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Since we've become parents we've grown used to the period between Thanksgiving and New Years being a big blur of activity. The Holidays are a wonderful time in New York City and we try to enjoy its magical moments, whether it's with out of town guests or just with our own children. One thing we know is that there's always too much to do.

We hope our Holiday Guide will help you a little bit by providing you with lots of information organized and in one place, whether it's how to get a Christmas tree or where to volunteer with your children, and lots and lots of fun Holiday activities which we'll keep posting as the information becomes available. One event we hope you'll make time for is our Holiday Toy Swap and Drive.

Thank you to everyone who entered our launch giveaway for our artists and Artisans Guide and left such great comments. We have picked our winners using a random number generator.

Do you have your costumes? Lined up all your Halloween parties and events? Know where you're trick or treating?

Halloween is one of the most fun times for kids in New York CIty. It's when the city turns itself over to the children and it seems like there's a Halloween happening just about in every corner. Our Halloween Guide helps you make the most of creepy and the kooky fun. Check out the Mommy Poppins Halloween Guide for the best Halloween events, parades, trick or treating and more.

While I've got your attention, there's a couple other things I want to let you know:

In addition to our regular daily newsletter, you can now sign up to get our New Jersey or Long Island emails to keep up on all that's happening in those parts. We've also added a weekly newsletter for NYC. If getting our email every day is too much for you, sign up for the weekly and you'll just get the Friday events post. Of course, for those of you who don't wan to miss out on anything, our daily emails will continue to keep you up to date with everything that's going on.

To sign up for any of these newsletters just go to our subscribe page.

I've added a new page to the site that I wanted to share with you. The Arts and Kid Shows Guide has lots of information about museums, performances, art shows and other fun cultural activities to do in New York with kids. There's also money-saving tips, like free times at all the museums, some ideas for how to make a museum outing more fun with kids, and recent reviews of kid shows.

I'll keep adding more info as we write it and all new reviews will be in there, so you can always check the guide for the most current exhibit and show information. You'll find it by clicking on the Art & Shows tab at the top of the site.

I hope this page will be a helpful addition to the site. If you have any suggestions please email me.

Visit the Culture Guide now.

About a month ago we relaunched this site with lots of new updates, a new look and features (all of which are summarized here). While resting on our laurels has been fun, we're itching to a) find out what people think of all the changes and b) start working on the next set of improvements.

We've put together a really short reader survey to get your input. This is your chance to tell us what you think of the site and how you think it could be better. We're all ears and would love to hear your complaints, brilliant ideas, whims and fetishes...we'll even take praise.

Best of all, if you answer the survey you get entered to win one of the 10 dinner parties for 10 we're giving away thanks to Susie's Supper Club.

The survey will take you less than five minutes. I hope you'll take the time to give us your input. Click here to take the survey. Thanks!

Oh, PS. We added one new feature today. Now on our Area Guides (the Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, etc tabs) you'll find recommendations and reviews for kid-friendly restaurants in that area thanks to TimeOut Kids. Hope that makes planning your day that much easier.

PPS. That's all there is in this post, don't click on the "read more" which shows up there automatically.

Mommy Poppins has always been a labor of love, but never more so than working on this redesign. Actually this project started out as just a simple desire to expand our neighborhood pages and make it easier to find all our new guides, but Simon, my amazing (and handsome) developer, was so good at making my wouldn't it be cool ifs... come true, I just kept coming up with more, and more...and more. Finally, a mere 9 months later, we've got a whole new site, with a new design and lots of cool features that make it easier to find what you're looking for and more fun to use.

Read on for highlights of some of the new cool features of the site and please leave a comment and let us know what you think:

Occasionally I get into a radio mode and I tune in to NPR. Somehow I always seem to tune in when they are having a pledge drive. So I've basically been listening to non-stop pledge driving for the last couple days and it's inspired me (or brain-washed me) into action.

Here's the skinny: Mommy Poppins has been nominated as the best local blog in NYC in the Parents Connect Parents Picks contest. (Cool) But we're not actually in the lead. (Bummer) But it would be kinda cool to win it 'cause I think we are the best local kids blog, don't you? So here's my NPR-style pitch (read below in best Brian Lehrer voice):

I have to admit. I've always been afraid of starting a forum or anything like that on this site. It feels like hosting a party when you're not sure if anyone is going to come. But I'm pleased to say that our new Twitter group, KidBuzzNY, has really taken off. In just over a week we already have over 100 followers and a very active group of contributors sharing ideas, tips and information on cool stuff for kids in New York.

There's so much new stuff going on, I just wanted to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming with this brief message explaining some of the happenings:

Story Maps
You may have noticed the NYC map added to our left sidebar. It's not just any map, it's actually a very cool tool created by local news site Outside.In that let's you search for our stories by map. Each marker on the map represents a place we have written about. Click on the marker and you'll get a pop-up of every post we've written about that place. Just click on the story title to go to the article. It's pretty cool. You can zoom in to the part of the city you want to find places or events and find stories from as far back as 6 months ago by changing the time-frame at the top of the map (which is set by default to one week). I'm testing this feature out and want to know if you all find it useful or not, so please shoot me an email and let me know if you'd like to see more mapping tools like this.

Have you noticed the new Events Calendar on Mommy Poppins lately? After a full four months of development, during which it was admittedly pretty pathetic, the calendar is now full of great activities, including over 55 Halloween activities, most of them free.

Judy Sklover, our new Events Editor, will be hand-picking the best events and activities all over NYC for kids. Expect to see only the best free activities, educational programs, and unique events for NYC kids you won't find listed anywhere else. Unlike other NYC resources, we don't just post every press release that comes across our desk. We actively seek out cool stuff and only post events we would go to ourselves.

FIND IT:
The events calendar is in our left sidebar. To see events, click on the date you're looking for to see that day's events or click on the month to see the whole month. You can also view our calendar in week or list view. I prefer list view myself because I can see upcoming events with a summary of what and where they are.

USE IT:
Another feature you'll notice is our Upcoming Events widget. Right there in the sidebar you can see the next five events at a glance. It's a great way to check what's happening that day if you need some inspiration, but be aware some days we have more than 5 events listed and you'll want to go to the main calendar view to get the complete list.

I want to thank Judy, the newest addition to the Mommy Poppins team and mommy dynamo. She was her school's PTA president for more years than anyone should sanely serve and has been a terrific community member. I'm thrilled to have her on board and I also want to thank the Wildlife Conservation Society and all our other advertisers for recognizing what a great little site this is and supporting us with their advertising dollars, making it possible to add features like this new event calendar .

Getting this calendar working was a big step for me, but it's only the first one. I want to make it even better and am going to be continuing to work on it. So email me with what you think could make it better and I'll see if I can make it happen in the next round of improvements.