When my building was evacuated due to DC’s earthquake last year, I was smart enough to grab my purse before walking out the door. When we were told that the building was closed and that we could go home, I was glad to have everything with me. On my walk to the Metro I became a little apprehensive about what my commute would have in store for me. And, my water bottle was almost empty. So I stopped at Potbelly to use the restroom and refill my bottle. I figured I’d better be prepared.

Even though I buy lunch there often, and this was an emergency situation, I felt a little guilty about taking water from the soda fountain without purchasing anything. Silly? Probably. But, you know, I’m one of those rule-follower-types.

A week or two later I was in line at the same Potbelly for lunch and noticed a flyer indicating that the store is a partner in TapIt. Upon closer inspection, I learned that TapIt is a network of stores and cafe owners who agree to provide free tap water to folks who carry a reusable water bottle. Hooray! I had felt guilty for nothing!

I’m so excited to know about this program! As a family we take our water bottles everywhere. Yes, I’m the person who takes an empty water bottle through airport security so I can fill it at a water fountain at the gate. But too often, especially on long excursions, we drink all our water. And so I always keep my eye out for water fountains to re-fill my bottles. If there’s no water fountain in sight, we end up having to buy bottled water, totally defeating the purpose of taking our own water bottles!!

Now that I know about TapIt, have checked out their interactive map, downloaded their free iPhone app and found out that there are nearly 200 participating locations in DC, I feel even better about taking our reusable water bottles on day-trips into the city. And I’m excited that I’ll pay for water — and waste plastic — much less often!

Aimee does her best to be green and loves sharing tips with others. She received no compensation for this post and honest-to-goodness is psyched to have noticed that flyer. You can read more about Aimee and her crazy boys at Smiling Mama and about family-friendly activities for getting out and about in Prince George’s County, MD, at Out by Ten.

You can’t open up a fashion magazine, browse a blog or clothing website without noticing one big trend. Pastels.  From pretty pink pants to pale peach sweaters and light-hued tanks, pastels are everywhere.  They seem perfect for spring and summer but sometimes I find them unbelievably hard to wear.  You don’t want to look too cute or washed out. So, what is the best way to wear pastels?

The answer is often by pairing them all together.  Combine a pair of white pants with a soft lilac blouse and add a pair of nude heels and a white bag and you have a sweet look.  Throw a light pink or orange sorbet colored cardigan over the top of that blouse and it looks like you just walked off the runway. Philip Lim 3.1 and Ralph Lauren both exceled at this look this year. The idea of grouping pastels together goes against how we often pair these colors in years past, but it works.  A white skirt with a light yellow button-down shirt looks just fine.  Add a toned down aqua or pale mint green jacket or sweater over top of it and it becomes a more luxurious, on-trend ensemble.

Want to be more cutting edge with those child-like colors?  Then pair those same pastels with something rougher and tougher like a motorcycle jacket or pair of black studded boots.  The addition of a pair of pastel Fantas-eyes sunglasses will kick it up another fashion notch.  Adding these darker, heavier pieces can also give more play to some of the clothes in your closet you still have from the colder months.  Why put them all into storage when you can use them for a few more months with pastels?

Finally, the last way I have found to jazz up pastels and create a more fashion forward look is to go futuristic.  I’m not talking bubble helmets but metallics.  A silver clutch or gold envelope style bag can add a lot to a pastel heavy look.  H&M has some great options for under $25 too.  Accessories are one of the best ways to stay in the fashion know without spending a lot of money so pick up a pair of acid green shades or earrings.  Find a pair of lime heels and match them with a pair of grey pants.  Pastels aren’t just for kids when you know how to wear them. Go forth, have fun and brighten your day.

Victoria Mason, blogs about fashion, beauty and parenting at The Mummy Chronicles and Mummy’s Product Reviews.

With the strange spring we’ve been having, we’ve already had quite a few hot days, and today is supposed to be another one.  Our conversations about sunscreen have become more commonplace, as have my concerns.

Let’s start with this: none of my kids has ever suffered a sunburn because we’re attentive about their time in the sun and the skin protection criteria under which they may spend that time. Compare that with how many sunburns we ourselves experienced as kids. And there’s also this: my grandmother died of colon cancer that had metastasized from skin cancer. This is not a topic I’m treating casually.

We apply and reapply suncscreen. We try not to spend too much time in direct sunlight during peak hours. We dress in layers and bring our beach umbrella and rest in the shade of our maple tree.  The idea of my kids burning in the sun and raising their risks of skin cancer in the future completely unnerves me. But here’s the flip side: applying all that who-knows-what to their skin really unnerves me, too. And I struggle with the appropriate balance.

I’ve been decreasing our dependence on chemicals for years. I’m one of those moms who worries about phthalates and parabens. I avoid reheating food in plastic containers. I use coconut oil as lip balm and pay easily double the price of conventional kiddie shampoos for the all-natural-ingredients products because when I think about what touches my kids’ skin and what I rub in their scalps and what I might accidentally drip into their eyes, I like all the words to be pronounceable and recognizable. We buy milk with an agenda of avoiding bovine hormones and antibiotics and clean with vinegar and baking soda and then summer comes, and what is in those sunscreens?

It makes me crazy that I spend most of the year avoiding slathering anything on my kids and summer comes and it’s all more goop, every hour. And what makes me even more crazy is that they’re so conditioned to it that as soon as the sun shines brightly they start asking for sunscreen. It was 65 degrees on Sunday and we were in our tree-shaded backyard and my four-year-old decided to apply her own sunscreen when I wouldn’t apply it for her. She really believed that she needed it.

I buy my sunscreen based on the recommendations of the Environmental Working Group, which analyzes the safety of each product’s ingredients (here’s the 2011 sunscreen guide). I avoid all the usual scary chemicals as well as retinyl palmitate, a form of Vitamin A that’s really common in sunscreen and other skin products because it’s an antioxidant, but in the presence of sun it is thought to accelerate skin cancers. I conscientiously do my best but I just can’t resolve this conflict between not liking to put anything on my kids at all and this summer need to protect their skin by covering them in product. Because let’s face it: we’re not staying inside.

The FDA is rolling out new requirements for the labeling of sunscreen next month. These new rules should make it more clear just how much protection you’re offering your kids and how often you need to reapply your product, but they can’t do anything to make the ingredients less unpleasant.

Our sunny season is still just beginning, so tell me: what’s your summer sunscreen plan?

When Robin isn’t here you can find her writing on her own blog, The Not-Ever-Still Life, or on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

I’ve always thought the saying ‘everyone has a story’ must be true; there is just so much going on in life you never know what is happening with any given person at any time.
And Mothers? Well, we have a lot to say about a lot of things, don’t we? Especially about motherhood. It was the desire to tell these stories that inspired Ann Imig to launch a show, a live reading, of original stories of motherhood with a portion of the proceeds going to a local woman-centered charity. Now in it’s third year, what started as a singular reading is now sweeping across the country as local readings are being produced in ten cities, including the DC Metro Area.

When I first heard of Listen To Your Mother I thought to myself, self, that is something you must do! So I am thrilled to be directing the very first DC area Listen To Your Mother show at the Synetic Theatre on May 6th at 2:00 p.m., The Sunday before Mother’s day fourteen women  will take to the stage to share their stories of triumph, failure, heartbreak and hysterical laughter.

Everyone does have a story, and these women take my breath away with theirs. I hope you will join us for an afternoon celebrating the strength and joy that is motherhood. Several of our DCMoms writers will be reading, and we are honored to have our beloved Susan Neibur’s own charity as our beneficiary The Susan Niebur Inflammatory Breast Cancer Research Fund.

Susan taught me so much about motherhood and charity, If I can’t have her at the show in body I am honored to have her in spirit and maybe we can help provide funding so that we can find a way to beat cancer.

I hope you will join us! Get your tickets here. They’re going fast!

A recent story on NPR “Teen Texting Soars; Will Social Skills Suffer?” caught my attention. The story focused on a poll by the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life project which showed that teens text – a lot. And the end result of all that texting may be children who lack interpersonal communication skills.

This, juxtaposed with my recent trip to Arlington’s Synetic Theater’s incredible performance of Taming of the Shrew, really started me thinking about all sorts of communication. For those not familiar with Synetic’s unique brand of theatre – they are quite possibly the premier physical theatre company in the United States. Their performances combine dance, music, movement, drama, and text – almost anything except talking. And yet, their stories are completely clear.

While the Pew Research had me worried that people were no longer going to speak to each other, the Synetic performance made me realize how much communication is non-verbal. And, unless your teen is particularly dramatic when composing those texts, perhaps it’s the physical act of communicating they lack that will prove most important – not just the spoken words. Synetic is doing what it can to bring the physical back into the children’s communication realm. This summer, they’re offering classes for ages 4 – 18. Children can participate in classes focusing on acting, movement, and visual art. Descriptions are here.

Camps run in two-week blocks, starting June 18 and ending August 24, with a one-week session at the end of summer to wrap it all up. Check it out! Friends who have sent their children to these camps before report they love them.

Elaine if a lifelong theater lover and takes her children to all sorts of performances in the DC area. She writes about those and other things at Connor and Helen Grow Up!

I was a guest of Synetic Theater at their production of Taming of the Shrew, though I’ve been to many other performances there that I paid for myself. I’m a huge fan of this theater company. I was not required to write about anything in exchange for the two tickets I received.

Photo credit: Synetic Theater

I just love saying this out loud, but my bookshelves are bursting with books by some of my favorite people! This spring has brought a spate of great reading by some of the best parent bloggers on the internet. I’ve been sneaking off to the backyard with a beer, or to my bed with a giant cup of tea, and a good book. Here’s what I have on tap:

Bloom: Finding Beauty in the Unexpected–A Memoir, by Kelle Hampton from Enjoying the Small Things.

I found Kelle’s blog through her viral post, “Nella Cordelia: A Birth Story”. It remains one of the most powerful and honest things I have ever read on the internet. I became a regular reader because of her sunny outlook on life, her way of celebrating both big and small milestones, and her beautiful photographs of her gorgeous girls.

When Kelle first laid eyes on her daughter, Nella, just moments after her birth, she knew something was wrong. While her friends and family were celebrating the beautiful blessing, Kelle was silently devastated. Bloom chronicles Kelle’s personal transformation from the shock and fear she felt upon suspecting, and later confirming, that Nella was born with Down Syndrome, to the joy and fullness of her life one-year later on Nella’s first birthday. Bloom is the one book on this list I’ve finished so far. It did not disappoint. It’s full of brilliant photographs and moving, inspiring prose.

Confessions of a Scary Mommy: An Honest and Irreverent Look at Motherhood: The Good, The Bad, and the Scary, by Jill Smokler from Scary Mommy. I first met Baltimore’s own, Jill Smokler, at a birthday dinner for another blogger. I hadn’t read her blog before, but after spending an evening with her and knowing that I had found a kindred soul, I found Scary Mommy, where motherhood is celebrated but never sugar-coated. There’s brutal honesty and lots of delicious snark.

Jill is a fabulous writer and Confessions of a Scary Mommy is a collection of some of her best, most real-deal essays on the confounding, often-frustrating, absolutely exhausting, yet most awe-inspiring job in the world: motherhood. It’s that book you wish you had read before you had kids.

Let’s Pretend this Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir), by Jenny Lawson from The Bloggess. True story, I found Jenny’s blog when I thought I had come up with the BEST blog name ever. I googled it to make sure that no one else had also had such a stroke of brilliance and found Jenny, The Bloggess. Even though she was way ahead of me in cleverness, I was hooked on her blog from that moment on. Jenny’s bizarre and quirky sense of humor has made me laugh harder than is safe for a woman who’s had four kids.

Let’s Pretend this Never Happened is Jenny’s story, from childhood to marriage and motherhood – with a few zombies and taxidermied animals thrown in for good measure. She tells serious tales, of rheumatoid arthritis and crippling anxiety, but in her unique, trademark way that will make you wish you hadn’t taken that sip of Diet Coke just then. Nobody tells a story like Jenny.

Heaven Is Here: An Incredible Story of Hope, Triumph, and Everyday Joy , by Stephanie Nielson from NieNie Dialogues. I found Stephanie’s blog in 2008, soon after word spread across the internet that she and her husband had been in a horrific plane crash and she was on life support. I could relate to her as a fellow mom of four, and I read back through the archives of her idyllic life, making homemade pizza and throwing kids’ birthday parties. I was completely taken with her story and anxiously awaited updates on her condition.

Stephanie survived her terrible injuries, but battled severe burns, searing pain, countless surgeries and months away from her children, who instead bonded with her sisters and were afraid of her, with her now-scarred face. I can only imagine the physical and emotional pain that she endured. She wrote her book to give hope to those in need of it, and to show that even when the life you knew seems like it’s over, there is still life waiting for you.

I was inspired by Stephanie’s life before the crash. I’m even more inspired by how she has lived after.

Mother’s Day is just around the corner. I think a good book, a cozy blanket, and an hour or two to yourself sounds like the perfect gift.

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Earth Day might be over, but it’s always a good thing to expose our kids to nature and wildlife issues. Even if there’s little chance your family ever travel to the remote North and South Pole, what happens there is still important. That’s why I love the documentary “Frozen Planet,” which aired on Discovery last month. BBC, which produced the breathtaking documentary series along with Discovery, has offered us two copies of the complete series on DVD for our readers.

The three-disc series includes not only the entire series that aired on Discovery but also 90 minutes of unaired footage and four hours of extras my nature-loving kiddos were just as excited about as the actual film! The feature about climate change is particularly educational, and my kids felt so committed to the idea of helping the planet after watching it that they immediately asked what more we could do beyond the usual recycling and composting. My 10-year-old son, who has been studying legendary oceanographer Jacques Cousteau for a biography project and is a budding scientist, says he hopes to visit the Poles some day. He even recognized Alastair Fothergill’s name from the other nature documentaries we’ve seen (including “Chimpanzee,” which was just released last Friday).

Here are the “Frozen Planet” special features:

• On Thin Ice - A unique exploration into how climate change is affecting the animals and people of the polar regions and what that might mean for the rest of us.
• Science at the Ends of the Earth – An examination of the remarkable scientific work being performed at the South Pole
• Freeze Frame – A series of 6 10-minute “making of” featurettes, one for each episode.
• Production Video Diaries - A set of 47 video shorts made by the Frozen Planet producers, directors, camera crew and more giving personal insights into this remarkable series.
• Frozen Planet: The Epic Journey – The best moments from this remarkable series compiled into one 60-minute highlights special

Watch the trailer:

To enter the giveaway for the DVD, just fill out the Rafflecopter form below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I received a review copy of the DVD courtesy of BBC, but as a career-long entertainment writer, screeners never influence my opinion of a production.

When she’s not watching cool educational programs on TV, Sandie blogs about Young Adult literature at Teen Lit Rocks and occasionally about herself at Urban Mama. Professionally, she reviews movies and books at Common Sense Media.

© 2012 Leticia Barr- TechSavvyMama.com

As residents in the Nation’s Capital, we’re privy to a lot of wonderful opportunities that are history in the making including today’s journey of the Space Shuttle Discovery as she traveled from Florida to her final resting place at The National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar Hazy Center.

Watching from my spot on the Mall between The Smithsonian Castle and the Capitol building, witnessing the shuttle on the back of a Shuttle Carrier Aircraft was a bittersweet occasion because while it was exciting, it also marks the end of the Space Shuttle era.  So many of my childhood memories involve the Space Shuttle.  From the exciting liftoff of the first launch on April 12, 1981 to watching in disbelief as the Challenger broke apart a mere 73 seconds into its flight and hearing the incredible sonic boom of Atlantis re-entering the atmosphere as it returned to Kennedy Space Center after its final mission.  Those moments were inspiring, heartbreaking, and just plain cool and will forever live on in my memory.

What’s next for NASA?  NASA plans to continue their exploration, technology development, and scientific research.  There is a new International Space Station for collaborative work with 15 countries and the new Space Launch System will transport astronauts well beyond the orbit ability of the space shuttle fleet. Certainly this new chapter in space exploration is exciting and will inspire a new generation of kids but it makes me a little nostalgic knowing that it’s happening without our Nation’s beloved Space Shuttles.

Leticia Barr is the founder of  Tech Savvy Mama and is Parents.com’s Tech Savvy Parents columnist.  She can be found on Twitter @TechSavvyMama, Facebook, and sharing her favorite finds on Pinterest.  

I have combination skin.  And in the summer my combination skin turns oily.   Makeup just slides off of me, and it looks like I’m barely wearing any makeup at all.  I would reapply and wear primer and even then, makeup never stayed on.

It was on a recent family vacation with my family that my sister introduced me to Urban Decay All Nighter Long-Lasting Makeup Setting Spray.  This stuff is amazing.  You spray it on your face after you apply your makeup and your makeup lasts, all day.  I have yet to have to reapply.  Now we are not in the dead heat of summer yet, although it was 90 degrees on Monday!  I read some reviews that say you can also use it as a primer and spray it on your face first, before you put on your makeup, but I’m still using my Smashbox Photo Finish Foundation Primer.  When I run out of that I plan to try using the All Nighter as a primer.

I have incredibly sensitive skin and this does not make me break out.  It is paraben free, which is another thing that is important to me.  The Urban Decay website says it sets your makeup for 16 hours.  I’m not sure I believe that, but I think it holds your makeup for a good 8 hours.

This is the first product I have ever purchased from the Urban Decay line.  It is also my first experience with setting sprays.  Are there other setting sprays that people like?

Jodi blogs at Jodifur about life, motherhood, working, and shoes. Mostly shoes.

*I purchased the All Nighter myself from Sephora.  I was not paid or asked to write this post.  All opinions are my own. Amazon links are through Affiliate program.

**Photo Credit: Urbandecay.com

When I was looking for a new job last summer, I Googled myself to see what potential employers would see if they Googled me. Quite frankly, I expected that a potential employer who liked my resume, or with whom I had an initial interview would Google me. If I was hiring someone, I’d do it.

But if they asked me for my Facebook, Twitter or other social media passwords, I would have been shocked and outraged. Although it would have been legal for them to ask the question, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have taken a job with an employer who required that information. How would you feel if your boss had the ability to access your entire Facebook account?

Now, Maryland has became the first state in the country to outlaw employers or potential employers from asking for social media user names and passwords, effective this October. Illinois, California and several other states are currently considering similar pieces dotRights legislation.

As a blogger and avid user of social media, I know that I have a lot of personal information “out there” for public consumption. My boss, colleagues, children’s teachers, neighbors, etc. can all find out a lot about me with a little digging. And that’s a decision I’ve made and I’m comfortable with. But I keep my Facebook privacy settings pretty high and, save for my husband who could probably guess my password in less than three tries, I’m not giving anyone access to my Facebook account!

Two of the places you can find Aimee online are her blogs Smiling Mama and Out by Ten.