Anna Fader

Founder & CEO of Mommy Poppins
Anna was born in Park Slope, spent her early years in the West Village. By the time she graduated high school, she had lived in 4 of the 5 boroughs. Growing up in NYC in the '70s meant the streets were her playgrounds. Museums and avant garde music venues were the kid-friendly activities. And living downtown taught her the importance of creating community for families in NYC.

Now, raising her own two children in the city, she tries to create the same sense of magic and community she felt growing up, despite today's more commercialized version of kid-friendly New York.

She started Mommy Poppins in 2007 to share a more artsy, educational, uncommercial, community-oriented vision of raising kids in New York City. Today Mommy Poppins is relied on by millions of families as the authority on the best things to do with kids beyond New York City: from Boston to Philly, Los Angeles, Houston and travel guides for dozens more cities and destinations.

Latest posts by Anna

Shopping Locally: Craft Fairs, Sample Sales and Holiday Shopping Events

Submitted by Anna Fader on Tue, 12/02/2008 - 12:36pm

Buying local is the hip new thing, but beyond just being trendy and "supporting local businesses," buying local is important to us because it builds community and sustains what we love most about NYC: its cool, eclectic mix of unique, small shops and walkable city streets.

There are several Holiday shopping events that make shopping locally into fun, outings. Plus we've got a round-up of sample sales.

Win Big in our Week of Holiday Giveaways!: Today, $300 in Toys

Submitted by Anna Fader on Mon, 12/01/2008 - 8:39am

This week to promote our Holiday Guide, we're doing a whole week of fabulous giveaways. This is by far the best line-up of giveaways we've ever done on the site, with well over $1000 in awesome prizes.

We're kicking it off with two awesome giveaways of Mattel's best selling toys for boys and girls. Each prize is worth $150. and will make you the most loved parent ever on Christmas or Chanukah. Check out what you get:

Countdown to Christmas: 5 Advent Calendar Ideas

Submitted by Anna Fader on Sat, 11/29/2008 - 6:43am

At the zoo today my friend was telling me how her daughter is already having anxiety about Christmas being over. She said they were even thinking of celebrating Chanukah this year just to spread it out a little and avoid the whole ONE BIG DAY thing. It made me think about the genius of advent calendars for spreading out the fun of the Holidays over a longer period of time.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, the advent calendar is really a perfect thing. They are beautiful, creative and hold tiny little treats in them that get to be opened one-a-day, working up to Christmas. What could be better than that? Some people put candies or small presents in their advent calendars, but the really great thing about them is you can create your own advent calendar tradition. You can also make an advent calendar out of just about anything. I've seen some really beautiful and cool home-made advent calendars.

Here are my best ideas both for advent calendars you can make and what to put inside them:

Free Play: November 28-30, 2008, Holiday Activities, National Day of Listening, Winter's Eve Festival and more

Submitted by Anna Fader on Fri, 11/28/2008 - 7:01am

Picture 34.png The Turkey's back in the fridge waiting to be pulled out for sandwiches, the family's in a tryptophan-induced stupor. OK, time to figure out what we're doing for the rest of the weekend!

This weekend will be a bunch of Christmas Tree lightings and Santas will be ready to hear children's wishes. In our Holiday Guide you'll also find lots of other holiday activities like visiting the Department Store Holiday Windows and Holiday Train Shows. Plus there's the opening festival of the new Children's Center at the 42nd St Library.

Here are some other interesting events and activities to do with the kids this weekend:

New Children's Library Center at Main 42nd St Branch

Submitted by Anna Fader on Thu, 11/27/2008 - 7:14pm

When I was a kid I basically lived at the Jefferson Market Library. We climbed on the bronze oxen sculpture (the things we let kids do in the 70s), watched movies in their little viewing room and worked my way through the books, literally, starting from A. It's a great children's library. But, there are shamefully few great children's libraries in New York City and last year they closed the main children's center at the Donnell Library which was a double shame. But I'm super excited to hear that they are opening a beautiful, new Children's Library Center at the 42nd St. main library. WOW!

How to volunteer with your children in NYC

Submitted by Anna Fader on Thu, 11/27/2008 - 6:14pm

Picture 30.png

We have more up-to-date posts about volunteering with kids in NYC in our Holiday Guide.

Reader, Susan, asked me if I knew of any places for families to volunteer around the Holiday time. Her idea was to get a couple of families together in her neighborhood to all volunteer together. That sounds like a great way to teach children about the importance of helping others and making it a fun community activity at the same time.

There are always so many opportunities around the city--even I find it overwhelming, but there are actually some great resources and websites that make it easy to find a good program to fit your location, child's age and interests to do some holiday giving.

Thankgsgiving Day Updates: See the ballloons up close without the crowds

Submitted by Anna Fader on Thu, 11/27/2008 - 4:11pm

Two last-minute updates I wanted to share:

South Street Seaport Ice Skating Rink, which was supposed to open tomorrow, Friday, November 28th has been postponed. The rink is not set up yet. I'll keep you posted.

Also, I got a great tip from my friend, Jonathan, last night on how to see the giant Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons up close without the crowds of the inflation station.

X-Siting News: Holiday Guide, Browse by Map, Big Giveaways, Holiday Tipping Poll, Sale Mail

Submitted by Anna Fader on Wed, 11/26/2008 - 5:15pm

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.