(“I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Clorox Clean-Up Recipes for Fun blogging program, for 8,000 My SocialMoms Rewards Points. For more information on this program, click here and see the Terms link.)

Have active children?

Me, too.

I even have a board on Pinterest titled “Activities to wear my children out”, see for yourself:

Getting down on my hands an knees and really playing with my kids is something I love and really enjoy. We play A LOT of Legos, trains and cars but some times I feel like I am totally out of ideas. Pinterest usually comes to the rescue for that but I have to dig. Not always the greatest when our energetic son wants to do a craft NOW!

Clorox® has just launched a “Recipes for Fun” campaign that I LOVE!!! There are ideas and projects to engage young minds. It’s like having your own tool box of ideas just a click away. Plus, you can win some sweet prizes for entering your won recipes.

The branding is so colorful, I love it.

About Clorox Recipes for Fun

Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner has launched an exciting Web site where you can find and share recipes for fun activities to do with your kids. At cloroxrecipesforfun.com, you and your kids can get ideas for science experiments, cooking recipes and arts and crafts projects. Have a ball making a mess while you teach your children cooking and science lessons along the way. No worries though, because the clean-up is a snap with Clorox® Clean Up®! You’ll be able to find the perfect activity for you and your kids to live it up, mess it up, then clean it up.

To celebrate the new Recipes for Fun site, Clorox has launched the Ultimate Mess Party Sweepstakes and they want you to clean up with prizes! Sign up for a chance to win $10,000 toward an Ultimate Mess Party, plus chances to win instantly every day. Just by registering or sharing a recipe you could win. And just for sharing your recipes for fun, you’ll get a coupon for $1.00 off Clorox® Clean-Up® instantly. You’ll also receive 10 extra grand prize entries for sharing a recipe! There’s more! Each day, Clorox Clean-Up is instantly awarding FREE Clorox® Clean-Up® coupons and $100 gift cards from a variety of favorite retailers to lucky users for just viewing recipes. Prizes are awarded randomly so good luck!

TEST KITCHEN

 My four year old and I tried this fun Magic Milk Paint Project. It took us all of 2 minutes to prep and it was fun:

The Masterpiece:

The perfect blend of art, milk and science, these momentary masterpieces will amaze and amuse your kids.

Ingredients for fun:

• Milk
• Food coloring
• Dish soap
• Toothpick
• Light-colored paper

 How to make it:

1. Place the dish soap-dipped toothpick into their hands and watch eyes widen as they make magic.
2. Pour milk into small dish or container lid.
3. After milk is poured, add a few drops of various food colors.
4. Dip toothpick in dish soap.
5. Place toothpick into milk.
6. After experimenting with swirling and mixing colors, colored milk can be used for painting on light-colored paper.

NOTE: To build up the suspense, tell kids that they’ll be using the world’s smallest magic wand.

The Wacky Science Behind It: All liquids have a surface tension that allows less dense objects to float on their surface (think of a leaf floating on top of a puddle). Inserting the soap-tainted toothpick into the mixture majorly messes with the milk’s surface tension, causing the food coloring to flee from the soap.

How to clean up:

Clorox^® Clean-Up^® Cleaner combines the powerful cleaners PLUS the disinfecting power of Clorox^® Bleach to help make clean-up
even easier.

See Clorox^® Clean-Up’s^® Recipe for Clean

(There is tooth paste in the picture because I read “tooth paste” not “tooth pick”. You do not need tooth paste for this activity ;)

We had fun putting this together and loved how pretty the colors swirled in the milk.

This is one website that I will bookmark and use regularly (plus I’m going to pin some of them on Pinterest, too!)

More About Clorox Clean Up:

Every Recipe For Fun needs a Recipe For Clean. That’s why Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner with the combination of cleaner and the disinfecting power of Clorox Bleach lets you spray away messy play. So no matter how big a mess you make of it, Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner Cleaner with Bleach can be used throughout your house to quickly and effectively clean, disinfect, and deodorize.

About Ultimate Mess Party:

Just by registering, you’ll receive one sweepstakes entry into the grand prize for a chance to win $10,000 toward an Ultimate Mess Party. With $10,000, you and your family could get everything you need to enjoy the wettest, sudsiest, paintiest, muddiest party of all time. From a colossal cooking party to a monumental mud volleyball party, you choose the mess and let Clorox® Clean-Up® Cleaner do the rest.

Share Your Recipe:

Share your Recipe For Fun and receive 10 extra grand prize entries! And as a “thanks” for sharing, you can get a $1.00 coupon on Clorox Clean-Up Cleaner for your first recipe.

For more information visit: cloroxrecipesforfun.com

Clorox on Facebook

Follow @Clorox on Twitter

When the universe tells me to do something, I listen.

Literally, within a minute from each other, I received an email from my friend about this “Breathing Space Blog Retreat” and a FB message from another friend personally inviting me to the event as she is one of the organizers. The event is set in a really unique setting, in Daybreak, where bloggers are able to live “dorm style” for a sleep over. I love the idea of getting away for a mini retreat, but still being close enough that there isn’t a huge travel expense involved. Personally, I love the Daybreak area and one of my business partners and his wife just built a lovely home out there. This event seems like the perfect opportunity to take a break and have some unique experiences with friends.

Now, you might think it’s cheesy that the universe told me to attend a blogger conference, but it did (and do not read “God told me to do this”. That is NOT what I’m saying). What I am saying is that it perked my interest and did a double take. Over the last few years of my blogging journey, I’ve enjoyed attending in person events like Casual Blogger Conference, Evo and Sassy Scoops nights out. What struck me about this conference was the name “breathing space” (what mom doesn’t need some breathing space) and that it’s a retreat.

The event is pretty exclusive, only 75 spots available and 1/2 are still available. For $75 it’s the best price you are going to find for a blogger conference. There are classes on cooking and photography.

OVERVIEW

These days, I feel like we’re all scrimping a little more and as a mom it’s my clothing budget that is always the first to go.
I feel like I’m turning into a “Frumpa lumpa” as Oprah calls it (think frumpy mom in yoga pants AKA me every day). But it is nice to have something new in your wardrobe to spice things up a little.

Just in time for Spring, I found NoMoreRack,com 

They have been featured on:

It’s like a lot of deal sites out there, but I like that it’s not just focused on clothing. I found these sweet iPhone glove for $9 from nomorerack.

There are also some house ware items that I liked at nomorerack like this Orack cleaning system:

Have you ever had your identity stolen? I’m not talking Jason Borne kind of stuff, I’m talking real life every day kinds of hacking? My brother was recently hacked and the feeling has left us all feeling a little unnerved. He just moved to New York at the end of January to attend Parsons for a degree in graphic design. He’s been dealing with a new city, roommates and simply figuring out how to do your own laundry is an accomplishment in and of itself. So, when he checked is credit card and saw that someone had been making charges he felt very violated. Thankfully, our dad was able to help him with the situation, but it’s still a discouraging situation to be in.

About 2 years ago someone made two airline ticket purchases on our American Express card to Amsterdam. We were never able to track the thieves down, but with more and more purchases that are being made online, we will only see more identity theft.

IdentityHawk helps people who have been hacked. For those of you looking for identity theft protection this seems like a good way to go. IdentityHawk was created to help consumers safeguard their assets, their properties, and their good names. Through their site of protective benefits, IdentityHawk members can view the health of their identity protection, identify areas where they’re most at risk, and take proactive steps to reduce those risks.

They are offering a Free 30-day trial right now.

There are few things that say Scandinavian like a beautifully knit sweater, don’t you think?

Here is one of my favorite:

I had the pleasure to meet the lovely gals of Icelandic Designs at the Outdoor Retailer show a few weeks back. I’ve always been a fan of these lovely hand knit sweaters and loved learning more about their founder and their story.

The founder “Gerdur Kristjansdottir founded Icelandic Design in 1984 in Boulder, Colorado. Originally from Iceland, Gerdur began the business of designing beautifully embellished Nordic sweaters with her mother, who hand knit pieces for friends and family.

The traditional Nordic patterns,  hand embroidery and exceptional craftsmanship found an immediate market in the states. The resulting company grew to take over an entire building in historic downtown Longmont, Colorado.  Soon Newari, a hand knit sweater line crafted by women in Nepal, sprang from a mutually beneficial relationship between Nepali artisans and Icelandic Design.  Icelandic employs approximately 850 Nepali women to produce this line.

In 2007 The categories Metropolitan (a sophisticated line of boiled wool jackets with European flare) and Dottir (an exquisitely embellished line of coats and luxurious sweaters) were introduced.  Icelandic also debuted their highly successful line of accessories, which includes hand knit hats and gloves crafted in wool (in Nepal) and alpaca (in Peru). ” (taken from the Icelandic website.)

Her granddaughters are even featured in the ads (two outer girls):

As much as I love skiing, these sweaters and hats kind of make me want to hang out at the ski lodge.

There are also these darling doll orniments that I’m going to get for my daughter:

Newari icelandic Fairy Ornaments

You can watch a fun video and see the sweaters in action:

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

In this video: The Kamala (Or Kathmandu) sweater filmed by Sundance Catalog

As a favor to YOU for reading this post, ICELANDIC DESIGNS is are offering a sweet deal for 40% off at

http://www.apparelvalley.com Simply use pro code of “INTHEBIZ” at check out.

I also found these gloves on clerance at Apparel Valley for $7.99!

Follow Icelandic Designs on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/IcelandicDesign

I fell in love with the most beautiful little girl sweaters. The kids’ sweaters won’t be available for purchase until late summer 2012, but stay tuned!

I was doing a little 007 research for my birthday that’s on Saturday and making a wish list. In order to be a true Dane (or wanna be Dane), you must own a fantastic pair of clogs. For Christmas last year I got a WONDERFUL pair of Sanita clogs (Sanita and Dansko use to be the same company way back when).

In researching for some cute cheap dansko I found a great resource called BECOME where they have everything from clothing, baby and camera’s. I’m not sure how it works, but it looks like it searches the web for other online shops and then brings you to the best discounted shop. Does anyone know how this works?

In researching I found these seville navy crinkle size 38 discounted to $69.

I also liked this so softly patio dresses

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/

My friend Denise shared this with me about a year and half ago, but hadn’t watched it until the other day. Very interesting commentary on why we like to be online so much. I’m using this for research for my book :)

Watch Digital Nation on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Since I love the Danish world HYGGE, I thought I’d share the NPR article that came out last week on the topic:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2012/01/30/146080892/winter-doldrums-got-you-down-have-some-hygge

Last week I was interviewed by Janet Thaler, AKA Newspaper Girl. Janet and I have been friends for a long time thanks to twitter and fb. We’ve attended similar events and enjoy her professional attitude and the great things she has done to grow her business. Janet maybe best known for her best selling book I NEED A KLLER PRESS RELEASE, NOW WHAT? you can grab your copy for the Kindle for only $9,95.

A PR Success Story: My Interview with Kathy Dalton

Kathy Dalton is my friend on Twitter and I’ve started getting to know her in real life too. She founded Little Stinker which makes natural skin care products for moms and babies.

Her blog is http://www.danishmama.com I asked her to share how she has gotten great PR results using HARO (helpareporter.com) and hiring a PR consultant.

You’ll see getting into the Associated Press got her a ton of additional coverage. I couldn’t find any press releases but she did post this one on her blog.

One tip I learned from her and that she always practices is to respond quickly to requests. She sent this the same day I asked. Hopefully we can get some review copies of her book and host my first giveaway on this blog!

Now for the interview:

Q: Do you have a specific method to finding relevant pitches on HARO?

A: I don’t have a specific method for finding relevant HARO posts. I just get the emails and read through them. I know some people set filters, but I haven’t done that. I actually like reading throughout them because more often than not I find something that can help out a friend.

Q: What kind of press coverage have you gotten for your business?

A: Associated Press: I announced we were expecting in an interview for the Babies documentary and was interviewed by the associated press.

It got picked up few more places:
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=10690048, http://wtop.com/?nid=114&sid=1960806

http://www.thestate.com/2010/05/19/1293890/parents-turning-babies-into-babys.html

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/05/19/2762270/parents-turning-babies-into-babys.html

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/05/19/1637322/parents-turning-babies-into-babys.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100519/ap_on_en_mo/us_fea_parenting_babies_movie_1

Parenting Magazine: Article on Sibling Rivalry http://www.parenting.com/article/dealing-sibling-rivalry

March Magazine: Page 22-23 http://marchmagazineonline.com/2011/05/01/mayjune-2011/

iVillage: http://www.ivillage.com/kids-favorite-stuffed-animals-toys-and-blankies/6-b-357535#357509

Parenting: April 2012

3. Who did you work with for your PR?
I hired Heather Allard for 6 months. She is an expert in the baby and toddler industry. She contacted all the major outlets and we got an editorial piece in American Baby Magazine (here’s a video of me opening magazine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMTAF3hBjZ4)

Q: What advice would you give small businesses?

A: Learn as much as you can. If you’re launching a business public relations can become your very best friend.

Q: What’s next?

A: I was just promoted to CEO for my hard work as CMO at Little Stinker USA. I’m in the process of writing a book “Word of Mom: How to get Moms Raving about your Brand” and consulting for Simply the Sweet Life Magazine.

Congrats to Kathy and thank you for taking the time to share your success story with us. Good luck on the new book!

I love connecting with fantastic women. While researching a what is a good baby doll for a first baby, Mari shared her experience with me while she worked for Manhattan Toy Company via the twitter. She is smart, sassy and very sweet.

Meet Mari

Hi! I’m Mari, (that rhymes with Atari, not Mary) and I manage the kids design blog Small for Big. I’m a mom to my three year old girl, whom we’ve lovingly nicknamed Birdie. We live in Minneapolis, MN with her amazing Daddy-O. I’m also an adjunct professor with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and run a freelance product design business, mr design (www.maririchardsdesign.com). In my spare time I try to tame my sweet tooth (I’m failing miserably), and long for more time to play my neglected piano, or make art, or make other things, or knit, or read more, or do any of those lovely things you do when you don’t work for yourself and parent full-time. But I don’t think I’d have it any other way right about now. Carving my own path is exhilarating.

Though the blog officially started in 2008 when I was pregnant and working full-time as a Senior Designer at Manhattan Toy (www.manhattantoy.com), I didn’t really become driven to grow the blog until Birdie’s arrival and my subsequent lay-off in 2009. Small for Big(www.smallforbig.com) has become the most amazing way to continue my obsession with kids design. It lets me share my finds with others, and it keeps me current in the industry while growing my freelance design business. It also keeps me from buying everything I love, because I can “own” a little bit of it by featuring it on the blog. Honestly, I just love gathering all my favorite things in one place, and getting feedback from all of you.

I’m not Scandinavian, but Minnesota is full of Scandinavian heritage. We actually celebrate Syttende Mai every year with my husband’s family, and loooove lefse. I know, those are little things, but we do enjoy them! (I won’t lower the caliber of this conversation by mentioning the abundance of Ole and Lena jokes in this area!)

What is your favorite activity to do with children?

Anything creative. As an artist and designer, seeing my daughter’s drawing, making, and painting evolve every day is so amazing to me, I often get tears in my eyes watching her. But tickling her still she squeals is good too! What was the most surprising moment as a parent? This sounds silly in hindsight, but before Birdie was born, I knew there would be lots of love and lots of hard moments too. But I had NO idea how much we’d be laughing. That girl cracks me up, and that’s what keeps us going day to day.

What challenges have you faced as a parent?

Letting go. I should be a card-carrying member of Over-Achievers Anonymous. Because of that, I have to constantly remind myself that there is no such thing as the perfect parent. I also have a chronic disease that makes doing some things with Birdie harder than I’d like – so again, letting go of expectations and doing the best I can is an important mantra around here.

What is your favorite children’s story or fairytale?

It’s impossible to choose a single story. As a kid, it was Grover’s There’s A Monster at the End of This Book. Classically I suppose it’s Alice in Wonderland, and we can’t forget to mention Harry Potter. We also love everything written by Mo Willems and Oliver Jeffers.

What are your favorite Scandinavian companies, stores, or food?

Ikea (www.ikea.com), Vyssan Lull (http://vyssanlull.com/), Polarn O. Pyret (http://www.polarnopyretusa.com/), Huset (http://www.huset-shop.com/), and eating lefse, of course, as mentioned earlier!

What advice would you give to a new blogger?

Give it time and patience. Blogs change and grow all the time, so though it it’s important to decide on your niche, don’t be afraid to change and adjust things as you go. Be unique to you and your personality. Ask questions of other bloggers – we’ve all been in your shoes and everyone I’ve ever contacted has been so giving with their advice in return. Network with other bloggers you admire, and also bloggers that are new like you – building a virtual community makes this whole thing feel more real, viable, and sustainable to me. Know that the learning curve is never-ending! How can we contact you? (email, twitter, linkedin, facebook page, etsy shop, pinterest)

Big@smallforbig.com https://twitter.com/smallforbig

http://www.linkedin.com/in/maririchards

https://www.facebook.com/smallforbig

http://pinterest.com/smallforbig

And I truly love seeing comments over at Small for Big – and I will always reply to them!