This is a compensated review by BlogHer and Pop-Tarts.

I was never a huge fan of Halloween when I was growing up, mainly because I’m sort of a chicken. I don’t like scary movies. I don’t like haunted houses. I don’t like anything that involves anybody jumping out in front of me and screaming “Boo!” or “RAWR!” or “HEY THERE ARE FREE FRIED CHEESE STICKS HERE!”

Though truth be told, free fried cheese sticks makes almost any situation more bearable.

But because I’m not really the poster child for jumping on board with a bunch of Halloween festivities, it’s really sort of a wonder that I’ve managed to get our child into some sort of costume every single October since he was born. Except for when he was one. I think I skipped a costume when he was one. Let’s just go ahead and assume that it’s because I was tired.

Our church used to have Trunk or Treat, and that was our motivation for costume-related fun for a couple of years. By the time the little guy started pre-school, we found ourselves in the midst of the Fall Festival tradition – which, truth be told, suits me way better than Halloween because nobody’s going to try to scare you at a Fall Festival. Unless you’re frightened by inflatable slides and cake walks, in which case the whole Fall Festival thing might not be for you.

Over the last few years it’s been fun to see our boy’s costume choices mirror the stuff that interests him; he’s dressed up as Mr. Incredible, Spider Man, Obi Wan Kenobi and even Darth Vader. It’s been all-light-sabers-all-the-time around our house for two straight years. But this year – well, it’s a departure from the norm for us. Alex isn’t dressing up as a character from a favorite movie. He’s dressing up as this guy.

Yep. Mario. From Super Mario Bros. Complete with some mad jumping moves and all manner of sound effects. He’s beside himself with excitement. I’ve actually hidden the costume in the back of my car until it’s time for the Fall Festival – otherwise it’ll be worn slap-out by the time the Fall Festival rolls around.

So what about the kids in your family? What are their favorite costumes? Answer in the comments, and you’ll be entered to win a $100 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer.

Be sure to check out the BlogHer.com exclusive offers page and click through to the other bloggers’ reviews; you have nine more chances to win!

And finally, here are the official rules.

Happy Costumes, everybody!

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This is sponsored content by BlogHer and Kellogg’s.

Now this may sound strange, but most of my favorite foods involve a bowl.

Well, all of my favorite foods except for bacon and fried chicken. Thought you could certainly eat them from a bowl if it struck your fancy.

In fact, all of the foods I associate with comfort – stuff like cheese grits and chili and black bean soup and late-night cereal and this incredibly delicious stew that I learned how to make last winter – all of those things are best in a bowl. I even have favorite bowls for each one of those dishes, but I probably shouldn’t frighten you by oversharing. Suffice it to say that I have a small collection of bowls that serves our little family very well.

And listen: if there were some sort of contest for my favorite food in a bowl (because let’s face it – that’s TOTALLY a possibility), I’d be hard-pressed to come up with one hands-down winner. But in the end – after a good measure of counseling and no small degree of prayer – I think that the all-time favorite would have to be a really good French Onion soup. That rich broth and those carmelized onions and that thick French bread and that toasty piece of cheese on top? HEAVEN ON EARTH TO ME.

This could all change tomorrow, however. Because I might make a batch of my grandmother’s homemade chocolate pudding. And if it’s especially good, it could quite possibly knock the French Onion soup right off of its throne.

The kitchen can be a very competitive place, y’all.

So what about you? What’s your favorite one bowl meal? Cereal? Soup? Cheese grits with bacon sprinkled on top? Leave a comment with your answer, and you’ll be entered to win a $100 Visa gift card (and come back next week to enter again -it will be the last week!).

For a second entry, you can:
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· Sweepstakes ends 5 PM EST on October 18, 2010.

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Mom’s Breakfast Club was started to help educate moms and families about kids’ cereal and share the scoop on their nutritional benefits and ingredients. To learn more about the program, visit www.loveyourcereal.com.

This is a compensated review by BlogHer and Pop-Tarts.

As a general rule I try to keep a close eye on the amount of sugar our little boy consumes over the course of a day. I’m not opposed to the occasional sweet treat, of course, but I definitely don’t think that dessert should be an all-day-long event. As a result of that, we have an ask-before-you-eat candy policy in our house. In addition, we don’t typically have lots of cakes and pies and cookies on hand – mainly because if they’re here, I AM POWERLESS TO RESIST THEM.

So maybe the sugar regulations in our house aren’t really about the young’un at all. Maybe they’re about his mama, who is BUT A WEAK VESSEL.

However, where mama and child both are concerned, there is one day – ONE DAY – every single year when I don’t monitor the sugar intake at all. I don’t even try.

Any clue as to what day that is?

Yep. You’re right (because you’re brilliant). It’s Halloween. Because whether you trick or treat in the neighborhood, go to Trunk or Treat at your church or celebrate at your school’s Fall Festival, one thing is for sure: there will be an abundance of sugar in all manner of forms. And every once in awhile, it’s fun to turn off the moderation button and surrender to the sweetness.

The other day I was trying to think of something fun I could make to hand out when the neighborhood kids come by on Halloween night, and I since I had a surplus of Choc-o-Lantern Chocolate Fudge flavored Pop-Tarts on hand, I asked our little guy if he thought there was a neat dessert we could make with them. He LOVES the Choc-o-Lantern Pop-Tarts, so he was all about incorporating them into a Halloween treat.

They’re pretty much my seven year-old’s love language.

After we bounced a few ideas back and forth, we came up with a plan: Choc-o-Lantern Crispies.

I know. It sounds crazy. But the end result will absolutely delight the kids in your life.

Oh, who am I kidding? Adults will love them, too.

Here’s how you make them:

8 Choc-o-Lantern Chocolate Flavored Pop-Tarts
3 tablespoons butter
1 10 oz. package marshmallows
6 cups crispy rice cereal

Place 4 Choc-o-Lantern Pop-Tarts in the bottom of a 13×9 casserole dish. Melt butter in a large saucepan, then add marshmallows and stir until mixture is completely melted. Remove from heat, then add cereal and combine. Use a spatula to gently spread cereal mixture on top of the Pop-Tarts, making sure to spread it evenly. Top with four more Pop-Tarts, pressing down firmly to make them stick. Cool for 5-10 minutes, then cut and serve – or wrap in plastic wrap and tie with ribbon for festive individual treats.

If you’d like to win a $100 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer, leave a comment that answers the following question: is there any day of the year when you happily break the normal food rules in your house? Any day when you lighten up just a bit?

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And finally, here are the official rules.

Happy Sweet Treat, everybody!

This giveaway is now closed.

This is sponsored content by BlogHer and Kellogg’s.

Over the years I’ve prepared just about every imaginable breakfast food.

We’ve gone through phases with certain cereals, oatmeal, bagels, English muffins, cinnamon toast, cheese grits, eggs, orange rolls – and a whole host of other things.

And while we’ve certainly enjoyed all of those foods – maybe even gotten in a little bit of a rut with them – there has been one breakfast food that has never, ever been out of the rotation for very long. Because it never, ever lets us down. And it never, ever fails to delight.

Everybody say it with me: bacon.

Oh, we LOVE the bacon.

And no matter what kind of morning it is – rushed, relaxed, peaceful, cuckoo – the bacon always makes us smile. It is, for me, the smell of home, and while maybe that’s a little too revealing in terms of my family’s fondness for fried pork products, it’s true. When I smell bacon cooking on the stove, I’m instantly transported to my grandmother’s kitchen and to my mother’s kitchen, to a less-hectic time when a hot breakfast was always the order of the day.

So while there are a lot of breakfast foods that we could probably live without if we had to, there’s definitely one that we would miss with everything in us if it happened to disappear. We’re in this breakfast thing with bacon for the long haul, and if it ever tries to leave us, well, we will hunt it down and write it letters and beg it to return.

So that we can fry it up and eat it.

The end.

So what about you? What’s one breakfast item that never lets you down? Biscuits? A favorite whisk? Chocolate milk? Leave a comment with your answer, and you’ll be entered to win a $100 Visa gift card (and come back next week to enter again – because these giveaways will continue for the next 2 weeks).

For a second entry, you can:
· Tweet about this post with a link to it (and put your tweet URL in a separate comment below)
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· Sweepstakes ends 5 PM EST on October 18, 2010.

And be sure to visit the BlogHer.com Kellogg exclusive offers page – you have 24 other chances to win $100 every single week that this program is running! Here are the official rules.

Mom’s Breakfast Club was started to help educate moms and families about kids’ cereal and share the scoop on their nutritional benefits and ingredients. To learn more about the program, visit www.loveyourcereal.com.

This giveaway is now closed.

This is sponsored content from BlogHer and The Laughing Cow.

Now I certainly don’t mean to brag, but I’m sort of the queen of setting some seriously unrealistic fitness goals.

You know, like losing 30 pounds over the course of a single weekend. Or vowing with my whole heart that, come Monday morning, I’m going to wake up and run five miles before breakfast.

Neveryoumind that I don’t actually run.

And because I have a personality that is completely and totally fascinated by whatever shiny object happens to be sitting in front of me at the time, it’s hard for me to stay motivated with a fitness routine. It’s hard to put on walking clothes when I’m just so delighted by combing through an old high school friend’s pictures on Facebook. Or when I’m smack-dab in the middle of a reality show marathon. Or when my little boy tells me that he would really like to snuggle on the couch with me for a little bit because “I just love you so much, Mama, that I never want to let go of you.”

I mean, come on. You’d totally stay on the couch with your child, too.

But the fact of the matter is that if I want to see that little guy grow up – which OF COURSE I do – and if I want to be a person who feels good and energetic and about 15 years younger than my actual age, I have to take care of myself. That doesn’t mean that I have to look like Heidi Klum or have Jillian Michaels’ rock-solid abs. It just means that I need to be intentional about doing the things that I KNOW make me feel better.

And oddly enough, even though the power of rationalization might convince me otherwise in a moment of weakness, eating ten chocolate kisses in one sitting REALLY DOESN’T contribute to my overall energy level. Neither does, well, SITTING.

Over the years I’ve come up with all sorts of misguided ways to keep myself motivated when it comes to exercise. There was the if-I-walk-two-miles-I’ll-reward-myself-with-fried-chicken-for-supper method, the if-I-walk-for-10-days-in-a-row-I-bet-I-can-lose-two-dress-sizes method, the my-class-reunion-is-coming-up-and-I’d-prefer-to-feel-moderately-confident method. And honestly, I’ve had a little short-term success with all of those strategies.

But as someone who has always struggled with weight and body image and all of those fun things, I’ve realized – especially over the last few years – that there are two sentences that are the very best motivation of all:

I want to feel strong.

I want to feel healthy.

And I’m certainly not saying that those two sentences have inspired me to train for a half-marathon. Oh no ma’am. I have a long way to go in terms of reaching my fitness goals. But those sentences do inspire me to get in the swimming pool with my child and play just as hard as he does. They inspire me to get outside on a beautiful day and just move.

They remind me that I don’t have to do crazy things in some misguided quest for unrealistic results.

That’s sort of freeing, you know?

If you’d like to win a $150 Visa gift card, leave a comment on this post that answers the following question:

Share a funny diet or exercise story, video clip, picture, etc. in the comment section and you will be entered to win $150. Please keep your comments G-rated as any profanity or offensive content will automatically disqualify you from sweepstakes entry. You should also visit The Daily Laugh hub to read funny content each day and for weekly chances to win $100 at the “Play For Laughs” game. If you share something really funny, we may even use it in The Daily Laugh!

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Happy Laughing, everybody!

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This is sponsored content from BlogHer and Similasan.

After I became a mama, one of the things I realized pretty quickly is that I like a little structure in our daily routine. I try not to be regimented, but I’m definitely a fan of establishing clear guidelines with our son. Nothing fancy or complicated – just simple stuff like making sure that homework is done before afternoon playtime, limiting video games to the weekends, making sure the dirty clothes go into (and not just in the general vicinity of) the laundry basket, and feeding the dog. And when those guidelines get ignored, I’ve been known to offer some gentle reminders and heartfelt encouragement to OBEY THE RULES, POR FAVOR.

But if there’s anything that gets me off of my let’s-stick-to-the-routine game, it’s seeing our little guy when he doesn’t feel so well. There’s something about a sick child that just turns my heart to mush, and the first time our son got really sick – when he was about one and a half – I turned into some sort of domestic genie. HIS WISH WAS MY COMMAND.

These days – now that he’s a great big first grader – I’m really no different when any sort of illness enters our family equation. I stop short of walking around with an order pad and a pen, but I might as well considering that I pepper him with questions about all the possible things that might make him feel better.

Sprite?

Crackers?

Crushed ice?

Cold rag?

Another episode of Phineas and Ferb?

Another 16 episodes of Phineas and Ferb?

Another blanket?

A brand new car on your 16th birthday?

YOU BETCHA.

Last year our little guy was sick for about a week with the flu, and the first few days of it just broke my heart. He was so lethargic, so not-at-all-himself, and all we could do to help him was to give him ibuprofen and lots of liquids. He stayed in one spot on the couch for two solid days, and I couldn’t walk past him without reaching down to feel his little forehead. We just couldn’t get that fever to break.

Bless him.

On the third or fourth day, though, things got tricky. He started feeling pretty good – but that high fever continued to linger. So while he really seemed to think that he could run circles around the house, his temperature indicated otherwise. And we had to find ways to keep him entertained that wouldn’t interfere with getting him well.

We watched “Finding Nemo” about nine times, played cards, battled through some Connect Four marathons and read more books than I could count. I bought the markers that you can use to draw on window panes, then quickly realized that I was going to be scrubbing them off of my windows for THE REST OF MY LIFE and decided to haul out all our coloring books instead. Our little boy loves mazes, and he blazed through every single maze he could get his hands on. We gave the no-Wii-during-the-week rule a temporary hiatus and let him play to his heart’s content (as long as he was sitting down and not imitating all of Mario’s awesome jump moves).

And do you know what? The last part of that week was just the sweetest time. A sick child has a way of putting life back into crystal clear perspective, and I found myself being much more mindful of our blessings as a family. When that fever FINALLY broke on day seven, I was relieved, no doubt about it – and I was also very grateful for the sweet memories that we’d made in the midst of some unexpected circumstances.

So what about you? What are some things you do with the kids in your life when they’re under the weather? How do you make the days a little more fun and bearable for them? Leave a comment with your answer, and you’ll be entered to win a $100 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer.

For a second entry, you can:
· Tweet about this post with a link to it (and put your tweet URL in a separate comment below)
· Blog about this post with a link to it (and put your blog post URL in a separate comment below)
· Read the official rules for alternate form of entry.

And don’t miss your other chances to win – you can find a complete list of participating bloggers over on the BlogHer.com exclusive offers page. You can also check out the official rules.

This giveaway will end on Thursday, November 18th.

Thanks for participating, everybody!
________________________

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