Zooligans Giveaway

I'm so excited  that Our Broken Road is able to be part of this Zooligans giveaway event! Read on to learn more about these cool shoes and how you can win one for your little animal lovers too!! What little kid wouldn't just love them!?I know mine would!! :)

Hosted/Reviewed by Mark it with a B

When Mady was learning to walk I had been buying her the critter themed soft-soled shoes and loved how they let her feet muscles develop without the restrictiveness of a traditional shoe {google it if you are unaware that this is important - you'll learn more than I could ever post here}, and she loved the critter styling! I was a bit disappointed to find that, when she outgrew the soft-soled types, there was very little to graduate to - and nothing with her beloved critters on them. Then Zooligans contacted me! Finally a cute and whimsical shoe with a super flexible sole for ages 1-5 {shoe sizes 4-12}!! Did I mention cute???? Mady loved them at first glance, when I showed her on the computer. I tried to stear her towards selecting the darling little Panda but she wanted the Bunny, Kitty, and the dog versions, then narrowed it down to the just as darling Kitty. And they have really cute details - like the wild cat print on the inside. :)

There is a critter for everyone in their line-up - boys and girls alike will love them!

I mentioned that four-way super flexible "Paw-Flex" sole - you can see that here. Try that with a traditional shoe. Not gonna happen. Each pair also feature ultra-soft breathable leather uppers, a roomy toe box, and did you notice the bottoms? Your kids will! I love these and so does Mady! And they are PINK! :)

The shoes arrived quickly and with a minimum of packaging which is important to me. We also love the box design - it turns into a pet carrier for your child's favorite stuffed animal {or just keep the shoes in the box - for awhile kids will prob love putting their shoes to bed and you will be able to easily find their shoes!} Love multi-purposing! And, of course, they remind you that cardboard is recycleable - when your child is done playing with the box please add it to your recycle pile. :) {Do you know what happens to our trash? After you enter the giveaway, Google that one too - it was a bit of an eye-opener for me. Especially the parts about the trash islands out in the ocean. ick. Please recycle folks!}

Mady loved the little critter keeper and promplty made it a home for her bat and doggie beanie toys. Another fun feature is that each pair of shoes comes with a tag that features the animals name as well as a fun and eductional story so kids can learn about the animals characteristics and quirky habits.

The Zooligans line was born from the creative team of longtime footwear designer and former toy designer, Joel Rusnak and his wife Cheryl Andonian, a creative marketer and brand builder. They teamed up with MA based Klas Shoe company to bring the shoes to the marketplace The combination of Rusnak and Andonian’s own brand building expertise and their playful approach to design and product combined with the solid footwear sales and distribution experience of the Klas team creates great potential for this new brand, even in these dicult times in the marketplace. Who can resist a shoe that looks you in the eye and smiles?  Parents Magazine just announced Zooligans as one of their top ten favorite products in their June ‘12 issue.

Keep reading because... I know you don't want to miss the giveaway!

Great company, great shoes, happy child. :)

Zooligans has kindly offered up a pair of their shoes to one lucky winner! Of course the winner will get to choose which critter design and size.

Thanks Zooligans!!

Zooligans are available atshoebuy.com and other fine realtors and... this is exciting! They are now available at Nordstroms.com! and some new critter designs will be coming out for Spring '13 - these will hit shelves in Jan.

 They are also available from Zooligans at their website: 
 http://www.zooligans.net/buy.html

Connect with Zooligans!
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/zooligans/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/zooligans
Twitter: @Zooligans
Website: www.zooligans.net

Prize: One pair of Zooligan shoes - winner's choice of style and size.
US residents 18+ only please. 
See other terms at bottom of Rafflecopter widget.
Winner will be notified by email and have 48 hours to respond.
Giveaway will run 22 August 2012 - 08 September 2012

Much appreciation to my partner bloggers who are listed on the widget - please show them love! Thank you!

Good Luck everyone!

a Rafflecopter giveaway







Disclaimer: This blog received no payment for posting this event, nor is it responsible for shipment of prize. The prize will be shipped from the sponsor.

Giddy over gardens!!

I am simply giddy.... yes that uncontrollable urge to just giggle with excitement!!!! :) As you know, we have spent our summer fine tuning our little fairy garden and recently shared it on the Magic Onions blog for their fairy garden contest.... The results were announced today and WE WON!!!! Out of 121+ gardens - we won!!!

Never in all my imagination did I actually think we would win... have you seen these amazing gardens?! I am so honored to even be listed with them, and feel so lucky to be a part of the winning gardens. The girls heard me squeal and came running thinking I was hurt! lol Now, they too are excited to get our next Living Craft magazine. While we didn't win a toy, or anything fairy related, they know that they will only benefit from me getting my FAVORITE magazine...the ideas, stories and patterns are AMAZING!! :)

Sorry to be purging my excitement onto all of you but I just can't help it!! Imagine my poor husband when he gets home and has to hear me gush all over again! :) You know our love of fairies... so this means so much to us!!

I have a feeling there will be some new fairy magic happening in our house soon so stay tuned! :)

Never stop learning!

Everyone these days are talking about summer break and how great it is to be out of school... the girls keep getting asked if they are enjoying their break and the girls just look questioning to me as if they don't understand the question! lol I guess that is the joy of homeschooling. My kids don't understand so many of the socially expected terms and rules associated with public schools. You see, for us, learning doesn't stop just because the temperatures are rising (everywhere else in the country anyways! ha!)... Summer "break" for us just means that we get to take our learning outside more, that we get to do more hands on things and that we get to take part in things like the summer reading program at our local library! :)

Each summer we chose a subject to study and then we run with it!! We read about it, do crafts about it, find things to do hands on, make snacks.... you get the picture! :) Last summer it was volcanoes (complete with a trip to Mt St Helens!) and this summer it is all things associated with Chickens and Eggs!! Boy have we been learning about that all first hand!! lol This summer has truly been a whirl wind of chicken activity at our house and from my 5 year old all the way up to DH, we have been enjoying the process every step of the way!!


 Now, I must say, this learning topic isn't something that is new to us. For any new readers, it is something that started about 2 years ago with the move to a new state. We just happened to luck in to a house in the country that already came with a coop that was complete with chickens!! We were over the moon to say the least!

Last spring we added to our chicken flock by getting and raising chicks from our local feed store. What an exciting day it was to bring those little guys home in a little box with air holes! If you've never does so, you would never believe how LOUD those little things can get!! lol















And then earlier this spring we decided that the next step of this adventure was to attempt to hatch out some eggs of our own!! A dear friend was kind enough to give us an old incubator she wasn't using and within a few days of getting it we were off and running!!  I have no words to describe what an amazing experience that was. To get to candle those eggs (almost nightly!) and watch them grow and eventually even get to witness a miracle!! What a blessing this journey of learning has become!





Which brings us to our most recent endeavor, raising chickens for meat!  Never in all my wildest dreams/nightmares did I ever think I would want to do this or be ready for it in any way shape or form!

And then thanks to our loving hen Mert, we have gotten to experience a broody hen at work! :) She hatched out 12 chicks and even let us witness parts of these little miracles...

I will be forever grateful for the amazing summer of learning that we've had. There has been nothing flashy or showy about the time we've had... just a fun simply summer of nature, learning and everyday miracles..

Summer Magic- Fairy Garden Contest

 Ever since I saw the Fairy contest last year over at The Magic Onions blog, I have been dying to make one too! Considering how crazy we are about fairies in our house, I thought it would be the perfect thing for us to use as a summer project and little by little we did it!! We started with an ugly flowerbed and ended up with our own little section of fairy magic in our backyard!!

So come and take a trip with us and see how it all began... :)



From this...

To this!! :)

I love how it turned out!












So we set to work on making things nice and cozy for the any fairies that might want to stop over! :) Luckily the craft store had some cute little houses for the girls to work on! :)



Here's how we got there...










I love the details that they wanted to put into these... and the time they spent making them just perfect! :) J asked me to wood burn the little circles on so she could paint it to look like a mushroom! :) Such creative girls!





                                                                                                                                                                                                   I love the time we got to spend together crafting for our little fairy village. It was good quality time, painting with my kids having great conversations and enjoying the gorgeous Pacific Northwest summer weather! :)

















And we even got big brother in on the creations! :) He worked on this little sail boat and I just had to pose a picture of it in the fairy garden before he left and had to take it with him! He did leave behind a cute little crocodile that he carved and wood burned tho! :)

 And now a closer look at all the details... we are just giddy at the way it turned out!! It's been an all summer project of adding this and moving that... I think it came together nicely don't you?

We got so lucky while we were on vacation to KS, and happened in to a garden shop that had a whole section of fairy gardens and treasures to buy for them!! Oh my, I could have just bought everything!! Instead tho, we settled on tiny gravel for the walk ways and the sweet mushroom outhouse for behind the cabin! :)












And then, one sunny afternoon, the kids and I spent time on the porch being creative and I came up with this totem pole! :) We had to put a little bit of Alaskan flare in our garden just incase some Alaskan fairies stopped by! :)

 

The girls brought out their fairies to check out the garden too! Here's the crocodile that brother carved for them! I love the things that kids can come up with when given the chance! 

Another vacation find was this Farmers Market bird house! We were driving down the road in the middle of nowhere Nebraska when we happened on to a little town that had a Dollar General store. J was our of batteries for her game so I ran in to get some and never guessed that I would find such a cute fairy treasure!! They had a few others I would have loved to have had but as it was I didn't know where I was going to put this one! lol The car was pretty packed with the four of us and I was afraid that I might have to hold it for the rest of the trip! But, where there's a will there's a way! lol It road all the way to Washington state in the back window of that little car! Boy is my MIL a good sport! :)

Another view of our little town... 

The girls just had to have these pink flamingos over the church. They so loved that move Gnomeo and Juliet and thought it would be funny to have them kissing by the church. Their necks didn't quite make the heart like it did in the movie but it's still cute. :)

And what fairy garden/village isn't complete without a solar house?! They are very earth friendly you know!

We got this kit to build this house and thought it was perfect for the fairies. The solar panel makes the house come alive with a working door bell, siren, light and working wind mill. Or there is an option for battery power and even a hand crank generator!! It was definitely a big hit with the kids!

One last creation for the garden was this dragon! The kids all got animals to paint one day and this one just happened to make it into the garden! He may be red but he's definitely a friendly dragon.

 Thanks so much for stopping by our fairy garden. The building of it has been such a wonderful experience for us and great time spent together planing and creating. It was just one more thing that added to an other wise amazing summer of childhood fun... with a little magic along the way!

Be sure to stop by The Magic Onions and check out the other fairy gardens in the contest. There are SO many amazing gardens and so many ideas that we'll be using for next year! Enjoy!

Unexpected magic

As an adult, there are very few times that we happen on to something so unexpected that even we can't help but to feel the magic in the air too...

What started as a fun last minute camping trip with the kids for one last summer hoorah before my step son had to come home... The morning started off with breakfast... or as my husband likes to call the eggs "floaters" (as in floating in bacon grease lol) Of course we were thinking of our chickens even when we were away, thanks to the eggs we brought with us! ha!

The day was lazy, and unplanned... and wonderful!! There is just something wonderful about camping... no phones or tvs or expectations...I love the simplicity of the day we spent in that camp spot. Hubby and I sat watching the fire a good portion of the day, while the kids spent time playing with the new marble sets they had gotten and coloring and playing card games in the tent...

While the boys went fishing, I thought it would be fun to pull out some twine and start looking for sticks so I could start working on a little ladder that I needed for our fairy garden.... and the rest of the day took on a life of its own from there! The girls would come to me with a handful of sticks and tell me where they needed me to tie the hemp. Their little creations were just adorable and inspiring!! J made hers look like a teepee and quickly found a spot in the camp spot to set up camp for the fairies (we made some of those out of sticks and leaves too!) R's was a little harder and proved to not be as stable but boy did it get a lot of playtime anyways!! :)

After spending the entire afternoon in the camp spot, it  led to a walk with the dogs around the campground when we happened on to a bridge that led us away from the hustle and bustle of other campers...

even at the time, I thought there was something magical about that bridge...

and was amazed by the beauty of the trees on the other side. I just kept thinking that it felt as if we were walking into a fairytale... I could just picture Little Red Ridinghood jumping out across our path, or us stumbling upon a little cottage of dwarves in the trees... little did I know...

... that forest magic was in store for us too!! We were walking along the path and trying to capture the amazing trees when dh pointed out a bunch of cool looking downed trees in the wood that would be good for picture taking... We had no sooner stepped into the wooded area when we all saw this view of what looked to be art work in a tree...

I remember thinking that this had to be a set up, this couldn't really be happening to us... to find a FAIRY HOUSE in the wood by chance!? What are the odds of this!!! ? And then right next to it we found another creation...

and then to the next tree on the left....

...At this point, I think we all scattered... hopping over fallen trees, creeping around these forest giants... finding fairy creations at every turn!!

If there really were fairies in the area, the squeels that came from us were sure to scare them off for sure! lol The chatter that followed was just contagious and I must admit that I found the entire experience to be quite magic and totally unexpected... the chance of a lifetime!! I find myself remembering that feeling of happening on to those creations, and wonder who exactly put them there, fairy or human... either way it doesn't really matter... I just wish I could tell them thank you... that was a moment that my girls and I will remember for a lifetime....

So the next morning, we all decided to add to the wonder for the next person that happens to stumble onto them...

... and just watching them, father and daughter building this structure for the fairies held a bit of magic to it too. He tries to be such a tough guy sometimes but you could tell that he was enjoying the magic of it all too. The wonder in the girls' eyes was priceless!

When it was time to leave the magic behind, I felt like we should tip toe... like if we were quiet enough we might just see the fairies fluttering back to their buildings, to inspect the one we left or to peak out around the trees at us... I half expected to hear tiny little voices laughing thru the woods... I found myself walking away backwards... afraid to miss one more touch of unexpected magic...