Today, Paige (also of Mudroom Boston) shares a beloved book, good for Valentine's Day or any day:

"Mr. Hatch was tall and thin and he did not smile." And so begins the story of Mr. Hatch, a lonesome man who leads a gray and dreary life. He leaves his house at precisely 6:30am for his job at the shoelace factory every day, sits alone and eats his cheese and mustard sandwich for lunch every day, and stops at the grocery store for a fresh turkey wing for dinner every day. And then one day, a day unlike every other day, the postman changes Mr. Hatch's world when he delivers a giant heart-shaped box of chocolates, complete with a special Valentine's note. "Somebody loves you," the note says. But who?
In Eileen Spinelli's Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch (our favorite Valentine story that we read year-round), we get a peek into how someone's whole life can change with one simple expression of love. As soon as Mr. Hatch reads that note, his world becomes more colorful and expressive -- captured perfectly by illustrator Paul Yalowitz -- as he begins wearing polka dot ties, helps out neighbors in need, throws backyard parties complete with homemade brownies, and laughs like he's never laughed before.

But just when we think all is right in Mr. Hatch's life, the postman returns to admit that he delivered the box to the wrong address, and suddenly Mr. Hatch's new found joy disappears (as does the color from Yalowitz's illustrations). And just when you want to jump into the pages of Mr. Hatch's world and say, "but WE love you, Mr. Hatch," the many people whose lives he touched in those few brief days of happiness band together and show Mr. Hatch exactly what he means to them.

Somebody Loves You, Mr. Hatch is a story that has brings tears of empathy and joy. With its simply written story and expressive pictures, not only does it teach that saying "I love you" can change someone's life, but that opening up to other people can change your life, too -- an important lesson for kids and grownups alike.

Happy February! While I don't pay much attention to Valentine's Day from a commercial standpoint -- Jon and I don't exchange gifts -- the day does offer a fun inspiration point for crafts and food around our house. (Plus, I love the colors red and pink!) As I've mentioned before, I adore Pinterest and decided to round up 10 pretty craft and treat ideas that caught my pinning eye. Oh, and if you need a Pinterest invite, drop me a line and I'll be happy to send you one! Enjoy!

Valentine's Day Crafts

1. I love the simple and chic of this pop-up Valentine.

2. Brilliant. Turn your collection of random broken crayons into Valentine's that will craft it forward.

3. Pretty heart ornaments.

4. Pinned from my archives: crepe paper rosebud Valentine's cards.

5. I'm tempted to make one of these DIY scratch off cards for Jon. So cute!

6. A pretty printable Valentine's book.

Valentine's Day Treats

7. Red velvet brownies. YES.

8. Easy cut out cupcakes.

9. You could totally serve this as a healthy Valentine's Day snack.

10. Figs for Valentine's Day? Brilliant and easy. Also high in fiber.

All images via Pinterest.

Today, Sheri offers ideas for celebrating and learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. at home (and if you're looking to get out of the house, there are several MLK activities included here):

Monday, January 16, is a holiday for our school-aged children. It's important for kids to understand why they have the day off and why we celebrate the birthday of one of America's most influential people. Kids can learn the history behind the life of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the event surrounding a man who changed history through a variety of activities that can be fun, inspiring, creative, and educational. Below is a sampling of ideas; if you have others, feel free to share in the comments!
Books

Read together! Here's a roundup of recommended books for teaching or introducing Martin Luther King, Jr. to children. Make an activity out of visiting your local library or used/new bookstore to look for titles.

Craft

I like this Decorate with Many Colors craft activity from Family Education.

Online Video, Printables, & Quizzes

Check out this powerful, free 4-minute cartoon video about the life and times of Martin Luther King, Jr. The site also includes printable activities and online quizzes that can be both fun and educational for your kids.

Songs

For younger kids you may want to introduce Martin Luther King, Jr. through song and rhyme. Check out these lyrics that you can apply to favorite kid's songs such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, Yankee Doodle, B-I-N-G-O, Skip To My Lou, and This Old Man.

Image credit: I Have A Dream banner from Paper Altar via Etsy

Happy Friday! I hope you're looking forward to a lovely long weekend. Here are 12 picks that caught my eye. And stay tuned -- this weekend I'll post some ideas for fun, creative, and educational ways to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at home.

1. Dance, arts, crafts, and critters to celebrate Chinese New Year. (Dorchester)

2. A family friendly show at Club Passim. (Cambridge)
3. More Year of the Dragon festivities via drumming, dance, tea, games, and more. (Boston)

4. Hooray for magic! (Brookline)

5. My father-in-law would go berserk over this train show. (Wenham)

6. Thanks to the Sound of Music, I'm intrigued by this marionette show. (Arlington)

7. Listen to the Boston Children's Chorus perform their annual Martin Luther King, Jr. tribute concert. (Boston)

8. Make some noise at this Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration. (Easton)

9. A family folk song concert in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Boston)

10. Celebrate friendship and honor Martin Luther King, Jr. (Acton)

11. Learn about Native American art and make a drum that represents your family. (Salem)

12. Enjoy free admission and special events at the MFA MLK Jr. Day Open Houes. (Boston)

Image credit: Franklin Park Zoo

Hello folks! I'm currently digging out after a few days away on a press trip (more to come on that front in the next week or two) and hope you had a spectacular weekend! Meanwhile, here are some handy/fun ideas to consider in this week's Weekly Blueprint:

Now through January 1: Christmas Festival of Lights at Edaville.

December 20: Hanukkah party at Inside Playground.
December 20: Menorah lighting on Boston Common.

December 21: Winter Solstice Night at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

December 22: Hanukkah celebration at the Discovery Museums.

December 22: Winter solstice celebration at Stony Brook.

December 22: Two opportunities to study coyotes.

At your leisure: Chip away at wrapping gifts, or if you're time crunched, pick up a bunch of gift bags to make your life easier.

At your leisure: Outsource. Whether for wrapping or otherwise, right this second I'm considering hiring a rabbit for an hour or two to take a little off my plate. My office, especially, is a disaster and needs organizational help.

At your leisure: Take care of a little grooming before the holiday photo blitz. The other month I stopped in at Infinity Beauty Salon last minute and was shocked to pay a mere $15 for a lip and brow wax.

At your leisure: Hit the grocery store for holiday baking supplies. I'm excited to make cookies with Laurel this week!

At your leisure: Do some preventative care. Whether it's yoga, walking, drinking hot lemon water with honey, or other tricks, take care of yourself. This is prime time for pushing too hard and getting sick.

At your leisure: Pick up mason jars or other supplies for little holiday treats. I have a big batch of magic salt awaiting packaging. I always like to do up some extra jars for last minute gifting.

Image credit: Edaville

Hello everyone! I'm soon to depart for a press trip to explore a (potentially) family friendly travel destination (hopefully I'll have excellent things to share with you in the next week or so!) so I wanted to leave you with this roundup of 13 fun weekend picks to consider:

1. Urban Nutcracker at the Wheelock Family Theatre. (Boston)

2. The opening of the Charles Hotel skating rink. (Cambridge)

3. A holiday concert by the Boston Choral Ensemble and the Choirs of Marlborough High School. (Boston)

4. The Cultural Survival Bazaar's final event of the season. (Boston)

5. Family friendly Chanukah lights celebrations. (Arlington, Newton)

6. A gingerbread castle competition at the Higgins Armory Museum. (Worcester)

7. Children's choruses and orchestras at the NEC Prep Winter Festival Concert. (Boston)

8. A Christmas Celtic Sojourn. (Boston)

9. The Christmas Revels. (Cambridge)

10. Trains galore at the National Heritage Museum. (Lexington)

11. A gingerbread house workshop at Smolak Farms. (North Andover)

12. Santa (on Saturday) and Chanukah celebrations (on Sunday) at Barefoot Books. (Concord)

13. The final showings of The Velveteen Rabbit (see Lindsey's review!). (Boston)

Image credit: Urban Nutcracker

Every holiday season since becoming a designer, I feel guilty when the holiday cards start rolling in because I'm too busy with design work to tend to my own cards. One year I embraced this reality and sent out cards in March; otherwise, I don't get around to it. However, this year, thanks to a kind offer from the folks at Minted (where I have had some designs represented), I actually will send out holiday cards this month! Read on to check out my thoughts on Minted's holiday cards, as well as to learn how to win a $150 gift certificate to Minted!
Minted is a paper goods site built largely on the talents of indie designers -- most of the collection is generated from design competitions. Bizarrely, just before Minted reached out to me, I was thinking of how nice it would be to design a holiday timeline card (if I had time, that is). So when I looked at the site and realized they have something similar, I figured it was fate. Even though it wouldn't be my design going out as our holiday greeting, it would be awesome to simply get it done. Because I love the reconnection that happens around holiday cards.

As you will see from a quick peek, Minted has a ton of options. I recommend rounding up your candidate photos prior to browsing so you can narrow down your search by number of photos to include and orientation. Here's how my process went.

Since I wanted a timeline approach, I started by selecting the Yearline Card collection. This rendered 216 options -- an unwieldy number for someone who likes to peruse all the options, but my process was then narrowed down a lot because the family photo I wanted to use was vertical in orientation and most of the Yearline cards require horizontally oriented photos. I clicked View All and did a quick first pass to identify vertically oriented candidates, ruling out anything that looked too Christmas-y (I prefer non-denominational cards) or didn't fit my style. Here were my final candidates -- all lovely, but I share my narrowing down process below.

Wish Banner

I love how simple and modern this Wish Banner card is. I also love that you can include four photos on the front -- I definitely had enough photo candidates to utilize this layout. However, I've been noticing this font around a lot lately in both personal and commercial work so I ruled this one out. (Note: you can change font styles and sizes but I wanted to land on a design quickly and not have to make a lot of stylistic edits.

Bowtie

This Bowtie card is classic and pretty, with a little whimsy added via the bird. However, six photo windows on the front meant more time obsessing over photo choices, plus I didn't think my vertically oriented family photo would fit well in any of the boxes.

A Big Hello

The minimalism of this Big Hello design appealed to me. After all, I designed a pair of cards inspired by the word Hello earlier this year! However, the red and green colorway was too Christmas-y for me and even though there are two blue colorway options that are lovely, after looking at the red/green, I kept thinking Christmas even when looking at the blue options.

Float + Joy

This Float + Joy design is really lovely and elegant. However, I ruled it out because I wanted more color pop, plus the photo window was too narrow for my family photo.

Joyful Modern Wreath

This Joyful Modern Wreath design is pretty and basically fit my parameters, but I wasn't struck by the must send response I was looking for.

Mod Joy

Ultimately, I chose Mod Joy! I don't know if it's the unconventional colorway (I am obsessed with yellow right now), the fun family photo in the example, or the fact that JOY is such a representative word for us this year, but I saw this design and it felt like the perfect one. And I love the pop of the color on the interior and the fact that the color is called sunshine, which is perfect given that the family photo I wanted to use was from our trip to California.

Once I settled on Mod Joy, I selected the quantity, paper options, and format and inserted photos and text. I bypassed the options to upgrade the envelopes, include envelope liners, and print return labels (all good options to have though), and asked in the comments whether they would consider adjusting the JOY text box slightly so the word JOY ran in full down the center of the section. And that was it, within an hour, my cards were done and ordered!

Within 24 hours I received my proof (and they took care of my design edit to the JOY box -- yay!) and approved it and my cards are expected to arrive early next week. Totally awesome! In short, the experience was great. While yes, in an ideal world, I would love to design my own holiday cards, when that isn't an option, truly, the next best thing for me is to support another indie designer.

And now, you can enter to win a gift certificate and get your cards out too! Minted kindly offered to match the $150 credit they offered me (I needed to order 150 cards so this helped defray my order total by almost half...thank you, Minted!) to you. Pretty cool, no? Here's how to enter to win:

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winner Tara!
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Rules:

Simply leave a comment below about this fantastic giveaway. (If you're so inclined I'd love to hear what you think about my design options or anything else you love from the Minted site!)

US entrants welcome to enter.

One comment per person (please do not leave comments from multiple e-mail addresses). Anonymous or SPAM-like comments will be removed. Note that your e-mail address will not be published or shared! Leaving just your first name or first name + initial in the name field is perfectly fine.

Entry period closes at noon EST, Monday, December 12, 2011.

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*One lucky winner (selected using Random.org) will receive a $150 Minted gift certificate! Sweet!

If the number of hours I used to spend polishing musical theatre dance numbers and color guard routines is an indication, I clearly have a thing for organized spectacle. And it arguably doesn't get more organized or spectacular than a blinged out kick line. The Radio City Christmas Spectacular starring the Radio City Rockettes recently debuted their new show in Boston and runs through December 28. And how cool is this? The kind folks at Citi Performing Arts Center offered me a 4-pack of Christmas Spectacular tickets to share with one of you awesome readers. Here's how to enter to win:

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winner Holly!
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Rules*:

Email contests@bostonmamas.com with "Rockettes" in the subject by noon EST, Thursday, December 8, 2011, and include your mailing address in your e-mail to expedite the process. (I have the tickets sitting here on my desk and will drop them in the mail as soon as I draw the winner!)

Local entrants welcome.

One entry per person (please do not enter off multiple e-mail accounts).

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*One lucky winner (drawn randomly via Random.org) will receive four (4) tickets to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular show in Boston on Wednesday, December 14, 2011 at 7:30pm. The winner will be notified directly via e-mail, then listed back at this post using first name only.

I can hardly believe I'm writing this, but Happy December everyone! There's so much great stuff on tap home and work-wise this month; I hope you're finding the same! Meanwhile, if you're looking for a Santa adventure that extends beyond the local mall, the kind folks at Spirit of Boston offered me a 4-pack of Santa Lunch Cruise tickets to share with one of you lucky readers. Setting sail Saturday, December 10, enjoy lunch, entertainment, goodie bags, cookie decorating, and photos with Santa against the lovely backdrop of the Boston Harbor. Fun, no? Here's how to enter to win:

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winner Erin!
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Rules*:

Simply email contests@bostonmamas.com with "Santa Cruise" in the subject by noon EST, Tuesday, December 6, 2011.

Local entrants welcome.

One entry per person (please do not enter off multiple e-mail accounts).

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*One lucky winner (drawn randomly via Random.org) will receive four (4) tickets (approximately $120 value!) to the Spirit of Boston Santa cruise on Saturday, December 10, 2011. The winner will be notified directly via e-mail, then listed back at this post using first name only.

Also: Bring a new toy to the Santa cruise (to benefit Christmas in the City) and receive a voucher for your child (12 and under) to cruise for free one time (of their choice) in 2012. Toys can be brought to the ticket booth at the Spirit of Boston. Voucher can only be used on the Spirit of Boston.