Send holiday cards online: Writers’ cramp affects millions of people every year. Or at least tens of people. Give your favorite fountain pen the year off and instead address your holiday greetings electronically. It doesn’t just cut back on paper; it saves you money, too! Plus you’ll need all that hand-strength for wrapping presents…

Wrap gifts in gently used materials: Remember all that tissue paper your Aunt Sally used to wrap that teeny tiny birthday gift in a big huge bag? You can use it again! Re-gifting wrapping paper isn’t the same as sending that fruit cake from last year to your neighbor down the block. Consider it a gift for the environment and your pocket book. No used gift wrap at your house? Use the comics section of your favorite newspaper and remember to save the paper you unwrap from gifts this year for next holiday season.

Give homemade gifts or give the gift of an experience: Are you a three-years-running tri-state area cookie-baking champion? Create a catalog of your ten favorite recipes and enclose a batch of your best cookies as a gift.  Not culinary or crafty? Give tickets to a concert or purchase a service: zero packaging, tons of fun.

Twinkle and glow efficiently: Need to replace some holiday lights this year? Look for the LED kind! They’re more energy efficient than the incandescent variety.

Buy Smart Packaging: During your holiday shopping trips keep an eye out for sustainable packaging.  Start at the grocery store! Malt-O-Meal® cereals come in bags, instead of bags inside of boxes.  If there’s less packaging to begin with, there’s less to dispose of later!

Wait a minute, “Upcycle?” Yes! At schools across the country, a company called TerraCycle^TM is offering students the chance to turn in empty consumer packages instead of throwing them out. TerraCycle then “upcycles” and recycles these items into eco-friendly products ranging from pencil cases to umbrellas.

Malt-O-Meal Company is back to school as well, proudly beginning the second year of its partnership with TerraCycle. In over 2500 schools (and counting!) kids can turn in their family’s empty Malt-O-Meal® cereal bags to be “upcycled” or recycled by TerraCycle.  Each participating school’s “Cereal Bag Brigade^TM” then receives 2¢ per bag from TerraCycle!

Best yet, Malt-O-Meal cereal bags already result in 75% less packaging* than boxed brands. For each bag that’s “upcycled”, that number jumps to 100%!  Join a Brigade^TM today!

Want to learn more about what Malt-O-Meal is doing to reduce packaging waste? Click here!

Malt-O-Meal® cereal bags can be "upcycled" to reduce packaging waste even more!

*75% less packaging based on the net weight of empty consumer packaging per pound of cereal delivered. Even when their box size is smaller, the net weight of their box and empty inner bag is still greater than the net weight of the larger Malt-O-Meal® bag when empty.

Click here for official contest rules.

Looking for cinematic inspiration? Check out these video webisodes. A truly odd couple exchanges quirky dialogue and will inspire you to submit your own video for a chance to win!

Stay sensible, cereal shoppers: buy a bag of the great tasting Malt-O-Meal® cereal. They taste great; are kind to the budget, are offered with 75% less packaging* than boxed cereal brands, not to mention fun!

Watch this quirky duo make sense out of cereal packaging!

*75% less packaging based on the net weight of empty consumer packaging per pound of cereal delivered. Even when their box size is smaller, the net weight of their box and empty inner bag is still greater than the net weight of the larger Malt-O-Meal® bag when empty.

All those months of getting up early, getting the kids ready for school and helping them with their homework have come an end.  Yep, I’m talking about your kids getting out of school for the Summer.

If you are anything like me you might have mixed feelings about what’s happening around your house right now. After all, there are definitely some perks to having our children in school all day. If you are one of those parents having mixed feelings about Summer Break…. get over it. Here are some reasons to get excited about your Children’s Summer Break.

Catch up on a little Sleep

( image by viralbus)

Jump in a Pool with the Kids

(image by hoyasmeg)

Plenty of Time for Family Game Time

(image by Scott Ableman)

Roast Some Marshmallows and Make S’mores

(image by kretyen)

Build an Elaborate Sand Castle

(image by guy schmidt)

Fun Car Trips

(image by Kevron)

Go on a Camping Trip Together

(image by Lars Plougmann)

Have a Water Fight

(image by Dan Zen)

This is just a little over a handful of fun ideas to keep you excited about your Children’s Summer Break. Surely, you can think of some more. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood was from summer time. Grab your kids and get started making tons of Summertime Family Memories. It will time for them to head back to school before you know it!

When it comes to the environment and taking care of it I think I help out in an average way. I recycle cans, plastic and paper; I turn water off when brushing my teeth; I use aluminum reusable water bottles; I even run around the house turning off the lights. But, is that enough? Probably not.

On April 22nd its Earth Day. Earth Day is a day to help spread awareness about the environment and what we humans can do to protect the Earth. This is the Day that I vow to do better…. to do my part to ensure a healthy and sustainable planet for all of us. I am certainly not doing enough. But this, starting today, will change.

Earth has given me and my family so much. And, unfortunately up until now I think I have been taking much of what Earth has provided us for granted. No more…. it stops now.

My Vow to Earth on Earth Day

I love my Earth and Earth has been generous to my family. Earth provides the air we breath and the wonderful land my children play on. It feeds us and keeps on giving. But, without our part will the Earth as we know it be here for our children’s children? The thought makes me shudder. It has to be…. so I am changing my ways. How? Through many of the following Earth Day Activities that I will continue even once Earth Day has long passed.

Earth Day Activities

Plant a Garden

Not only is gardening fun for kids and the entire family, it is also a wonderful way to help the environment. Planting a garden is a terrific way to celebrate Earth Day!! We have already started our new garden earlier this month and we are loving it!!

How Planting a Garden Helps the Environment

Planting a garden is your way of helping limit the amount of fruits and vegetables that are shipped in from far away.

Plant a Tree

This is one of the Earth Day Activities that I’m most excited about taking part in with my family. Planting a Tree in your yard is something that not only will the Earth love, but you will enjoy the Tree every day you look at it. After all, it was a family Earth Day Project planted with love. It doesn’t get much better than that.

How Planting a Tree Helps the Environment

Trees help our environment in quite a few wonderful ways.

• Trees offer us oxygen
• Trees provide habitat for birds and other wildlife.
• Reduce ozone levels in urban areas

Just think, with one tree you plant you will be helping the environment in three ways. And, this is not just on Earth day, but every day.

Composting

Composting is another new activity I will be starting this Earth Day. I have never composted, but from what I understand it is very easy and an amazing way to help our Earth. Composting is taking your kitchen scraps and instead of throwing them out you put them in your garden. It is supposed to help your garden grow beautifully and like I said…. we just started our garden, so this is exactly what we need.

How does Composting Help the Environment

Composting is an all natural alternative to chemical fertilizers. The nutrients in compost support the microorganisms in the soil. Another words, the soil eats it right up and makes it the proper environment for our vegetables and plants to grow at its best.

Purchase Items with Less Packaging

Our landfills are quickly filling up. And, much of it is from the materials that the items we purchase are packaged in. So, many of these items have needless packaging… it is very upsetting.

Malt-O-Meal has bagged the box. They package their delicious cereal in just a bag instead of a bag and a box. What does this mean? It means Malt-O-Meal’s resealable bag results in 75% less consumer waste. And, my kids think they are YUMMY!!!

How does Less Packaging help the Environment

It means less garbage in our landfill which are quickly filling up.

Other Earth Day Projects

Just as important as the above four Earth Day Activities here are some other items I will be enforcing this Earth Day.

• Putting night lights on a timer - My little ones need night lights, but they don’t need to be on 24/7. Timers will ensure that the night lights are off during daytime hours.
• Be more aware of what I’m throwing away – There are so many items that can be recycled and I’m positive that I’m throwing things away that I shouldn’t be. I am vowing to be more aware and to read-up on what I should be recycling.
• Trash can become Treasures with Crafts – I had no idea all the awesome items you can make from things that I normally would throw away. Did you know that you could make secret storage boxes made from recycled books??? How Awesome is that?! There are tons of treasures you could make from recycled crafts.
• Start using environmentally safe cleaning products - There are tons of environmentally safe cleaning products out there now-a-days. Or, I could even make my very own homemade environmentally safe cleaning products. Either way, what I use will not harm my family or the environment.
• Being more aware how much bath water I use on the little ones – My little ones need their tubbies, but certainly they can manage on a little less water.
• Start hanging clothes out to dry…. great to do in this gorgeous Spring weather. - I do at least 2 loads of laundry a day. With just a little act of hanging these clothes out to dry on nice days I could save the environment a great deal of stress. I’m actually looking forward to this one…. I think it could be very relaxing.
• Start using reusable grocery bags. – This is an easy switch. I see that my grocery store sells these reusable grocery bags. I can simply keep them in my car and grab them every time I shop. Easy-Peasy-Lemon-Squeazy.

This is a hefty list, but I feel my Earth deserves my help. Earth has given me so much and I’m prepared to do my part to give back. The above are my Vows to Earth and I’m going to work hard on each….. not just on Earth Day, but every day. Would you join me?

Top image by aussiegall

What’s a Twitter Party, you ask? Find out more about these fast-paced, fun online parties by clicking HERE!

We’re inviting everyone who uses Twitter to join us for an open discussion about fighting hunger in America. We’re excited to offer this unique opportunity to talk about, share & discover new ways that we can all make a difference in the lives of people in need. Prizes will be given away all hour. Each person to RSVP for this online event will receive a coupon!

• What: @MaltOMealCereal is having a Twitter Party!
• When: February 15th at 9M Eastern Standard Time (8PM CST)
• Who to Follow: @MaltOMealCereal and our generous co-hosts, @Delightful_Toni & @Chaotic_Barb.
• How to keep up: The hashtag to follow & use for this party will be: #maltomeal

CLICK HERE FOR PARTY DETAILS!

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We live in rural North Carolina.

My husband and I have nine children, with our tenth scheduled to appear in March. With a family this size, we certainly get some interesting questions from folks. I’ll try and answer some of those here, as well as give you a look inside at our daily lives.

MP Godfrey
Team Malt-O-Meal

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I will never understand the fashions that kids are into these days.  For example, my daughter…wears socks on her arms.  They look like leg warmers with a notch cut out for her thumb.  Arm socks!

I was too young for leg warmers when you wore them on your legs.  And somehow I’ve been bypassed again and the kids wear them on their arms now.  I’m feeling a little ripped off here!

Ok, not really.

I like to give her a hard time about the arm socks.  We joke about them, yet she still wears them.  Oh well, I don’t really care…I just don’t get it.

What really gets me are these hairstyles where the hair hangs right in your face, in your eyes.  When I was that age I used gallons of hairspray to keep my hair as high as I could, as stiff as I could.  It

could rain and my hair wouldn’t fall.  There was absolutely nothing natural about my hair.

Eighteen years ago I had bangs that were ceiling high while the rest of my hair was pretty flat.  I wore pants that were folded over in front and then rolled up (pegged).  I wore shirts that were two or

three sizes too big.  Leg warmers were something you seen in old movies…and made fun of.

Today the kid’s hair is flat all over, hanging in their face, their pants and shirts are tight.   Leg warmers are now worn on the arms.

I know my daughter (who is 13) would KILL me if I posted a picture of her.  She’ll probably get mad for me even mentioning her in this article, but hey…I’m the Mom, what I say, goes.

But to justify this article (in her eyes, hopefully), I’ll post a picture of me…when I was her age.  To show her how ridiculous I looked eighteen years ago.  Not saying she looks ridiculous, but eighteen

years from now she may think differently. –Then maybe she’ll really laugh about the arm socks.

Fairy Blog Mother, 1991

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My mother is a heavyweight mother. By this I mean she’s always been there – one eye on us, one eye on the pot bubbling on the cooker. She was a stay-at-home mum for most of my childhood, with a brief spell as a working mother when I was a ‘tween’. She cooked 98% of meals in our home and did most of the household chores, though as soon as my brother and I were old enough, she roped us into this task. She was the ‘bad’ cop, the one who shouted, who doled out the punishments, and the one who chased us round the dining-room table to tickle us and cuddle us.

My mother and my son.

I’m sure by today’s standards her methods of discipline would be severely frowned on, and in some places, no doubt, she would have been locked up for child cruelty. But this was back in the 80s and 90s, in Hong Kong – a place where people still smack their children’s bottom in public without people batting an eyelid.

First, a word about my background so readers can understand the context of what I talk about. I am the product of a bi-cultural marriage – East (Hong Kong Chinese) meets West (British : English, Irish and Scottish). This was in the 70s, when Hong Kong was very much a British colony and the British ruled it with the desperate fervor of the last (almost) abandoned outpost. There were football (soccer) clubs and cricket clubs in place of country clubs, and few Chinese were admitted as members. My childhood was a heady mix of hanging out by the club pool or going on company junks (the company boat used for senior employees to impress clients ) with my parents, or going to the wet market with my mother, or visiting my Chinese relations in the most densely packed part of the world – Mong Kok. My father’s job meant I had a privileged upbringing – going to a private school and living in a large, airy 4 bedroom flat in the expensive part of Hong Kong. This sat oddly when I visited my grandmother and uncle’s family, who were squeezed into a tiny 2-bedroom flat above a market, just big enough to allow people standing room when we came over. And yet, nothing was said about, and just taken as a part of life. Chinese people are immensely pragmatic, and perhaps it was just felt that my mother had done well for herself and ‘good for her’.

Hong Kong Skyline

For us it was second nature, and we assumed most kids grew up the way we did. But I guess my mother had more foresight than most, and saw how other kids of a similar background were being raised by the amah (the domestic helper) while parents worked or played all day long. She made us go to the wet market with her, a place we hated, at the time, for its smells and grime and rawness. We saw how chickens were chosen while alive, and then taken round back and dispatched, cleaned and plucked. The same with fish. It always grossed us out, but we grew up with a far stronger connection to our food than most kids. Food fussiness was not tolerated well under my mum’s roof. My brother was once served the exact same dish for breakfast, that he had turned his nose up the previous dinner. It was the last time he messed around with his food. As soon as we were old enough, we had to do chores, even for the brief time that we had an amah to help us, because my mother thought there was no excuse in not knowing how to clean up after yourselves (and everyone else). My favorite was always helping her prepare dinner. I graduated from washing vegetables and rice to chopping, dicing, slicing and mincing before most kids knew how to dress themselves. My brother and I took great pride in making our parents tea for breakfast in bed at the age of 6.

Chinese Banquet Dinner, Hong Kong

Words meant little in our household. “I love you” was rarely said but often shown. Food was our strongest conduit. I could tell when we had displeased our mother if she regularly served fish (which I hated) or one of her ‘medicinal’ soups that looked and tasted like brackish water. When we were in her good books, it was:

• Stir-fried garlic snake beans,
• Green carrot soup,
• Pork and mushroom stew… all the dishes we loved.

I still remember coming home from school at lunch when I was five. There was always a plate of sandwiches, a cup of milk and a little chocolate Club bar waiting for me, under a napkin so it wouldn’t dry out, which my mother would insist I eat as soon as I came in the door, while telling her about my day.

She was harsh with her criticism, letting us know straight away if we were doing things wrong. When I was 14, I smart-mouthed her in front of the relations at a big Chinese banquet reunion. She picked up a chopstick and hurled it across the table at me, smacking me right in the forehead. No one blinked. Even today I can see her trying to bite her tongue, as she watches me cook or parent my two-year-old, knowing that she’s itching to tell me how to do it. Sometimes it slips out before she can stop herself – ‘Ai Ya! Is this how I raised you? What kind of Chinese cook are you? This is not Chinese cooking! What will your husband say? Ai Ya!”.

She also had her own “secret, Chinese mother ways” of not letting us eat bad things like Coke, or hamburgers, or sweets, or making us eat food that was good (like fish). The biggest whopper was pointing out a man on the street who had a neck brace on (presumably for whiplash) and saying ‘You see?! This is what happens if you don’t eat fish! Your throat swells up BIG and then you can’t eat! Better eat fish now…”. Or another time, “Don’t drink any Coke, it excites your glands. Make you lu-lu (crazy)”.

3rd Birthday Party!

With hindsight, I see how hard it must have been for my mother, juggling East and West, entertaining Dad’s colleagues on their junk trips, or cooking Chinese banquets, being a kind of trophy wife then running back to Mong Kok to spend time with her brother and mother in their tiny flat with 5 people crammed in. All this while simultaneously raising two kids in two cultures, helping them find their feet and their independence. When my Por-por (grandma) passed away a few years ago, my mother had spent three or four years by her side watching her decline into dementia and finally slip away, frail and fragile as a feather. At the time, my parents were going through a difficult divorce after being married for 30 years. She wobbled badly, but never crumbled. I can only conclude that she has a will of iron and a diamond-hard core.

Being back under her roof now, with my son is both a blessing and a curse. She is exactly the same with him as she was with us… Uncompromising, determined, loving, raucous. He now knows where to put his dirty clothes, loves to sweep the floor, helps his Por Por to load and unload the washing machine and hang up clothes, and is generally a little messenger boy between rooms. They adore each other. She is his absolute best friend. And yet, with me it’s still the eagle eye, and the odd “Why are you doing it that way? My way is better!”

So I listen, watch, observe quietly and remember how she kept us in line, how she showed us love. I too have mastered her thousand yard stare – better known as the Eye of Death, for its laser beam intensity. I practiced it to perfection as a teacher, and now only have to release a fraction of it, to scare my kid into picking up his toys. If I turn out half as good and tough as my mother, I will be happy in the knowledge that my son has been raised well.

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When I was asked to guest blog for M-O-M, I was absolutely gobsmacked and almost fell off my chair. Who’d have thought that my little blog would garner any attention? I feel very much a minnow in the blog world, compared to the big-hitters of Skip to My Lou, Smitten Kitchen, Bakerella, Steamy Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman, to name just a few. How to stand out amongst the crowd of giants? Because, to be honest, there really isn’t anything special about me or my blog. I’m just an average Joanne, struggling to make things work – food, love, life and motherhood. But after reading M-O-M’s blog, I realize that I’m in great company – the women featured are all average Joannes making sense of their world. The things they blog about are universal – food, love, life and motherhood. That’s what makes it so relevant to me, keeps me hooked. How many times I’ve read something and laughed out loud, thinking ‘Hey, me too!’ or ‘Wait a minute! I thought I was the only one!’. My guest blog is hopefully one that resonates with all of you too. Enjoy!

Warm Regards,

Shal
Jasmine & Ginger Blog
www.jasmineandginger.blogspot.com