With Springfield Avenue Partnership as the host and Walgreens as the presenter, Maplewood MayFest will celebrate its 11th Anniversary on Sunday, May 20.
Highlights of MayFest 2012 will include petting zoos and four ponies to ride, a kiddie train and inflatable rides, a balloon animal maker and lots of fun activities for kids. A Classic Car Show will display custom and special interest cars. More than 100 vendors, artists, crafters and civic associations, live music provided by some of the area’s hottest bands plus great food representing the diverse community that lives, works, shops and dines along Springfield Avenue will complete the scene at one of Maplewood’s largest and most anticipated community events.
The Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health (CAECMH) at Montclair State University will host the Todd Ouida Children’s Foundation Annual Conference, focusing on “Enriching the “Everyday Leaders” Who Support the Mental Health and Well-Being of Infants, Children, and Families” on Wednesday, May 16.
But there’s more. Here are this weekend’s highlights:
Drop off the kids off at The Messy Artist in South Orange this afternoon for the Mother’s Day Gift-making workshop. They’ll make Mom a gift and a card. (Friday, May 11)
Stop in to the Bloomfield Public Library all day on Saturday to make tissue-paper flowers. Mom will love them! (Saturday, May 12)
a) Beautiful. It’s just a mom breastfeeding her child.
b) Awful. The kid’s too old to be doing that.
c) Offensive and perpetuates the battle between mothers, because of the heading, “Are You Mom Enough?”
d) Just made to cause a stir which it has.
We’re making a Barista Kids Mother’s Day card and we want your photos. It could be your favorite picture of you and your mom, you and your kids, or your beautiful wife and kids.
This is me and my youngest daughter taken four years ago by Christie Adams Photography. She had just turned one, and we had family photos to celebrate. They were taken in the gorgeous Van Vleck Gardens and that day is a wonderful memory.
So email your wonderful memories (jpgs please!) to us here. And check out Baristaville’s beautiful families in our slideshow on Sunday, May 13.
This is another jam-packed family event weekend. That’s what happens when spring arrives. Things get busy! It’s going to be difficult to choose what to do. Of course, the Montclair Film Festival is happening and this weekend two films are family-friendly: First Position and Brooklyn Castle. Barista Kids is the proud co-presenter of these great films. There are still tickets available to First Position, but act fast!
Breaking news: Thank God for Twitter. It just brought me this horrifying video I never would have seen if not for endless streams of tweets and HuffPo Weird News. Usually the only kind of news I like is weird, but I’m not sure this quite qualifies.
The video is short and sweet but also disturbing – not because the lioness at the Oregon Zoo literally attempts to bite the head off the little baby who ostensibly is sitting safely in front of the glass-walled cage – but because the the family filming the home video is unfazed and actually laughing while the lioness claws at the glass trying to devour their child.
To be fair to the lioness, the toddler is dressed in a black and white striped hooded sweatshirt which could be confusing for a wild animal. If I were a lioness I might mistakenly take the child for an baby zebra myself. An injured baby zebra, which makes for an easy meal, because the kid is placed sitting alone on the floor propped up against the glass wall,
Verona Park was filled with families celebrating health, fun and community yesterday for the Montclair YMCA’s Healthy Kids Day. The Y promised it would be a carnival-like event and it was, but it was much more than that. There was an infectious energy in the air and people young and old joined in with hula hoop fitness, Zumba, fitness contests, Conga lines and joining together to attempt to break a Guinness World Record.
After all the festivities were done, including pottery making with MAM, face painting, Take Back the Kitchen’s delicious dip tasting (Alma really does deserve the win she had for her Edamame dip!) and more, everyone was asked to Conga out of the center of the area so that the Y staff could set up for the record attempt.
Maplewood’s fifth annual Green Day took place on Saturday, April 28 in Memorial Park. Over 3,000 people came to see, do and eat “Green!”
“Maplewood is Green is the largest green fair in New Jersey and probable one of the largest in the nation.” said Tracy Woods, the event’s coordinator.
All attendees had their choice of local food vendors such as The Blue Plate Special, Sono and at The Able Baker there were special green day cookies shaped as maple leafs. Adults had their pick of various vendors showing off green windows, insulation, solar energy set ups and other non-kid centric stuff. There were members from many local ‘green’ groups manning booths offering more information on going green. From the Maplewood Community Garden and the Maplewood Garden Clube where you could learn about gardening. From bookBgone how to recycle your used books to communities that need them. At the Maplewood Library booth you could make a bracelet out of old t-shirts and pick up a free book. Into biking? High Gear Cyclery and Complete Streets were there to help you get back into the groove.
With Springfield Avenue Partnership as the host and Walgreens as the presenter, Maplewood MayFest will celebrate its 11th Anniversary on Sunday, May 20.
