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By Stacey, on April 13th, 2012
Ashlyn loves to play in her playhouse in the backyard, but like many families we just don’t have room to put one inside. Norio Kids has a creative solution – a cardboard playhouse system!
We received our Cocoro playhouse system just before Easter but I held off on opening it until after the holiday weekend. With a total of 26 pieces, you can create any structure you like! It comes with instructions for a basic playhouse, which is what we built. The playhouse dimensions are 44” x 39” x 39” so there is lots of room for my almost-3-year old and a friend to play inside. Made with sturdy double-wall SFI (Sustainable Forestry Initiative) certified cardboard that is 100% recyclable, it is much sturdier than I had expected it to be!
First things first: we opened the package. When I explained to Ashlyn that not only was it a playhouse that we could build, but she was allowed to decorate it with crayons and stickers, she literally could not wait long enough for me to take everything out! We spent a half hour just decorating the roof together, as it was the piece on the top when I opened the box.
The next step was separating the pieces and assembling the playhouse. I took this picture at 1:59pm:
And these were taken at 2:07pm:
Ashlyn is having a blast with her new playhouse. She loves to play in it and it was a big hit with one of her little friends when they came for a play date – how often can children colour on the walls? I love that this playhouse offers a variety of creative outlets and Ashlyn will have loads of fun decorating it for weeks to come. We’ll keep it up most of the time because it’s so much fun, but I love that if we’re having a particularly full house due to company or a packed play date, I can disassemble the playhouse in moments and store it easily, then have it back up before the last mini-van pulls away from our home!
A bonus that she doesn’t even know about yet (I’m holding on to them for a rainy afternoon): all of the Cocoro cardboard playhouse structures come with 2 miniature versions made of cardstock!
Norio Kids is offering Not Just Baby Brain readers a 20% discount code until May 6th! Just enter MRK320BB when you order your Cocoro playhouse system; 2 free miniature versions are included with the sale of the cardboard Cocoro playhouses.
One lucky reader will win a Cocoro playhouse system from Norio Kids!
To enter, leave a comment telling me why you’d love to win a Cocoro playhouse system (required).
For additional entries (leave a separate comment here for each):
Contest closes APRIL 27 @ 10pm EST; open to US and CANADIAN RESIDENTS only.
Please make sure that your profile is public or leave me your email address in each entry so I have a way to contact you. I will use And The Winner Is… to chose the winner and email them. The winner will have 48 hours to contact me or a new winner will be chosen. Good luck!
By Stacey, on April 12th, 2012
When I came across this leprechaun trap cake on Pinterest I knew it was something I had to try! Everything that I read online said that using a boxed white cake mix was the way to go but I had this crazy idea to use a red velvet cupcake recipe from an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay and it was a hit.
I separated the batter into 6 bowls of decreasing amounts. The largest bowl was dyed red using gel food colouring, the next orange, and so on. Because of the cocoa powder in the recipe the colours are more muted than if the batter was a stark white.Now comes the hard part – getting it into the bundt pan!
After a good butter and flouring, I put a layer of red batter, about halfway up the pan. This makes for a smaller cake than I’d usually make in this pan but I was afraid if I overfilled it the rainbow wouldn’t work. Then I put the other colours into separate plastic bags and snipped a corner off. I ‘piped’ the orange in next, leaving a rim of red around each side. Then I ‘piped’ the yellow in the centre of the orange, then the green, blue and purple. As you can see, keeping a steady hand was much harder than I anticipated!
I had lots of batter left over, so we made cupcakes; they have all of the colours in them but we just sort of blobbed them in instead of attempting the piping.. Once the cake was baked and cooled, Ashlyn helped me make the cream cheese icing and added the sprinkles. Yes, we inadvertently made a Homer Simpson donut cake.
And when we cut the cake – success! A very pretty, and very tasty, Easter cake.
I’m thinking of doing a variation of this for Ashlyn’s birthday in a few weeks, it was definitely worth the effort.
By Stacey, on April 11th, 2012
Is there anything cuter than little girls in bunny ears?
By Stacey, on April 4th, 2012
BLOCKBUSTER Express has made April kids’ movie month! One of my favourite ways to spend an afternoon is snuggled up on the couch with Ashlyn watching a movie and snacking on popcorn. Those handy blue movie rental kiosks you see at grocery and convenience stores will be full of titles that your kids will love and at only $2 for the first night and $1 each additional night (and they come with the BLOCKBUSTER Express In-Stock Guarantee) it’s a great way to spend some quality time with your favourite little ones.
Some of our favourite NCircle movies are being stocked by BLOCKBUSTER Express this month. Hardly a week goes by in this house without a screening of “Meet the Fairies” or a Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That movie!
As a feel-good bonus for the month of April, BLOCKBUSTER Express will donate 10% of all first-night Family, Kids and Animated movie rentals to Make-A-Wish®. Make-A-Wish is a wonderful foundation that grants very sick children their special wishes, and BLOCKBUSTER Express has set a with a minimum donation of $30,000, up to a maximum of $60,000.
Check out BLOCKBUSTER Express on Facebook and follow @blockbusterexp on Twitter to get all of the special promotions that BLOCKBUSTER Express offers!
By Stacey, on March 30th, 2012
I’ve talked before about my tendency to do “winter cleaning” instead of spring cleaning and the weather lately really proved my point. Ottawa had gorgeous, sunny, summer weather for a week and we were out every day for hours at various playgrounds and backyards, soaking up every moment we could. Then winter came back and I had a good look around my house and realized I’d better get my act together! When my package of Green Works® cleaners arrived I knew I had no more excuses.
I hate to admit it, but I’m a bit of a procrastinator. If I have to get out one cleaner for my tile floor (kitchen and entry/powder room), one for my hardwood, one for windows, one for stainless steel, one for wood…I just don’t end up doing any of it. I need cleaners that multitask and let me get as much cleaning done in the shortest amount of time. Ashlyn loves to ‘help’ me clean so I also want to make sure that the products I use can clean powerfully without harsh chemical fumes, and with Rowan crawling around and occasionally licking the floors I need no residue!
Some of the big selling features of Green Works® are:
- Green Works® products are made with plant- and mineral-based cleaning ingredients. These ingredients are biodegradable and are naturally derived.
- Green Works® products are not tested on animals.
- Green Works® products are acknowledged by the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s Design for the Environment program (you can read more about what this means here)
So far I have tested out a number of Green Works® products in our home. The dilutable multi-purpose cleaner did a great job on both my tile and my hardwood with no sticky residue. The bathroom cleaner and toilet bowl cleaner both have a light, pleasant scent – very important when you’re working in a small, enclosed space! – and did the job I needed them to do.
I’m most impressed with the glass and surface cleaner and all-purpose cleaner. I’ve purchased a ‘natural’ glass cleaner in the past and had to throw it out because I could not get a streak-free clean. When I saw that the Green Works® glass and surface cleaner is also recommended to use on stainless steel I was sold. It cleaned my windows and oven door with no streaking and no harsh fumes. The Green Works® all-purpose cleaner has taken up residence in my kitchen. One spray bottle can clean my stainless steel appliances, my counters, my table, my sink and I even sprayed a bit on a cloth to do a quick once-over on my dark wood furniture in the adjoining family room!
You can find the Green Works® line of cleaners at Walmart, Sobey’s, London Drugs and other retailers across Canada.
Disclosure – I am participating in the Green Works program. I received compensation as a thank you for my participation. This is a personal blog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of The Clorox Company of Canada Ltd.
One lucky reader will win a Green Works® gift pack!
To enter, leave a comment here telling me what your favourite Green Works® product is (required).
For additional entries (leave a separate comment here for each):
Contest closes APRIL 14 @ 10pm EST; open to CANADIAN RESIDENTS only. Please note that readers may readers may enter across multiple blogs, but may only win one prize.
Please make sure that your profile is public or leave me your email address in each entry so I have a way to contact you. For Facebook entries please leave your first name and last initial so I can verify entries. I will use And The Winner Is… to chose the winner and email them. The winner will have 48 hours to contact me or a new winner will be chosen. Good luck!
By Stacey, on March 29th, 2012
 The incredibly popular game Angry Birds by Rovio and SwaddleDesigns have teamed up to launch a new collection! Perfect for the Angry Birds fan and new parent in your life, there are bodysuits, swaddle blankets and more featuring those cute – but angry – birds in red, yellow and blue.
I’m a big fan of SwaddleDesigns and we used our Ultimate Recieving Blanket to swaddle Rowan all the time when she was first born. Having their how to swaddle instructions on a tag sewn right on the blanket was a huge help during those first sleep-deprived nights when we couldn’t quite remember how to do it. Their Marquisette blanket is a light-weight option that is similar to gauze, but softer for that delicate baby skin, and is perfect for the summer weather that is (hopefully) just around the corner.
Now that I’ve ‘been there, done that’ as a parent of a newborn twice, I find my gifts to parents of new babies have changed. Instead of finding something cute that catches my eye in a store, I prefer to give something that worked well for us. SwaddleDesigns blankets are high on my list of ‘go to’ gifts and now I have one more reason to buy them!
You can join the SwaddleDesigns exclusive email club and get the inside scoop for special offers on SwaddleDesigns products.
One lucky reader will win their choice of Angry Birds bodysuit (size and bird) OR Angry Birds marquisette blanket from SwaddleDesigns!
To enter, visit SwaddleDesigns and leave me a comment here telling me what your favorite product is (required).
For additional entries (leave a separate comment here for each):
Contest closes APRIL 13 @ 10pm EST; open to US and CANADIAN RESIDENTS only.
Please make sure that your profile is public or leave me your email address in each entry so I have a way to contact you. For Facebook entries please leave your first name and last initial so I can verify entries. I will use And The Winner Is… to chose the winner and email them. The winner will have 48 hours to contact me or a new winner will be chosen. Good luck!
By Stacey, on March 28th, 2012
My girls a year ago, during Rowan’s newborn/family photo shoot – the first of many beautiful shots of my girls together taken by Elizabeth Fulton Photography. Ashlyn was just a baby herself at only 22 months old!
And at Rowan’s one year photoshoot with my new toddler and almost-three year old:
Time can slow down now!
By Stacey, on March 22nd, 2012
I’ve made a turtle cake and a duck cake for Ashlyn’s birthdays but I was having a hard time deciding on what to make for Rowan. Thankfully I found a guide on how to make an owl cake on Pinterest and I knew what I wanted to make for Rowan’s first birthday! I started with my carrot cake recipe and made 2 9 inch round cakes. That was the easy part!
While they cooled, I attempted my template. Basically, you trace the bottoms of the cake pans (I have a lot of 9 inch pans for some reason so I used the ones that were not hot from the oven) onto some parchment paper and intersect them about half way or so. One cake will stay whole, the other will become the head and other parts: wings, ears and legs.
You can see my failed attempt at tracing the pans the first time through the paper, hense why I traced over the ‘good’ copy in marker. Then I cut out my template and when the cakes were totally cooled I used them to cut out all of the pieces. Next I pieced together the owl and did the quick and dirty icing.
I also used a few things I had around the house (ie some of the girls play food) to act as the templates for the owl’s eyes and belly. I just stuck the play food on top and used a toothpick to poke holes around them so I’d have a guide for my frosting.
Ashlyn had to get in on the icing of the cake. I can’t do anything in my kitchen anymore without my little shadow helper at my side! We decided on a purple owl with a pink belly so I separated the cream cheese into 3 portions: the largest was purple, then 2 smaller plastic sandwhich bags of pink and white.
I used an offset spatula and one of those little spreaders that I think are meant for appetizers at dinner parties but it’s what I had and it worked! I cut the tips off of the plastic sandwhich bags and used them as piping bags. After I was done with the eyes I added some yellow colouring to do the little beak. Ashlyn added 2 chocolate chips to the eyes and I added a little bow to put the candle in and ta da! A cute owl cake for the birthday girl.
By Stacey, on March 21st, 2012
Winter could come back but for now, we’re enjoying every minute of the fabulous spring (that feels like summer) weather!
By Stacey, on March 19th, 2012
My husband, in the 9 years that we have been together, has only ever asked for 2 kinds of birthday cake: black forest and carrot. I was on the hunt for the perfect carrot cake recipe and my good friend Joleen gave it to me. It’s now my go-to cake for the girls’ birthdays as well. It’s always delicious and I’ve never had a complaint about it…or any plates returned that weren’t licked clean. Of course, I’ll include the cream cheese icing recipe as well!
Carrot Cake
Ingredients
- 4 eggs
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 1/4 cups oil
- 2 cups flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 3 cups peeled and grated carrots (about 6 average-sized carrots)
- 1 medium can crushed pineapple (I think it’s about 20 oz), well drained
- 1 tsp vanilla
Directions
- Beat eggs, add oil and sugar and mix well.
- In another large bowl, mix all dry ingredients. Add the egg mixture, carrots, pineapple and vanilla and mix well.
- Bake at 350° for 40-50 minutes, until toothpick comes out clean. Let cool completely before frosting.
Cream Cheese Icing
Ingredients
- 8 oz cream cheese
- 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
- 2 cups icing sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
Directions
- Cream together butter and cream cheese until very smooth.
- Add vanilla and icing sugar and mix well.
This icing takes colour very well and can be made the day before you want to ice your cake and kept in the fridge. Bring to room temperature before you start icing!
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Coupon Codes Enter the code "MRK320BB" to save 20% when you order your Norio Kids Cocoro playhouse system (valid until May 6th)
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Enter the code "notjustbb20" at the checkout to save 20% off your Mixbook order!
Enter the code "BabyBrain2011" when you place your order on Second Peek Maternity Boutique to save 10%!
Enter the code "STMMMS73949" at the checkout to receive $10 off your purchase of My Memories Suite
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