The Angel Forever

KidFunPlaza Summer Expo and Tech Valley Tweetup

Posted on April 12, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

What are you doing on Saturday, April 16?

If you live in the Capital District area, I hope you will be heading to Colonie Center to join me at the KidsFunPlaza first ever event for the community. This Saturday we will be hosting the KidsFunPlaza Summer Expo. Summer is coming quickly. This is the perfect time and place to come with your family to investigate all of the options for this summer.

More about the Summer Expo:

Who: Representatives from a wide variety of local camps including

Residential Camps
Day Camps
Athlete Summer Programs
Teen Adventure Programs
Public and Private School Camps
County Offerings
Language Camps

What: Event for the entire family to learn more about summer offerings in the Capital District/Tech Valley region. Other items include

Easter Bunny
Smile Monster
Face Painting
Games
Camp Demos
Hands on Fun with Jodie Fitz

Here are my boys with the Smile Monster and participating in a demo with Jodie Fitz last weekend:

When: April 16, 2011 10 am to 7 pm

Where: Colonie Center

How and Why: Lots of hard work with local camps and programs to provide YOU with great information and fun.

More about the Tech Valley Blogger Tweet up:

The #TechValley blogger Tweetup will be from 6 pm to 7pm. There will be a blog panel including:

Lisa Barone from Outspoken Media
Greg Dahlmann from All Over Albany
Christina Gleason from Kids Fun Plaza
Steve Jeffes from Capital District & Upstate NY Professionals
Dave Ward from Social Media Club Tech Valley

Once the panel is finished, everyone in attendance will have a chance to sign up to do a 30-second commercial about your business/blog. After this there will be time to network with other bloggers while enjoying some refreshments.

Oh, one other little thing. . . there are also some amazing prizes that you could win. KidsFunPlaza will be giving away an iPad2 and a conference pass to Blog World Expo 2011 in NYC. Be sure to enter today to be eligible.

So, will I see you Saturday? Let me know and we will try to catch up.

Categories:
fun local event photos

Passover 2011 Preparations

Posted on April 11, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

It’s that time of year again. In just a week, we will be sitting down to a Passover Seder with family to celebrate the start of Pesach. Nursery school already has their Passover display in the hall:

On Sunday, TechyDad and I decided it was time to tackle the Passover food shopping. We went to Price Chopper and had a goal. We wanted to keep things simple, make mostly fresh foods, and limit packaged items. We really cut way back last year and it worked out nicely. We were happy with quinoa like oatmeal for breakfast, a turkey burger with lots of veggies, eggs in many forms, cottage cheese, and other staples. Yes, we did buy a few already made frozen items, along with Passover cakes/cookies, but very few.

When we went shopping, I took my camera along to show you how far Passover food shopping has come. Welcome to Passover Land at our local Price Chopper.

"Passover 2011 Shopping at Price Chopper"

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When we left Price Chopper, we had almost everything we need. Only a few items like eggs, produce, cottage cheese, and raisins to get.

Now the real stress begins. We have to convert the kitchen to be ready for Passover while we do everything else in the busy week ahead.

To read more about last year, my 2010 Passover posts are:

Whether you celebrate Passover, Easter, or another spring holiday, I wish you luck with your preparations. What are you looking forward to most and/or least in the next upcoming weeks?

Categories:
food glorious food holidays interesting jl looking back photos shopping TechyDad

You Can Catch Me There – April 10, 2011

Posted on April 10, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Spring may officially be here in the Capital District. As the weather warms up, I hope to be able to spend more time with my family outdoors. In addition to writing here, I have also been busy contributing to other places.

Since my last update, I have written two new posts on The Disney Driven Life:

Early Learning With Bear in the Big Blue House – Learning, growing, and teaching with Bear in the Big Blue House DVDs from Disney.
Disney Inspiration for National Poetry Month – April is National Poetry month. Stop by to learn about acrostic poems and read one from me, along with a hidden one by

NDM183

I have also been working on more articles for the KidsFunPlaza magazine. The April issue should be out in the Capital District within the week. You can check out the March Digital Issue here:

I have also had some new blog posts on the KidsFunPlaza blog:

My recent posts on KidsFunPlaza:

Some of the latest posts from my KidsFunPlaza colleagues:

Please stop by A Disney Driven Life and KidsFunPlaza to say hello to everyone else that writes there as well.

Categories:
bloggy friends DisneyDrivenLife Educational EduMICKation looking back me moments My Other Projects

Opening His First Vinylmation

Posted on April 9, 2011 9:42 am by TheAngelForever

Dear NHL,

Before we left for Disney World, we were all really curious about the relatively new collectables called Vinylmations. Basically, artists have created art pieces on a standard Mickey Mouse vinyl figure. The results are a multitude of series of these fun critters.

When we looked at them online, you were really interested in the Muppets, Toy Story 3, and Animation options. Daddy was curious about the Star Wars one (which we never saw in person). I wanted to see the Nerds and figure out which one to begin my collection with.

When we switched resorts, you were an amazing helper. Thanks to being really great at the conference, we offered to buy you your first Vinylmation at Pop Century before we went back to our room. We asked you to wait to open it in our room so I could capture it on video. I wanted to do this since Scott on InnerMouse had featured a video of a little girl doing something similar. I figured it would be fun to capture this memory for all of us. Here is what happened:

As you can see, you were VERY happy with the Swedish Chef Vinylmation – thank goodness! By the end of our trip, you had a few additional friends to add to your new collection.

What I love about Vinylmations is that all four of us enjoy looking for them, reading about them, and saving our money to get more. I can not wait to see which one you add next. I love your passion for Mickey collectables – you should be proud of being NDK78!

Love,

Mommy

Disclosure: Although we paid for our own trip to Disney World, we were given an incredible deal thanks to Disney. The sweet conference fee included 3 nights at the Grand Floridian, several meals for the entire family, 7 day park hoppers for everyone, conference/meals for me and some other items to take home. Also note that Disney never asked us to blog about this event. As a long time Disney fan, it is my pleasure to share my experiences from the event.

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If you want to participate in Dear Kid Saturday, head on over to Cutest Kid Ever by clicking on the button below.

Categories:
Dear Kid Saturday Disney DisneyDrivenLife DisneySMMoms fun milestone nhl vacation video

Facebook The Final Frontier

Posted on April 8, 2011 12:00 am by TheAngelForever

Several years ago, I started working on a Facebook page for my blog. For some reason, I never pushed the publish button. At the time, I was more focused on other ends of the Social Media spectrum. The reality is that not everyone likes Twitter. A lot of people prefer to use Facebook. By not pushing that button and setting up the Facebook page, I was only hurting myself.

While at the Disney Social Media Moms Celebration, one of the guest speakers was Matt Jacobson.

Jacobson is the head of market development for Facebook. While listening to everything that he told us, I knew that I was going to have to go home and finish working on my Facebook page. One of Jacobson’s biggest points that hit home is separating your personal and professional Facebook identities. He showed us an example using Mark Zuckerberg’s two profiles. He also talked about Building your brand on Facebook.

Yes, I knew it was time to get to work on Facebook. There was a need not only to publish a public page for The Angel Forever, but to have my own personal profile for family and friends.

Later in the day, Chris Brogan took the stage.

One of the many items that Chris talked about was using different forms of social media as outposts to get people to your blog or home base. Yes, I was utilizing Twitter in many ways, but Facebook was something that I foolishly ignored for too long. I will be sharing more from DisneySMMoms in the upcoming weeks – there is a lot to process.

While home with a sick kiddo this week, I finally tweaked my Facebook page for this blog. Over on the left, I even put a way to head there if you would like to.

See, I even took time to get a button for the side of my blog like the one above. It is a work in progress, but so is everything else in life.

This week my question to you is:

Do you have a Facebook page for your blog? Any input on whether having one or not having one has made a difference from your experience. If you do have a Facebook page, I would love to know so I can stop by visit and say hello.

If you feel a little bit of love in your heart, I would love for you to like The Angel Forever on Facebook as well. Thanks so much!

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Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the linky there if you are participating.