Jackie Smith

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. Growing up as a Canadian in an American school in Singapore was pretty fantastic – we wore shorts every day of the year, we learned about different countries and cultures, we had friends from all over the world, and Canadians like myself weren’t required to take French all through […]

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of summer. I love spending afternoons at the park with my 3-year-old. I love blowing bubbles on our terrace after dinner. I love wearing maxi dresses and flip flops. I love weekend trips to the beach. And I love the sound

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. Busy bags are a great way to keep little ones occupied on bad weather days and sick days, while traveling, or during the witching hour leading up to dinnertime, but coming up with fresh ideas to keep them interesting can be challenging. And that’s why I loved Pinterest. My daughter

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. My daughter started kindergarten this year, and while she isn’t really a fan of desserts and sugar, she absolutely loves Halloween, and I am beyond excited to show up at her school with a few Halloween treats for her classmates on October 31. I can remember a couple of

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. One of my fondest Halloween memories from my childhood happened in Girl Scouts. I was about 8-years-old at the time, and we were living in Singapore where Halloween didn’t exist, so the Leaders (is that what they’re called?) wanted to make our Halloween extra special. We used to meet

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. When we first moved to Singapore, my parents warned me that things would be different, and while I missed my grandparents terribly in the first few months after we left Canada, I adjusted to the move without any issues and didn’t understand why my mother and sister cried all

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. One of my most vivid memories of moving to Singapore when I was 7-years-old is the moment when I found out that Halloween didn’t exist there. Sure, we got to dress up at school and always had some sort of class party to mark the date, but unless you

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. While my daughter and I were at Chapters (the Canadian equivalent of Barnes and Noble) one afternoon last November, I saw an Elf on the Shelf and couldn’t resist buying it. It was the first year she fully grasped the idea of Santa Claus, and when we sat together to read

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. One of my favorite parts of the holidays is that they give me an excuse to take my 4-year-old to our local craft store so we can stock up on the supplies we need to transform our home into a holiday-inspired wonderland. There’s just something so incredibly wonderful about

THIS POST MAY CONTAIN AFFILIATE LINKS. When we were knee-deep in cold and flu season, I seriously thought junior kindergarten would NEVER come to an end, and all of a sudden it’s the beginning of June and I feel like I have no idea where the time has gone. Of course, this is partly due