Parenting Healthy

National Park Gifts for your Child about Outdoor Play and Forest Fun

Books and Flash cards are great education tools for your children. Whether teaching colors, shapes or even about science and nature, your child can put concepts together and feel more connected to these topics through such learning tools and it makes learning fun. Gibbs-Smith has books and tools about nature, STEM and animals. Living in the Pacific Northwest has us admiring forests and mountains where camping and hiking are common family events for most. For my nephew, I wanted him to have these books and cards about National Parks.

The book, How To Play in the Woods is a fun camping tool. With simple items you find around camp, you get suggested fun such as music sticks, make rope from plant materials and more projects and games. The kids will self-entertain for hours and learn about nature as well. It is not a bad thing to become resourceful out in the wilderness at a young age!

The flash cards, All About National Parks features iconic animals, sights, and landmarks that make up the 27 US national parks. Included is a one-sheet map to visualize these parks locations. These are ABC cards from B-Bison, E-Everglades, S-Sequoia and more. They neatly store back in their box and the illustrations are large and bright.

These make great gifts for families who love to travel and learn together. Visit Gibbs-Smith for all of their books that make learning easy and fun!

Home

The Moso Natural Air Purifying, Odor Absorbing Bag For Your Refrigerator

October 18, 2023October 14, 2023 Erin Sluka

This little bag not only helps produce stay fresh longer, but it helps keep odors away for up to 2 years in your fridge, freezer, cooler or lunch bag. Just hang in the fridge or toss in a cooler to purify the space around your food, naturally.

This is the Moso Refrigerator & Freezer Odor Eliminator and it uses ionically charged moso bamboo charcoal to actively capture odors, moisture and ethylene gas. When ethylene gas is released from fruit and veggies it accelerates the ripening process and soon after these foods are not the best for eating and cooking with. This bag slows that process by absorbing this gas so your fruits and veggies don’t.

It even comes with a suction so you can easily hang it in your fridge to save shelf space. To help it last the 2 years for freshness, just set the bag in the sun for 1 hour once a month to keep the charcoal active. These are a must for every cold space. Visit the moso natural store for bamboo charcoal products for your home.

Books Reviews

YA Book Review – Free Throws, Friendship, and Other Things We Fouled Up

October 17, 2023November 4, 2023 Erin Sluka

New with Chronicle Books Publishing is Free Throws, Friendship, and Other Things We Fouled Up by Jenn Bishop. This is a great book for young athletes or all tween/teen readers. Young readers will get real emotions, family struggles, and insecurities driven by the tension of middle school sports in this book

Synopsis

Cincinnati, Ohio, lives and dies by college basketball, with two elite Division I rivals separated by a mere three miles. Rory’s dad just secured a new coaching gig at the University of Cincinnati, so it means yet another school and move for her, only this time to her dad’s hometown. Rory’s life revolves around basketball; she’s never had a close friend outside of it. Could this be a chance for a fresh start?

Abby has always lived in Cincinnati, where her dad grew up playing ball and now coaches at Xavier University. But Abby has recently retreated from basketball after a frustrating season that left her confidence in shambles. This year, she finds herself on the outside looking in when it comes to her former teammates, and she could seriously use a new friend.

The coaches’ daughters connect over their shared love of the game when Abby chaperones Rory on her first day of school. But when Abby’s dad practically forbids their friendship because of something that happened between him and Rory’s dad when they were younger, Abby and Rory have no choice but to move their budding friendship underground.

Can the two of them get to the bottom of what went down between their dads in the 1990s before history repeats itself?

Available for pre-order today on Amazon! Release date is October 24, 2023.

Education

Taking control of your Budget using calculators and planning

October 16, 2023October 13, 2023 Erin Sluka

When I think back 10 years and 20 years ago, what a difference it has been when it comes to money, finances and where I stand with my budget. 20 years ago I started dating my ‘now’ husband and we both entered the relationship with so much debt. Today we are on track with little debt and a good outlook on our retirement future that is within 15 years away between the 2 of us. My long-term goals are to not have a mortgage payment and we are definitely on track for that by retirement age and to travel-lots of travel!

We had to be strict with our spending and wise in our credit choices when we started attacking our debt. We made decisions on how we spent money on bills, fun, blending credit accounts to pay them off which meant consolidating and how to begin retirement savings and choose medical plans. Budgeting is not simple and even in a tech world, I rely on online calculators or trusty apps.

A lot has changed in 20 years in regards to technology as well and planning is so easy much easier today with online tracking apps, including my bank app where I can customize notifications and keep up on what is happening in my accounts right in the palm of my hand!

There a few things you can do to start tackling debt and creating a realistic budget plan. If you are married or share finances with a partner, the first step is communication and coming to compromises and common goals. I frequently check my bank apps to see what notification options I have and how to set certain alerts. Consolidating smart and choosing to tackle one debt at a time (like getting rid of the high interest debt first) can help you feel like you are making progress. In our debt relief journey, I would have never guessed that I could actually become a tad obsessed with wanting to pay things off at any sacrifice because it is such a great feeling to clean up the budget.

You can always find online tools, such as card comparison calculators from calculator.me. Sites like these allow you to type in your budgets and see your options and goal results. If you have not started the budget talk lately, it is time to start again, especialy as we near the Holidays.