Local's Story-time at Books& Cookies with Alva Sachs

TOMORROW, September 30th at 4pm there is a Local's Story-time at Books & Cookies. The featured Local Author for this story-time is Alva Sachs, an award-winning children's author from Calabasas. She is the Author of Circus Fever, On your Mark, Get Set, GO! and her latest release is I'm 5. All three of those books have received honors and awards for children's picture books.

As a future children's book author and illustrator, meeting someone that has gone through this process and completed it successfully 3 times is going to be a great experience. It's hard to stay driven sometimes when you have a blank canvas and a pencil in your hand but can't seem to start that first line. Seeing completed projects and all the events that she has participated in, and the millions of smiles that she has brought to families...especially children...is a great motivator. It also reminds me that every great story starts with ONE WORD and every great drawing starts with one line....and I can't be nervous or afraid to place those lines. All art-work is a work in progress and the first line won't determine my success.

SO...I hereby decree that the first lines placed on these pages are unimportant... unloading the pressure that is stacked on top of my drawing pencils and markers!

A little bit about the Bookstore hosting this Local's story-time:

Books and Cookies, a new bookstore, bakery, and enrichment center, seems to have figured out how to keep kids and parents happy and excited about reading. They have a cozy set up in their Bookstore and Interactive Reading Room where kids and their imagination are free to wander, and an Kid's Cafe where both you and your kid's taste buds are FREE to ROAM. Not only do they make it a great experience, they also offer other classes and events in theirActivity Space that you and your children can surely enjoy together, alone, or with friends...that will feed into their love of books and learning starting at an early age!

Books & Cookies is not only a great stop for moms with infants for STORY-TIMES, babies and toddlers for music classes, and everyone and anyone for BootCamp workouts, they are a positive influence in the community as well. They have teamed up with Children's and Literacy programs to give back and share their love for books....and of course cookies too.

Event's like tomorrow's Local Story-time take place the Last friday of every month. This gives the local authors a chance to connect with their readers and it give our kids the opportunity to meet those special people that write the books that they read everyday.

Come check out the FREE event tomorrow at Books & Cookies (2230 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90405) and support our local author, Alva Sachs, from 4pm to 5pm. She will be reading her 3 books, have fun coloring activities, and will also be signing books!

WHO KNOWS? Maybe one day I'll get the chance to Host a LOCAL Author's STORY-TIME...ahhhh, so exciting!

To find out more about events and activities at Books & Cookies, check out this Calendar.

Why I started this BLOG...

Mommy-hood is a complex state in which us women have to all of a sudden become experts in all areas of life from Art's and Crafts to Accounting. The second we are "with Child" we start morphing into this SUPER BEING--educator, manner's enforcer, nurse, sanitation engineer, savings specialist, Rachel Ray Prodigies, mom-prenuers, artists, musicians, magicians, referees, bankers, interpreters, and SOO MANY MORE THINGS that are TIED into the STATE of MOMMY-HOOD!

With this blog, I hope to look for things that make mommy-hood easier; helpful sites, creative people, and other tools out there in one helpful place so that we can use them to make our MOMMY-HOOD journey a little easier.

I will try and divide my articles into the following Sub-TOPICS:

• Health/Fitness- Articles and posts in this topic will include nutrition tips to how to find the right bootcamp or exercise class for you and everything in between. This will be one of my personal favorites since I already write for examiner.com about LA women's Fitness and LA Motherhood as well as teach a BootCamp4Moms Class here in the Marina.
• Child Development- This Topic will attempt to organize and located some of those parenting sites that help you FREAK OUT about what your child should be doing at what age.
• Home Improvement- This will be a wide range of articles that all deal with things of the home, whether it's figuring out what cleaning products are best for the home to how to turn articles of clothing into other useful things.
• Technology- These articles will discuss those NEW TECHNOLOGY things that might infact not be too complicated for us and CAN HELP us Multitask MORE than we already do.
• Working Mom- Articles that pertain to those moms who work outside the home or have created their own businesses.
• SAHM (Stay-at-home-Mom)- Articles that relate to those moms who work from HOME taking care of their littles ones.
• Arts & Crafts- This will be a list of all the FUN and CREATIVE crafts that I find that you might enjoy too, from sewing to simple ways to transform things into OTHER things!
• Mommy Break- articles and posts related to those things that give mommy a 5 minute time-out.
• Enrichment- Posts that relate to books, intellectually stimulating things, and cultural activities that can enrich us as moms, our kids or our whole family.
• Family- anything related to our families whether it's how to deal with overly-opinionated family members to keeping the family nucleus at PEACE..which is sometimes easier said than done!
• Local Events- Things that are happening in this neck of the woods. If you would be interested in sharing what is happening in your area, just let me know, and I'll hook you up!
• FREE STUFF- Enough said eyy?!?

If you have any ideas for articles, want to share your opinion on a particular topic, or questions you would like answered, please email me at valeria.rodez@gmail.com with the MMHE in the Subject line. (MMHE stands for Making Mother-Hood Easier).

I look forward to sharing my findings with you as we all keep learning how to adapt and change with our new roles as they are thrown our way....but we must admit, WE WOULDN'T HAVE IT ANY OTHER WAY!