• travel roatan
    active family travel - Travel

    Travel Tuesday Roatan Honduras Selfie #Linky

    January 13, 2015 - By 

    It’s Tuesday and that means it’s time to link up your awesome travel photos or blog posts and share the love of travel with each other. This was my magical travel moment he first week of January. Midway through our recent cruise I woke to find this! Magical and amazing. We sailed all night and slept like babies and woke to find we were in this gorgeous place we had never been before – Mahogany Bay, Roatan, Honduras. Honduras alone was captivating to me as a first time visitor. I hope to return to see more of this beautiful travel destination.…

  • active family travel - Travel

    Top Ten Reasons We Will Take Family Cruises Again #travel

    January 12, 2015 - By 

    We always avoided family cruises, at least up until this past month when we took our first ever family cruise and we were hooked immediately. Family cruises can be budget friendly and worth the time and effort. Here are my top ten reasons why we will take family cruises again. Top Ten Reasons to Take Family Cruises. 1. The service is exceptional. Incomparable. The closest I can compare there experience to is staying at a Disney resort. That’s how well taken care of you are. The staff ratio to tourist ratio was something like 1 to 3. It was outrageous…

  • first cruise tips
    active family travel - family - parenting - Travel

    Why I am Hooked on Cruising – Our First Cruise

    January 9, 2015 - By 

    e have travelled a fair bit as a family and yet we have always avoided cruising. Why? Well, I always thought it was a lot of work booking the cruise, then the flight and then figuring out all the logistics. I also thought it was too expensive. My husband has always been reluctant to cruise because of rumours we heard from friends. We heard that you wait for everything because of the number of people. We heard that the rooms are way too small and they make you feel claustrophobic. We wondered out loud if we would all get seasick. I wasn’t…

  • Skylanders
    Technology

    Ten of the Lowest Priced Skylanders Toys

    January 8, 2015 - By 

    Skylanders is one of the most sought after collectibles. With almost 300 different figures available, and several different lines of Skylanders toys, it is hard to collect them all. Did you know there’s a new line just out? That’s right. I saw it on Youtube the other day. It’s hard for a Mom to keep track of all the various figures and levels of play for Skylanders. Trap Team is the newest addition to this Skylanders franchise. For more information about Trap Team you can read a couple of the related links below. Amazon is a great place to find the…

  • cruising
    active family travel - Travel

    Our First Cruise #WordlessWednesday

    January 8, 2015 - By 

    We ended 2014 and started 2015 with our first cruise together ever. It was fantastic. Service was amazing and there was always something to do. The ports were stunning and the excursions each topped the next until we landed in Grand Cayman near the end of the trip and it was beyond gorgeous. This is my Wordless Wednesday post. It’s hard to be wordless about something so incredible. This is my new favourite form of family travel. It was our first cruise ever, but I am pretty sure it won’t be our last. Our first impression here the day we…

  • family - Giveaways

    K-Tel’s Mini Pops CDs 11 and 12 for Kids #Giveaway

    January 7, 2015 - By 

    My kids are 10 and 13 now and they are all about the music and the computers and gadgets too of course. My youngest loves listening to her Ipod Nano and she also has a pretty busy social calendar which means a lot of car time. In my mini van I have a TV but I don’t always want my kids watching TV on the road so I love to have music handy and books too. My husband has no entertainment system in his car and he often pops in a family friendly CD for road trips and even for…

  • Disney Live
    family

    Disney Live Rocks Budweiser Gardens #Ldnont

    January 6, 2015 - By 

    This is a review by a contributor to Thriftymommastips. Thanks to Tabitha Pye for attending this event while I was away on vacation. Tabitha is a London Mom of four and a blogger. Visit her blog at http://www.notquiteahandful.com/ Today my son and I got to take a couple of our friends to see Disney Live! Mickey’s Music Festival at Budweiser Gardens and it was a fantastic show! We had floor seats and I am telling you they are well worth the extra cost. The energy in this show is infectious. From start to finish you couldn’t help but get involved…

  • tampa travel
    active family travel - family travel - Travel

    New Feature Tuesday Travel Photo #linky – Leaving Tampa

    January 6, 2015 - By 

    I don’t know if I can even put into words how much I love active family travel. We just returned from a New Year’s cruise. It was our first cruise ever and after a week at sea I am slowly getting my land legs back. My heart is still warm from the time spent with family and the many awesome excursions we did together. Swimming with stingrays on a reef just along the coast of Belize rocked. Snorkelling alongside my husband and daughters while stingrays, looking prehistoric and unfazed by our presence, swam just beneath us was something we all…

  • Pumpkin Cheesecake squares
    Food

    Best Pumpkin Cheesecake Squares

    January 6, 2015 - By 

    Pumpkin. Cheesecake. Squares. Need I say more? These are so good. Honestly they vanished fast. Easy to make also but squares always require a bit of patience. Stick with it and the taste and the smiles on your guest’s faces will be so worth it that you will want to make them over and over again. The trick here is the layers. I started off with my special soft sugar cookie recipe for the crust. I left out the pumpkin ingredient just for the crust though. You could probably substitute something else for the crust if you wanted. Oreos would…

  • Health

    Five Ways to Cope with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder)

    January 6, 2015 - By 

    As seasons shift from fall to winter, there can also be a lot of climate changes and physical changes to your environment that are often hard to deal with for many. Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is a mental health disorder that is triggered by less light during the fall and winter months and the change in seasons. Symptoms of SAD can range from mild to severe. For a lot of people, SAD, makes it difficult to concentrate, causes a mild depression and even saps energy. It is always a good idea to see a health professional to both diagnose and…