family Archives - Page 9 of 16 - My Life: A Work in Progress

Review: PishPoshBaby

11 March, 2013 16 Comments

*Updated 4/17/13

I recently received a $50 gift code to spend at PishPoshBaby in order to share my shopping experience with you all. Started by a fellow mother, PishPoshBaby is an online and brick-and-mortar retail store featuring high-quality baby gear from strollers, to layettes, to furnishings.

PishPoshBaby Screen Shot

With an easy-to-navigate site, PishPoshBaby has a great deal to offer if you’re looking for baby products! Their product selection comprises quality brands like 4moms, Tiny Love, Bugaboo, BOB, Boon, Graco, Medela, ErgoBaby, Petunia Pickle Bottom, and many more. If you have questions about anything, their Mom reps are available to answer your questions by phone or chat 9am-9pm Monday to Thursday, with limited hours on Friday and Sunday. And, yes, they’re real moms!

PishPoshBaby offers fast, free shipping on orders more than $75 which is great for larger items like strollers, car seats, and bassinets.

I really needed something to block the sun and wind when jogging at the park with Baby J, so I ordered the BOB Revolution Sun Shield (SALE $52).

BOB sun shield 1

Our Experiences:

I called PishPoshBaby to order the sun shield. First I spoke with a mom rep briefly, but was transferred to a sales rep to make my purchase. The ordering process was fast and painless, and the two employees I spoke to were both very courteous and patient- even when I was spelling out my looooooong email address. 🙂

The sun shield arrived incredibly fast. I ordered it on a Wednesday morning, and it was here by Friday afternoon!

The packaging (and the Web site) say the shield is for the BOB Revolution or Stroller Stride single stroller models, but after browsing a bit and checking the specs, I was sure it would fit our BOB Ironman jogging stroller. And it does!

BOB sun shield 2

I haven’t been able try it out with Baby J at the park yet, unfortunately. After I opened the shield package, the inside information told me if I had a stroller model before early 2011 (I do), then I’d have to order a free Retrofit Kit from BOB. Turns out BOB did a voluntary recall of their canopy strings in 2011, so now I need a different attachment. It looks like I can use it without the attachment, but I’m waiting for it to arrive, just in case.

Here’s a shot of inside the stroller with the sun shield from the back vent, so you can see how it will look from Baby J’s eyes. It doesn’t block all of the sun, but it does block most of it, which is exactly what the product specs claim. I also have the stroller directly pointed into the sun at this angle, and it’s about 2pm.

BOB sun shield 3

If you live in or near Jackson, N.J., you can check out the interactive baby gear experience at PishPoshBaby’s brick and mortar store. For the rest of us, visit PishPoshBaby on the Web, on Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter.

You could win your own $50 gift code to PishPoshBaby! Click HERE.

Note: I was provided a $50 gift code towards my purchase at PishPoshBaby but was not asked to provide a positive review. The opinions expressed above are my own and may differ from the opinions of others.

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cooking, Guest Post

Guest Post: Perfect Roasted Potatoes

25 February, 2013 9 Comments

Let me say, upfront, that I’m not an excellent cook. I have many faults in the kitchen, such as not reading recipes all the way through before beginning or substituting spices based on the letter they start with (seemed like a good idea at the time…). So I may not seem like the best source for absolutely perfect roasted potatoes. But I am here to tell you that I have the secret.

And I discovered it quite by accident!

Most recipes will tell you that you need to parboil your potatoes to get them perfectly roasted. I have no idea if that is true because frankly, that just sounds like extra work to me. I always skip extra work (hence not being the world’s best home cook…). In the past, my roasted potatoes were fine enough. But now they rock SO HARD! Read my tutorial below and you’ll discover why!

Perfect Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients you will need:

1 sweet potato (trust me…throwing a sweet potato in the mix makes it all the better!)
3 or 4 red potatoes
Italian seasoning (or whatever seasoning you like best)
olive oil
garlic salt
Reynolds aluminum foil

Wash and peel your potatoes. Then roughly chop them into bite sized pieces. Place all potato chunks in a large bowl.

Add roughly a palm full of Italian seasoning. I don’t measure. Measuring takes extra work, and that’s not how I roll.

Now do the same thing with your garlic salt. Any type-A folks out there cringing over the lack of specific measurements? I’m actually type-A, myself, except for in the kitchen. Take a deep breath, and just go with it. You will be pleased with the end result, I promise!

After you have added the seasonings to the potato mix, it is time to add lots and lots of olive oil. I added 1/3 of a cup, but the main thing to remember is that your potatoes need to be generously coated. Mix everything up thoroughly.

Now, here’s where the secret to perfect roasted potatoes lies: you need to let everything sit right in this bowl for a minimum of one hour. I recommend letting it sit for 3 or 4 hours if you can. I think the seasonings become stronger when they have time to mingle with the olive oil, and I also think some of that starchiness in the potatoes comes out during this time. But I’m not sure. I discovered this step a few months ago when I was trying to make these for lunch and then got distracted with the kiddos. I got to this step and then had to stop, so I decided to just make them 4 hours later for dinner. And they BLEW. MY. MIND.

When you are ready to do the roasting, make sure your oven is preheated to 400 degrees. Don’t put them in before the oven gets that hot. They really need that blast of heat from the start! Trust me! Also be sure to put them on a foil lined pan (you’ll thank me at clean up time) and spray the pan with something like Pam. Yes, even with all that olive oil, I still recommend this step. Also make sure that your pieces are not sitting on top of each other.

After they have been in the oven for 20 minutes, take them out and flip them all around.

Pop them back into the oven for another 20 minutes. The flip them again. Then they need one more round in the oven for 10 minutes. And this is what you will get after that final roasting session:

Oh, they are heaven, folks. They are a bit time intensive in that you have to babysit them a little once they are in the oven, but other than that, it is a very easy recipe, as long as you get started well in advance! I hope your family enjoys these as much as mine does! If you loved this recipe, would you consider pinning it on Pinterest or sharing it on Facebook so others can give it a try, too?

Tiffany Merritt is the blogger behind Stuff Parents Need, a website dedicated to sharing products and services that make life a little less hectic and a lot more fun for parents of young children. She gives away great prizes every week and keeps entries simple to make it easy to enter (and win!). Stop by and see if there’s anything you’d love to win for your family! Tiffany is also currently a finalist for the Reynolds Real Moms ambassador program. She’s sharing great tips and tricks on the Reynolds Facebook page every Wednesday for the next 6 weeks. She would be totally thrilled to earn your vote there!

parenting

Sleep training update: We’re seeing progress!

26 January, 2013 3 Comments

First of all, I really don’t like the words “sleep training.” He’s my baby, not my dog. Is there another word/term for it? If you haven’t read any of my previous posts, our son slept in our bed with us until he was past the high-risk age for SIDS. I’d read all the info saying it could be dangerous to sleep in the same bed with your child, and we had a little bassinet…but the first two months of his life, that kid did NOT sleep, unless he was sleeping on my or Daddy’s chest. When he was about 4 months old, I went through several weeks of torture (more so for me, than him, I think) to get him to fall asleep in his crib. It was finally starting to go better; then came the holidays. For about a month and a half, we had guests staying with us, on and off, sleeping in my son’s room. So we moved him back in with us.

Anyway, I started off almost two weeks ago now, by co-sleeping with my son in his room (in the spare bed). After 3 nights of that, I started moving him in the middle of the night into his crib (I stayed sleeping in the room). This past Monday, I started putting him in crib to start with, and I slept away from him with Hubby in our bedroom.

The first night he cried for about 40 minutes. I felt terrible, but just kept going in and checking on him, picking him up, patting his back, whispering to him…basically comforting him in whatever way I could other than giving in and taking him back to bed with me (which is what he wanted).

The second night he cried less. The third night he cried for maybe 15 minutes. Last night he didn’t cry at all.

HALLELUJAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now, I have enough experience with babies to know that he might just turn around and say, “Psyche!” tonight or tomorrow night or a month from now and start crying again. But last night was wonderful. I can hope that tonight will go just as well, can’t I?

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