I cannot believe that tomorrow is Easter. Where did the Winter go?

(Please don’t mistake my disbelief for being upset. I am thrilled beyond measure that Spring is here)

One of my favorite holiday traditions with my kids is reading holiday-themed books with them, and I love finding book round ups of children’s story books that other parents (and children) have tested and loved.

Jennifer at 5 Minutes for Books included a fun round up of Spring stories this past week, and I thought it was too timely to pass by.

Bright, Colorful Easter Picture Books

Topical books are always a good place to start when you are trying to find some books to share with your preschooler or elementary student. Here are a few books to break out this Spring season that combine creative text and bright beautiful illustrations.

Click here to see the list of books that Jennifer recommends!

Jennifer also suggests that everyone checks out Dawn’s review of the HOP DVD here at 5 Minutes for Mom, where you can enter to win a prize pack worth almost $170, including the DVD and a Blu-Ray player.

If your kids are a little too old for picture books, then you’ll probably love I’ve Had it Up to Here with Teenagers. We’re giving that away, too!

Checking in with the Sisters recap is written by Lolli. You can find me blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

Valentine’s Day is one of those wonderful holidays where the only gift you need to give is a little love to the people you care about most. As a mom, I spend all year doing the things I have to do with my kids and I like taking the extra time during the holidays to do the things I want to do with them. That usually means baking something extra special or surprising the kids with a breakfast made with love in the form of heart shaped pancakes.

This year we’re getting in the kitchen to spend some time together making treats our children as young as 3 can help create like these Dipped and Decorated Pretzels for Valentine’s Day.

*Step 1*

Gather your favorite pretzel snacks. The large pretzel rods and twists work well for this sweet project but you can definitely dip the small sticks and twists too for a mini treat.

*Step 2*

Candy melts are a great product for a non-chocolate flavor and come ready in fun holiday colors like red, white and pink. When melted the candy, use a microwave-safe bowl and add 2 tablespoons of vegetable shortening to about a cup of candy melts. Microwave the melts in 30 second intervals, stirring each time in between until the melts are smooth and creamy.

*Step 3*

Place a large sheet of wax paper over a hard surface. Dip and cover each pretzel covering about a third of the surface. Tap the pretzel on the side of the bowl to remove excess candy. If your bowl is too small, use a spoon to pour the candy melts over the pretzels (necessary for the rods).

*Step 4*

Place the dipped pretzels on a sheet of wax paper and decorate with your favorite candy sprinkles.

*Step 5*

Let the dipped pretzels harden for about an hour. You can also place them in the fridge for a quick chill.

*Step 6*

Wrap your treats with candy wrappers which you can find at your local craft store.

The Valentine’s Day Pretzel Treats are perfect for some special time in the kitchen with kids and even an affordable treat to make and take to school parties. Do you have a special treat you like to make for Valentine’s Day?

Written By 5 Minutes for Food Contributing Editor Cat Davis
Join us every Thursday for a new recipe your family will love.

Happy Holidays!!!

We hope you are having a beautiful, peaceful time with your family and friends this holiday season. Thank you SO much for being a part of 5 Minutes for Mom.

We appreciate you so much — and would love to see YOUR holiday photos!

Link UP!

We know you have some wonderful holiday photos on your cameras and phones. Have you posted them yet?

As soon as you post, make sure you link up your holiday and Christmas posts here by pasting the URL of your posts in one of the linkies below. Then hop around and read other posts! It will be a festive way to meet new friends and visit old ones.

It is kind of like a bloggy sleigh ride…

Add your link below:

Here’s a Thumbnail style Linky…

Or a basic style Linky if you prefer…

In case you want to — we would love it if you gave it a Stumble, Tweet or Facebook Like. Thanks so much! We really appreciate your support of 5 Minutes for Mom.

Written by Janice Croze, co-founder of 5 Minutes for Mom.

We want to get to know you better — Tweet with us: @5minutesformom, find us on Facebook: Facebook.com/5minutesformom, or join our newsletter list.

I love Christmas stories, and this one, found on our sister site, 5 Minutes for Faith, touched me this week. The author, Amy from Signs, Miracles, and Wonders tells the story of finding a blessing in an unexpected place – the courtroom.

The Blessing

The man opened the mail and couldn’t believe what he saw. A jury summons, for the week before Christmas, one of the worst off all times to be called to service. With so much to do before the holidays, he couldn’t believe he would have to spend every day, possibly in a courtroom. He was a person who believed everything that happened to him had a purpose, so as he went to the courthouse each day, he asked God what in the world he had planned for him. Why did he need to be there this particular week? Could there possibly be any good reason?

Each day, nothing particularly special happened and by the end of the week, he was a little discouraged thinking somehow he had missed what God was calling him to do. The last day, he was chatting with a bailiff when he learned of a family who was in desperate need of financial help. Both the husband and wife had been diagnosed with cancer, so their medical bills were especially high. Neither one had been able to work for some time. Earlier that week on the way home from cashing a disability check at the bank, the woman had been robbed, her purse stolen. They would have nothing for Christmas. The man left the courtroom thinking this must be it, somehow he was supposed to help this family, but he was not sure what to do next….

Finish reading this story…

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor, Lolli. You can find me blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

Lolli here….Last Wednesday, Susan and I led an entertaining and educational twitter party with Toon Boom, where we chatted about developing creativity in children. If I had any doubts before, I know for sure now – our readers are amazing parents and have some incredible ideas!

Toon Boom Animation Inc. is the worldwide leader in digital content and animation creation software. Toon Boom carries user-friendly animation applications for all, catering to the needs of children, home users, creative professionals as well as students, educators and schools.

Toon Boom eCards

This past week, I discovered Toon Boom’s free eCards, and I went to work creating a card with all of my kids. It was easy to upload pictures of each of my kids and even easier to share our creation afterwards. Here’s how it turned out (click the image to see the animated version):

As an added bonus (if eCards aren’t fun enough in themselves), when you create an eCard with Toon Boom and then share it with family and friends, you are entered to win an iPad. Send your customized eCard to as many people as you want and get the same number of chances to win an iPad! Toon Boom will give away 1 (one) iPad. The winner will be selected on January 3, 2012.

Did you miss the twitter party?

In case you missed our twitter party last week, we wanted to offer you the special promo code that Toon Boom created just for 5 Minutes for Mom readers. Use promo code 5MINUTES25 for a discount of 25% off all Toon Boom’s Kids software, valid until Dec 31, 2011. It’s the perfect gift for your budding artist!

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor, Lolli. You can find me blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

This is part of a promotional campaign with Toon Boom. All opinions are our own.

Holiday season is party season. It seems like there’s a party every weekend from Thanksgiving to Christmas, and the question on many people’s minds is how can you make yours stand out? Certified Specialist of Spirits and Master of Wine Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan took the time to answer some of our holiday party questions.

Here’s what we asked Jennifer:

• We’d love some suggestions for new and unique drinks to serve at this year’s holiday parties. Do you have any cocktails that you would recommend?
• We’d love to hear your tips on the best foods and drinks to pair together at parties. Sometimes coming up with the menu is the hardest part of planning a party!
• What do you recommend for those party-goers who do not drink alcohol? Do you have any festive mocktails that are both kid and non-drinker friendly?
• When we’re getting ready for holiday get-togethers this season, is there an easy way to know how much food and drink to purchase for a certain party size?

 
Here’s what Jennifer had to say to 5 Minutes for Mom:

MORE ABOUT JENNIFER SIMONETTI-BRYAN:

Jennifer Simonetti-Bryan is a definitive authority on spirits in the United States and among a small number of people to have received the highest credentials in the spirits and wine industry. She has a Professional Certificate in Spirits from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust and is a Certified Specialist of Spirits from the Society of Wine Educators. Ms. Simonetti-Bryan is also one of only a few hundred people in the world to hold the Master of Wine title (M.W.) from The Institute of Masters of Wine in London, England—the highest and most difficult title to achieve in the industry. Winner of the Wiesbaden Tasting Trophy from the Institute of Masters of Wine, Ms. Simonetti-Bryan has trained thousands of professionals in the spirits and wine industry, has judged international spirits and wine competitions, and has hosted seminars with Food Network stars including Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay. She is a frequent guest on television programs, including Fox Business and Bloomberg TV, and has been featured in Fortune, Wine & Spirits Magazine, and Wine Enthusiast Magazine.

MORE ABOUT THE GREAT COURSES:

Designed to meet the demand for lifelong learning and to change the way people think about the world, The Great Courses is a highly popular series of university-level lectures crafted and delivered by top professors and experts. The Great Courses currently offers more than 350 courses in a range of video and audio formats including DVD, CD, and digital downloads. Courses span more than 5,000 hours of content across ten subject categories: science and mathematics, history, fine arts and music, religion and theology, philosophy and intellectual history, literature and English language, business and economics, better living, professional, and high school. Since 1990, over 10 million courses have been sold around the world.

Disclosure: We did not receive anything in exchange for this interview. This opportunity was made possible by The Great Courses.

 
Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor, Lolli. You can find me blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

When I was little, we always had a large gift basket or two during the Christmas season. I don’t know who sent them to us, but I only know that they were always there.

Nuts and cheeses and candies and big baskets with bows became something that symbolized the holidays for me. After I left home and eventually got married, we had a gift basket dry spell. I missed those baskets full of sweet, salty, and savory treats.

The year that my dad sent a gift basket to us was such an exciting, nostalgic one for me, and I loved sharing that holiday memory and tradition with my kids. Now, we get gift baskets every year (though often I just get them for myself).

We recently had a huge gift basket delivered to our door from Wine Country Gift Baskets, and the kids were especially excited when we opened it. Inside was a little bit of everything – chocolates, crackers, popcorn, etc. The kids and I (and Dad, too) loved tearing through the boxes and trying a little bit of everything.

I selected The Festive Gourmet, which is $74.95 plus shipping, and includes Buttercrunch toffee cookies, honey mustard pretzels, French truffles, sea salt almonds, Godiva white and milk chocolate truffles, Sonoma Jacks garlic herb cheese spread, chocolate graham crackers, peanut brittle, organic green tea, butter cookies, Lily O’Brien’s chocolate chip cookies, smoked salmon, vanilla sea salt caramels, Ghirardelli dark chocolate with caramel, double chocolate hot cocoa, extra dark chocolate hazelnut pralines, peppermint puffs, olives and more.

They had ME at Ghirardelli.

I was impressed with the quality and variety of the food and snacks in our gift basket from Wine Country Gift Baskets. In looking at the selection of holiday gift baskets on their site, they had several options that were full of amazing treats. Take a peek at Season’s Greetings (which includes free shipping!), Holiday Delight (this one is enormous!), and Happy Holidays (a smaller option, also with free shipping).

True to their name, Wine Country Gift Baskets also has an extensive selection of wine gift baskets, as well as occasion-themed baskets that make the perfect gifts for housewarmings, new baby, anniversaries, birthdays, etc.

Enter to win a Holiday Gift Basket

To enter to win the The Festive Gourmet from Wine Country Gift Baskets (the same one that I received), leave a comment on this post letting us know what kind of gift basket you would love to receive the most. Do you see another basket on their site that has you drooling?

This giveaway will end on December 17, 2011 at midnight ET and a winner will be chosen at random and announced on Sunday in the weekly Around The Blogosphere. Please see our site’s terms and conditions for more information.

Disclosure: I received a gift basket from Wine Country Gift Baskets to review, but the thoughts and opinions about the product are my own.

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor, Lolli. You can find me blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

Jennifer here sharing a tackle that is long overdue. I’m years late on this one.

I have to admit that as I’ve gotten older and our lives have gotten busier, I’ve gotten a touch of the Grinch when it comes to decorating for Christmas. I’ve had my excuses. For several years it was being out of town Thanksgiving weekend and then having dress rehearsals and a church Christmas musical that took up the first weekend of December, and then visiting family at Christmas that often made me think “What’s the point?”

Last year all we managed to decorate the mantle with stockings and lights, but because we left our home in Connecticut a week before Christmas to move back to Houston, that was all we could — or wanted to — do.

This year I was determined to do it right. I even shopped for some more lights and garland and got the mantle done on Saturday morning.

Saturday afternoon we bought our tree, Houston-style. In Connecticut we did the New England thing and cut down our own tree at a family-owned tree farm. Here we walked the aisles of Lowe’s and bought one of the first ones we saw (at a great price — $30).

Then we put on Third Day’s Christmas Offerings and decorated. It’s done! Let’s not even think about the fact that in a month, we’ll have to take it down, okay??

What about you? Do you love decorating or have you come to dread it?

Calling All Tacklers!

We’re looking for YOU – guest bloggers to post about your own tackles right here. If you are interested in showing off your tackles (we all need some tips and ideas!) then send a quick email to lolli.5m4m at gmail (link in the About Lolli section at the bottom of the post). Thanks for your inspiring tackles!!

Mom Bloggers — what are you tackling this week?

Link up your Tackle it Tuesday post…

Tell us what you’re up to with all your other tackles… housework and otherwise… add your link to your tackle in the Linky below!

We are Tackling Our To-Do Lists Together and making housework bloggable — Each week on Tuesday, we are posting before and after pictures of a project or trouble area that we tackled this week.

Find out more about how Tackle It Tuesday began.
The project can be little or big – whatever you want.

Basically, Tackle It Tuesday is about giving ourselves incentive, deadlines and satisfaction in tackling all our tasks — whether household or otherwise.

If you tackled a project this week, just add a comment and add your link below.

Here is a fun thumbnail linky:

And here is a basic linky if you prefer your linkies the good old fashioned way!

Written by 5 Minutes for Books Managing Editor and 5 Minutes for Mom contributor Jennifer Donovan.

As much as I love the holidays, I admit that the thought of the Christmas season “officially” starting this weekend gives me small waves of panic. Let’s just say that sometimes December can be a tough and VERY busy month.

As I was checking in with our sister sites this week, I enjoyed reading this story from Mary, author of RefreshMoments, written on our sister site, 5 Minutes for Faith.

Hurry Less, Worry Less at Christmas

When Dean and I were dating and first married, our holidays were spent putting hundreds of miles on our cars as we drove to where his family lived for a couple days, journeyed an hour and a half to my family’s Christmas Eve gathering and back, and then spent time with some of his family before making the trek back home.

After we moved to the Northwest for seminary, we added plane travel to the itinerary, often driving an additional five hundred miles or more to make sure we got to visit as many people as we could. There was a lot of hurrying and scurrying, and not much in the way of peace or rest.

Our most peaceful Christmas was probably the one when I was too pregnant to travel with our first baby due in January…..

Finish reading this post….

You can win a copy of the book Hurry Less, Worry Less at Christmas, which Mary mentions in her post, on 5 Minutes for Mom and on 5 Minutes for Books.

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor, Lolli. You can find me blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

Do you know about Driscoll’s – Only the finest Berries?  So good.  I recently did a Twitter Party with them.  They have strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries.

Right now I can’t seem to get enough of their strawberries and raspberries (even though they happen to be out of season for New England) when I hit the supermarket.  The boys and I love them.

Driscoll’s is currently running a very exciting contest called ‘Celebrate the Sweeter Moments‘.

Between now and December 15th, when the entry period closes, you just need to visit their website and tell them about a special occasion when the berries made the moment sweet.  (I’m thinking back to holidays at my Great Grama’s house when I was a kid.  Strawberries in a homemade sauce over cheesecake.  As a kid I didn’t even love cheesecake, but I would have some just for those strawberries.)

Tell your story, then upload a photo of the sweetest berry moment.

Once you have entered the contest, then all you need to do is come back from December 19th through January 9th to vote for your favorites. Winners will be announced March 1st, 2012.

The Grand Prize for winning this contest is A Viking Professional Cookware Set (worth $1,395)!!!

Nine finalists will receive $100 in Driscoll’s Berries Coupons!  So what are you waiting for?  Enter TODAY!  You can visit their Facebook page or go directly to their website.

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom contributing writer, Liza. You can find Liza on her personal blog, Cira’s Lyrics, and on twitter at @Liza_Rae.

This is a promotional campaign with Driscoll Berries. All opinions are our own.