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M&M’S® Racing and NASCAR® announced the re-launch of the popular “The Most Colorful Fan™ of NASCAR” contest, which encourages NASCAR fans nationwide to showcase their passionate love for the sport by uploading their most eye-catching photos to NASCAR.com for a chance to win big. Just like America ’s favorite candy known for colorful chocolate fun, the M&M’S contest brings the excitement and revelry of the weekly NASCAR circuit to fans.

“‘The Most Colorful Fan of NASCAR’ contest allows fans a one-of-a-kind interactive experience to show off the fun side that defines the excitement of the sport,” said William Clements, vice president of Mars Properties. “Whether you’re a die-hard fan or new to the sport, M&M’S Racing is giving you the opportunity to compete just like the drivers, but among fellow fans.”

Five finalists will also win trips to the Ford 400 in Homestead , Fla. , on November 16, 2008, for the ultimate NASCAR VIP experience courtesy of M&M’S, as well as $100 g if t cards from The Home Depot for colorful paints. Kyle Busch, driver of the M&M’S No. 18 Toyota Camry and one of the sports top stars is even getting in on the action, as he’ll help judge the final competition in Homestead along with other top drivers. “The Most Colorful Fan of NASCAR” will be awarded with an exclusive Tissot® wrist watch and a VIP trip for two to the Richard Petty Driving Experience with Kyle Busch.

“While all drivers are out to win week in and week out, we all have to remember that the sport is truly about the fans,” said Busch, winner of the recent Best Buy 400 Benefiting Student Clubs for Autism Speaks. “That’s why the M&M’S Racing ‘The Most Colorful Fan of NASCAR’ contest is so cool – because the fans get to compete weekly just like we do, as well as win some pretty amazing prizes.”

So, here are two photos, in your comment, tell me, which one is the Most Colorful Fan?

#1-

#2-

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You just have to click and check out the Barefoot Books website, because it is unlike any other bookseller I have ever seen! Barefoot Books are individually sold by “stallholders”, and the books feature rich storytelling and amazing illustrations. We got a copy of “My Granny Went To Market”, written by Stella Blackstone and illustrated by Christopher Corr, and it is so beautiful.

In the story, Granny flies on a magic carpet around the world, collecting souvenirs along the way. She collects three “fierce and funny” masks in Mexico, six booming drums in Kenya, and nine kites in Japan. “My Granny Went to Market” is meant to be read out loud for ages 0-4, and read alone for ages 4-7. One thing that makes Barefoot Books really unique is that for each book, there’s a web page or PDF file that suggests additional activities to bring the books to life. For example, the Barefoot Book of Pirates has a PDF file that gives instructions on how to throw a Pirate party, including decorations and costumes, food, and party favors. Other links on the site include getting to know the authors and artists, and links to buy original artwork and story CDs. Barefoot Books is really unique, creative, and you can tell they really care about the books they sell. Check them out!

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I started a new school in a new city in the 5th grade. It was 1977. My Mom was making almost all of my clothes. For the first day of 5th grade, she made me a “special” outfit, I’ll never forget it. A red high-neck, long-sleeved blouse with little white flowers on it, with a denim blue (but not denim material, that part’s important) matching vest and pants. I cared very little what kind of clothes I was wearing then, and the town we had moved from was the same, kids wore whatever their parents gave them.

Not so much the case in Okemos, Michigan, which I was about to find out. So it’s the first day of school, and I’m standing on the blacktop of the playground with all the other kids, when a woman holding one of those bullhorn things yells out that we are to form lines by grade, indicating with big waves of her arm which grades go there. I fall into formation with the other 5th graders, there’s about five girls in a row right in front of me. I notice that unlike me, they are all wearing actual blue jeans, and short sleeve tops with folded-down collars and what looked like an alligator on the front left, and their jeans all have a little red tag on the back.

And then, in a moment I will never forget, one of the girls called out “let’s tug on each other’s tags for good luck!”. And everyone BUT ME reached out and gave a little tug to the Levi’s tag sticking out from the jeans of the person in front of me. The girl behind me might have snickered, I don’t remember.

I had dorky homemade clothes and an extremely stupid and unflattering “bowl cut” haircut, and I had just moved to a town where even the 5th graders were wearing the latest fashions. Oh, and to make it worse, my Dad had gotten the job offer at the beginning of summer, and by the time we were able to sell our house and buy the new one, it was August, and both of the 5th grade classes had already been filled up. So I had to spend 5th grade in the WORST class possible, the one that was for all of the kids for whom ENGLISH WAS NOT THEIR FIRST LANGUAGE.

I had no friends at all that year. That is not an exaggeration. None. It took me months to convince my Mom that I needed her to buy me clothes from Hudson’s like everyone else had, and to let me grow my hair out from the bowl cut. By 6th grade, when middle school started and I was in classes with kids from three other schools, I was finally able to live down the humiliation of 5th grade. And I did NOT wear homemade clothes to the first day of school.

This humiliating memory of the first day of school has been brought to you by Hanes Kids and the Parent Bloggers Network Blog Blast. Thanks for making me relive that, ladies. lol

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Laurie Berkner fans, rejoice! Not only is there a new Laurie Berkner Band CD called Rocketship Run, but thanks to Wal*Mart’s Soundcheck site (presented by Suave), you can watch a great full-length video of the band performing “Candy Cane Jane”, “Going On A Hunt”, and “Mouse In My Toolbox”. OR, thanks to my pals at M80 Resources, you can just watch the video right here!

GIVEAWAY: Win a copy of “We Are…The Laurie Berkner Band” the DVD that my daughter fell in love with at EIGHT MONTHS OLD and watched every single day for MONTHS. The songs performed on this DVD are the ones I sang to her to calm her down while she was getting her finger stitched up last Christmas. These songs have magical powers or something. You’ll want to enter to win!

RULES: One entry per person, open to U.S. and Canada only. For one entry, visit the Soundcheck Homepage and take a look at all the great bands who’s performances are available on the site. Come back here and tell me in your comment which video you checked out on the site. Leave your real first name or blog alias and a valid email. I will choose one winner at random from all eligible entries and email the winner for their address.

EXTRA ENTRY:

• Bloggers - Blog about this contest and leave me the link on your comment, or add me to your sidebar and let me know its there. Please make sure to list the name of the blog as MomReviews with no space in between, so Google gives me proper credit
• No blog? No problem! Subscribe to my feed in a reader or by email for an extra entry!

Let me know if you earned an extra entry in your comment.

ENTER BY Thursday, September 04, 2008. Good luck!

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Just because you have to carry a diaper bag doesn’t mean it can’t look like a cute purse, right? I’ve got a wonderful bag to tell you about called the BeLight from Ju-Ju Be.

BeLight • $35
This ultra-light (a mere 6.4 ounces!) diaper bag looks just like a purse. Adjust the lightly padded straps by tying them short or keeping them long. The bag is completely reversible, almost like owning two bags, not one! One side features a zippered pocket, the other boasts a divided pocket. Best of all, a removable lightly padded matching changing pad is tucked inside.

The BeLight bag comes in seven fresh colors:

• Citrus Sorbet/Green • Green/Pink
• Black/Silver • Mint Julep/Champagne
BeLight Reversible Bag in Brown/Champagne
• Brown/Champagne • Perky Perennials/Silver
• Groovy Garden/Tangerine

Want to win a BeLight bag of your own? There are two ways you can do that! One, you can go to the Ju-Ju Be.com “Pink” Room, which is a forum for Ju-Ju Be bag owners (Yes! a forum just for people like me who love handbags!). Scroll down until you see the thread called 2008 Real Mom Giveaway Week Thirty-Three (8/17/08-8/24/08) and enter to win!

OR, enter my GIVEAWAY! Visit the Ju-Ju Be website, browse around, then come back here and tell me which bag you love the most! Leave your comment with your name and a valid email address, please. I’ll choose one winner at random to win a BeLight bag. Open to U.S. only. Enter by Wednesday, August 27th at 11:59 PM EST. Good luck!

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When Ryan started Kindergarten, I remember being surprised the first week when the first spelling list came home. The spelling sheet explained that these were words that Kindergartners were going to be taught to recognize ‘on sight’. I had assumed schools used phonics to teach kids to sound words out, but that was not the case for Kindergarten, at least not in our school district. Think about a word like “said”. If you sound it out phonetically, it would be “Sa-eye-d”. Instead of trying to explain the completely baffling rules that make up pronouncing words in the English language to five year olds, the “sight word” concept just gets them understanding how the whole word is pronounced.

Meet the Sight Words, from Preschool Prep Company, makes learning common pre-K and Kindergarten level sight words easier and more fun by animating the words and reinforcing their pronounciation through repetition. A LOT of repetition, which might drive you a little crazy, but if my two and a half year old is any indication, kids don’t mind the repetition of the word because they are watching fun animation at the same time. When each word is shown on the screen, it’s “brought to life”. Some of the actions go along with the word, and some take the shape of the word itself and turn it into an object. For example, “the” is turned into a helicopter with the propellor on the top of the “h” and the “e” turned into the pilot.

Kaitlyn calls Meet the Sight Words “the word movie”, and she LOVES it. Even her older brothers who are 11 and 9 admit that it’s cute and that they find some of the animation clever, which is pretty high praise coming from them. As the three of them were watching, I wrote down some of the words and animations that they exclaimed over the most:

“In” I is holding open a door inside the letter n, and letting animals IN

“To” T is a basketball player, O is the ball, T is going “to” the basket

“Said”-cupcake assembly line! “d” is the oven, the space inside the “d” is the door. The door opens, “i” takes the cupcake out, puts it on the “a” conveyor belt for a plop of white frosting, then it moves to the “s” conveyor belt for some sprinkles. So cute!

There are three DVDs in the Meet the Sight Words series, I’ll definitely be picking up the second and third DVDs. Preschool Prep Company also makes Meet the Letters, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Colors, and Meet the Shapes. Kaitlyn already knows colors and shapes, but I’d like to get her the Letters and Numbers DVDs to help her start learning visual recognition. There are also sturdy board books to go along with them. Watching these DVDs doesn’t replace reading books to your child and pointing out letters and words, of course, but it’s sure a fun way to reinforce reading and help them gain reading confidence by being able to start Kindergarten already knowing some words by sight!

Read more reviews of Meet the Sight Words at Parent Bloggers Network.

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Have you ever wished you could give suggestions to a company as to how they could improve? Let them know exactly what you don’t like or what you think they could do better? Some businesses have a “Suggestion Box” where you can drop in a piece of paper, but who KNOWS what happens to those, right? You want to be able to see the suggestion you’ve made and what the company’s response is, right? Well, you can! SuggestionBox.com is the online site where companies create their own virtual “Suggestion Box”. Here’s what Founder Jeff Whitton has to say about the site:

“SuggestionBox.com was founded on the principle that ‘the customer is always right’. While customers have great ideas and companies want to listen to what they have to say; there has never been a place where those ideas could easily be submitted and followed – from idea to implementation,” said Jeff Whitton, Founder of SuggestionBox.com. “The number of Suggesters and suggestions on SuggestionBox.com continue to grow daily. Suggesters have already created suggestion boxes for several hundred companies of all sizes, demonstrating an incredible interest in providing valuable insights to the companies they interact with on a daily basis.’’

You can view your own history of suggestions (click on My Suggestion tab, then My Suggestions again), but it’s up to the company if they want to make suggestions public and allow everyone to see them. In addition, every Suggester has the option to make his/her own suggestion private or public. To give you an idea of what it looks like, Addison Avenue is an example of a company that has made its suggestions public.

How to enter for the chance to win a $100 gas card:
- Log in to www.suggestionbox.com and send your idea to any company of your choosing – it could be a company as big as Babies ‘R’ Us or as local as the store at the mall – Moms will become part of a community, where they can vote, comment on, and follow all their favorite suggestions.
- Once you come up with a suggestion, copy/paste it onto your clipboard or into Textpad or somewhere, because you are going to copy and paste your suggestion into a comment on this post! – I’ll vote for the best suggestion and determine the winner! Who gets a $100 gas card! w00t!

Rules: You must use a real name and valid email address when leaving your comment. You must leave your copy/pasted suggestion in your comment as well. Comments that do not include a suggestion will not be counted towards the prize of a $100 gas card. Enter by Saturday, August 23, 2008 at 9:00 AM EST. The determination of the winner of this contest is solely up to me and my personal opinion. If there are several that I like equally, I will use random.org to choose a winner. I will then email the winner for their mailing address, if I don’t get a reply in three days, I’ll choose a new winner. Good luck everybody!!!

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Back to School time means one thing that I love- shopping for new school supplies! I love the bins at Target full of 39 cent glue sticks and safety scissors and pencil sharpeners. I love sharpening new pencils and filling up new zippered cases for the boys to tuck in their backpacks. And now, thanks to Carolina Pad and Paper, us Moms can shop for our own new supplies! Think about it, you are going to have forms to fill out and notices from the teachers to organize, you might have IEP forms or medication forms, whatever you have, why not use beautiful organizational supplies to get everything ready for back to school?

Available at Wal-Mart, Simply Chic is a line of classic designs with pops of color, and Eye Candy is bright and full of fun colors. Thanks to MomCentral, I got a box full of samples from each line and it was so fun going through everything! Here’s what I got:

From the Simply Chic collection I received the green portable hanging file with white polka dots, two fashion ballpoint pens, the black with white stripes folder, a yellow with white polka dots organizational folder with 8 plastic pockets, and a hardcover journal I just love, black with a white Fleur de Lis pattern on the outside and yellow with white polka dots on the inside.

From Eye Candy I got a mouse pad, white with colorful flowers, a box of note cards and a monthly calendar, both white with large multi-colored polka dots. Anything from either of these lines of products would be great to send to a student headed off to college to brighten up their dorm room desk, or to use for your own desk at home. I’m especially happy I got the hanging file because I needed something to put all the press materials I get with products for review, so that I can refer to them when I’m writing. And a cute polka dota file organizer is a lot better than just piling papers up on my desk until they threaten to topple over like an avalanche.

Get organized! Get to Wal-Mart and look for Simply Chic and Eye Candy, or go to CarolinaPad.com, and get organized with style!

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For an easy pasta meal any time of the day, Ronzoni has created their new Bistro line of pasta dishes that come in an easy-to-microwave pouch. We received one of each of the varieties to sample:

Penne with Chicken and Broccoli - Penne pasta cooked with
white-meat chicken and broccoli tossed in a light rosemary and garlic
cream sauce

Linguine with Chicken and Mushrooms - Linguine pasta cooked with
white meat chicken, mushrooms and tomatoes tossed in a white wine and
cream sauce

Rotini with Tomato and Basil - Rotini pasta in a savory
vine-ripened tomato sauce with onions, garlic and sweet basil

Spaghetti and Meatballs - The classic spaghetti and meatballs
simmered in a rich tomato sauce with seasoned herbs

Nathan ate Spaghetti and Meatballs one night for dinner when he was headed out to a sleepover. It smelled great but I thought the sauce lacked a fresh flavor. I also cook our spaghetti al dente, so the consistency of the noodles was softer than Nathan is used to, but he ate it all and said his favorite part was the meatballs.

Kaitlyn ate the Linguini and Mushrooms for lunch one day, and although the portion size was much too large for a toddler, she ate bites of everything including the mushrooms and tomatoes and seemed to enjoy it.

The Rotini with Tomato and Basil was my pick for lunch one day, and I thought the sauce was much better than the sauce in the Spaghetti and Meatballs. Again, I would prefer more al dente noodles, but otherwise it was satisfying and I didn’t have to wait for water to boil, cook noodles, heat up sauce in another container, and dirty up all those extra dishes. 90 seconds in the microwave, pour it into a wide bowl, and it’s lunch! Pretty cool!

You can find Ronzoni Bistro pouches in the pasta aisle of your grocery store, and the suggested retail price is $2.79 for each 8-ounce meal.

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Summer isn’t over yet, and Disney Records is celebrating with tours of some of their best music groups like They Might Be Giants, Dan Zanes, Imagination Movers, and Choo Choo Soul! Thanks to Disney and MomCentral, we received five CDs to get us up and moving and let me tell you, these CDs are FUN! We weren’t able to get through every song on every CD because there are certain children in this house who insist on monopolizing the entertainment center with their oh-so-important video games, ahem, but we did discover some favorites in the bunch.

The CDs we received are:

• Ralph’s World, The Rhyming Circus
• Disney Music Block Party
• Imagination Movers, Juice Box Heroes
• They Might Be Giants, Here Come The 123s
• Choo Choo Soul

My personal favorite is Choo Choo Soul, because on the Disney channel, they play this video called “Steam Train”, it goes “All aboard the choo choo train, all aboard the choo choo train. All aboard the choo choo train, all aboard, all aboard”. Every time I hear it, I end up singing it all day! The singer, Genevieve, has a wonderful voice and a great sense of rhythm and style, I listen to that CD in the van even when the kids aren’t with me

Please visit the Disney Music Block Party website for more information about the CDs, about summer tour dates for Disney Artists (They Might Be Giants will be in Long Island, New York from Friday, August 22nd - Sunday, August 24th, 2008!), tips for throwing a block party, even a podcast for preschoolers! Fun!

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