Family movie night is a popular activity in our household but for the most part, we try to get out and be active as much as possible. It’s good for the kids. It’s good for mom and dad. I recently found out about the Active Family Project, a free resource for activities, tips and tools for getting the entire family active.

I attended an event with actress and spokesperson Ana Ortiz (from Ugly Betty and Devious Maids) and learned more about the Active Family Project and how it works.

The Active Family Project is, as mentioned, a free service brought by Merck Consumer Care. It’s mission is to give moms and dads resources to spend quality family time. On the site you will see tools for locating various activities in your area, as well as tips. For even more information you can visit their facebook page. In celebration of Youth Soccer Month, through September 30th, 2014, for every like, comment or share the Active Family Project will donate $1 to the U.S Youth Soccer (up to $15,000). The money will go toward soccer equipment and training in undeserved communities and give families opportunity to stay active together through soccer games.

Visit the Active Family Project site and their facebook page: facebook.com/activefamilyproject

I was not compensated for this post. I received a gift bag.

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Senior Reviewer Maytal Wichman is the owner of Mama’s Bites and has also written for The Huffington Post. She has been living in New York City for thirteen years and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature as well as a Law Degree, but blogging is her true passion. Maytal is a stay-at-home mom to three kids (ages 7, 5 and 1) and loves finding great products that make her family’s life easier.

The post Keep Your Kids Moving with the Active Family Project appeared first on The Mama Maven Blog.

Ellen’s record-breaking Oscar selfie is not the only gathering of mega-celebrities in a small space. The world-famous wax museum, Madame Tussauds, has over 200 of the most interesting celebrities and famous people. My family & I recently got to see them all in the Times Square location. Here are pictures from our experience, plus tips at the end of the post.

Each figure costs approximately $220,000, takes about 3-4 months to complete and involves a team of 20 artists.

To create a wax figure of a current celebrity, the process often begins with a sitting where over 375 measurements and photographs are taken of the celebrity.

The Spirit of New York was one of our favorite rooms!

The Music Experience room was awesome!

My kids had a blast being in the spotlight!

It was cool to show my kids the Presidents they had recently learned about during Presidents’ Day in their school.

My husband and older son LOVED the sports room!

Tips:

• During the summer and busy seasons the lines can be long so now is a good time to go! (We waited about 5 minutes in line).
• It takes about 1.5 hours to go through the entire exhibit, so plan accordingly and don’t forget to bring a camera!
• Be sure to see the 12 minute 4D movie. It’s about all the Marvel superheroes. The 4D experience has vibrating seats, mist, wind and other cool effects. It was an awesome experience and it’s included in the price of admission.
• You can bring a stroller, although some areas have some stairs.
• You can’t bring in food but you can buy food throughout the exhibit.
• The store at the end of the exhibit is not cheap, but it has some really unique items (you can buy your very own Oscar!)
• Save 20% off your ticket when you book online.

Be sure to visit the Madame Tussauds Facebook page and follow on Twitter.

Visit Madame Tussauds to learn more and click here to purchase tickets.I was not compensated for this post. I received tickets to the museum.

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Senior Reviewer Maytal Wichman is the owner of Mama’s Bites and has also written for The Huffington Post. She has been living in New York City for thirteen years and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature as well as a Law Degree, but blogging is her true passion. Maytal is a stay-at-home mom to three kids (ages 7, 5 and 1) and loves finding great products that make her family’s life easier.

The post Enjoying Madame Tussauds of New York with Kids appeared first on The Mama Maven Blog.

Looking for a kids movie that has action, adventure, science, history and humor? Then Walking With Dinosaurs 3D is for you. Opening today, this movie is pretty different from other dinosaur movies you may have seen.

We’re going to give you 5 reasons to see it:

1. You really feel like you are RIGHT  there as the dinosaurs walked the earth.. seriously. WALKING WITH DINOSAURS is really an immersive, big screen adventure for families. You get to meet several types of dinosaurs and you’ll feel like you are in the adventure. In this prehistoric adventure, Patchi, an underdog dinosaur, triumphs against all odds to become a hero for his fellow dinosaurs.

2. Adults will be as interested as kids will. The mix of scientific facts and adventure will teach as well as entertain. Which is always a good thing.  

3. Justin Long plays Patchi (the main character), who’s a Pachyrhino. It’s amazing seeing him go from a hatchling to an adult and see everything he goes through on the way.

4. John Leguizamo steals the show, as Alex, a prehistoric Alexornis bird (who serves as the narrator and a guide to Pachi). He will make you laugh (and when we went to the premiere, he was watching our family get our picture taking.

No ego, just waiting for his turn. He also enjoyed the movie several rows back from us.. which was really cool to see an actor actually in the theatre. Justin Long and Skyler Stone were there also, as well as the producers.

5. Good supporting performances from Skyler Stone (as Scowler, Patchi’s brother) and the sweet Tiya Sircar (as Juniper, Patchi’s love interest).

Check out the trailer:

Scary? What ages should see this?

This definitely for older kids — I think over age 7 or 8 is perfect. 9-13 would probably be much better. There are a few scary parts. However, we were warned with John Leguizamo’s voiceover for one of the scarier parts. My three year old and almost 6 year old definitely jumped during the scary parts. I would recommend this film, because it really feels like you are right there with the dinosaurs and kids will really learn a lot of different dinosaurs and what prehistoric life was really like.

Find out more about Pachyrhinos:

Find out what dinosaurs ate back then:

Games & Coloring Pages

Visit the Activity Page on the film’s official website to download free coloring pages here, here & here PLUS play online games including Match Three, Memoryand Slider Puzzle!

Get Social with Walking With Dinosaurs: 

Visit the  Website

Connect on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter

#WalkingWithDinosaurs

Thank you to 20th Century Fox for providing tickets to the premiere screening.

The post 5 Reasons to See Walking With Dinosaurs 3D appeared first on The Mama Maven Blog.

Our first Q & A session was with Chris Wedge, Colin Farrell and Amanda Seyfried. It was amazing to hear from Chris Wedge, who directed and produced the movie, along with Blue Sky Studios (he’s part owner).

Chris Wedge discussed how the movie came about during our Q & A, “We just started dreaming up an idea for a movie. It was this place, it was the woods that we started thinking about. And Bill [William Joyce, who is a good friend] had just finished that book, The Leaf Men. So, we took that notion that there are leaf men out there and put it in our movie, but that’s all we took from the book. The book’s a very charming, beautifully illustrated by him, painted like a bed time story kind of book. But, I just loved that idea that those guardians were out there. And that’s really all we took from the book. The rest, we conjured up the basic idea of this movie together. And then, eight years later with a lot more collaborators and writing and designing, we came up with the idea for this movie.”

Wedge discussed the themes in Epic, “The themes were more about connections between people and finding things that we don’t realize are there, because I think that it’s emotionally satisfying to discover that someone’s been thinking about you, or somebody helped behind the scenes, or when you’re in trouble, somebody comes through that you didn’t expect to hear from. When I walk into the forest, the one thing that I sense, if you just stand there for a second, you feel this kind of magical presence. I was just trying to express that in a fantasy. You feel the silence, you feel the strength, you see the leaf growing, the birds flitting around. And, if there’s a message, it’s just that, check it out, respect it, maybe spend some time out there. But, the real thing about destroying the forest and trying to save it is what’s just happening in there. If you go walk in the woods you’ll see evidence that this battle is going on. There are rotten trees that succumb to a Boggin attack, and over here where stuff’s growing, and that’s where the leaf men fought them back. We made it up.”

Since this was an animated film, the actors don’t interact like a live action production. Most of the time, the cast didn’t even meet. When Amanda Seyfried and Colin Farrell told us that they didn’t interact, but voiced their parts separately, they were recorded separately — director Chris Wedge would act out the other roles to keep the pacing going. Colin Farrell and Amanda Seyfried were very nice (even if they aren’t big users of social media). Seyfried said it took her a while to see the value, “I kind of like it now because when I have an opinion about something that I share with a lot of people, I feel like I can make like a tiny, tiny little difference to my small amount of followers, and feels good.” She had 100,000 followers, so I think people care what she thinks.

In the 2nd Q & A, we spoke to Aziz Ansari and Chris O’ Dowd. Aziz played Mub, a slug and self characterized “ladies’ man” and Chris O’Dowd plays Grub, a snail and wannabe Leafman. In the movie, Mub and Grub have an important job, they are charged with taking care of the pods that Queen Tara (Beyonce Knowles) chooses her heir from. Once the pod is chosen, they keep it safe for her. Mub flirts with the Amanda Seyfried’s character, M.K., who is a human, shamelessly.
When asked by our group if they did research on their roles, Chris O’ Dowd said, “I had a slug farm, so like I felt like I was already one step ahead, yes like an ant farm.”
Aziz Ansari told us with a straight face, “Me and Chris went to the woods with a magnifying glass and followed a snail and slug around for a couple of months.”
O’Dowd chimed in with, “ It did not end well, obviously. It was a sunny day. One thing led to another. Yes, it was really sad. It was sad, but worth it.” O’Dowd and Ansari both had this wonderful deadpan delivery that had the room in stitches.
Unlike Amanda Seyfried and Colin Farrell, Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari actually did the first long audio session together, and then they recorded the rest of their parts separately.
It was really interesting to get an insight into Epic’s production and I hope I can see Chris O’Dowd and Aziz Ansari work together again. I really enjoyed Colin Farrell (yes, that is me next to him in the photo and his arm is around me), Amanda Seyfried (who was so petite and pretty), and director Chris Wedge.

Thank you to 20th Century Fox for inviting us to the screening and the Q & A Session.

The post Epic the Movie: Part 2 of our Sit Down with the Cast! appeared first on The Mama Maven Blog.

I worked at the Food Network, The Cooking Channel’s sister network for 5 years when I was in my twenties (ouch!) and it was so nice to go back and see it as a mom blogger.

While the location of the network has changed (I worked at the old studio on 6th Avenue), and well as most of the people; I still got excited when I walked into the test kitchen. I used to handle the Green Room, so I interacted with the amazing kitchen staffers back in the day! I also got to reminisce with my old friend Bill Calamita and see a few other people I worked with years ago.

I brought my 18 month old son with me (since I had no one to watch him) and put him in the ERGO carrier to watch the demo (since toddlers and kitchens don’t mix so well).. While I had heard of Melissa before, I wasn’t aware of how charming she was. This mom of 4 was warm and has some great ideas for making family dinners (that will still help mamas lose some pounds by swapping some of the ingredients).

Melissa’s Tips included:
Get used to measuring out ingredients (it will help you stay on track easier). Gradually you’ll be able to eye out what a 1/4 teaspoon or 1/2 teaspoon looks like
Don’t be afraid to add some salt to bring out flavor (I usually try to cook salt free, so this was helpful)
Add as many veggies as you can to help you fill up.
She also taught us to add frozen peas to the bottom of your colander when you are draining pasta. The hot water from the pasta will instantly defrost and heat up the peas. It’s a great way to add some more fiber to your food and kids will love it. I actually tried this last night and it was a huge success.

Melissa showed us how to make Low-Fat Creamy Mushroom Cavatappi and it was amazing (and the baby even loved it).

Since my family doesn’t normally eat ham and my oldest kid is mostly vegetarian (yes, even at 6); I’d serve it without the ham (or let my husband and daughter top it with turkey if they’d like). This recipe was really fast and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to make. Melissa recommended starting it when you get home, changing your clothes and then finishing it. If you have very picky eaters like I do, you could serve them the pasta with the peas and leave the mushroom sauce (which was so light) off.

I also enjoyed meeting Good Housekeeping Nutrition Director Samantha Cassetty, one of the correspondents on the show. She answered all my picky eater related questions, like “Is soy safe for boys to eat?” Her answer was yes, but serve it more in an unprocessed forms like edamame or tofu, rather than soy nuggets (but it’s okay to do occasionally).

Thank you to the Cooking Channel who hosted us for lunch (yes, in the test kitchen). It was delicious and they served us meals from the show, including the recipe above. I had a wonderful time and I was honored to be invited.

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