ZannaLand Adventures Archives

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Remember Rainbow Brite? If you grew up around the 80’s I’m sure you remember Rainbow and her colorful friends. She’s back with a whole new look and thanks to Hallmark and MomSelect (who provided me with CD’s to review and share) I have 10 interactive CD’s to giveaway to readers of ZannaLand!

The Rainbow Brite Adventure Pack CD includes:

  • Rainbow Brite animated short
  • Games and Puzzles
  • Rainbow Brite theme song
  • Meet Rainbow Brite and Friends
  • Coloring pages, printables and more!


To enter the giveaway {mandatory}-

Comment here and tell me what other toys from the 80’s you wish would come back again!

Additional entries {optional}-

  • Subscribe to ZannaLand’s feed
  • Add ZannaLand to your Google Friend Connect (scroll down to bottom right and click “Join This Site” on Google Friend Connect)
  • Follow ZannaLand on Facebook or Networked Blogs
  • Follow ZannaLand on twitter

Please comment separately with each additional entry so I can properly pick a winner through random.org. Giveaway ends on March 20th, winner will be announced March 21st. Thanks and good luck!

Last night was spent in food and wine wonderland as my mom and I enjoyed the Discovery Dinner featuring local Floridian specialties at The Wave restaurant. I’m working on editing pictures and writing up a full report, but until then I thought I’d leave you with a couple of pictures to whet your appetite. :)

The Wave wine glass

Our first wine tasting, in The Wave lounge

Table at The Wave Discovery Dinner

Our table in The Wave's private dining room




As promised, I entered all the comments for the Stonyfield Farms YoBaby 3-in-1 Meals giveaway into random.org. The winning comment was #10 – Lorna Marion. Congratulations! I’ll be contacting you for your info to receive your prize pack!

YoBaby giveaway winner

#10 was chosen!

Win a Trip to The View!

The wonderful folks at Mom Central created a Brand Ambassador program for fans of The View. I am proud to announce I was chosen to be a brand ambassador for The View! At Mom Central they’ve put together a great group where you can learn more about becoming an official brand ambassador for The View and discuss Hot Topics, show guests and hosts.

You can also win a trip to The View!

One lucky winner will be randomly selected to receive an all-expenses paid trip (with a friend) to New York to visit the set of The View and sit in the audience for a show taping!
Fill out this survey by February 28, 2010 for the chance to win. Sweepstakes rules.

Be sure to join Mom Central, check out the group forum there, sign up for the sweepstakes and check back here and on twitter for further updates on great topics from The View.


I am a participant in a Mom Central campaign for ABC Daytime and will receive a tote bag or other The View branded items to facilitate my review.

How Chris Brogan Saved My {Blogging} Life

{Alright, first things first. If you are following my posts, you realize that me + NaBloPoMo = FAIL. I had planned to pre-write posts for my time away at Disney World for the Social Media Moms Celebration but time got away from me. Then I thought I’d live blog while there or at the very least get a Wordless Wednesday post up the first day. Again, that did not happen.}

What did happen, was a blogging identity crisis. Right in the middle of Walt Disney World.

Readers of ZannaLand may have noticed the not-so-subtle shift from Disney posts to more me/personal/generic posts. This happened both because I combined the MainStreet.Zannaland.com posts here and I really wanted to venture out into the world of Mom Blogs and hopefully get more involved with other bloggers, product reviews and blogging opportunities. I thought – “I can be a REAL blogging mom!” There was only one problem…I had no idea what to blog about. Read the rest of this entry

Ok, so the party isn’t even quite over yet – but I am just now getting online after relying only on my cell to keep up with tweets for the most part. I thought it’d be great to have a bloggy carnival link-up with all our #DisneySMMoms recaps! So post your links here and I’ll even post mine when I get back home and have a chance to upload my photos and remember what happened. {I may have been 1 Skyy & lemonade away from forgetting everything ;) }

Can’t wait to read your posts!

Read the rest of this entry

Photobucket

My fabulous blogging friend and fellow Walt Disney World Moms Panelist OhAmanda does Top 10 Tuesday every week and each week I think “I really need to participate in this!” but I always either have a different topic on tap, or can’t think of a list in time. So this week, I’ve finally found a topic to join in with. Below are ten of the many things I am looking forward to tomorrow, when we arrive at Walt Disney World for the first-ever Social Media Moms Celebration. One thing I am NOT looking forward to is the fact that Amanda will not be there. *sobs* However, she just got back from Blissdom and taking part in amazing workshops there AND seeing Harry Connick Jr. so that is slight consolation I guess. Anyway…

10. Being able to be at Walt Disney World both as a blogger and as a Moms PanelistWITH my family. Moms Panel training was so amazingly fun, and though I wouldn’t change it for the world, the fact that my husband and children will be with me this time around, is a treat. I really love how Disney put together the registration that way, to include families.

9. Celebrating J.’s birthday (the 10th) at Disney. I suppose I could’ve been quiet about this whole thing and let him think I planned a huge celebration at the new ESPN Wide World of Sports just for his birthday, but the hundreds of strangers crashing the party might’ve given it away…I’m confident it’ll still be a special day for him and hope I can force him to wear a Disney Birthday Button!

8. Diving into the world of Social Media/Blogging conventions feet first by attending my first conference at Walt Disney World! I am hoping this is just the first of many. Watching friends and fellow bloggers attend BlogHer 09, Type A Mom 09 and now Blissdom 10 has definitely wet my appetite for blogging conferences I must attend next year. I’m hoping to get to BlogHer ‘10 this year too. Working on sponsors for that now! The fact that it’s my first one and Disney’s first one seems like a perfect fit.

7. Dole Whip! I don’t really need to say more.

6. Getting to hear the speakers Disney has secured for the conference. Guy Kawasaki. Chris Brogan. Maxine Clark. Just to name a few. As a new-ish blogger I’m all ears for any and everything I can learn about the process and how to improve as a writer and communicator. I figure I might as well start off at the top, right?

5. The special events Disney has planned for us. Sooo, I may have mentioned this is DISNEY, yes? And my love for all things Disney? And my recent super fabulous Disney Moms Panel training trip (which I will continue writing about soon, promise!) where I experienced quite a bit of pixie dust? This is DISNEY. Can you imagine the special surprises they have planned for us? There have already been reports leaked about the performers who will be at Thursday night’s Epcot celebration (entertainment subject to change). I can only imagine what else they have in store for us.

4. Meeting new friends from twitter. In the course of expanding my blogging topics and connecting with others who are attending this conference, I’ve made a ton of new friends whom I cannot wait to meet in person at Disney. I feel like I should probably wear my twitter handle on a t-shirt or print out a poster size version of my twitter picture so I can ensure people know who I am because I don’t want to miss anyone!

3. Meeting old friends from twitter. Another benefit to this celebration being held at Walt Disney World is many of my Disney fan friends from twitter were eager to attend as well. Because of that, quite a few of them will be at the conference and I will get to meet them too. People that have been with me from my start on twitter and followed my journey onto the Moms Panel. It will be great to finally put faces to the names, in person.

2. Staying at the Polynesian. I mentioned in my previous post about the Social Media Moms Celebration that the Polynesian was one of the few resorts I had not stayed in. It has always been one of our family’s favorite spots for dining and visiting, so the fact that we will get to sleep there too, experiencing all the resort has to offer guests, is a real treat.

2 of our fearless Moms Panel leaders: Laura Spencer & Jo Anne Wallace, who make everything more fun! (Oh, and those royal-looking people would be the gorgeous Princess Tiana and the debonair Prince Naveen!)

1. Meeting up with my Moms Panel friends/Disney cast members. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to reconnect with a handful of the wonderful moms I just met during Moms Panel training. I feel like our time together ended too soon and am so excited to be able to hug, laugh and just hang out again. I kinda just want to run around the Polynesian at night in our pj’s and pink jackets like a big slumber party…but I’ll restrain myself. In addition, I’ll be able to see the wonderful cast members that make the Walt Disney World Moms Panel and the Disney Parks social media team so successful. Hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with a very special Canadian cast member and enjoy #7 with her.

In other words - I’M EXCITED!!! If you are attending, what are you most looking forward to? Please, please look for me because I am terrible with associating twitter names with real names and I don’t want to miss anyone. See you tomorrow!

It’s no secret I am a Patriots fan, but since the Pats were out of the running I am more than happy for the Saints to have won Super Bowl 44. I think the best part of the game for me was following it on twitter with all my friends. The comments on the commercials and half-time show were hysterical. To show my support for the winning team, I thought I’d share my favorite photo from after the win last night:


Brees with his adorable son. Photo: NY Times



And my two favorite commercials from last night:

Read the rest of this entry

YoBaby 3 in 1 Meals multipack

A while back I was given a chance to receive and review Stonyfield Farm’s new YoBaby Meals. I was completely intrigued by this concept. I had been a YoBaby fan from when they first came out, when my now 11 year-old was a baby. I think he survived on YoBaby organic yogurts for breakfast or lunch for more than a year!

Click to continue reading AND check out the GIVEAWAY

I’ve mentioned before that I was spoiled as a child. I remember once, a two of my friends told me I was spoiled and I had to ask my mom what it meant. She said it meant I was really loved. Now obviously that could be misinterpreted to lead my friends to think they weren’t loved, but we all seemed to turn out okay. Really, as a child I don’t recall being obnoxiously spoiled. I mean – I never had an Easy Bake Oven OR a Snoopy Sno-Cone Machine, so seriously, how bad could it have been? I actually think the conversation with my friends came from my announcing our first trip to Walt Disney World. I suppose, in the world of a small bedroom community in New England, announcing a 2-week trip to Walt Disney World where we would stay in the Lake Buena Vista Vacation Villas was something to be envied.

Anyway, that is not the point of this post. I wanted to talk a bit about my parents, and how I was raised. Of course, my reflections and memories of my childhood are just that, MY memories, and my mom may have a completely different account as to how things happened. These are the things that stuck with me and formed me into the kind of parent I am today – some as a direct result of what I rebelled against as a child, others because I appreciated the lessons I learned from my parents.

Click to continue reading

I was LOST but now I’m FOUND

Alright, I’m sure by now the entire population is aware of tonight’s premiere of the final season of Lost. I will admit to watching most of the first season, though I can’t remember much of it. I saw parts of I think the second or third season, but I really lost interest with the whole polar-bear-in-the-jungle premise and the introduction of the second group of people really did me in. It was kind of hard to hear all about the wonderment that is Lost and not want to jump on that bandwagon, but my stress levels simply couldn’t take it!

I am one of those people that has to psych herself up to watch a sad movie. I could live watching nothing but Bosom Buddies for the rest of my life because it’s just so happy and carefree…ish. Ok, I might get a little tired of Bosom Buddies but you get the idea. I actually get sick when I watch movies like Silence of the Lambs or pretty much any Martin Scorsese film. I’m not saying Lost is in that category, but I also can’t take series that stress you out with suspense AND don’t give you explanations for things. I’m all for mystery and mind-bending plot twists, but I’d like them to be resolved at LEAST by the end of each season. Give me a nice cliffhanger that frustrates me for a few days and I’ll get over it. Not plot lines that need entire websites, books and countless other sources of theories. My rainbows and unicorn-filled head just wouldn’t know what to do!

Click to continue reading FOUND

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