Do you have a future hall of famer in your midst? An Albert Pujols want to be?

Click Image to enlarge the Baseball gift guide!

Links to products used.

	No baseball bedroom is complete without one of our baseball lamps, and this one is the Triple Crown winner!
	After the big game, your little ballplayer will love crashing into this comfy chair to relax.
	After the big game, your little ballplayer will love crashing into this comfy chair to relax.
	Learning to tell time becomes a whole lot more fun with our solid wood Baseball Clock!
	For the Baseball fan. Colorful players and pennants cover the main fabric.
	This Vintage Victory Wall Art is so simple, yet meaningful.

Bedding, Furniture, Room Decor | No Comments »

Ever heard of Jewish Penicillin? Well this is the best dose. Enjoy.

Chicken and Matzah Ball Soup

1 medium size 4 -5 lb frying chicken (organic)

1 large bag of carrots (organic)

3 large onions (organic)

1 large bunch of celery

I large box of noodles (optinal)

1 bag of chicken soup mix (I like bearcreek or manchevitz)

3 boxes of manchevitz matza ball mix (eggs, olive oil needed to make)

Boil a huge pot of water  and put the fryer chicken for 40 minutes or
until fully cooked in water. You could even use two chickens if your pot is huge.

Take chicken out of water and put in bowl and let cool, debone chicken when
cooled or even if its hot.

Meanwhile, put whatever you like in the boiling water. Two or three large onion
cut up for flavor, soup mix or manichevitz matza ball soup mix is good also. A little salt, a little pepper, garlic powder..

Celery, carrots, onion, noodles if you want (I don’t use them and there are
some in the bearcreek mix) and put chicken pieces back into soup.

Make matzah balls manichevitz mix. I use about three boxes so six packets.
Follow directions and sit in fridge to rise for fifteen minutes

Take out and put balls into boiling soup turn down temp and simmer for
another 20 minutes. You can let the soup simmer all day to soak in flavor.

I usually let it simmer for a couple of hours.

Sit by the fire and enjoy slowly…

Kim Gellman is the owner of Artisticsensations.com, a fun and hip website that sells kids furniture, bedding, and room decor from baby to college age kids. She is the mother of two boys and enjoys every moment of life and all its adventures!

life balance | 1 Comment »

I find myself thinking of the future so much these days.

I hear myself saying I can’t wait for spring. (Because I am tired of the winter)

I can’t wait until its summer. (When I get to go to Israel for the first time. Yay!)

I am looking forward to fall. (When I get to see both my sons both play football)

Then I have to stop and remind myself to enjoy the present. Stand still and take it all in.

The dinners with my family. The lounging in bed watching espn and sports center with the boys. The family vacations. The laying on the floor petting our loyal Labrador retrievers.

Why am I in such a hurry for the future? Why do I always yearn for something else and not what’s currently happening in our life?

Maybe its because I am so used to running from activity to activity that I don’t have time to stop and enjoy it.. Our life is an endless series of basketball, football and baseball in the form of practices, lessons and games. And looking at schedules and planning out our next week of commitments.  Our kids love it and seem to be flourishing. That’s all that matters, right?

I just finished reading The Gift of An Ordinary Day by Katrina Kenison.  It was so relatable and an incredible read.

She has two boys and they are getting older and moving further away from her. (Figuratively and eventually literally) As she says, “Pay attention to the moment at hand- the worn wooden table still scattered with breakfast crumbs, the breeze coming through the open door, the stillness of late morning, my nearly grown son sitting at my side, waiting my response to his work.”

I see this happening in my life too, of course.  My sons are getting older and becoming young men and I am merely the vessel that is carrying them through this journey.. They will eventually be making their own choices and hopefully the guidance we have given them will have some effect on them.

Kenison continues and quotes poet Kahill Gibran. “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.”

And my favorite quote from the book.  “We have all been so busy- doing our work, growing up, being a family. Soon it will all end. All this striving, accommodating, juggling, will be the past…No more college applications to proofread or loads of sweaty t-shirts in the hamper. No more enormous sneakers to trip over as I walk through the back door.  And I will miss all of it. The beauty that I love is the life that we live, the four of us together, now, this moment, with all its cluttered complexity and inconvenience. The beauty that I love is the gift of every ordinary day that’s left to me. “

So I am trying to stop and smell the roses as they say. (or as one of my incredible mentors has said to me many times) Slow down. Enjoy each day. Relish these moments with my children. Be present. The spring, the summer and the fall will come soon enough. And another year will have passed.

Enjoy the ordinary moments. Life is good.

Kim Gellman is the owner of Artisticsensations.com, a fun and hip website that sells kids furniture, bedding, and room decor from baby to college age kids. She is the mother of two boys and enjoys every moment of life and all its adventures!

Parenting, life balance | No Comments »

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Room Decor | No Comments »

Should you let your daughter blog?

Blogging is no longer limited to adults. Children are hopping on the information superhighway and heading for venues like MySpace and LiveJournal. Both of these providers offer blogging services to children over the age of 13. And kids are taking them up on their offer. According the latest research by WiredSafety.org, an estimated 6 million children under the age of 18 have blogs through these services or others like them. Many of these children are also doing so without their parents’ knowledge.

Blogging, a published online version of a personal or professional journal, has quickly become one of the top forms of communication and information sharing on the internet. Allowing your daughter to blog certainly has its’ benefits. It can provide her with a wonderful creative outlet to express her inner thoughts and feelings. In addition, blogging can help improve her writing, social, internet, and technical skills.

But as is the case with most social media outlets, blogging can also open the door to dangerous liaisons with internet predators or cyber bullies. Online safety often becomes the central issue when children blog; which begs the question, should you allow your daughter to blog at all if she is under the age of 18? And if you choose to let her enter the blogosphere, how can you make sure your teen is safe?

As with most things involving your daughter connecting and sharing information with others online, there are things you can do as a parent to help.

Blogging Safety Guide:

• Break out the “Rule Book.” Parents should establish rules before allowing their teens to blog a single sentence. You may want to prohibit personal information such as her real name, address, phone number, etc. from being used on her blog to ensure no one she doesn’t know has access to private information. Pseudonyms are commonplace in the blogosphere for this very reason.

• Find a reliable blogging service. Choose a blogging service that allows your daughter’s personal information to be pass word protected so only her close friends can view her blog. Blogger and Wordpress are both popular blog services that offer additional security measures.

• Read her blog. Don’t let your daughter tell you that you are “invading her privacy.” The truth of the matter is that as many as 700 million people online may have access to the information she publishes. Reading her blog is not the same as digging through her drawers for her private diary. As a parent, it’s not only your right, but arguably your duty to occasionally browse the content of her blog. This also ensures that she is following the blogging rules you’ve agreed upon.

• Talk with her. Chat with your daughter about her blog. Ask her questions and listen to her answers. Use her blogging experience as a way to connect with her about issues that matter to both of you (yes, there are some of those even though she’s a teen). Make it known that you routinely read her blog and let her know what you enjoy about it. This will also help remind her that whatever she publishes online will be read by you. She may think twice about writing about inappropriate subjects.

• Google her. If you are ever in doubt about what your daughter’s really up to online, you can always “Google” her name. This internet search will give you a fairly complete picture of her online activities.

• Investigate questionable content. Trust is often the determining factor in whether or not parents allow their children to blog. If you stumble across a post that you have “questions” about, try not to jump to any conclusions until you talk with your daughter. Teens, by nature, tend to embellish their thoughts and feelings to impress their friends. That being said, if there is questionable content on her blog, it’s important to confront her and get to the bottom of the issue. Whether the content is a case of embellishment or indicative of a more serious problem, it’s important to address the issue promptly and directly.

• When to pull the plug. If you suspect or discover any information on your daughter’s blog that “breaks” your rules or is too revealing, it’s time to pull the plug for a while. It’s important for your daughter to understand that there are consequences for her actions and that you mean what you say. Take her computer privileges away and disable her blog until she can prove she’s trustworthy again. It’s true that she may find other ways to chat online but it will make access to a computer much more difficult.

The Writer:

By: Elizabeth Donovan, M.A.

ParentingPink.com

The Collaborator: Kim Gellman is the owner of Artisticsensations.com, a fun and hip website that sells kids furniture, bedding, and room decor from baby to college age kids. She is the mother of two boys and enjoys every moment of life and all its adventures!

Parenting | No Comments »