Giveaway: The Oogieloves in The Big Balloon Adventure Kids Prize Pack- In Theaters Oogust 29th!

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3decades3kids
Giveaway
Help Us Celebrate The
Truly G Rated
Smash New Movie
The Oogieloves 
In The Big Balloon Adventure
With Us 
And
Win A Super
Oogieloves
Kids Prize Pack 
The Oogieloves Hit Theaters Oogust 29th
I am SO excited about this movie, The Oogiesloves In The Big Balloon Adventure!
Finally, a G rated movie is hitting the screens. That’s right, G!
I can finally take my little girl to the movies and not worry about any type of explanations for 
off the cuff words or complicated situations that come along with PG movies that we had hoped would be Rated G.
So hurray for The Oogieloves and their G rating. I will be able to sit back, relax and enjoy the G rating!
Along with saying that, the Oogieloves are simply adorable and each one has something wonderful to share.
Goobie is Scientastic!
Zoozie is a lover of all languages!
Toofie is adventurific!
Ruffy is the grumpy yet likable fish!
Schluufy is the lovable pillow!
Windy is the magical window!
J. Edgar is the caretaker vacuum!
Now, with a line up like that, how can you lose? 
On August 29th, The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure will hit the big screens. 
It’s perfect timing for the end of summer and the beginning of school. Our family is looking forward to following the Oogieloves throughout their adventure!
Check out The Oogieloves in The Big Balloon Adventure by clicking here.
GIVEAWAY:
To celebrate the fun 3decades3kids and The Oogieloves are offering one lucky 3decades3kids subscriber the chance to win the above pictured Oogieloves Super Prize Pack! 
This prize pack includes 
One Oogieloves tent
Oogieloves mobile
2 Glitter Tattoos
2 stickers 
2 beach balls
To Enter: You can do any or all of the listed ways to enter. 
Please leave the comment Oogieloves on the 3decades3kids fb page. and LIKE the page.
Please leave the comment 3decades3kids sent me on The Oogieloves fb page. and LIKE the page.
Leave a comment below under this blog post.
Email ELGeorgia@aol.com with Oogieloves in the subject line.
Winner will be chosen September 2, 2012 at 11:59pm by random.org. and notified by email. The winner will have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen. 18+/USA. Oogieloves is responsible for prize delivery. 

Disclosure: Prize Pack Giveaway and review tickets provided by The Oogieloves In The Big Balloon Adventure. All opinions are that of Diane Sullivan. ELGeorgia@aol.com Twitter @3decades3kids @elgeorgia

Giveaway: Win 3 Boxes of Lipton Tea & Honey (5 winners)

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Giveaway:
Win 3 Boxes 
Of The New
Lipton 
Tea & Honey
(5 winners)
Recently Lipton Tea & Honey was one of the proud sponsors at The Moms event featuring Jennifer Garner and the screening of The Odd Life of Timothy Green (now in theaters). 
Ice tea has been my little happy haven ever since I took my last sip of soda seven years ago. 
Since then I am always in search of new ways to replace what was once such a big part of my life.
I was thrilled to be introduced to the new Lipton Tea & Honey. 
Can you say variety? Delicious? Low Calorie?
There are so many fantastic flavors and combinations of tastes that your mouth 
will be tingling with happiness.
Lipton Tea & Honey comes in six different and delicious flavors: Mango Pineapple, Blackberry Pomegranate, Strawberry Acai, Peach Apricot, Black Current Raspberry, and Lemon.
They come in Pitcher packets and also To Go Packets!
You will want to carry a few of these around with you to brighten up your taste buds throughout the day. 
As if the delicious and unique taste and variety of these ice teas are not enough -it gets better. Each serving drink is only 5 calories! Lipton Tea & Honey is sweetened with honey and made with real tea leaves and real fruit flavors. 
I can attest to the fact that these are delish! 
But, don’t take my word for it, you can be one of 5 winners and  get 3 boxes of Lipton Tea & Honey to try  out for yourself!
Giveaway: 5 winners will each receive 3 boxes of Lipton Tea & Honey.
To enter do any or all of the options below:
Please post the comment LIPTON  on 3decades3kids Facebook Wall.
Please post 3decades3kids sent me on Lipton Tea & Honey FB page.
Leave a comment below on this blog.
Email ELGeorgia@aol.com with Lipton Tea & Honey in the subject line.
Good Luck! This contest is open to 18+ USA. 5 winners will be chosen on August 30th at 11:59pm by random.org and contacted by email. The winners will have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen. Lipton is responsible for delivery of this product. 
Disclosure: Review samples provided by Lipton. All opinions are that of Diane Sullivan.

Ghost Buddy #2 Mind If I Read Your Mind? What A Great Fun Read For Kids!

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Ghost Buddy #2
Mind If I Read Your Mind?
Authors: 
Henry Winkler
Lin Oliver

Every summer our family likes to try to read even more than we do during the school year. 
We are open to just about any type of book and enjoy many of them.
After spending twenty years as a classroom teacher, I am always in search of some quality print to share with the kids. When I heard about “Ghost Buddy #2 Mind If I Read Your Mind?”, I could not have been more excited. I had to read it myself along with my children.
I have been a long time fan of both Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver, so I knew this had to be a win!
I am happy to say that I was right with this one. 
Although the book is geared for 8+, my almost six year old enjoyed hearing me read the story out loud.
Without giving away too much of the story,
let me share just a little bit about it. 
Ghost Buddy #2  Mind If I Read Your Mind? Is number two in the series. It follows book one: Ghost Buddy Zero To Hero. In Book one where Billy Broccoli first meets up with Hoover Porterhouse, his new Ghost friend! The Hoove helps Billy to deal with his new school and new life. He even comes up with a plan to help Billy overcome the bully he encounters.
In book #2, Billy Broccoli has a best friend who also happens to be imaginary..and a ghost… Hoover Porterhouse. Billy and the Hoove are close as can be until Billy joins his school’s Speak Out Challenge. Billy decides he can have the competition in the bag with the help of Hoover. I mean, what better way to read someones mind than to have an invisible friend helping you out? Billy demonstrates his talent reading people’s minds and is so good everyone thinks he should get his own show! Even his teacher, Mr. Wallwetter has no explanation for Billy’s secret mind reading skills! 
 But when Billy decides to devote more and more time to hanging out with his new friends and Hoover has to take a back seat, he is not a happy chap anymore and plans his own way to get even with Billy! 
The rest I will leave up to enjoy!
We had so much fun reading this book at home and in the park. 
It’s a very fast read and filled with fun! 
Your son or daughter will love this book. If you are a teacher, definitely check this book out for your class! They will thank you for it! 
Pure FUN!
Don’t take my word for it! Check it out on the link below!
You can grab your own copy on Amazon by clicking here! 
Note: Teacher Friends-Definitely check this book out and recommend it to your students! One reason I would recommend this book is because it opened up a line of chat with my own children about school and ways to handle different and difficult situations. Every year when school starts we discuss ways to  handle meeting new students and how to believe in yourself. I think this book gives children a sense of self-confidence that is important in every aspect of life. 
Secondly, I heard my younger daughter quoting the book to my older son. They were discussing the book and she was retelling all of the parts she found hilarious! Any book that gets my children carrying  on a dialogue about the content is a book that as a teacher I would give an A+.
Disclosure: Review books provided of Ghost Buddy #1 and #2. All opinions are that of Diane Sullivan ELGeorgia@aol.com



War Horse on Stage at Lincoln Center Theater NYC -Winner of 5 Tony Awards Including Best Play

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War Horse
On Stage
At Lincoln Center Stage
NYC
Recently I was invited to War Horse on Stage at Lincoln Center Stage, NYC.
From the moment the invitation arrived I could not have been any more excited. I have wanted to see War Horse forever and now I was going to see it live on stage. The thought did cross my mind wondering if I would be able to buy into the whole “horse on stage” aspect of the show.
I am not new to Broadway and have been an avid show watcher since before I hit my teens(a long time ago), but I don’t think I have ever been to a show that depicted animals in the way that War Horse seemed to have mastered.
You can send your own video postcard from Joey’s stable!
War Horse had me from the moment it began. The magic of a tiny colt running free on the stage, manned by puppeteers was just fascinating. War Horse itself has quite an involved and intense theme. 
Joey(War Horse) is won in a bet between two brothers, even though the brother that won has sacrificed his mortgage money to do so. The tiny colt is brought home and Albert(the young son) along with the audience falls hopelessly in love with Joey later known as War Horse. We watch as Joey and Albert from a relationship that tears at our hearts and Joey grows into a full sized horse in front of our eyes. Check out the cast of War Horse here.
War Horse. A day out at the park.  NYC
War Horse is set in England during World War I but soon changes to Germany and France. Along with the change goes Joey, sold into the Calvary by Albert’s father and taken to France. Albert is heartbroken as we watch Joey being taken and vows to find a way for them to be together again. The scenes are quite intriguing. The accompanying music and songs help us to feel the emotion that engulfed the mood of this Broadway show.
Of course, Joey is not the only horse on the stage. There are scenes of galloping and War World I that will come to life in front of your very eyes. I sat in amazement as the show went on.
I would definitely recommend this show to anyone looking for a wonderful night out.
Note: There are quite a few tissue alerts. 
You can check them out on facebook, too!
Check out War Horse on Stage at Lincoln Center soon! You will love it!
WINNER of 5 Tony Awards including Best Play!
Disclosure: Review tickets were provided by War Horse on Stage at Lincoln Center.

Review and Giveaway: Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead

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Recently I had the pleasure of reviewing Maggie Shipstead’s Seating Arrangements as part of the Role Mommy Book Club.
  Maggie Shipstead’s debut novel, “Seating Arrangements,” 

is a cleverly-written, biting satire of New England “old money”
 style families, detailing all the issues that come up over the course
 of a wedding weekend. At its center is Winn Van Meter, an aging 
socialite plagued by everything from the pregnancies of both his
 daughters (not at the same time, thankfully, although Daphne is 
pregnant for her wedding) to his three-year-long quest to join the
 elusive Pequod club. Add to the mix the bevy of relationships he 
has to juggle throughout the weekend, old and new alike, and the 
affair Winn is considering, and you certainly have trouble brewing
 for the whole Van Meter family!

     Shipstead deftly handles the various loves, hates, hookups, breakups, 
and affairs of her characters throughout the novel, and although she
 is handling quite the ensemble, the author manages to keep things 
clear and comprehensible for her audience as far as the characters’
 interactions and desires go. Having said that, though, “Seating Arrangements” 
is far from predictable, and some of its more dramatic moments
 had me gripped in page-turning suspense. 

GIVEAWAY: Don’t take my word for it. This is your chance to win a copy. Email ELGeorgia@aol.com with Seating Arrangements in the subject line. 
Contest ends August 25th at 11:59pm. Winner will be notified and have 24 hours to respond before a new winner is chosen. Good Luck! USA only.

A conversation with
Maggie Shipstead
author of
SEATING ARRANGEMENTS
Q: SEATING ARRANGEMENTS is set on a Nantucket-like island off the coast of Cape Cod over a three-day wedding weekend.  What about this elite social setting drew you in?
I grew up in Southern California. My parents are transplanted Midwesterners who don’t like gin or lobster (I know: weird). I didn’t know what a WASP was until I went to college, and then, through friends, distinctly non-friends, and a boyfriend, I got something of a crash course, which was, like most crash courses, intense but patchy and incomplete. I’m not a believer in the old “write what you know” chestnut. I like to write about what I want to know more about.
My first year of grad school, I was kicking around the question of what problems come with privilege and entitlement. For example: if you think all possibilities are rightfully open to you, whether in choosing a job or a mate, then how do you ever decide? How can you ever be content? I hadn’t come up with a way to approach these questions through fiction until a friend of mine had the good grace to be hit by a golf cart while riding his bike on Nantucket. (Naturally, he was wearing tennis whites.) His leg was cut badly enough to need stitches, but the driver of the golf cart wouldn’t apologize. This profoundly unsettled my friend. “You’re supposed to apologize,” he told me on the phone. “Even if something’s not your fault, you apologize so everyone feels better. It’s polite.” He was bewildered, not angry, and, while making sympathetic noises, I started thinking about a character who depends on the people around him to abide by strict rules of behavior and whose fragile world is thrown into disarray when they don’t. I knew I wanted to explore and maybe critique the very, very First World problems of such a character, and I knew I wanted to use a certain crisp, clean, preppy New England vacation aesthetic as a background for behavior that was neither crisp nor clean. So I wrote a very bad short story, and then, two years later, I lived on Nantucket for eight months (let the record show that they did not include the summer months) and wrote the first draft of the novel.
Q: Throughout SEATING ARRANGEMENTS, it often feels like we’re getting voyeuristic glimpses in to the habits of the well-bred and ill-behaved.  Where did you draw inspiration for these characters and their antics?
The characters are all primarily invented, but I accessorized them with bits and pieces borrowed from real people: choice phrases, descriptive details, a delightfully strange first name. Sometimes a name or a line of dialogue is enough to give a character shape, especially at the beginning. Then, the more you write about a character, the more information you have about what he or she would do, think, and feel in any given situation, and their antics start to flow from their personalities. When you go back to the beginning of a draft to revise, you suddenly know this person better than you did when you started and can see all sorts of psychological inconsistencies and moments where the tone wanders. The borrowed bits and pieces get crusted over with layers of invention and eventually lose all connection to that poor real-life source who was foolish enough to talk to a writer at a party.
Q: Patriarch Winn Van Meter is a Harvard graduate who is obsessed with membership in all the right clubs.  As a Harvard graduate yourself, was club membership something people took very seriously?
Harvard has an odd, retro system of social clubs called final clubs that are exclusively male, are not funded or regulated by the university, own spectacular Cambridge real estate, and admit members through a selective process called punching. From what I observed, membership was a matter of absolute and dire seriousness for some guys, but others had no interest in joining a club or joined for reasons that didn’t go much deeper than wanting to have a place to hang out with their friends. A handful of female final clubs have been founded over the past twenty or so years, but because they don’t have the same alumni resources or long traditions as the men’s clubs, they don’t seem to confer the same status or occupy the same place in the collective Harvard imagination. There’s an ongoing debate about the final clubs that will probably never end. Some people think they’re incubating and perpetuating misogyny, racism, economic segregation, homophobia, and other very bad things. Other people argue that club members have special and unique bonds and create opportunities for one another. I don’t begin to have the answers—I think, at the very least, it’s problematic that men control so much of the social space at Harvard, but I also see how, for lots of members, the clubs are harmless fun. Truth be told, I was just glad to be a girl so I didn’t have to worry about getting punched or not.
Q: To the horror of his daughter, to whom he is toasting, Winn’s wedding toast equates marriage with death.  Was this intended as farcical or tragic and have you previously experienced an awkward wedding toast such as this one?
I’ve never been in the audience for quitesuch a downer of a wedding toast, but I would say a solid 30-40% of the ones I have witnessed would qualify as awkward. Most people aren’t entirely comfortable with public speaking, and when you mix in a lot of emotion and alcohol, people can be unpredictable. I’ve seen a mother-of-the-groom catalog the groom’s ex-girlfriends. I’ve seen a maid-of-honor catalog the bride’s ex-boyfriends. I’ve seen a best man rewrite the lyrics of “American Pie” to be an uncomfortable seven minute string of rhyming insults about the groom. I’m generally ambivalent about the prospect of having a wedding of my own, but, if I have one, toasts will be forbidden.
Q: There’s a great scene with an exploding whale.  Does that actually happen?? 
It does! And let that be a lesson to us all: don’t get too close to a decomposing whale carcass. When I was in high school, I read an article in the Los Angeles Times about a scientist who had been killed while performing a necropsy on a whale. Gas built up inside the corpse; it exploded, and this poor man was impaled by a shard of bone. Not surprisingly, the story stuck with me, and when I started drafting Seating Arrangements, I decided early on to include an exploding whale. I didn’t have the plot mapped out at all, but I was strangely confident there would be an opportunity somewhere to work in the whale.
If you search on YouTube, you’ll find some whale explosions, natural and otherwise. One of my favorites is a classic news clip from 1970 about local authorities in Oregon who didn’t know what to do with a dead grey whale and decided to blow it up with dynamite . . . too much dynamite. Huge chunks of blubber rained from the sky and crushed cars and terrified all the spectators who’d come out to see the blast. Whales are just so impossibly large that I think there’s something confrontational and compellingly grotesque about them when they’re dead. You can’t ignore a dead whale; it’s a memento mori on a gigantic scale.
Q: What writers and novels inspire you?
There are too many to list! Day to day, I tend to read a lot of nonfiction and am not great at staying on top of current fiction, but I have a shelf of books at the ready for when I’m having trouble writing. I’ll pick one up and read for a while, and often just a few pages of someone’s marvelous prose will sort of get me in tune. The contents of the shelf rotates, but some standbys are The Great Gatsby (duh), Brideshead Revisited, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Lolita, Housekeeping, To the Lighthouse, Pride and Prejudice, Loving, The Virgin Suicides, The Early Stories by John Updike, Selected Stories by Alice Munro, and The Stories of John Cheever. Lately I’ve been on simultaneous A.S. Byatt and John Le Carré kicks, who write about very different subjects but are both master stylists and are inspiring me to aspire to use the omniscient voice. I’m also reading Michael Chabon’s new book, and I’ve been thinking about how much I love the way the humor and beauty in his work starts on the diction level. He routinely writes sad sentences that are made funny by one unexpected word or vice versa. Reading his fiction reminds me that every word matters.
Q: When did you first realize you loved to write? 
Any day now. Writing is difficult and takes forever, and I’m constantly aware that I should always be looking harder and thinking harder. I don’t dislike the act of writing—and I would feel lost and useless if I stopped doing it—but when things are going well, the experience is more of focus than of enjoyment. I love books, and I do love certain things about the process of constructing characters and stories, like when the solution to some structural problem suddenly becomes clear and I get a boost of momentum. I also love the challenge of inventing characters who seem real to me, and then I love trying to see through their eyes. The opportunity to be someone else is one of the great pleasures of reading, and I’ve been surprised that it’s a pleasure of writing as well.
On a practical level, I started writing fiction in college more or less on a whim and then applied to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop the year after graduation also pretty much on a whim. When I got in, I immediately became much more serious about improving my work, but I can’t remember any moment where I knew I wanted to be a writer. It was more that I slowly figured out I didn’t want to be anything else.
Q: What are you working on next?
I just finished a novel that’s mostly about ballet. It’s all in present tense but covers thirty years. There’s a Soviet defector. There’s Southern California and Paris and New York. There’s some high drama. But, other than that, I’m terrible at describing my own projects and should say no more. Next I’d like to finish a couple short stories I’ve been toying with, one about the Paris catacombs and one about an ocean liner. I like to mix it up.