Kelly Bonanno

Life & Wellness Coach & Matchmaker helping you make your next chapter your best chapter

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The Bay Lights Of San Fransisco

Stunning light sculpture on San Fransisco’s Bay Bridge

baylights01San Francisco has such character and charm. It’s one of my favorite cities and now there is another reason to visit. Pioneer of computer driven imagery and use of LED, Leo Villareal created this dazzling display of the world’s largest LED sculpture. Inspired by the 75th anniversary of the Bay Bridge, this work of illuminative art has 25,000 white LED lights. That is eight times the scale of lighting they did for the 100th anniversary of the Eiffel Tower. The Bay Lights grand lighting was Tuesday, it will be lit from dusk until 2:00 am every evening through 2015. It is estimated to bring over 97 million dollars to the local economy. It’s something amazing to see for those visiting the city by the bay and people living in the bay area are lucky to enjoy such an incredible view!

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Review: Get Your Groove On With The BassBoomz Portable Speaker

I love my BassBuds earphones so I was very excited to review the BassBoomz high performance portable Bluetooth speaker. Music lights me up so the idea of playing it anywhere, anytime fills me with joy. This is a fantastic speaker. Designed with an innovative Bass Expansion System, BassBoomz gives you great sound quality with amazing bass.bassboomz-blue

It’s Small enough to fit just about anywhere (even in your pocket!) but gives huge sound amplification. BassBoomz are compatible with smartphones, laptops, tablets and MP3 players; they have a Li-ion battery that recharges fast giving you 5 – 6 hours of music. One speaker is loud but if you really want to blast your tunes and crank it up, hook 2 up with the dual connectivity option. It’s great looking and comes in a variety of cool colors. Mine is pretty pink which matches my fabulous BassBuds earphones!

Its easy portability is such a bonus because I love playing music while I’m making dinner, doing housework, etc, music makes life more fun. And I can’t tell you how nice it is to just put it anywhere and not have to bother with an electrical outlet. My iPod dock will not get much use now that I have BassBoomz! I’m excited to take it to the beach and pool this summer and it will be great to have when we host outdoor BBQs. Remember when we had to lug a big giant boom box everywhere? Wish I had the BassBoomz when I was in high school!

BassBoomz-headerThey have generously offered my readers $85 off the retail price so you can get them for only $46 for the entire month of March! Enter the voucher code:  BBZUS026506 at check out. Grab one, get your groove on and let me know what you think, you know you want one!

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Happy Birthday Dr. Suess!

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go” -Dr. Suess
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“If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good” -Dr. Seuss

His are some of the first books we read as children, fostering the all important love for reading. He helped create book lovers out of many of us. In honor of his birthday, my son and I have been reading Dr. Suess books all week at bedtime.

His best selling book is my favorite Dr. Suess book, Green Eggs and Ham. You just have to love the cadence of that spectacular rolls-right-off-the-tongue rhyming!  Most of his books were written in anapestic tetrameter giving them that fun beat. He won a 50 dollar bet with his publisher by writing Green Eggs and Ham with only 50 words and all but one of those words has only one syllable.

The extraordinarily talented Theodor Geisel (Suess is his middle name) even won an Academy Award in 1947 for writing the documentary feature, Design For Death.

He published 46 children’s books, the final one, “Oh The Places You’ll Go,”  was published in 1990. What is your favorite Dr. Suess book?

“I know it is wet and the sun is not sunny. But we can have lots of good fun that is funny” -from The Cat in the Hat 

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3 Healthy Alternatives to Kids’ Favorite Foods

When was the last time your child asked you for a plate of steamed vegetable? Never, right?! If they’re like most kids they’re begging for cookies, cheeseburgers, pizza, candy, etc… right?!

Providing our kids with a healthy diet is a constant battle for parents. Our culture is obsessed with junk food, and spends more than 110 billion dollars on fast food every year. Over 30 percent of children in America under age 17 are overweight. Kids are the target market for all the junk food out there. We don’t want to deprive them of the foods they love, but it’s our job to make sure they’re getting proper nutrition. Many of their favorite foods are unhealthy, but fortunately there are some delicious alternatives. Read on to learn about my picks …

1. Healthy pancakes.

Love to make pancakes every Sunday morning? Look for a mix that’s made with organic stone ground whole grain flour, pure raw evaporated cane juice or pure raw sugar, and aluminum-free leavening. I make them even healthier by adding ground flax seeds and wheat germ. (My kids don’t even notice.) The recipe calls for oil, so opt for a healthy option like grape seed oil, then top with a little 100 percent pure maple syrup. My kids love them! Try Bob’s Red Mill buttermilk pancake and waffle mix or organic seven-grain pancake mix from Nuts.com… Read entire article at Parent Society. 

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When In Doubt, Recycle

20130215_102100Our trash bin is rarely full but our recycle bin is busting at the seams nearly every week. I’m always asking my neighbor if I can put our overflow of recyclables in his bin. Most people don’t realize that lots of stuff that we toss in the garbage can be recycled.  They just throw things away because they either assume it cannot be recycled or they just don’t bother. In fact, more than 75 % of waste is recyclable, but only about 30 % of it actually gets recycled!

Glass jars, newspaper, magazines, cardboard, cans, some of this stuff is obvious but people still neglect to fill their recycle bins each week. Someone once told me that they don’t recycle because there is no room for a bin under their kitchen sink. Seriously?!! Make room. The mud room, the laundry room, the bathroom, garage anywhere!  Recycling is probably the easiest thing that a person can do to live a greener existence.

Even that clear, hard plastic packaging used for toys and other goods can be recycled as can shipping boxes, department store bags, tissue paper and some types of wrapping paper. Milk cartons and those liquid cartons that contain juice, egg nog and broth can be recycled as well. Those containers have a high grade fiber so they work well in paper mills.

My kids and I went on a tour of our local landfill. Not exactly a trip to Legoland but it was interesting, the boys had fun and we learned a lot. Our guide told us, when in doubt, recycle. She said if you’re not sure whether or not an item is recyclable throw it in the recycle bin because they sort through everything anyway. Not every municipality is run the same but you can call yours with questions. Certain items like tires, electronics, carpeting, appliances, paint, etc. are not always easy to recycle because you usually have to find a drop off center but it can be done, just go online for information on your area. Just do what you can, every little bit helps.

“We can help educate our families and communities about the importance of recycling for our environment, and how each of us can make a difference for a better world by recycling” 
-Robert Alan Silverstein

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Happy Birthday To My Sweet Baby

Happy 7th Birthday Jackson!! XOXO2012-06-07 Spring 2012 001

I am madly in love with my sweet, smart, happy, funny, fun, amazing boy!
He brings more happiness into my life than I could ever have imagined ♥2012-02-25 2012-02-25 001 016

This joyful little boy has a special quality, a sparkle in his eye… one of those people everyone likes.

♥  I am incredibly lucky and proud to be his mommy  ♥

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Make The Sandy Hook Promise

Keep the community of Newtown in your heart

www.sandyhookpromiseI still get intensely sad when I think about the horrific tragedy in Newtown, CT last December. In an effort to honor the lives lost and help the community heal, members of the Newtown community have formed a nonprofit grassroots organization called Sandy Hook Promise. Their mission is to come together and support all involved. They are dedicated to making and keeping the very important promises of honoring the 26 lives that were lost and encouraging and supporting common sense solutions that make our communities and country safer. We can all make these promises at Sandy Hook Promise.

It was two months on Valentine’s Day, pledge your support to the Newtown community by participating in the One Million Hearts for Newtown campaign. Although Valentine’s Day has passed, you can still send a virtual Valentine to show the community of Newtown that they are in your heart. My heart goes out to the parents of those sweet babies and the families of all the victims. I hope you’ll join me in making the Sandy Hook Promise and send them your love and support.

“Our hearts are broken;
Our spirit is not.”

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Valentine’s Day Fun Facts

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  • The legend of St. Valentine’s Day is as mysterious and elusive as love itself. There is more than one theory, but the most widely believed dates back to the Roman Empire when Claudius II forbade men to marry during wartime. Bishop Valentine was executed on February 14th for defying the order and secretly marrying young lovers. Just before his death he wrote a love note to a young woman he had fallen in love with and signed it, “from your Valentine”
  • Valentine wishes date back to the middle ages but the first known ‘Valentine’ was a poem sent from Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife in 1415 written during his sentence at the Tower of London after he was captured at the Battle of Agincourt
  • Do you ‘wear your heart on your sleeve’? That expression comes from a Valentine ritual popular in the middle ages. Young men and women drew names from a bowl and pinned the name to their sleeve, the name they chose was said to be their Valentine
  • Chocolate is synonymous with Valentine’s Day possibly because in the 1800s, physicians would ‘prescribe’ it to calm patients who were pinning over a lost love. Another reason could be that Casanova, known as the world’s greatest lover, is said to have eaten chocolate to make him more virile
  • After taking over England, the Romans held a Pagan fertility festival in on February 14th. When the Romans left, Pope Gelsius did away with the Pagan tradition and established St. Valentine’s Day as a celebration of love in 496A.D, it was first declared a holiday in 1537 by England’s King Henry VIII

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Work It With Physique 57

Looking for a good workout DVD that will kick your #%$? Try Physique 57. I am particular about fitness DVDs because they can get boring, I’d rather be outside jogging or on the elliptical blasting my iPod. But Physique 57 is not your typical exercise video, these DVDs are well paced with lots of energy.

002They give you a seriously challenging workout with exercises that target each part of your body working muscles you never even knew you had. The instructors are fantastic. They explain all the moves in easy to understand detail and they keep things from getting dull. If one your resolutions for 2013 is to lose a few lbs., this will help.

These gals also keep you motivated by asking things like, “how do you want your bottom to look in a bathing suit?!” Tight, toned and shapely please! It’s based on the Lotte Berke Method targeting muscles to the point of fatigue in what they call interval overload and let me say, it works you. They have studios in New York and Los Angeles. It’s the workout that Kelly “ripped” Ripa has been doing for years.  Give it a try and let me know how you think it compares to other workout DVDs.

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Seriously Good Cereal

3 Sisters Cereal 007Do your kids beg you for sugary big brand cereal after being bombarded by their commercials? I love how they spin it as “part of a healthy breakfast,” yeah, the unhealthy part. Sure, once in a while I give in and treat them to a box but our pantry is stocked with healthier alternatives. There really are several to choose from. My family loves a line of cereal sold exclusively at Whole Foods called Three Sisters. They do not use any partially hydrated oils, high fructose corn syrup, artificial preservatives, colors or flavors.  My husband says it’s even better than the unhealthy sugar laden brands!

My kid’s favorites are Cinnamon Sweets, their alternative for Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Marshmallow Oaties, their answer to Lucky Charms. In fact, the ‘oatie’ part is tastier than the non-marshmallow cereal in Lucky Charms. My youngest actually eats it rather than just picking out the marshmallows the way he does on the rare occasions he has Lucky Charms. Three Sisters offers several other varieties including four flavors of oatmeal.  The only con? It’s a bit pricey considering how much is in the bag. They use renewable wind energy in their production and the cereals come in a freshness saver bag, no box saves energy as well as a few trees. This eco girl loves that! Try them and let me know what you think.