Feel like burning up some old Christmas trees? Or dancing and howling around some apple trees? There’s a lot of outdoor fun in NJ this weekend, so pull on your long underwear and head out. Of course, if you’d rather not freeze your patootie off, you can go indoors for a fairy princess tea party, some Cabin Fever movie shorts or a balloon animal extravaganza. Have a great time!

Note: Next week we will be offering a Poppins Perk to try out Off Your Desk to try at an incredibly low price.
While the politicians debate our health care crisis in Washington, every day, regular people have to struggle to try to get adequate health care without going broke. It is likely that everyone, at one time or another, has had a run in with their insurance company. From my personal experience I know that I will need to file most claims at least twice in order to get them processed correctly, whether because they were "lost" or denied or just some petty thing they can find to not file it, knowing that many people are too busy to follow up.

During Tuesday's freezing rain, sleet, snow and ice storm, I left my warm and cozy (well, overheated and small) apartment to check out park here, the indoor temporary pop up park created in a gallery space on Mulberry Street that I have been reading about everywhere.  Is it worth dragging the kids out in this weather?  Read on to find out.
 

Next weekend, Brooklyn’s Invisible Dog Art Center will be turned into a haven for creative kids, when the Inventgenuity Festival takes it over. This innovative (and free) festival for kids is all about hands on tinkering, doing and making, but don’t expect ordinary store bought craft sets here but instead invention, ingenuity, engineering, design and creation.  The festival is full of of interesting workshops – like lock picking--and there is even a large scale group project where kids help the artist create a 40 foot Rube Goldberg chain reaction contraption (think of the game mousetrap!).  This festival is brought to us for the second time by Beam Camp, a mixed ages sleep away camp in New Hampshire that keeps kids busy with large scale collaborative projects during the summer. Read on to find out how to register and what else is going on.  

Ever feel like the only exercise your kids get in the winter is lifting the Goldfish to their mouths while watching the tube? Enter the snowy classic: ice skating. Whether indoor, outdoor, or semi-covered, get your Michelle Kwan on and take your pick of New Jersey’s best kid-friendly ice skating rinks!

If cold, gray and slushy are the only words that come to mind when you think of Winter in NYC, then you have come to the right place. Just because the thermometer seems frozen below 32 degrees and you're too cold to think, there's no reason you can't still have fun.

Our Winter Fun Guide is a new guide for us and filled with the best things to do in New York City this winter from culture highlights to indoor and outdoor sports, winter day and weekend trips and other ways to have fun without the sun. We'll be adding more to this guide in the coming weeks and you can always find the latest winter news at the bottom of the guide. Make sure to check it whenever you need a little bit of frosty inspiration.

We've also updated our Indoor Activity Guide where you can find lots of places to get in from the cold, from play spaces to free indoor spots to hang out. There's no need to suffer from cabin fever.

Our Winter and Indoor Guides have everything you need to know to keep the good times rolling until Puxatawny Phil brings us warmer days.

We have five inspiring Martin Luther King Jr Day events lined up for kids on this long weekend! Kids can celebrate MLK Day through art, performance, community events and leadership activities at the Newark Museum, Morris Museum, Arts Council of Princeton, Express Yourself Studios, or the Essex Environmental Center. On Saturday and Sunday participate in special zoo programs at the Turtleback Zoo or Jenkinson Aquarium, explore the outdoors maple-sugaring at Great Swamp or learning how to cook outdoors at Plainsboro Preserve, get hands-on at the New Jersey State Museum's new kids workshops, or make some snowflake inspired art work at the Liberty Hall Museum. Or take advantage of the snow and take the kids skiing on NJ's slopes!

Although I don’t think we have stepped foot in a theater on the Great White Way since our son was born almost six years ago, both my husband and I adore musicals. In fact, the very first bit of media we introduced our son to was The Sound of Music movie and I look forward to the day that we can bring him to see a musical on Broadway. He is nearly six so I think we are almost there, but until that day comes, there is Broadway Playhouse; a fantastic three concert series introducing time-honored musicals to kids.  If you have a family that loves musicals (or even just likes them a lot), this is a series you won’t want to miss.