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Libby’s Picnic Basket Giveaway Worth $450 (3 Winners)

September 12, 2009 by Jyl Johnson Pattee · 393 Comments 

Think picnic season is over? Think again! This trendy Picnic Time Metro Basket is going to make you want to move your picnic indoors this fall when you see all the goodies that come inside!

Prizes

Three lucky winners will each receive this picnic basket filled with everything you need to make a delicious family meal, including:

• Assorted Libby’s Vegetables
• Hannah Keeley’s Total Mom Makeover book
• Picnic Time Metro Basket
• Scanpan CTX Saute Pan
• Scanpan CTX Fry Pan

This entire basket has an approximate retail value of $450.00.

Entry Requirements

To enter for a chance to win, you are required to do two things (make sure you leave a separate comment for each of your entries).
Note: Entries that do not follow all of these requirements will not be considered.

1. Sign up to become a member of Libby’s Get Back to the Table community, which promotes family togetherness.
2. Post these messages on Facebook and/or on Twitter and leave comments here, linking to your messages:

Join #gno Tues 9/15 from 9-11 ET 2 share tips on family togetherness & mealtimes w/ #Libby’s & @feedingamerica RSVP: http://bit.ly/espTa

GIVEAWAY! Enter 4 a chance 2 win picnic basket w/ #Libby’s veggies, ScanPan pans, & more! (Ret Val $450) http://bit.ly/aooGl

Extra Entries

You can earn up to five extra entries for this week’s giveaways. These extra entries count for both giveaways. You do not need to repeat them twice!

1. Join the Mom It Forward Facebook group.
2. Post the “Mom Is a Verb” button on your blog. (See right-hand sidebar for button with code.)
3. Join the Mom It Forward Facebook page and leave a comment on the wall, answering one of the questions about mealtime and family togetherness.
4. Join the Mom It Forward Google Friend Connect. (See right-hand sidebar.)
5. Follow @momitforward on Twitter.

The Fine Print

No purchase necessary to enter. Winners will be selected randomly through http://random.org. Libbys and Mom It Forward employees are ineligible to participate. All entries received after Sunday, September 20 at midnight PDT will not be considered. Entries that do not follow all of the entry requirements will not be considered. Winners will be notified and will have 24 hours to confirm receipt of the e-mail. If they do not reply within 24 hours, another winner will be selected. Open to participants in the US and Canada 18 years and older.

Ten Ways to Strengthen Your Relationships This Week

August 9, 2009 by Jyl Johnson Pattee · Leave a Comment 

This week’s Summer of Service challenge, sponsored by Crayola, is all about building and strengthening your relationships and helping your children to do the same by doing one or more of the following creative things. If you have more ideas, please share them in the comments!

1. Write a list of ten questions you’d like to know about a family member or friend and schedule an interview with them to get to know them better. Encourage your children to interview someone they’d like to get to know better as well. If they are younger, help them create the list of questions.
2. Write a note to a family member or friend, telling them how much you appreciate, love, or admire them. Use your talents in drawing, painting, stamping, hand writing, letter writing, or your favorite form of creativity to put your personal stamp on the card.
3. Involve your family in putting together a progressive dinner right within the walls of your own home. Assign each person to be in charge of a specific room and portion of the meal. Work together to make the meal and set up the rooms. Award prizes for most creative, yummiest, most colorful, etc.
4. Welcome your spouse home from work or your children home from school with a picture or note on one of your windows or mirrors using Crayola’s window markers.
5. Encourage your children to welcome their mom or dad (or both!) home from work or other outing by helping them write a love note using Crayola’s sidewalk chalk on the driveway.
6. Have a family art gallery night where each of you prepares a drawing, painting, photograph, Model Magic sculpture, or other artistic project and showcases it for each other. Award participants with certificates or ribbons, indicating most creative, best use of color, best use of black and white, best use of emotions, etc.
7. Encourage your children to get to know their grandparents better by having them record (through audio and/or video) an interview with them about what life was like when they were growing up. Help your children prepare the questions, get the recording equipment ready, and set up an appointment. Then help them put together the audio/video project and share it with the rest of the family, including their grandparents.
8. Have a girls’ night out that’s a blast from the past with activities like finger painting, running through sprinklers, jumping on the trampoline, or other fun things you enjoyed as a child. Make sure to feature your favorite childhood snacks and drinks. Tang anyone?
9. Have a “walk down memory lane” party with your family, your friends, other couples, or others where you all bring photo albums and share your favorite memories. One fun group date is to all bring your wedding photo albums and each take turns sharing favorite memories from your wedding and your newlywed years.
10. Schedule a family coloring night, where you each choose a favorite page from a coloring book or your own coloring books and color together while chatting and enjoying your favorite snacks.

How Will You Give to Others This Week?

• What other ideas do you have for strengthening your relationships this week using creativity?
• What are things that get in the way of strengthening your relationships using creativity?
• What are ways to overcome these challenges?
• How has strengthening your relationships this week using creativity others made a meaningful difference for you? For others?

How Else Can You Make a Difference This Summer?

Make a meaningful difference this summer by taking the Summer of Service (SOS) Challenge. Here’s how you can participate:

• Commit to do one act of kindness/service based on the week’s challenge.
• Leave a comment with ideas relating to the week’s challenge as well as your experience(s) performing it.
• Grab the SOS button in the sidebar and put it on your blog or social networking site.
• Enter to win each week’s giveaway. Click here to check out this week’s prize from Crayola.
• Join #gno this Tuesday on Twitter to connect with other Mom It Forward moms about the challenge.

RSVP to Discuss Back-to-School Survival on #GNO Tuesday on Twitter

August 2, 2009 by Jyl Johnson Pattee · 150 Comments 

Looking for tips on how to transition from summer break to back to school? Then tweet the night away with other Mom It Forward gals at #gno this Tuesday on Twitter as we talk about back-to-school survival.

• What: Crayola Creativitycast on #gno (Click here to learn more about #gno!)
• When: Tuesday, August 4, 9-11 p.m. EST
• Where: Tweetgrid (Use hashtags #gno & #crayola.)
• Topic: Back-to-School Survival Guide
• Who: @coolcatteacher from Cool Cat Teacher, @crayola, @momadvice from Mom Advice @noflashcards from No Time for Flashcards, @parentingauthor from Susan Heim on Parenting, @petit_elefant from Petit Elefant,  @razzmatazzrob from Crayola, and @skybluestacy from Crayola.
• Party Favors: Click here to check out this week’s giveaway sponsored by Crayola.
• RSVP: The link list is not working this week, so please leave your Twitter ID in the comments.

10 Tips to Raising Service-Oriented, Giving, and Charitable Children

May 21, 2009 by Jyl Johnson Pattee · 2 Comments 

Growing up, I remember feeling frustrated when my parents dragged me from service project to service project, forcing me to give up precious time with my friends and, let’s face it, even more invaluable time sitting on the couch watching tv LOL! I was convinced my parents were service-a-holics. And what that meant for their six children, especially me being the oldest, was a life of indentured servitude… or so I thought.

Now, with two children of my own, I have realized that my parents taught me one of the most powerful lessons a parent could teach—a knowledge and a love of service. So, now as I “drag” my own children from project to project, I have wondered what, exactly, it was that my parents did that helped me turn my drudgery for service into a passion.

Here are 10 tips I have extrapolated from their parenting that I hope to instill in my children.

1. Serve With Your Children. Serving side by side with your children is one of the most powerful teachers of how to serve all while bringing the family closer. While kids may complain, the bonding time you share sticks in their memories as a positive experience. When they have children of their own and search for ways in which to bond with their children, they will want to repeat the positive experiences they had as a child and the cycle will continue.

• One of my most memorable service projects as a child was a family picnic where my dad did all the service. My dad was the president of our local Rotary Club and they were raising money to wipe out Polio. I was 10 years old and remember the hot Arizona day, watching my dad prepare the dutch oven luncheon for the event and him talking to me at length about Polio, explaining why the Rotary Club was focused on raising money to eradicate it, and the importance of my participation. I felt important! I didn’t do a thing but talk to my dad and eat the picnic lunch, but I felt I had made a huge difference for mankind.

2. Talk to Your Children About Giving and Sharing. When you are not able to serve side by side with your children, share in detail your experiences after the event. Specifically, help them understand the need, how you helped to meet the need, and why your giving and sharing was so important. If you can, take pictures or video and share it with them. Your excitement for your volunteering will be contagious!

Family Service Project at Assisted Living Facility

3. Choose Service Activities Your Children Are Passionate About. Service activities come in many shapes and sizes. Identify what is important to your children and choose activities and causes that fit with their interests. Some suggestions include animals, the environment, children will illnesses, an illness a family member suffers from, etc.

4. Choose a Cause That Taps In to Your Child’s Talents, Skills, & Abilities. Does your child play a musical instrument? Does she like to do arts and crafts? Is he good at weeding or picking up trash? Can she make homemade greeting cards? Can he sing in a group? Nursing homes is just one example of a place that allows kids to visit and share who they are with others. This act of sharing and giving boosts self esteem and helps children learn that their talents, skills, and abilities can be used for good.

5. Tie Everyday Tasks Into Service. Make service an everyday activity and giving a constant thought by reinforcing these concepts in simple things like sharing toys, taking turns, secretly doing a sibling’s chores, giving family members hugs and kisses, etc. You can do this by saying things like: “Johnny, great job at sharing your toys with Billy. That shows that you are a giving person.” To help kids recognize the many ways to serve, create a Giving Chart, where they identify either in written or drawing format things they can do on a daily basis to serve those around them.

Cousins Creating Treasure Boxes (Gratitude Charts)

6. Show Gratitude. Helping kids recognize and show appreciation for things they are grateful for is an important aspect of service. Involve your children in gratitude activities such as keeping a gratitude journal or art book; going on gratitude walks; keeping a Daily Gratitude Chart on the refrigerator where you, as a family, can list your blessings; and having activities such as sitting in a circle and sharing what you are grateful for about the person sitting to your right. Check out Fishful Thinking for their Grateful Sayings activity.

7. Add an Aspect of Giving to Holidays & Events. The Christmas and Hanukkah season is a terrific and natural time to give to others, but you can add a touch of service during many other events as well. For example, many people are now donating their birthday gifts to charity.

• When I was 11 years old, my parents enlisted our help in doing the 12 Days of Christmas for a family whose mom was dying of breast cancer. Together, we picked out all of the gifts, items that would help the family feel joy during the holiday season. We created a strategy for how we would anonymously deliver the gifts. Then, we created a schedule of which family member would take responsibility for various tasks: wrapping the gifts, delivering them, etc. Each day, we huddled together after it got dark to work on our tasks and carry out the project. I will always remember that as one of the best Christmases. Not surprisingly, I don’t recall what I received for my gifts that year.

Kids Bowling to Help Fight Poverty in Africa

8. Serve even when you’re away from home. What a better way to get to know and bond with a destination location than to serve it or its community? If you’ll be away on a long trip, you can arrange a project through an organization. Nearly every major city has a homeless shelter or rescue mission, for example. For shorter stays, simple tasks like picking up garbage at a park and smiling at strangers on the street can make a big difference. Before going on a trip, plan as a family by answering the question: What can we do to give back to the towns and people we’ll be visiting?

• When I was 12 years old, my parents gave me the wonderful opportunity of visiting their friends in Costa Rica for the summer and encouraged me to do a service project before I left. I planned and ran a bake sale with the help of some of my church friends. I raised a whopping $30, which felt like a million bucks! Once I arrived, Silvia, the mom of the family I was staying with, took me all by myself to the grocery store where we purchases items for three families—food that would help them survive for 6 months. The most memorable part of my summer was delivering the food to the three families, crying with them as they humbly accepted it, and gaining a stark realization at the age of 12 of how other people suffer and that I had the power to make a huge difference. I count that as one of the most fortunate experiences I’ve ever had and thank my parents for ensuring it happened.

Decorating Tree at Center for Abused Children

9. Do Unto Others as They Need You to Do Unto Them. What’s valuable to teach your kids about service is that everyone needs to be loved in different ways and that finding out and meeting their needs is most important. While some people need your undivided attention, others need a quick smile or hug. Still others may need a meal brought in (and yes, kids can and should help with that!) or their houses cleaned. When you look at a person and ask yourself and your child: What need does that person have and how can we meet it, you are getting at the heart of selfless service.

10. Emphasize the Role of Money in Charity. Giving includes all sorts of things, many of which do not cost a cent. A child can donate old toys, clothes, or art supplies to organizations that need them. But, since charities also require money to operate, volunteer opportunities and causes that require money offer a wonderful way to teach children about its value. For example, just as you can teach kids to save by reserving a percentage of their allowances for a savings account, you can also have them put aside a specific amount for a giving account. Turn this into a craft activity where they get to decorate three cans or envelopes, labeling them: “Spending,” “Saving,” and “Giving”.

For some great child-oriented service projects, read http://www.parents.com/family-life/work-money-politics/volunteering-philanthropy/10-kid-oriented-causes/.

(Top photo used with permission from Flickr.)

Mother’s Day: Moms Make All the Difference

May 8, 2009 by Jyl Johnson Pattee · 4 Comments 

Moms: you are amazing! You give life. You comfort and take pride in your children. You lead the way, teach, share, and love. And you do all this on the good and the not-so-good days—while balancing your many roles and figuring out the secrets of motherhood success all without a guidebook. You rise above life’s challenges with resiliency and determination, committed to do it all over again day in and day out of an absolute love for your family. And, as evidenced by the many kind acts of service you’ve performed, you also take on your role of motherhood while serving others. In short, you are changing the world one mom at a time, starting with yourself, while focusing on your family, as well as extending your reach to your community and beyond.

Happy Mother’s Day! You are amazing!