The coolest toothbrush holders ever

I'm almost ashamed to admit this: I've been holding out on you. I typically can't wait to tell you about my favorite cool products, especially those unique things that few people have heard of or those that make my life easier.

Well, the truth is, I've been keeping one to myself - the coolest toothbrush holders ever. Until my friend (you know who you are) was over at my house recently and freaked on me, "WHERE did you get those toothbrush holders?! I need to order them right now!" This is what she saw sticking to the mirror in my bathroom:

Yeah, okay, I'll tell. They are called Flipper Toothbrush Holders. I heard about them over here a couple of years ago and bought two right away. They are ADORABLE. In addition to cute animals, they also have adult-themed flippers (both plain and fancy).

The Flippers have suction cups on the back to stick to your mirror. They flip open and closed easily so your kiddos can get their toothbrushes out and put them away by themselves. My kids love them. Here Alex demonstrates putting his toothbrush away.

I'm not just into these because they are fun, cheap (~ $2-6 each) and have a bunch of cool designs. These little buggers help keep nasty germs off your toothbrushes! Right before I heard of The Flippers, I had watched a TV show that showed a kazillion germ particles spewing about bathrooms every time someone flushes the toilet with the lid open. It was NASTY. We are talking feces particles flying around and landing on your toothbrush! And, um, good luck trying to get your family to close the lid every time they flush.

I started keeping our toothbrushes in the cabinet under the sink, but Alex couldn't get his own toothbrush... which is a part of becoming self-sufficient, right? The Flipper solved that problem. Now the kiddos can head to the bathroom on their own and grab their toothbrushes while they wait for me to come help.

When the cool people at Flipper heard I was going to highlight their products here, they offered an exclusive 10% off discount just for my readers - the code is: Marketing Mama. Pretty easy to remember, eh? Check out their web site to see all the products... you can also follow them on facebook and twitter.

Disclosure Statement: There is nothing to disclose! I bought these myself. I received no free products or compensation for this review. No children were harmed during the photo shoot.

The Warning Signs of Food Allergies

My little Avery (age 2) has food allergies to eggs, milk and peanuts. We discovered her food allergies after many months of awful skin rashes and, finally, a scary experience with eggs that sent us rushing to do the doctor. Since then, our entire lives changed! Things like grocery shopping, meal planning, family holidays, eating at restaurants, play dates all take great care and considerable planning. You can read more about our food allergy journey here.

The weird thing about food allergies is that so many people don't understand how serious it is. If you say someone is allergic to bee stings, people get worried and ask about Epi-pens. If you say someone is allergic to milk, they ask if taking Lactaid will help. The fact is that food allergies can cause the same reaction as bee stings! The body can go into anaphylaxis and essentially shut down and kill them. It's very scary, and also very different than being lactose or gluten intolerant (not that those aren't without their challenges, but they won't kill you on the spot).

Check out this video from Dr. Oz talking about food allergies. I'm grateful such a well-known tv doc covered this topic to help educate others. Food allergies are on the rise with children and the more we learn about it, the better we can support them. Check it out.




I would like to add that although 95% of Dr. Oz's information is correct, his demonstration of how to use an Epi-pen was not correct. You should hold it in your fist, NOT hold it like a pen. And you ARE supposed to jab it forcefully into the person's upper thigh. We have a trainer Epi-pen (no needle) and I frequently teach others how to use it to make sure they would know what to do in case Avery needed it. I'm happy to show you, too, just ask next time you see me. :)

Working moms cook, too

"Is it kid's choice tonight, Mama?" my kiddos ask a few nights a week. I know if I answer "yes," I'll hear squeals of delight and shotgun orders for hot dogs or chicken nuggets or Sunbutter and jelly sandwiches. And usually once or twice a week, I'll oblige. Heck, it's easier on me. Plus, they are healthy hot dogs and organic chicken nuggets. And we use whole grain-wheat bread with no high fructose corn syrup and my jam is all natural. So, there. I can feel good about it. And so can they.

You've probably caught on by now that cooking isn't my main gig. Although I do cook (although not always well). And I do bake... but I come up with most meals on the spot, 30 minutes or so before I know everyone will be hungry. I certainly plan a lot of things in my life, but meal planning is not one of them.

I do have a few favorites though - recipes that are tried and true and worth the extra effort for special occasions, company, or because somebody asks me nicely. I've featured many of them here, and thought it would be nice to pull my faves into one post. Feel free to browse around and see if any of these strike your fancy.

The Marketing Mama's favorite recipes

Aunt Trudie's Lasagna - There are not enough adjectives in the English language to describe this lasagna. It. is. amazing. Always a hit.

Creamy Turkey Wild Rice Soup - I'm a big fan of thick, creamy soups. Chicken/turkey wild rice is my absolute favorite. This recipe is easy and delicious.

Chicken Chow Mein - Yum. Make a double batch so you can freeze some for later.

Hot Dog Aliens - The only kid-friendly recipe on my blog. Ha! It's kind of a craft project!

Candied Walnut Gorgonzola Salad - Making candied walnuts is super-easy and they taste amazing. You will be very popular if you make this salad.

Greek Isles Pasta Salad - My tried and true Baptism-potluck-summer BBQ-4th of July-birthday party salad. Always goes fast. Delish.

Red Lobster Garlic Biscuits - If you are a fan of these biscuits at Red Lobster, now you can make them at home. yum.

Loring Cafe Artichoke Dip (aka Artichoke Ramekin) - Hard core artichoke lovers will ditch the spinach and give this a shot. It is very popular and I get a lot of google traffic from people trying to find this recipe! It isn't an exact recipe, but it has all the ingredients for how to make the most amazing artichoke dip ever.

What is one of your signature dishes? If you've blogged about it, please share a link!

Yo Gabba Gabba Minneapolis - ticket giveaway!

Yo Gabba Gabba is on tour and coming to Minneapolis Saturday, March 13. Tickets go on sale Saturday, and all my Minnesota readers are invited to enter to win four free tickets to the show.

To enter the contest, click here.

School Lunch Experiment

My kids are too young to go to school, so I'm not a parent of kids who eat school lunches... yet. But as a person who ate school lunches most of my childhood, I wasn't scarred that badly. I remember a lot of tater tots in elementary school. And chocolate milk. And pizza day. Okay, not that bad, but not that healthy either.

For a random year of my life I lived in South Dakota for 7th grade, and I hated school lunch there. I remember they put weird seasonings in the corn and served things I would call mystery meat, even though there were a LOT of cows around, people. We ate steak nearly every night at my house, but at school? Yuck. They didn't even call it lunch, they called it dinner! I was so confused when I heard my classmates asking what was for dinner... it's a farming thing. Live in the middle of nowhere and people call the biggest meal of the day dinner and what you and I might call dinner, they call supper. Yup. Okay, moving on...

High school was a different story. I don't know if it's because it was a private school, or because I was too busy hanging out with friends to care what I was eating... but I remember the food was good! We had options, and if you didn't like them, you could still choose a peanut butter sandwich so you wouldn't starve. They baked fresh muffins for the mornings and the lunch ladies were sooooo sweet. Seriously, we all loved them. Doris and Betty, I still heart you.

I stumbled across a blog via twitter the other day that is all about school lunches. A teacher, who is trying to remain anonymous, is committed to eating (and photographing) school lunches every day for the remaining school year in 2010. Every day, people! She calls herself Mrs. Q and says she's from Illinois. Her blog is called Fed Up: School Lunch Project and she's doing this to raise awareness about what kids eat at school. If you are intrigued by this whistle blower/reality blogging sort of gig like I am, you simply must check it out. :)

And since it's only a few weeks old, it won't take you long to catch up on all her past posts. I found myself pretty grossed out looking at the pictures. I think the worst part is the packaging - there is so much styrofoam and plastic wrapping in those lunches that it makes me shiver just thinking of a) all those kids eating the chemicals that leeched into their food from it b) the hassle of removing it to get to their food and c) imagining all that crap in our landfills, instead of a more eco-friendly option - like REAL plates!

Mrs. Q acknowledges that her blog could very well get her fired. That could be. But actually, I have a feeling it might just get her a book deal. Or a movie.

What do you remember about school lunches from growing up? If you are a parent of school-agers, how do you feel about the lunches at your children's school?

On my way to getting fit...

I've mentioned that I'm working at trying to get back into shape again. Those of you following me on twitter and facebook have already heard bits and pieces of what I'm doing. But for those of you that are new here, or are interested in a little trip down memory lane... I'm going to start at the beginning. Well, not at my birth, but just before the birth of my kiddos.

Here are a few pictures of me from the summer of 2004, just before I got pregnant with Alex. I found I was pregnant in November. This is from my niece Sammie's baptism. On the far left is my sister Tina. On the far right is me. Go ahead and click on the pics to make them bigger.

Here's a nice side shot. Damn, my hair looked good. :) I was a size 6 here and felt very good about myself. I never really exercised.

Just to be clear, I wasn't always a size 6. There were a few times in my life where I was heavier than others. A couple years before this I was a size 8 almost pushing a 10. Then I went on the Atkins diet and *loved* it. I was a low-carber for nearly two years. Until I started trying to get pregnant. And then I thought a few more carbs might be important. Then this happened:

and this...

...and I was so happy.

Even though I gained a lot of weight and hadn't lost nearly enough of it. And then this happened a year and a half later:

and this:

and I was so happy.
I hadn't gained nearly as much weight during my second pregnancy, which was a good thing since I was still holding onto too much from the first one. This time I practiced prenatal yoga and loved it. I was more careful about what I ate. A few weeks after Avery was born I was out walking and doing cheesy after-baby aerobics videos and trying to make a dent in the weight. And it was working. Until I got hurt. I reinjured my back and couldn't exercise for a long time. I was back in physical therapy. (I had had back surgery in 2006 for a herniated disc. ouch).

When Avery turned one in December of 2008, I was still considerably overweight. Like 48 pounds.

Although I was loving being a mom and breastfeeding, I was not loving being exhausted and overweight. But since I was afraid of injuring myself again, and because I was so, um, tired, I didn't exercise again. I've never liked exercising anyways... This is around the time we found out about Avery's food allergies to milk, eggs, soy and peanuts. And I needed to adapt my diet as well in order for my breast milk to be safe for her. So I completely cut out all processed foods and all dairy... which meant no more cheese people. No pizza. No ice cream. No Chinese food. Not much of anything easy, except fruit, veggies, meat and some pasta.

During the summer I took the kids on walks and for a couple of weeks I walked during my lunch break at work, but that didn't last long. It's really hard to get out of the office for that.

But after a year, a full year, I had tracked a weight loss of 20 pounds. How exciting! I can tell a difference from looking at those last two pictures above to these two from this past December 2009:

The fall was tough, I had gone up in the scale before I came back down for that total loss of 20 pounds. My grandfather had died, there was travel involved. I'm an emotional eater... like lots of women. But rounding out the year with an accomplishment of 20 pounds gave me confidence and it made me realize that I'm much closer to my goal. With 28 pounds more to go, I decided I needed to start exercising again and get a move on already.

I started doing yoga again somewhere around November or December. Starting out slow. I knew I wasn't going to burn a lot of calories, but it would help me feel strong again and more in touch with myself and getting physical. I really love yoga! I don't have time to run out to a gym, so I do it at home with DVDs. After a couple of weeks I was ready to start putting some aerobics into the mix. I borrowed some DVDs from one of my friends. It included strength-training with cardio and needed hand weights. Huh. That's like workout equipment!!! I did them for a couple weeks without hand weights... I'm a beginner you know. I alternated aerobics videos one day with yoga the next day. It felt like a good pace.

I had heard about the 30 Day Shred from other bloggers and friends, basically the 30-something moms with baby-weight I hang with were raving about Jillian Michaels, the famous TV trainer from The Biggest Loser. It sounded really, um, hard.

But I was gaining confidence in my workouts and found myself buying hand weights when I saw 30 Day Shred DVD in the same aisle. It was only $10. I thought I'd give it a try. If you aren't familiar with it, the concept is that you work your ass off for 20 minutes a day for 30 days. The workouts are VERY intense. There are three circuits of strength training, cardio and ab work.

Now, a few of my friends have dropped dead after day 1 and never went back. I'm not judging. It's freakin' hard. If I hadn't already been working out for a few weeks, I would have died too.

Some people don't do it every day. I can understand that. But me? I'm the kind of person that needs a challenge. Once I make up my mind about something, I need to be disciplined and meet my goal. So the 30 Day Shred was exactly the challenge I needed. My first 10 days were all devoted to Level 1. I quickly was able to move from the wimpier modified versions to the full versions of the exercises after a few days of practice. I was nervous to move to Level 2 on day 11 for good reason - it's a lot harder! I'm hoping it will get easier as my body adapts, as it did in Level 1.

Here's the cool thing. It's freakin' hard, but it's fun. Remember I said I never liked exercise before? Yeah, well, this is working for me a couple of reasons. One is Jillian's personality. She's a bad ass and I love it. She can hold my attention and keep me going, and she says things like "I want you dying!" and "Your legs should be burning. I want you panting!" Ha! That's awesome! She's also really hot (good motivation to look like her) and I appreciate she's not blond. Really, I'm sick of blond aerobics bimbos bouncing around on my TV.

Results? Well, I'm only on day 12 of 30, but I certainly can tell that the shred is making a difference. I'm feeling stronger in various muscles from the weights. I've lost 4 pounds since I started (two pounds a week, which is pretty steady for me). I've definitely lost inches - I could already drop a pant size but I'm going to wait a bit longer before I go shopping.

I took revealing before pictures... but there is NO WAY IN HELL I'm putting them on the internet. Sorry peeps. But here's a pic of me, fully clothed, from Friday night. It's fuzzy from my cell phone, but I can totally tell a difference. At least in my cheek bones. ;) And yes, my hair is getting long. I'm getting it cut soon.

So, stay tuned for occasional updates. I need to lose 24 more pounds to get to my goal. I will finish the 30 day shred and then I plan to buy more of Jillian's DVDs to keep going.

For more info and support on the Shred, check out The Shredheads blog and follow shredheads on twitter. Thanks for your support and encouragement!