For the last several years, my parents have hosted a bunko party on New Year's Eve, which is a fun, and often rambunctious, way to countdown to the new year with a few friends. It works great for us, because our young daughter can just go to bed while mommy and daddy have fun with family and friends just down the hall. Going out on the town can be hard for those with young kids, and often no one to babysit. Plus, it's always nice to not have to drive home on one of the most dangerous nights of the year to be on the road.

Staying home can be just as fun as a night out though, especially when the whole family is celebrating together! Here are some ideas for ringing in 2009 with the family.

*Have a special dinner of appetizers/hor d'oeurves- which basically can consist of anything you normally feed the kids, simply chopped or sliced and skewered with a toothpick, complete with bubbly sparkling apple cider!

*Have a movie marathon, with lots of popcorn, of course, and then watch the ball drop in New York on TV.

*Get the whole family involved in a "living room campout"- with a real tent, or an elaborate fort that you all sleep under. 

*Plan a scavenger hunt around the house, ending with a funny pair of 2009 glasses as the last treasure (this is, after all, the last year those type of glasses will work!)

*Play board games, Wii or other family-friendly video games like Dance Dance Revolution or Rock Band.

*Write a list of family New Year's Resolutions, and talk about what you're all looking forward to in the new year.

*Make funny hats out of construction paper, scrapbook paper or even newspaper and wear them as you celebrate!

*Set up a homemade "theatre" in the house and let the kids dress up and put on a show or performance for mom and dad.

*Go out in your backyard and bang pots and pans at midnight (sorry, neighbors, at least it's better than fireworks!)

*Make a traditional family dish for dinner and talk about your ancestors and family heritage with the kids.

*Make homemade ice cream, cookies or other yummy treats, and then enjoy eating them way past normal bedtime!

*Roast hot dogs and marshmallows in the fireplace.

  I hope these ideas get you started in planning a fun night at home with the family! Combine as many of them as you can for a great night of celebrating! If you're staying in this year for New Year's Eve, I'd love to hear your ideas on how you intend to celebrate the new year with your family!

  photo by dude.patrick

Look! Here's Gwen, out on the town with her family, cuddling her son with one of Patricia Ann Designs' luxurious blankets!!

Want baby Zuma's blanket? Check out the Giraffe Overstuffed Blanket over at PAD.  This blanket guarantees ultimate snuggling fit for a prince or princess! It will grow with baby and be a companion into his or her toddler years. It is made to fit a standard crib and makes an excellent floor blanket or toddler throw. The fabrics are sumptuous and designs are stunning, creating a beautiful heirloom made to last.

Just for Fun:

See the family picture

Learn a theory on baby Zuma's name (Was he named after a beach or Bob Marley? Or both?)

More details on Celeb Sightings with Patricia Ann Designs blankets

  Here at The Lily Pad we are big supporters of mompreneurs and small businesses of handmade clothes, toys and accessories. So when I heard about the new legislation that is threatening to put these small toy makers out of business, I was concerned. Shelley, from PAD, has assured me that Patricia Ann Designs is not going to be affected, but we still care about the many businesses that will!

The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was passed last August, and in the coming year will go into effect. As a mother, I, too, am concerned about the safety of the toys our children are playing with, but I agree with others that this legislation is a lazy way of going about toy safety regulation by generalizing all manufacturers, local and foreign.

A website called the Handmade Toy Alliance, states:

"Among other things, the CPSIA bans lead and phthalates in toys, mandates third-party testing and certification for all toys and requires toy makers to permanently label each toy with a date and batch number.  All of these changes will be fairly easy for large, multinational toy manufacturers to comply with. Large manufacturers who make thousands of units of each toy have very little incremental cost to pay for testing and update their molds to include batch labels." 

It's the small manufacturers that won't be able to afford the required third party testing who are going to be in trouble though.  Ohana Mama puts it this way: "Third party testing is expensive and it's not just testing one thing, it's testing all parts of something. So it will put many many retailers/makers of products out of business."

If you'd like to help, be sure to sign the online petition!  The petition is not completely against the legislation, but rather requests changes be made to avoid the tragic end of handmade, locally-based, small-scale businesses. You can also write to your United States Congress Person and Senator to request changes in the CPSIA to save handmade toys.  Use Handmade Toy Alliance's sample letter or write your own.  You can find your Congress Person here and Senator here.

Z Recommends also has a great article on 5  Steps You Can Take to Save Natural/Handmade Companies from the CPSC and CPSIA.

The button above comes from Thoughtfully Simple.

Have you seen Patricia Ann Designs' two new fabulously fun fabric lines, Cherry Cupcake and Sweet Skull? If you are looking for a great gift for that special baby or toddler, than you have to take a peak at these two new fabrics! Pssst! Do you also want to save 15%, get free shipping and free gift wrapping? Then click on over to Patricia Ann Designs' store and enter coupon code 'gift, ship' and get this special holiday deal on all regular priced merchandise! Merry Christmas and Happy Shopping!

Our Cherry Cupcake Burpcloth Set of 2 is beautifully wrapped in ribbon, our burp cloth sets are perfect for the ever bubbling baby. We begin with a 100% soft premium cotton cloth diaper created out of tiny yarns, making this soft, fast drying and absorbent. They are also fitted with an absorbent pad insert to keep moisture away from baby’s tender skin. Lastly, we adorn them in our stylish fabric designs making a darling gift set of 2!

With Christmas just around the corner, now's the perfect time to take your family to the kitchen and do some baking together! Here are some fun resources, links and recipes to get you going!

• Popcorn Balls~ a how-to video! 
• Banana chocolate chip bread~ a family recipe from moi!
• Vintage Mommy has a whole slew of recipes for food gifts!
• Fruit Loop Rice Krispie Treats would be especially fun with kids!
• An even more decadent rice-krispie-creation: Peanut Butter Fudge Treats!! 
• C&H Sugar has a fun guide to baking with kids

• And I love About.com's rules for your "budding chef":

1. Get permission to use the kitchen.
2. Wash your hands with soap and water before starting your kitchen preparations. Continually wash hands as needed like touching the trash can or picking up items from the floor. 
3. Re-read the recipe several times.
4. Make sure you have all of the necessary ingredients. Put them out on the counter.
5. Get out all of the equipment like pans and measuring cups.
6. Follow the recipe exactly.
7. Use oven mittens or pot holders when taking food in and out of the oven.
8. Clean as you go along.
9. Share your wonderful dessert creation with your friends and family.

I thought I would share my family's Christmas card here, in order to inspire those of you who are still thinking about yours... Have you heard of Scrapblog? It's a fun site for digital scrapbooking. I made ours there and it was super easy! Here's our card:

If you'd like to see a few more of the projects I've created with Scrapblog, be sure to visit my profile there. It's free to create and their printing prices are quite reasonable. And I was shocked at how quickly my order was processed and shipped.

After 5 years of incredible success through design, manufacturing, wholesale distribution, and retail sales, Patricia Ann Designs is excited to launch their new offspring company ~ The PAD Showroom.  

How it Began

To review from their Spring 08 Press Release, in January of this year, “the girls” (as they’re often called) or the “blonde Mother Daughter Duo” Mary Patricia & Shelley Ann began supporting their community of local moms by helping to develop and promote their child-inspired collections.  Shelley and Pat leased a 1000 SF showroom in an Orange County business park to run their expanding day to day business of Patricia Ann Designs as well as to offer their loyal OC patrons a place to shop on a regular basis rather than referring them to their website, www.PatriciaAnnDesigns.com .

Sharing the Love

After about a month, the girls graciously took on about a dozen local “Mom-Preneuers” under their wing.  They proudly showcased their collections in their OC showroom, mentored them in business protocol, even took their products on the road to small and large expos to sell, endorse and market to OC retail customers.   

Mary Patricia and Shelley Ann feel blessed to have had these women as faithful patrons and friends of Patricia Ann Designs over the years and were looking forward to 2008 being a year to “pay it forward” by assisting in growing these moms’ at-home-hobbies into successful name-sakes like Patricia Ann Designs.  Looking back, it was just 5 short years ago that Patricia Ann Designs born out of a garage with some remnant fabric and a good Singer sewing machine.   

What better way to help these amazing Mom-Preneurs take their businesses to the next level then to officially endorse their designs and market them to the trade nationally?!   So after many months of hard work, detailed planning, and thorough preparation, The PAD Showroom was conceived!  

A New Horizon for PAD

For the last five years, P.A.D. was well-known as Patricia Ann Designs.  But now, the initials P.A.D. take on a new meaning with the PAD Showroom. 
P ~ Passion; A ~ Artistry ~ D ~ Dedication. The PAD Showroom is an Orange County based showroom representing the finest Mom-Preneurs’ Chic & Unique Designs For The Posh Baby, Toddler & Mom.  

With the good news spreading rapidly across the country, the PAD Showroom is elated to be showcasing 15 incredible lines ~ all child-inspired and mom-created!  Some of the Mom-Preneurs are new to the industry, others are talented veterans.  But share a common desire ~ expressing their creativity while building a flourishing business for the betterment of their families. The assortment of showcased lines boasts exceptional quality, unique design and amazing variety with an already successful celebrity following! This is a new type of MOMS club ~ one where Passion, Artistry and Dedication will shine through and make a difference in growing families.

The PADShowroom Specs:

•  www.PADShowroom will be going LIVE on January 1st, 2009.  
• Grand Opening Market Showing will be January 15th – 20th in VIP Style complete with sparkling mimosas and delicious catered hors d’ oeuvres! 
• Reimbursement for Metro Link Fares will be honored or optional gas reimbursement for round trip mileage from Los Angeles to Lake Forest. 
• Appointments encouraged, walk ins welcome
• The PADShowroom is located in the heart of beautiful Orange County, California just 35 minutes from Los Angeles, conveniently less than 1 mile off the 5 freeway. 
• Unbeatable Show Specials offered from all lines on opening orders
• Special Market Hours ~ will remain standard but will be open on market Sunday from 10-3    
  

The PADShowroom
22762 Aspan Street
Suite 205
Lake Forest, CA 92630
949.716.4800 ph
949.716.4488 fx

www.PADShowroom.com (goes live 1.1.09)

Free parking
Hours:     Monday – Friday 10-5
Saturday 10-3
Sunday Closed

I'm so excited to tell you about this fun new online book club, which comes from my favorite blogger, Simple Mom.

As moms, I think it's easy for us to caught up in reading parenting how-to books & magazines, and board books & Caldecott Award-winners to our kids. While these are great ways to educate ourselves as parents and expose our kids to reading, those of us who have a love for reading might remember the days when we read literature that was a little more inspiring for other areas of our lives, or simple covered a variety of subjects. 

I've been able to read a few awesome books this year in my moms' Bible study, along with some great reads on green living for my own research, but there are so many more books out there I want to read, that sometimes it's helpful to have some guidance and accountability to spur me on. I am super stoked about Simple Mom's idea to start this book club in 2009, and these books all sound fabulous. She picked books that relate to the topics she writes about on her blog, all of which are right up my own alley. I encourage you to take a look at them and consider "joining the club." 

She has organized the club to read 6 books in 12 months, which means we should have plenty of time to read each book. You can click on over to read the post describing in some detail the six books we'll be reading, but I'll give you the titles here.

1. Your Money or Your Life, by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin
2. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:  A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver
3. Last Child In The Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder, by Richard Louv
4. For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men, by Shaunti Feldhahn
5. It’s All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff, by Peter Walsh
6. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families, by Stephen R. Covey
   

I hope that some of you will join me in reading a long!

If you're a Southern California local, here are a couple of opportunities to find Patricia Ann Designs at holiday boutiques:

• Tuesday, December 2nd: Marbella Holiday Boutique in San Juan Capistrano

• Friday, December 5th: Foothill Ranch Holiday Boutique at Foothill Ranch Elementary School

Foothill Ranch ASB Boutique Flyer.doc (298.00 kb)