This is sponsored content by BlogHer and Kellogg’s.

I try to be organized. I really do.

But sometimes life conspires against me. And sometimes I don’t do so well with the whole “being organized” thing. And sometimes – especially in the mornings – I tend to run around our house like a chicken with its head cut off while I put our seven year-old’s snack in my purse and my wallet in his bookbag and the shoes, OH MY WORD THE SHOES, I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE THE SHOES ARE.

Needless to say, our home is a calm oasis of tranquility on weekday mornings between 6:00 and 6:55.

Just this morning, for example, I had the best intentions. I’d made my way through about a third of my early-morning routine by 6:15, and when I woke up my sleeping child, I felt pretty good about the direction of the morning. I didn’t feel hurried. I didn’t feel crazed. THERE WERE EVEN CLEAN CLOTHES.

But while I was fixing my hair and putting on make-up, the seven year-old decided to set a record for the world’s longest steaming hot shower. I didn’t realize this, of course, until I walked out of my bathroom and realized that he was still singing and showering up a storm in his. Long story endless, he sat down to breakfast 10 minutes later than usual, and any hope of a hot breakfast was shot.

Thankfully I always keep a few things in the pantry that will work for breakfast when we’re in a hurry. Cereal. Toaster pastries. Granola bars. Peanut butter. Granted, I really prefer to serve a hot breakfast on a school morning, but I also recognize that when we’re in a hurry, those go-to items? ARE MY FRIEND.

They ensure that my little man actually eats breakfast (as opposed to sitting at the table and listening to me wonder aloud if we have time to run through a drive-thru), and because they’re not everyday items in our morning routine, he always smiles when he gets a “special treat” for breakfast. A bowl of cereal with a scoop of peanut butter on the side is one of his favorites, and on mornings like today, I’m more grateful than I can tell you for a simple breakfast option.

So what about you? What kinds of foods do you keep on hand just in case you’re pressed for time in the mornings? 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 3 weeks).

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!

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 a sponsored review from BlogHer and Ragú.

When I was but a blushing young newlywed, I made my own spaghetti sauce. Now I certainly don’t mean that I grew my own tomatoes and herbs and spent endless hours planting and tending and harvesting my garden so that I could serve my husband the freshest possible tomato sauce, because the fact of the matter is that I’ve never really grown anything successfully. Except for maybe weeds. But those don’t really count, now do they?

I loved going to the grocery store, picking out all my favorite ingredients, then combining tomatoes, garlic, onion, basil and oregano in a big ole pot and letting the heat work its magic. My next door neighbor, Ann, taught me to grate a little carrot in my sauce to add a little sweetness. And don’t tell anybody, but I added a little sugar, too. The sauce could be time-consuming, but it was good. And I figured I’d make my own sauce forever.

After I became a mama, however, I started looking for shortcuts in the kitchen. Making my own spaghetti sauce wasn’t really high on the list anymore, and I’ll never forget the first time I made a spinach and spaghetti casserole with the sauce from a jar. IT WAS A REVELATION. It was simple and delicious and fast, and if you’ve ever tried to cook a meal while keeping one eye on a toddler, you know that fast cooking can be your friend. I was hooked.

A few weeks ago some folks from Ragu asked if they could send me some samples of their new spaghetti sauce. Since we eat spaghetti sauce in one dish or another at least once a week, I happily agreed. Truth be told, I’ve only bought Ragu a handful of times – we have typically preferred Another Brand – but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try, especially when I saw that the new recipe has two servings of vegetables in every half cup. If you’re someone who tries to make sure your little ones eat nutritious meals, you know that those two veggie servings per half cup are SOLID GOLD.

A couple of nights ago I decided to make lasagna with the Ragu sauce. I actually opened a jar of the old recipe and a jar of the new recipe so that I could compare the taste – and do you know what? I really could tell a difference. Since there are twice as many vegetables in the new recipe, the sauce is thicker, and the flavor is great. GREAT.

After the taste test, I assembled all the ingredients on the kitchen counter so that I could take their picture. And also so that I could remember how I made the dish because I wasn’t following a recipe. I’m all cuckoo and devil-may-care that way.

Don’t they look cute?

I browned my ground beef, cooked my noodles (our grocery store was out of the whole wheat lasagna noodles, so I improvised with whole wheat rigatoni) and mixed together the ricotta and cottage cheeses. Then I started layering. And here’s how it looked before I cooked it.

But do you know what’s even better? How it looked right before we ate it.

It was DELICIOUS – a huge hit with the whole family. Our seven year-old practically licked his plate, and it made me feel good that the sauce was chock-full of vegetables. I mixed cottage cheese in with the ricotta and he had no idea (he would not touch cottage cheese under normal circumstances), and I loved that our one dish hit four of the five food groups: dairy, veggies, protein and whole grains. OH, HAPPY DAY.

Here’s the recipe:

Riga-sagna

2 lbs. ground chuck, browned and drained (seasoned to taste)
1 jar Ragu
1 lb. whole wheat rigatoni, cooked
16 oz. whole milk ricotta cheese
16 oz. cottage cheese
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 eggs, beaten
1 cup mozzarella cheese, freshly grated

Preheat oven to 375. Combine cooked ground beef with Ragu sauce and let simmer on stove while cooking and assembling other ingredients.

Boil and drain pasta. Set aside.

Combine ricotta cheese, cottage cheese, basil, oregano and eggs – then set aside.

In a 9×13 baking dish, lightly coat the bottom of the dish with sauce. Put a layer of noodles on top, then ricotta mixture, then sauce, then noodles, then ricotta mixture, then sauce. Sprinkle mozzarella over top, then bake for 45 minutes to an hour.

You may have a few noodles left over if you cook the whole box – just FYI.

If you’d like to enter to win a $100 Visa gift card courtesy of BlogHer, leave a comment that answers the following question: what’s your favorite way to use spaghetti sauce when you cook for your family? Old fashioned spaghetti and meatballs? Chicken parmesan? Lasagna? A great family recipe?

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.

There are ten other chances to win a $100 gift card, so be sure to check out the BlogHer.com special offers page. And by all means feel free to check out the official rules.

By the way, if you’d like to be one of the first to sample the new Ragu recipe, check out the Ragu Facebook page. They’re giving away some tremendous goodie baskets filled with Ragu sauce, pasta, a colander, a box grater, cookware and all sorts of kitchen gadgets via the Ragu Facebook Sweepstakes.

Happy Ragu-ing, y’all!

This giveaway is now closed.

This is sponsored content by BlogHer and Kellogg’s.

When I was younger, I always thought I’d grow up to be a pancake mom. You know, the mom whose family woke up on Saturday mornings to the smell of bacon frying and made-from-scratch pancakes cooking on the griddle. Naturally I’d serve the pancakes with fresh blueberries and warm maple syrup, and it probably goes without saying that I’d be wearing a starched apron and a double strand of pearls as I lovingly served breakfast to a table of smiling, grateful people.

(I’m thinking that maybe all those afternoons I spent watching reruns of Leave It To Beaver on TBS may have left an indelible imprint on my hopes and dreams.)

(However, I am happy to tell you that I never bought into the notion that I should clean my house while wearing two-inch heels.)

(Sanity prevailed!)

And the reality, of course, is that while there have been some weekend mornings when I’ve cooked big breakfasts for my family – especially during holidays when our extended family is visiting – by and large I tend to take the weekend off from the hustle and bustle of getting breakfast on the table. We eat breakfast, mind you, but odds are it’s going to be something that does not require me to turn on the stove and/or oven – something like cereal or peanut butter on whole wheat bread or, if we’re out of town for the weekend, something like this:

I know.

But to my boy’s credit, he was not in fact about to polish off a half-dozen donuts when I took this picture. Granted, he can put down some original glazed, but six donuts in one sitting is not a part of his breakfast-eating repertoire, and for that I am grateful. Because quite frankly I don’t think I’d have the foggiest idea how to harness the aftermath of a child who eats that much sugar before 8 AM.

So basically there’s one word that describes our weekend breakfast routine: simple. And we love it that way.

What about you? What does a typical weekend breakfast look like in your house? 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 4 weeks).

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!

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 by BlogHer and Kellogg’s.

I really wish that I could take some credit for the happy mornings in our house.

Really, I do.

But the fact of the matter is that cheerful isn’t my typical disposition early in the mornings. Oh, I try to fake it. I say “good morning!” like I mean it, and I do my very best not to grumble. But the fact of the matter is that I have about a thirty minute window between “awake” and “civil,” and the first key to a good morning around these parts is that I experience the window on my own. Up thirty minutes before everybody else. Or the morning goes downhill and fast.

(I’m really not that bad.)

(I just like to wake up gradually).

However, despite my questionable disposition in the mornings, there is another force at work in our house that always seems to counter – and I’d even say trump – whatever grumpiness I might have going on. The other force is about four and a half feet tall, about sixty pounds, and he’s never, ever, EVER met a morning that he didn’t absolutely love. He’s a seven year-old dose of cheerfulness and light every. single. day.

Don’t worry. We’re not requiring him to show up at the breakfast table in a suit a bow tie. But the expression on his face in that picture? It’s the way he looks as soon as he wakes up. That is to say: happy as a clam.

Even though I don’t have to do a whole lot to keep the morning mood light and upbeat (thanks to our resident Cheerful McHappyson), I do try to keep our mornings predictable. It does us all a world of good when we don’t feel rushed or hurried or dead-dog certain that we’re running 15 minutes late. I like to have breakfast on the table by 6:30 at the latest, and while we’re eating I typically look up our verses for the day and read them out loud. After that I put on my make-up while the little guy is getting dressed, and by 6:55 we’re ready to head out the door – usually without incident.

You’ll be happy to know that by 7 in the morning I have usually found my way to my early morning happy place. It just takes me a little while to get there.

So what about you? What do you do to get your family’s mornings off to a good start? 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 5 weeks).

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!

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 and the winner has been notified.

This is sponsored content from BlogHer and The Laughing Cow.

When I went off to college I felt pretty good about my weight. Granted, I wasn’t thin by any stretch of the imagination, but I was healthy. I liked how I looked in my clothes.

But – and you know the drill – it didn’t take long for me to start packing on the pounds. And while I’d love to tell you a kicky little story about how I went home for summer vacation bound and determined to kick the freshman 15 in the teeth, the fact of the matter is that I was waaaaay past “15” at that point. I’d passed “15” sometime around Thanksgiving. Something about eating cheeseburgers and fries really late at night and developing the misguided mentality that a two-piece fried chicken dinner (with red beans and rice, French fries and a biscuit) constituted a perfectly healthy lunch.

Needless to say, I was big friends with elastic the summer after my freshman year.

I lost a little bit of weight that summer thanks to a whole lot of exercise, but since I was working in Atlanta and eating out a ton, the weight didn’t fall off like I’d hoped it would. So flash forward to the end of my sophomore year, when I was still carrying around some of that excess freshman baggage plus a few pizza-related pounds from my sophomore year. I wanted a diet that would give me results. And fast.

This was right around the time when liquid diets became wildly popular. Lots of people bought different flavored shakes in the grocery store, and other folks favored a liquid diet that was supervised by a doctor. I decided to go the doctor-supervised route since I was such a bastion of maturity and responsibility. After all, I had once tried to lose upwards of 15 pounds over the course of 4 days by eating nothing but popcorn for my meals.

Be sure to let me know if you’d like any other diet or fitness tips!

In retrospect I’m not entirely sure why I thought a liquid diet would work for me; after all, I’ve been known to crave the texture of certain foods so much that I’ll plan a whole meal around them (I’M TALKING TO YOU, GUACAMOLE). But since the liquid diet promised big results, I figured I could endure it long enough to drop those pesky extra pounds. And I figured that if I was really desperate to chew something, I could go to town on some sugarless gum.

Extra Wintergreen and I became very close that summer. Inseparable, really.

The first week of the liquid diet was fine. It actually felt a little bit like detox, which wasn’t a bad thing given all the junk I’d eaten during finals. I don’t necessarily know if our bodies are meant to consume a two-liter of Mountain Dew and a bag of Cheddar and Sour Cream potato chips in one marathon-study sitting, so I kind of enjoyed the break from sugar and your various and sundry simple carbohydrates. And after about seven days, I felt GOOD. Sassy, even.

The second week was a little more difficult. I wasn’t just hungry. I was HAWNGRY. And even though there were a few “foods” I could eat – chicken or beef broth, for example – they didn’t really have the crunch or texture or, you know, flavor that I was looking for. But I was a good little dieter, and I felt so encouraged by the nurse and the doctor who were supervising me that I was resolved to keep on keepin’ on. With my Extra Wintergreen by my side AT ALL TIMES, DON’T YOU EVEN THINK ABOUT ASKING ME FOR A PIECE.

At some point during the fourth week I made a trip to a big discount store with my mother. By that point I’d lost about 12 pounds, I think, so the good news was that my clothes were fitting better than they had in awhile. The bad news was that I was weak as a kitten. Mama and I hadn’t been in the discount store more than five minutes when I had to find a patio set on display so that I could sit down for a bit, and Mama knew me well enough to know that I just wasn’t feeling well.

I’ll never forget how she leaned over me with a look of concern on her face and said, “Is there anything I can do for you? Anything that would make you feel better?”

And y’all, I will never forget my response. My 19 year-old self looked up at my mama and said one very important word with determination and clarity: “Meat. MEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT.”

I kid you not: we left that store, drove home, and Mama cooked me two petite sirloin steaks right then and there. Cooked them in the cast iron skillet. And if you’re wondering how I remember that, it’s because OH MY LANDS IT IS A PRECIOUS MEMORY.

I learned a great lesson that day: any weight loss plan has to have balance at its core. I continued with the liquid diet for the rest of the summer, but I also ate small meals with real food. It took me a few weeks, but I finally figured out that man should not live by liquid alone.

Or, for that matter, popcorn.

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!

And don’t miss the other bloggers’ posts – you have 11 other chances to win each month!

Questions about the sweepstakes? Check out the official rules.

Happy Laughing, everybody!

This giveaway is now closed.

This is sponsored content by BlogHer and Kellogg’s.

It always starts around mid-July. Always. And it seems like there’s nothing I can do to shake it.

Nothing.

Now contrary to what you might think, I’m actually not talking about Alabama’s stifling summer humidity, though that definitely kicks in full-force in July and makes me long to live atop an ice block on a planet called Cold.

But the real reason for my summertime apprehension is that mid-July brings on the first feelings of dread about our back-to-school schedule. Granted, in mid-July the prospect of having to wake up early is more than a month away, but please understand that one of my most favorite pastimes is to obsess about things over which I have no control. It’s sort of like a hobby, only without any of the fun or tangible rewards.

Despite my fretting, I’m usually pleasantly surprised by how easily we transition back into our school schedule. We try to gradually work our way back to a school night bedtime over the course of a week or so, and by the time school starts, we’re typically in a pretty good place.

I wish I’d known to dial back the bedtime gradually when I was in high school, because back then my idea of transitioning into a school schedule was to go to bed five hours earlier than normal the night before school started and then toss and turn while I wondered, WHY, WHY CAN’T I SLEEP, WHY, I DON’T UNDERSTAND.

In addition to our sleep adjustments, we do something else to make the back-to-school transition fun: SPECIAL TRADITIONS. That means that the back-to-school breakfast is absolutely and totally our little boy’s choice – whether that be grits or bacon or a favorite cereal or a peanut butter sandwich. It also means that when the first day of school is over, we’re going to meet some of our favorite friends and do something fun to celebrate.

This year it was a trip to a local yogurt place. And the kids had a blast.

In fact, by the time we got home that day, I was ready to wake up early all over again. As much as I dread being tied to a schedule during the summer, the predictability of our days becomes sort of oddly comforting once it’s school time again.

So what about you? What’s something fun you do to help your little one(s) get back in the swing of a school schedule? 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 6 weeks).

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!

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.