spectacular Macy's July 4th Aboard the Norwegian Epic Cruise Ship

WOW.

It's July 6th and we're still coming down from the high of our super swanky Fourth of July night. We were so excited about the event that we cut short our vacation in Michigan to awake at 3:30 a.m. on July 4th and drive back to NYC to make the party. Oh, and we splurged on a new DSLR camera so we could take better photos of the fireworks (so excuse the abundance of photos here, we had to practice!). You see, Macy's, Inc. invited us to celebrate the Fourth of July right on the Hudson River aboard the brand spanking new Epic cruise ship, the newest and largest ship to set sail from Norwegian Cruise Lines. DOUBLE WOW!

Needless to say, it was a night to remember. The combination of the freedom of a night away from the kiddo, the crystal clear summer sky, the balmy yet breezy air, our front row seats for the fireworks and the eighteen stories of luxurious merriment for us to explore left us feeling like we were kids let loose in a high-end resort.

Hands-on Gaming Fun with Kinect for Xbox 360

Last week while we were in L.A. for the launch of Kinect for Xbox 360, we had time to play with some of the games that are in development to launch this fall. We tried our hands at all of the games available to us, and we enjoyed playing ALL of them! You can't help but smile and giggle watching others control the games with their bodies, and then doing it yourself. We had a blast.

I'd have to say our favorite games were Dance Central, Kinectimals, Your Shape, Kinect Adventures and Kinect Sports. These are some of our personal experiences with the games, so if you're looking for a more authoritative and technical look at the technology, check out my piece for Techlicious.

One of the overall crowd favorites was Dance Central, and while a great addition to any party, I can totally see tweens, dance teams and cheer teams and sorrorities having slumber parties playing this game all night long. (Or maybe, that's what I would have done. ;-)) Developed by Harmonix, the same company behind Rock Band, and you can see the similarities when you play it. I can see my sisters and me holding a dance-off next holiday season between us and the kiddos. It was fun watching others get their swag on, and I laughed watching Li'l Boo and c2cDad get funky.

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.

Would My Grandmothers Mind Being Called This Color?

This post is inspired by the latest SVMoms book club choice, Green Guide Families: The Complete Reference for Eco-friendly Parents. I received a copy of the book as part of my participation in the book club.

I learned of a concept for the first time last week, in the run up to Earth Day on April 22nd, that within the eco-friendly green movement, there are actually "shades" of green. I heard that 65% of people fall under the shade "light green." These people have made some earth-friendly changes to their lifestyle, perhaps commuting or taking publictransportation and recycling some of their paper, glass, plastic and aluminum products, but haven't changed eveything in their life to live completely "dark green" by living their entire lives in the most earth-friendly ways they can possibly imagine. 

It made me think about how so much of the green movement is really a throwback to the lifestyle from a half century ago, and how my grandmothers' generation must be getting such a kick out of it - as a return to the life they knew in their younger years, and for the most part, never really left behind. When I visit my grandmothers, they've always done more with less, and by comparison of consuming less, seemingly accomplished more. They've continued their gardens and sewing on buttons and cooking from scratch. They're today's hipsters without trying to be.

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. 

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.

 

 

 

 

Waking up in Cleveland

The snow and wintry weather made our drive back to New Jersey difficult, so we stopped in Cleveland to stay for the night. Thank goodness for my Hyatt Gold Passport points so we had a free stay. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Cleveland at The Arcade right smack downtown, and had a very nice stay. It was snowing on our drive in past Progressive Field and Quicken Loans Arena, though the holiday lights in Cleveland's Public Square was still cool to see (we'd never seen that many red or blue lights at once before!). It was our first time in Cleveland, and it was fun learning bits and pieces about it during our brief stay. (Seriously - the first things that came to mind before when I thought of Cleveland were: 1-LeBron James, 2- Grover Cleveland and 3- the movie Howard the Duck.)

For example, the first indoor shopping mall in the U.S. was opened in Cleveland in 1890. That's what it looks like today up above. The Hyatt is attached to the mall, and the mall looked beautiful as we came in from the snow. We learned about the 57 floors of the Key Tower on Public Square which was beautifully illuminated in holiday colors, and was the tallest point between New York and Chicago when it was built in 1991, until the Comcast Center went up in 2007 in Philadelphia.

Before we took off in the morning, we walked down the restaurant row on 4th Street to Erie Island Coffee Co and were glad we ventured out before climbing back into the car home. We all split the French Toast Crush and the Applewood Bacon Crush - a crush being a mix between a bagel sandwich and a panini. c2cDad LOVED their Ivory Mocha, Li'l Boo enjoyed his whipped cream and kids hot chocolate and I had a very nice Chai. Because everything was so tasty, we took a strawberry smoothie to go (trying build up our Vitamin C reserves).

East 4th street looks like a fun summer hot spot, and a place we plan to explore when we return to Cleveland. Oh, we'll return alright - to check out the Great Lakes Science Center, Cleveland Metroparks Zoo (with the largest primate collection) and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and maybe see Progressive Field up close and continue Li'l Boo's tour of baseball fields this summer.

Our 2009 Holiday Roadtrip

We had a Merry Christmas in that the weather cooperated for our twelve hour drive to Michigan, and counting gifts from all of our extended family, Li'l Boo received most of what he asked for (alas, no puppy). The downside to our trip was that Li'l Boo and I caught a flu bug and we cut our visit with my in-laws to celebrate a very late Hanukkah waaaay short. One of the most difficult things about our roadtrips to Chicago, Kalamazoo and Detroit is that we can never fit in visits with everyone we want to see or do everything that we want to do, but alas that's what email, Facebook, blogs, etc. are for - right?

Some highlights:

• Seeing family! We miss 'em dearly and I always cry when we have to leave.
• Biggby Coffee (friendly and de-lish as always) and we tried Penn Station East Coast Subs in Kalamazoo which was great - kind of like Potbelly Sandwich Works and the fries reminded us of Five Guys.
• Li'l Boo's gifts: all of 'em. The entire family played his Beatles: Rock Band on Christmas Day (he asked for a drum set, and I thought Rock Band drums would allow him songs he could play rather than blindly and briefly banging on a set of drums - so perhaps he'll get a set of drums for his birthday ;-)), and he LOVES his new Trek bike and Leapster 2. We're going to have lots of fun playing with all of his new dinosaurs, trucks, puzzles and games!
• Missing having a country music station in NYC. Oh, and my favorite new cd: Carrie Underwood's Play On. It's been a LONG time since I could pop a cd in and listen to the entire thing without fast-forwarding past songs.
• c2cDad and I both stayed off of our laptops for three full days - a near record!
• Stopping off in Cleveland to get off of the snowy roads on our way home.

We're so thankful for our friends and family around the world, and hope everyone is enjoying a blessed holiday season!

Discounts to Family Favorite NYC Holiday Shows

If you haven't caught these shows yet, there's still time! The Radio City Christmas Soectacular has just been extended through Jan 3rd, 2010. Thought I'd pass along a couple of NYC holiday family entertainment deals and discounts:

Radio City Christmas Spectacular

• 40% off Orchestra or 1st Mezzanine Seats with code SNCHEER through 12/21/09.
• Buy One, Get One Free on Orchestra/1st Mezz Seats with code SN50 through 12/27/09.

Wintuk from Cirque du Soleil

• Kids Go Free with the purchase of one adult ticket with code 50MAGIC through 12/24/09.

Haven't Sent Holiday Cards Yet? Make A Quick Video Holiday Card

I was ecstatic this year to have enough time to order our Christmas cards from Erin Condren designs. I've admired her design collections for the past two years, but never had our year-end wrap-up or photo pulled together in time to order them until this year. (Thanks to the Radio City Rockettes!) So I was able to order from ErinCondren.com the first week of October and I'm really pleased with our cards this year.

However, this year is an anomaly for us, and if you're feeling the stressful pinch as the days until Christmas wind down, take a deep breath and maybe re-assess your means to a card-sending solution. In less than an hour, I created the above little holiday diddy using Animoto. What I loved about using Animoto: it was quick, the process was simple and streamlined - without many decisions to make -so it sped up the process. The only reason it took an hour was because we had to find and decide upon the photos and video to throw into the video montage.

If you've already taken care of your holiday cards, then you may want to consider using Animoto to create meaningful and authentic thank-yous to send to people. Who hasn't nagged a child to write their thank-yous, or fully dictated thank-yous for them to send out? Why not capture their excitment upon opening their gifts, record them thanking the gift-giver with a close-up shot, and take a photo of your child using or wearing the item later on? It's personalized and compelling, and may just bring a smile to the recipient's face. Check out my piece on Techlicious to prepare your own video thank-you.