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Children's Books, Kids Crafts, Motherhood, Sponsored
It’s Shoe Time! Time to Learn to Tie Shoelaces
- 12:31 pm
- 0 comments
- by Adanna Dill
Thank you to our sponsor Disney-Hyperion!

It’s Shoe Time! Do your little ones know how to pick out their shoes and how to tie their shoelaces yet? That’s regular topic at our home these days as we prepare my son for Kindergarten next fall. My son hasn’t been thrilled about shoe time although he’s able to dress all by himself. As every parent knows, nothing gets kids more motivated than their favorite fictional characters so when we received the newest book in the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series, It’s Shoe Time! by Bryan Collier, I felt like the literary powers were smiling on us. If you’re not familiar with the Elephant & Piggie Like Reading! series, it’s special stories that Elephant and Piggie love and introduce to us. It’s Shoe Time! is the fourth book in the series and was released last month on November 7th.

It’s Shoe Time! is equal parts inspirational and funny to my son. He discovered a bit about self-expression and independence through the characters, a beautiful little brown girl like my kids (the diversity makes me very happy) and the shoes who compete for her attention. She ultimately decides to wear two mismatched shoes which it turns out her dad also does. The first time we read it, my son reminded me that he always chooses matching shoes so I made it a point to celebrate that with him and remind him that all we need to do now is learn to tie his laces. I assured him it wasn’t hard and made him this craft inspired by Elephant and Piggie as I knew seeing his beloved characters would encourage him to practice tying his laces.

Materials you’ll need for this craft:
- Construction Paper
- Scissors
- Hole Punch
- Shoelaces
- Glue
- Pencil
- Marker
Instructions
1. Using the method we learned from We Are in an ART-ivity Book!, we drew Elephant & Piggie.
2. Draw shoes of choice, you can design any style of shoes you want.
3. Glue the shoes on the feet of the characters.
4. Punch holes for the laces
5. Lace up the shoes and give it to your kids to play and practice.
How do you make shoe time fun? Do you have any special hacks for teaching kids to tie their laces?
Baby, Motherhood, New Born, Sponsored
5 Reasons You Can Never Have Enough Onesies
- 1:41 pm
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- by Adanna Dill
This post is in partnership with ONESIES® brand baby apparel. As always, all opinions are my own.

Laundry! Oh the Joy…

I was folding my baby’s laundry and complaining about the number of onesies she uses in one week. I started to wonder if it’s just that I’m extra but my friend who came by the meet the baby assured me that she went through just as much if not more when her son was a baby. I never really thought about how much onesies babies really use but the more I thought about it the more I realize why we can never have enough. So today, I’m partnering with ONESIES® brand to share a few reasons why you can never have enough onesies:

1.Spit-up is the Name of the Baby Game.

Back when I was a first-time mom, I assumed that breastfed babies didn’t spit up. Girl, I was wrong, my first baby would spit up slightly that I wouldn’t even notice. Then one day I noticed that one of her onesies felt a bit hard around the neckline and upon further inspection realized it was dried spit-up. I felt terrible that I didn’t realize it right away but I took it as a learning experience to always check my baby neckline for spit-up.

2.Blowouts Happen!

With a newborn, you could find yourself in the catastrophe of a blowout so it’s always great to have extras on hand. Onesies are also perfect for containing those blowouts.

3.Baby, It’s Cold Outside

It’s cold now, I’m talking freezing temperatures today but that doesn’t mean that baby doesn’t have to get outside. I bundle her up and dress her in layers always using onesies for her first layer.

4.Cuteness Overload

I love to see my baby in her onesies from the classic whites to fun colors, it’s the baby basic we can’t get enough of.

5.Onesies Are always in the Budget

Onesies are inexpensive so you can continuously stock them. I love purchasing the ONESIES® brand bodysuits at Walmart because I get bang for my dollar. Spending less on basics and layering pieces like these good quality onesies is a win for me.

Anyway, those are my reasons why as a mom I can never have enough onesies.

What are yours?
Motherhood, Sponsored
Jamming and Reading with the WEYV App + Free 2-Month Trial
- 1:51 pm
- 0 comments
- by Adanna Dill
This post is sponsored by WEYV. As usual, all opinions are my own.

In our home, we’re always jamming to reggae, pop, and R&B! I’ve loved listening to music all of my life and I remember making my first playlist back when I was my daughter’s age. I used my walkman (don’t pretend you didn’t have a walkman) to record a few songs from the radio that I loved over a crappy cassette that I found in the house. Of course, there were parts with commercials or with the DJ speaking that I mistakenly taped but overall it was fun to curate my own music. As I got older, my friends and I would trade these cassettes sometimes the were actual albums, sometimes our homemade playlists. This evolved into burning CDs and eventually digital playlists by the time I got to college. When I met my husband during my senior year of college, I realized that I was a rookie at playlists. He’s very serious about them and seems to have one for just about every occasion which I think is beautiful as not only it puts a timestamp on our lives but as the kids grow older I know they’re going to associate certain artists and songs with their childhood and our family. It’s about us connecting with each other and that’s why I was excited to partner with the WEYV app when they reached out to me.

If you haven’t heard of WEYV yet it’s a new entertainment app (with both music and magazines) that my family’s been using for about one month now. I’ve had a few other music streaming app subscriptions before and none really impressed me as much WEYV. I love that we get access to both on-demand music and create stations but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Just like my old cassette days, I can share playlists, but now more seamlessly. I can even have other users collaborate with me on playlists which is perfect for my husband and I since I’m always complaining that I want some of my favorite songs added to his playlists. There are absolutely NO ADS which I am very happy about and we can download music within the app and listen offline when we do not have WiFi access.

WEYV isn’t just for music lovers though. As I’ve mentioned before I absolutely love reading magazines too (doing both at the same time is like mom heaven, No?). Well, this is what makes WEYV worth it to me because I can read my favorite magazines like ESSENCE, Real Simple, Women’s Health and People StyleWatch while using it.

I’ve been able to curate a reading list, save articles that I enjoyed including recipes and DIYs and share with my friends. I’m famous for walking around with magazines and then forgetting them just about anywhere thanks to my mom brain but since I’ve been reading them in WEYV I no longer have to worry that. I can read on my iPhone or on my iPad. It’s much more convenient and also easier on my pockets.

We’ve been really enjoying our family time together since we started using WEYV. Driving to swimming class has turned into karaoke time and family concerts are now a frequent thing in the car. Since WEYV is COPPA compliant and allows us to create a profile for each child, my husband and I don’t have to look over the kids’ shoulders to ensure that the content is child-friendly, which as parents is important to us.

WEYV TRIAL OFFER

Anyway, I don’t want to just tell you all about WEYV, I would love for your family to experience it yourself. Fortunately, Rattles and Heels readers can receive a FREE 2-month trial of the WEYV family plan. Just sign-up here, enter the promotion code RattlesHeels under Manage Subscription, and then download the app from the App Store or Google Play. WEYV is available on Apple iPhones and Google Androids and on your desktop via a web player. Oh and the more you listen to an artist in WEYV the more WEYV will donate to the charity selected by or on behalf of that artist. So don’t feel bad playing your favorite song on repeat.