Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

One of the things I want to make sure my two kids understand is that there are lots of children who are not as fortunate as they are — especially this time of year when the words “I want” become part of their daily lexicon.

That’s why we adopted a family through my daughter’s school and why I always ask them to help me go through their toys to pick the ones they no longer use to give to our next-door neighbor who works with local families in need.

This year, however, giving to those less fortunate than us, has gotten even easier thanks to Walmart’s campaign known as Fill the Truck. Working in conjunction with the Salvation Army, Walmart has put out cardboard boxes in the shape of trucks like the one you see in the photo above and all you have to do is purchase a toy or a coat for a child in need and drop it off in there. The Salvation Army will then be in charge of distributing the donated items to local kids in need. Some Walmart stores will also have a special event the next two weekends where volunteers will work together to fill the actual trucks with the donated toys.

I think that the best part about this program is that it really can’t get any easier to donate. Think about it, all you have to do is buy one or two toys while you’re shopping at Walmart and then just drop them off in one of the cardboard boxes by the entrance.

One of the things I miss the most about my native country is its delectable cuisine. I’m no chef, but because I want my children to experience the flavors of Peru, I do my best to cook traditional dishes as often as possible.

Some times that’s hard to do because not all the ingredients for the more complicated dishes are readily available where I live, that’s why I’m always looking to make the simpler recipes. This usually means trying to recreate the flavors of some of Peru’s many sandwiches or sánguches, like we call them over there.

For some unknown reason, despite their simplicity, it hadn’t occurred to me to make sánguches de pollo or chicken sandwiches. So when I found myself with some left over Marketplace traditional rotisserie chicken from Walmart, which is on rollback for $4.98 until October 31, I decided to go for it.

This type of sandwich is one of the most popular in Peru because we eat a lot of rotisserie chicken (pollo a la brasa). If you ever visit my country, I highly recommend you try it. I promise you won’t regret it.

The great think about these chicken sandwiches is that they are SUPER easy to make. All you need is the left over rotisserie chicken, mayonnaise (ideally the Peruvian kind that has a bit more lime) and bread rolls, such as the telera kind sold at Walmart. Because like many Peruvians I like to eat my food a bit spicy, I also used a bit of ají amarillo for the sandwiches.

Once you have the ingredients, just shred the chicken using a fork (make sure to include the skin), add the mayo (and the ají if you’re using it), spread it on the bread and you’ve got a finger lickin’ good chicken sandwich Peruvian style. ¡Qué rico!

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This is a sponsored post brought to you by Walmart. ¡Gracias!

The kids are so excited for our Fourth of July celebration. This year we will not be purchasing fireworks because our neighborhood has banned the use of fireworks. We are totally ok with that because we know we will be able to watch big fireworks in the sky put on our town.

To get started with the celebration I wanted to have the kids create something that would remind them of the years past.

I thought it would be really cool to do flameless DIY celebration sparklers. Now wouldn’t those be cool to celebrate our countries Independence Day? While they aren’t your typical sparklers, they are pretty cool and so easy to make!

Here is what you need to make your own Celebration Sparkelers:

1-Round dowels or wooden sticks. Walmart has a great price on 16 sticks for $.97

2-Scissors

3-Tape. Clear tape works best

4-Cellophane in your color of choice

5-Curling ribbon

6-Styrofoam balls. Walmart has a bag of 12pc for $4.97

Let’s get started!

1. Cut your cellophane to 4×4 squares and 3×3 squares. You will need about four of each so a total of eight cellophane squares.

2. Choose your foam ball. We used one of the smallest. Insert the stick and wrap with a larger square. Secure with tape.

3. Starting with the smaller squares first, make a slint in the center of the celephane squares. Slide stick thru from the bottom to the top at the base of the foam ball and wrap around and secure. See image above.

4. Continue adding all sqaures and securing each with tape at the base.

5. Lastly, decorate the stick with ribbon. Starting at the top, wrap around and secure with tape.

¡A celebrar se ha dicho! Let’s celebrate!!!

Today we join in the celebration of International Women’s Day with joy and a great outlook for a future where women across the globe will enjoy the same access to equality and girls can grow up to live to their full potential.

However, the reality is that women are still much more likely than men to be poor and illiterate. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said in an article yesterday that, “No country can get ahead if it leaves half of its people behind. This is why the United States believes gender equality is critical to our shared goals of prosperity, stability, and peace, and why investing in women and girls worldwide is critical to advancing US foreign policy.” The beauty of this is that we all have the purchasing power to effect real change for women and girls all over.

After my trip to Haiti a year ago, I’ve become passionate about learning more about how the decisions we make when we purchase something can have a direct impact on the women who created it, and ripple through to their families and communities. I call it conscious purchasing, it’s also known as ethical fashion or consumption.

So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Walmart, one of the brands that SpanglishBaby works with (and through whose sponsorship we’re able to keep this movement going!) is launching an online destination on Walmart.com that gives shoppers who want to buy unique and interesting products the opportunity to do so while supporting small women-owned businesses around the world.  With each purchase, consumers lift and empower the women behind these products to create new jobs and improve both their own lives and the lives of their families and communities.  Empowering Women Together offers shoppers more than 200 items from 19 businesses in nine countries.

Empowering Women Together is also dedicated to helping U.S.-based women-owned businesses grow and expand their distribution.  Nine of the initial 19 Empowering Women Together businesses are U.S. based.

Empowering Women Together will be part of Store for Good, a developing Walmart.com program dedicated to connecting consumers with products that do good for other people, for themselves, or for our environment.  The initiative will grow and potentially include eco-friendly products and healthier food options. Something I truly can’t wait to see happen!

The inaugural Empowering Women Together collection includes jewelry from Peru, Rwanda, Kenya and the U.S.; home accessories from Rwanda and Haiti; paper mache from Haiti, apparel and accessories from Rwanda; iPad and laptop cases from Cambodia and Nepal; coffee and tea sets sourced globally and made in America; and specialty foods made in America and Canada.  The full collection can be viewed online at www.walmart.com/empoweringwomentogether.

Empowering Women Together will give Joy Ndungutse, an entrepreneur in Rwanda, and many women like her around the world the opportunity they never thought they’d have – to begin or greatly expand their access to shoppers in America.

“From a humble beginning under a tree in a remote village in Rwanda, my sister and I founded Gahaya Links after the devastating 1994 Rwanda Genocide that left over 1 million dead,” said Joy Ndungutse.  “We organized about 20 women with a vision of empowering them to enhance their weaving skills, to be able to earn an income, and live adequately by community standards.  Today we are a growing network of over 4,000 women, the majority of whom are genocide survivors and are organized in cooperatives throughout Rwanda.  Through our partnership with Full Circle Exchange and opportunities such as Empowering Women Together, this platform gives hope to many families in Rwanda and we are so grateful.”

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, we’ve received compensation for our time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

January is over and Valentine’s is right around the corner. As I’ve said before I’m not a huge fan of this celebration, but I do think it’s a great time to do fun things with my kids. So I loved the idea of creating our own messages in Spanish on the large conversation hearts by Brach’s pictured above.

I figured that it’d be not only fun, but it’d be a great Spanish vocabulary lesson for my kids.

First, I showed them the idea concept behind the conversation hearts and I gave them an example by writing the word AMOR on one of them with the red food-safe pen that comes in the box. Then, I told them that before we got started we had to come up with a list of words related to love, friendship and Valentine’s Day in Spanish. We had so much fun coming up with words!

In all honesty, I figured most of them would come from Vanessa, since she’s the eldest. But boy was I in for a big surprise! It was actually my 3.5-year-old son who came up with the majority of the words on our list. Check them out:

Vanessa wasn’t too thrilled, but then she came up with a few phrases herself (such as ¿me quieres? and eres mi amor) and we were ready to get started. My first-grader did an amazing job writing these words onto the conversation hearts. (And her little brother has fun scribbling on them too!) So not only did we get to brainstorm some vocabulary, but Vanessa had a chance to practice writing all these words in Spanish too.

I must say I that my favorite part of Brach’s Conversation Hearts, which are available exclusively at your local Walmart, is their large size — perfect for little hands with plenty of space for those just learning to write. ¡Quedaron súper lindos!

Check out all the Valentine’s goodies we have for you here and our Valentine’s Pinterest board is really cute too!

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I have to admit that packing a lunch box for Camila every single day has been more challenging than I imagined. She just started school back in September, but it seems like I’m still getting the hang of it all and the snack and lunch box are my biggest challenge. When she was in preschool I had a lot more options because I could serve her warm meals and the teachers could heat it up for her. Now, she barely gets to finish her almuerzo with the ridiculous 15 minutes they get to eat!

I want her lunch to be packed with nutrition, flavor, variety and plain old fun. I know, I survived on the same ‘ole sandwich way back when, but times are different and I want my girl to crave what’s in her lunch box more than whatever’s being served in the school’s cafeteria.

So, I’ve gotten really good at finding products she’ll love and that are good for her, like the 8oz bottles of Cuties Juices and Smoothies found at Walmart that are 100% juice, no sugar added and made with the good-for-you, great flavor from Cuties tangerines! Since there are 10 flavors to choose from, it’s pretty much guaranteed she won’t get bored!

Aside from making sure she gets a good nutrition and protein boost with her juice, I also just started using a bento-style box like the one pictured above. Today I made for her a wrap with low fat cream cheese, shredded carrot and turkey ham. I cut it up like sushi pieces and placed some fun fork picks to spice it up for her. In another compartment I put some steamed broccoli and in the other strawberries and blueberries. I also put in the crunch with some honey wheat pretzel sticks. I’m so happy with all the colors, textures, flavors and the Cutie Juice!

Share: How do you pack nutrition into your child’s lunch?

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This last weekend was one of those. I had just finally started to feel better after spending a whole week in bed with that flu, or something that totally felt like it, and all I wanted was to get outdoors and spend real time with my girl. So Saturday morning I got up with renewed energy and was happy to be able to take my daughter to her swimming lessons at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center in Pasadena. It was such a gorgeous and warm day and I soaked up all the vitamin D I could while my girl had a blast in her class.

Here she is after swim lessons sucking on a healthy snack of Peter Rabbit Organics, made with organic fruit and veggie blends. Even at age 5, she loves gulping on the squeezy pouches and I love that they are easy to carry, always handy, 100% healthy with no added sugar or salt, pretty much mess-free and that they come in so many flavors that hit the perfect craving spot all the time.

The next day was just as sunny and gorgeous, but we knew there was still snow on the mountains because it had been so cold during the last few weeks. Last year we never got a chance to head up to the mountains for some snow play and Camila kept reminding us about the fact. So we headed up to Mt. Baldy, just a short one-hour drive away, for some snow tubing with friends. We packed a lunch and some snacks and the first thing Camila asked for as soon as she stopped for a much-needed rest after so much snow fun was a squeezy pouch from Peter Rabbit Organics. Just check her out!

As you can tell from our last weekend and if you follow me on Instagram, we do live a pretty active life and are always heading out for some kind of adventure on the weekends. Since I’m not the best at packing lunches and snacks, I’ve now made a note to make sure I stock up on Peter Rabbit Organics on my next visit to Walmart. With six fruit snacks and five veggie blends to choose from, I’m sure we’ll have enough variety to keep Camila excited for a while.

Disclosure: As a participant in the Walmart Moms Program, I’ve received product samples and compensation for my time and efforts in creating this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Mexican shrimp cocktail always brings a smile to my face. The tangy tomato entrada or “entrance” to an amazing meal is a tough dish to follow. The combination of sweet, tart and spicy is the perfect medley to accompany the plump shrimp overflowing from the tall glass it is served in.

The most memorable and delicious shrimp cocktail I’ve ever experienced was at the Mercado Municipal in Zihuatanejo, a Mexican city in the state of Guerrero. Recommended by our taxi driver, the Mercado is a must stop for artesania shopping and local eats.

Overwhelmed by the mercado’s vivid colors, spiced odors and noisy hustle that seemed to blend together, we were waved in by a man on a megaphone telling us not to miss the best shrimp cocktail in town. We were convinced and made our way to a small food stand with a mural of a giant, scary-looking shrimp painted over clumpy and peeling turquoise paint.

As soon as we sat at the counter, two bulging shrimp cocktail glasses were placed in front of us, a stack of crackers, a bowl full of avocado halves and a couple of sweaty beers to wash it all down.

Trying to recreate that particular moment, here is my interpretation of the Mercado’s Municipal shrimp cocktail using Clamato and a few other ingredients I found at Walmart.

It’s a hit at family get-togethers, tailgates and football play off parties. If you prefer a spicy version, add a chopped up Serrano chile to the mixture and enjoy!

Serves 6-8

Ingredients for Shrimp Cocktail

16oz medium cooked shrimp, frozen, tail on peeled and deveined (about 70 count)

1 cup Clamato Tomato Cocktail

1 cup ketchup

3 lemons, juiced

1 cup orange flavored soda

½ onion

1 celery stalk

10 cilantro sprigs

2 avocados, chopped in cubes

assorted crackers

Instructions

Thaw shrimp in sealed bag by submerging it in warm water for approximately 15 minutes.  Remove tails and rinse.

Chop celery, onion and cilantro and place them in a large salad bowl.

Add Clamato Tomato Cocktail to salad bowl and gently stir.

Add lemon juice, orange soda, ketchup and avocado to mixture.

Stir ingredients to combine.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.  Serve with assorted crackers.

Disclosure: As part of the Walmart Moms program, SpanglishBaby received compensation and the products to facilitate this post. As always, all stories and opinions are our own.

We’ve all had a teacher who has inspired us during our school years. Whether it’s simply because of their kindness or because they inspired in us a passion for a certain subject , teachers have played a big role in our educational lives and in those of our kids.

That is why we are excited to tell you about the Teachers Rock Wall of Fame. Between now and September 20, you can honor an influential teacher in your life by nominating them to the Wall of Fame on the Teachers Rock app. What’s cool about nominating a teacher is that  each day a nominee will be inducted and given a $500 gift card. This is awesome for teachers because on average they spend $500 a year of their own money on items for the classroom, and dual immersion and bilingual education teachers spend even more to get language and cultural-appropriate materials.

So what exactly is Teachers Rock all about? Teachers Rock is being presented by Wal-Mart and Walden Media’s upcoming feature film “Won’t Back Down.” You can start by nominating a teacher to the wall of fame, then on August 14 the Teacher’s Rock Concert Benefit will take place and two-hundred deserving teachers from the LA area have already been invited to attend. All proceeds from ticket sales will benefit DonorsChoose.org, Feeding America and Teach for America. This concert will air on CBS on August 17.

There are many ways you can show our teachers your appreciation and even win great prizes yourself! Just check out Teachers Rock on Facebook and the Teachers Rock App !

Like any child her age, my 6-year-old daughter Vanessa brings home all kinds of art projects that end up covering the entire refrigerator door. She usually likes to take some of the stuff to display in her room too, but I don’t really like how the walls of her room looks with all those push pins. So when I learned through Walmart’s Projects Made Simple that there’s a super easy way to make a section of a wall (or any other surface for that matter) magnetic, I knew I wanted to give it a try.

Another big reason why I wanted to try this project out is because Vanessa has been learning how to write and I love the idea that she can practice her spelling skills in Spanish in her own room using her newly converted section of the wall!

I  must admit that since I’m no good when it comes to DYI projects of any sort, I was pretty skeptical about the whole thing, even though the Projects Made Simple video made it look exactly like the way it describes it: SIMPLE. Now that I’m done, I realize I had nothing to worry about because it’s really, truly simple.

I basically just followed each and every single step on the video and was able to complete the project, with the help of my daughter, without a problem.

The first thing we did was gather all the necessary materials incluiding:

• Rustoleum Magnetic Primer
• Painter’s Tape
• Drop Cloth
• Foam Rollers (different sizes)
• Tray Kits

We then taped off the section of the wall we wanted to become magnetic and then we were ready to start applying the magnetic primer. Just like the video indicated, we put three coats of the primer waiting about 30 minutes (or a bit less) between each one. We then had to wait four hours for the primer to set in before we peeled the tape off. And then, Vanessa’s new magnetic surface was ready to be used. As simple as that!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C_cm3WRXWE&feature=BFa&list=PLFEEC65C49CA79DCB

My main tip regarding the process is that you make sure you allow for a lot of ventilation in the room where you’re using the magnetic primer because it definitely releases an extremely strong odor.

The best part of the whole project was seeing Vanessa’s astonished face after she stuck the first two magnets to the wall and hearing her ask me if it was magic! And then, she told me she wanted me to use the magnetic primer in her entire room!

And now, check out our own how-to video:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sK6cJMmbzg

Disclosure: As part of the Walmart Moms program, SpanglishBaby received compensation and the product to facilitate this post. As always, all stories and opinions are our own.