This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Miracle-Gro for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I love to grow plants, but I admit that I don’t have much of a green thumb.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t keep trying though.  It just means that I need a little more help, and Miracle-Gro products are the help I need.  With their help I’ve been able to have some beautiful flowers that can make me proud of how the outside of my home looks.

Miracle-Gro is so committed to helping all types of gardeners that they have a Pinterest page that is full of fun garden projects.  I love to see all of the new ideas that they have there.  I spend a lot of time daydreaming of all the fun planting projects I could do, but I know I have to keep it simple for me.  Maybe I can add some of their amazing ideas when Nick is older and I am better able to work outside.

For now I need to turn my sights to indoor ideas.  When I found The Gro Project with it’s detailed steps on how to build a Toyarium I knew that I had found something that I could probably pull off.  Plus the Moisture Control Potting Mix should help save the plant when I over water it which I have a tendency to do.  To top things off I thought Nick would love a plant that had toys in it.

Since Nick’s only two he couldn’t help much with putting the Toyarium together, but I did let him choose the cactus plant.  I think the whole thing really turned out cute.  It’s a perfect addition to our sun porch as well.

Here is how to make your own Toyarium:

Materials:

1. Fishbowl or other glass container
2. Cacti plants (we only added one, but you certainly could add more)
3. Moisture Control Potting Mix
4. Plastic toys
5. Rocks
6. Spoon

Process:

1. Cover the bottom of the container with a layer of rocks.
2. Fill it about 1/3 full with potting mix.
3. Use the spoon to plant your plant in the potting mix, adding more mix to create your landscape.
4. Set the scene with your toys.
5. Use a spritzer to only moisten the soil when it gets dry.

You can learn more about The Gro Project by watching the video below.

Which Gro Project is your favorite?

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We have been having roof problems.  Our contractor fit us in two weeks ago to fix it, and to find where the leak was coming from he had to rip off a lot of our mudroom ceiling tiles (by the way three of them were covered in an old bees nest, yikes!).  Many of them were ruined from water damage and needed replacing anyways.  Now it sits like this though because he’s going to fix it when he comes to add our half bath in the next couple weeks.  Nick is very interested in it and has referred to it as both yucky and an uh-oh.  I’ll be so glad to get it fixed!

The post Wordless Wednesday: Our Yucky Uh-Oh appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

This sponsored post is brought to you by Qmee.

With the economy the way it is many of us look for ways to make a little extra cash.  Of course as busy as we all are it’s difficult to find the time necessary to do things to make that extra money.  Do you ever wish that you could make some money from the things you do everyday?  I know I wish that a lot.

How many of you do online searches?  How many of you do it a lot?  What would you say if I told you that there was a service that would let you earn cash rewards just for doing the online searches that you already do?  It’s true with Qmee.

What is Qmee?

Qmee is an app that you download onto your computer.  Then when you do searches through Google, Amazon, EBay, Yahoo, or Bing a side bar will open on the left side of the search screen with relevant search results that Qmee found.  The side bar will not appear if Qmee doesn’t have any relevant results for your search.

How Does Qmee Work?

All the results that Qmee shows have a value attached to them that is displayed on the screen.  If you click on the link than the amount displayed will be deposited into a virtual piggy bank.  When you’re ready you can cash out the balance in your piggy bank.  You can either have the amount deposited into your PayPal account or you can choose to donate the amount to charity.  Best of all there isn’t a minimum amount that you need to reach in order to cash out.

My Thoughts on Qmee

Qmee just became available to the U.S. last week, but I got a special code to start using it a few months ago.  I really like it.  One thing I really like about Qmee is that it is not its own search engine, so I can still use the search engine that I like and that I’m used to.  It has also been really useful for comparing products when I have been shopping for items on Amazon.

Qmee is so easy to use.  Like most people I do a lot of online searches.  The amount you make isn’t huge, but if you do it often than it quickly adds up.  You can’t beat getting rewarded for something that you already do.  Especially when you can get an answer to your question in the process.

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Do you have a giveaway you’re hosting on your blog? Do you like to get things for FREE? Come join Rock-A-Bye Parents Giveaway Link-Up! You can come here to find the current giveaways that Rock-A-Bye Parents has, and you’ll find a lot of other amazing giveaways from other blogs. If you’re a blogger with your own giveaways than link away (please no affiliate links)!

The post Giveaway Link-Up: May 19, 2013 appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

One of the hardest part of your child having an egg allergy is making them a cake for their birthday.  Last year we did manage to make Nick an eggless cake.  I wasn’t about to have my baby miss out on that first birthday cake moment.  This year we weren’t sure if we wanted to go that route again, but I still wanted Nick to have a cake.  With the way he’s been so picky about food lately though my mom wasn’t sure he’d eat the cake this year.  As she put it she wasn’t going to take all the time to make it to have Nick stick his tongue out and go, “yuck.”  There aren’t a lot of baked goods that Nick can eat though, so we were left with the alternative of just having Oreos.  Nick would have been happy with Oreos since he inhales them, but I wanted something more.  The thought of Oreos put my mom’s mind to working though, and she thought of making dirt for the party instead.

I knew everyone in our family would be happy with dirt, but there was a part of me that was still sad that there wouldn’t be a cake to decorate.  I asked mom about putting the dirt into a cake pan and she thought that would work.  I saw a lot of great looking cakes while doing my Cars birthday party research on Pinterest, and it got me thinking about how we could decorate our dirt cake.   I then had the idea of making a road on the cake for Nick’s Cars figurines to sit on.  The dirt was already the right color for the road, but we needed a way to make a specific road stand out.  That’s when I had the idea of using the vanilla Oreos.  The colors made it look just like Radiator Springs!

We were so happy with how our dirt cake turned out.  It looked really cute.  Nick got a cake that he liked.  In fact he really liked it.  I loved that we still had a fun cake to display and that there was still a place to put a candle for Nick to blow out (or not blow out as the case was).  Another great thing was that since Nick’s toys weren’t sitting on frosting they were totally clean when we took them off the cake.  It was just a perfect egg free cake solution all around!

The post Dirt Cake: An Egg Free Cake Alternative appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

Why is it that when a car seat is in the house it is so much fun, but getting a kid into it in the car can be a huge battle?

The post Wordless Wednesday: A Love/Hate Relationship appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

Once May and June hit social calendars are filled up with graduation parties.  Those with kids in high school will have a whole lot of them to go to, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of us always get to escape them.  The majority of people attending a graduation open house will give a check or a gift card to the graduate.  With so much to purchase for college a financial gift is very much appreciated, but what’s the fun in it?  Sometimes you want to give a gift that will be remembered, but at the same time you want your gift to be useful and well liked.

My mother felt this way when we started getting invited to graduation parties for close family friends.  Gas cards were the staple gift to give in our house, but when she wanted to give a larger amount of money to such good friends it just didn’t seem right.  A gas card with a lot of money on it could be a very nice gift, but my mother wanted to do something special.  Then someone told her about making a money pizza and the rest is history.  Money pizzas became our new staple gift.  Everyone we have given has not only been well received, but everyone is always so excited about it that it is shown off to all of the guests.  It certainly is a gift that isn’t forgotten.  The best part is that it is very easy to make and it takes only a little time.

Supplies:

1. A large pizza box – It’s best to get a new one that hasn’t been used.  Ask at a pizza place for a large box (works best if you’re picking a pizza up at the same time).  They might want to know why you want it, but most places will give you one.  You can always help sway them by letting them know it’s free publicity because a lot of people are going to see that box!
2. Thin piece of cardboard to make into the “pizza.”
3. Red paper – You can use construction paper or tissue paper.
4. Money (bills and coins)- Go to the bank and take out the amount of money that you want to give the graduate.  The amount of bills you need depends on the size that you make the “pizza.”  You most likely will need 15 to 20 rolls.  You don’t need to give all large bills.  You can have a mix of say 20s, 10s, and 5s.  Don’t forget to add the amount that the coins add up to as part of the gift amount.
5. Shredded paper – I just took paper right from the paper shredder, but you could rip paper up too.
6. Tape

Steps:

• Cut out your thin piece of cardboard to make the pizza and cover it with the red paper.  It does not need to be a perfect circle.  It will have a circular look once you add the bills.

• Roll up your bills hot dog length.  If you want to give a lot of money, or if you have more bills than you need, then you can roll two bills up together.  Once rolled up use a small piece of tape to hold the roll together.  Use as small of piece as you can or the graduate is going to spend a long time taking their gift apart.

• Tape the bills to the cardboard.  Bend them slightly to give a curved look to the outside of the pizza.  The bills will go all the way around the outside and then use the remaining pieces on the inside to make “slices.”

• Tape coins to the open areas of the “slices” to give your “pizza” toppings.

• Top your pizza off with “cheese” by adding the shredded paper.  This doesn’t need to be tapped.  Just throw the paper on there.

• Finish your gift by placing it in the pizza box.

The post How To Make A Money Pizza – Graduation Gift Idea appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

Do you have a giveaway you’re hosting on your blog? Do you like to get things for FREE? Come join Rock-A-Bye Parents Giveaway Link-Up! You can come here to find the current giveaways that Rock-A-Bye Parents has, and you’ll find a lot of other amazing giveaways from other blogs. If you’re a blogger with your own giveaways than link away (please no affiliate links)!

The post Giveaway Link-up: May 12, 2013 appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

I can’t believe that it has almost been three weeks since Nick’s second birthday.  For the party we went with a Disney and Pixar’s Cars theme.  Cars are one of Nick’s favorite things, so he loved the theme.  The day itself was a little rough though. Nick hadn’t slept well the night before because of teething, so he was both exhausted and in pain.  Really not a good combination.  To top it off the party was at 1:00, so he had to skip a nap.  He’s at the stage where skipping a nap isn’t always pretty, but it is manageable.  Yeah, on that day the lack of a nap really wasn’t a good thing.

There was so much to do right from the start of the day.  Nick was pretty cranky, but I managed to get a few things done when I could get him distracted.  Mom arrived at 11:00 and we immediately headed out to get balloons for the party.  Nick loves balloons, so he was pretty happy with that outing.

When we got back home we got a little time to work while Nick played with the balloons.  It was a funny site to see him walking around with all seven of them.  We kept joking that he would probably lift off the ground if he had any more.  Sadly the balloon excitement didn’t last.  Nick started to get crazy fussy again. It got so bad that I made Jason take him outside. We managed to get everything done in time, but we really cut it close.

The party itself went pretty well. For food we decided on going with a taco bar and it was quite a hit. Nick decided he wanted to open his presents at the start of the party, so we let him. He didn’t really care about ripping the paper, but he wanted to take everything out of their boxes. For dessert we had a dirt cake. Yep, you read that right. Look for an upcoming blog post where I’ll go into more details on it.

After the party things got rough again. When Nana left you would have thought Nick’s life was over by the way he cried. The combination of extreme exhaustion and teething pain was not pretty. In the end I even had to rock Nick to sleep which is unheard of for him.

Now, onto the details. The start of a well themed party is the invitation. I had found a with a Cars theme that I liked, but none of them seemed like the right one to me. Jason ended up designing ours with Photo Shop, and then we used Picaboo to print them off. Loved Picaboo by the way. This was the first time I used them. The program was so easy and the turn around time was really fast. In fact the invitations arrived days before they were supposed to.

Once it’s party time you have to set the scene. I had really wanted to do more decorating than I had, but Nick’s teething took up all my free, and not free, time. We did the basic birthday party decorations to start with themed plates, napkins, and a table cloth. Then we went a little farther and added a banner and centerpieces. I loved this banner because it allowed you to put up whatever birthday age your little one was turning. The centerpieces we got were cool too because they came with decorative confetti, but they were big confetti pieces and not little ones that just make a mess.

Then I went deeper with the decorations by adding traffic cones that I had purchased from Amazon as well as some of Nick’s Cars toys.  It really is the little things that can add to the overall theme.

The post Nick’s 2nd Birthday With A Cars Theme appeared first on rockabyeparents.com.

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