Making Movies

Turn your tot into a producer!

Make your own movies easily and instantly on GoAnimate

Today we discovered GoAnimate, a website where you can sign up for free and quickly make animated movies.  I simply typed in the dialog my 5 year old daughter dictated to me. She also chose the scene, characters and which voices to use.  But I should warn you, it's addicting, you're kids will want to make more than one after they see their first video come to life!  But it was a great way to spend a muggy, stormy afternoon!  If you make a movie, please don't keep it to yourself, come on over and post it on my facebook page!

candacecreations's Animation by candacecreations on GoAnimate

Make a Video - Powered by GoAnimate.

candacecreations's Animation by candacecreations on GoAnimate

Animation Software - Powered by GoAnimate.

Copy Kids Eat Your Veggies DVD Review and Giveaway

COPY KIDS 

Review and Giveaway

Get Kids Hooked on Eating Fruits and Vegetables

The premise behind Copy Kids Eat Fruit and Vegetables is that young children are more willing to try new fruits and vegetables when they see another child eating them.  I believe this idea is totally valid because I have witnessed this myself with my own kids.  My older daughter always eats better when she's around her older cousins and my 2 year old son who shows little interest in sitting at the table and eating, will sit and eat a meal, even food he's consistently refused before, when we have interesting company over (i.e grandparents, aunts or uncles - but unfortunately non of them live close by).  So I was very excited for the opportunity to review the Copy Kids DVD.

J wanted to make a movie of her eating her veggies just like "those kids"

I told my daughter I had a new movie to watch she had never seen before and didn't tell her the name of it.  The first two comments she made as we watched the Copy Kids DVD were

"I want a pepper!" and "I want to copy her!"

While watching the Copy Kids DVD my 5 year old daughter ate a whole bell pepper and my 2 year old son was munching on bell pepper too...he kept spitting it out after a while, but he wanted to keep trying it because he thought it was fun to eat it while watching the kids on the DVD enjoy and have fun eating their vegetables.  It's a good start considering before seeing this DVD he wouldn't even TRY bell pepper (and it's been offered plenty as we often have slices of raw bell pepper at dinner).

Then my daughter wanted to eat a bunch of cucumber followed by 3 enormous carrots.  She got too full and couldn't finish all 3 but she ate most of 2.  She planned on eating raw broccoli after the carrots but she got too full.

Here's what my kids were saying while watching Copy Kids Eat Fruit and Vegetables

"I WANT A PEPPER TOO!"

"I WANT TO COPY HER!" (she didn't know the name of the video was "copy kids")

"I want to copy those kids!"

"LOOK! He likes that!" (avocado)

"Can I eat those?"

"Today I'm going to eat ALL the vegetables that they're eating"

"LOOK!!!  They LIKE them!"

"AJSDLKJEWRNJHAJjadfsajslfjasf!!!!!" (I couldn't understand her mouth was stuffed with peppers)

"I'm going to eat cucumbers after that (peppers) and then watch the cucumber movie when I eat cucumbers mom"

the shocking part was my finicky 2 year old grabbing slices of bell pepper and demanding "MORE MOO-EE!!! MORE MOO-EE!" and nibbling on the pepper (MOO-EE means Movie) as the movie had gone to the menu after the bell pepper segment had finished.

The Copy Kids DVD shows kids of various ages having fun and enjoying their food.  It is cute and the sound effects and style of it reminds me a little of the Baby Einstein series, which kids really enjoy.  The evening ended with my kids fighting over the bell pepper strips.  As much as my kids enjoyed and were fascinated by this video and inspired to chow on some raw veggies, watching little children/toddlers eat is not all that appetizing to me.  When the toddlers in the video were scarfing down avocado in HD on my big screen, it made me want to gag...despite that, overall the video is very cute, fun and makes my kids want to eat more fruits and vegetables so it's got two thumbs up in my book!  Just make sure you have a selection of fruits and vegetables on hand before you put this on or your kids might be upset...they want to COPY THE KIDS while watching it!




Want to win a free copy and get your kids chowing down on healthy fruits and vegetables NOW? Just enter below!
You can learn more by visiting
the Copy Kids website HERE
the Copy Kids youtube channel HERE




a Rafflecopter giveaway


GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED but you can still get a copy here


And if you haven't made the Rainbow in my Tummy - Eating Your Colors Activity Set tutorial I created, head over and print off the template, this will go perfectly with the DVD to get your kids eating all the colors of the rainbow in fresh produce!

Exploring Omaha with Mom

Wow, I can't believe how fast the past month has gone by!  Since my last post we have been gone visiting family and friends, attending weddings, camping, baby showers, and then having mom mom visit us at our new home for the first time and exploring Omaha with her.  She was our first guest and it was SO nice to finally be able to accommodate her better than we have been able to with friends and family visiting in the past.  Being in a house 3.5 times bigger than our old apartment makes a pretty big difference!  I am still so excited about having a garage after years of giant apartment complex parking lots! Anyways, I have lots of blogging catching up to do but most recently...

Here are some of the things we did with my mom...

First we went to the World of Mexican Pottery which is located on S 24th Street between M and O streets in Omaha which is a cool little historic district.   Renowned for its cultural influences, including the historic location of Omaha's Greek, Russian, Polish and Czech immigrant communities, as well as the city's current growing Latino community, including Mexicans* 
World of Mexican Pottery is a unique store, tons of real clay chimneys, planters, urns and other decor that is really really well priced!  You can get a pretty clay fireplace/chimney for under $100 and they are gorgeous!  My mom wants to get one but will have to plan a trip to drive out here to be be able to take it back home.

 After walking through the rest of that historic district, we had enough time to drive up to the Mormon Trail Winter Quarters for a free tour.  It was really interesting and didn't take too long (which was good with the kids).  They had a little sod house/cabin set up with 2 beds inside and a little loft above both, a tiny eating area and fireplace.  It was so tiny and apparently 2 families/~15 people would share one of those little houses.

That night we got my mom to play pool with us on our pool table that came with the house.  At first she seemed a little reluctant but then once she got going she wasn't too bad and was having fun, she is so cute!  My mom and I played a game and it was going so slow! lol! I asked Tyler "I wonder what's the longest game of pool every played"... his reply was "We're finding out right now!" lol!  My mom beat me but it was close!

We took her to the spray park and fed the geese...

We played in the sink to cool off with this big heat wave that has been going on....

We went to the zoo when it was 96 degrees with 88% humidity!  We were totally drenched the whole time it was so hot!  When we got near the end, just before the butterfly exhibit and aquarium, I saw a frozen lemonade stand and boy was that heaven in a cup!  The Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha is the coolest zoo I have even been too! The habitats are seriously amazing, I've never seen anything like it!  It was HUGE and next time I think we are getting a yearly family pass so we can just go and see parts of the zoo on multiple occasions instead of trying to do it all in one day...we were there for hours and still didn't see everything...

 Budgie Encounter at the Henry Doorly Zoo

bring cash, $1 per feeding stick

And of course we took my mom to Nebraska Furniture Mart....that is an attraction on it's own!  It's not just a furniture store, it's a complex of huge buildings with the biggest furniture store, electronics store and clearance stores ever!  We spent quite a bit of time looking at everything, they have all kinds of styles and it doesn't just all look like some typical out of the box furniture, they have everything and all kinds of unique, awesome things in all styles and I found my dream dining table...although it's $10,000 so good thing they have nice things in all price ranges!  It's so exciting to just envision the different possibilities!  I've got my eye on a couple of the dining room sets and bedroom sets.  My mom was such a sweetheart and got us this cute bistro set for our deck as a housewarming gift! I LOVE IT!  We found this at Mrs.B's clearance center, just what we needed out there...it's perfect...

 And of course we did lots of baking and relaxing, she showed me how she makes gluten free bread and I got her hooked on my gluten free dark chocolate covered peanut butter cookies, and we went to Hobby Lobby at least twice, where my mom also picked out this awesome wall clock for us and just our luck all wall decor was 50% off...I freaking love that store.

 Starting to get a little less bare in the dining room....

Greased out from the heat wave...what's the point of putting on makeup, it'll sweat off in 2 minutes!

Her flight got delayed so we got to keep her for an extra night (I couldn't have been  more excited about a flight delay!) so I drove her through downtown on the way back from the airport to see the big bronze pioneer sculptures at First National's Spirit of Nebraska's Wilderness and Pioneer Courage Park

photo credit:Mike Kleveter

and drove through the Old Market just  for a peek...we'll go back and walk around next visit, it was just too hot and after the zoo day we were done with sweating our pants off!

Omaha Old Market

photo courtesy Marriot

old market passageway 

photo courtesy omahanightlife.com

We'll go back at night when the lighted horse drawn carriages are going around on the cobblestone streets.  And to finish it off, we left the kids with Tyler and had a girls dinner out at the Farmhouse Cafe!  The perfect place for potato lovers like us! :) The last 2 nights we stayed up and watched Food Matters and then that extra bonus night we watched Emma What a CUTE funny movie! We loved it! It's been forever since watching a really good movie like that!  I recommend both Food Matters and Emma for your list of things to watch!  I'm still chuckling over some of the dialog in Emma.